From Startup Struggles to Real Estate Triumphs with Josh Lopour, Co-Founder of EveryState

Three, two, one.

Hey. Welcome, everybody. This is another episode of Founder Journey. I'm here with one of my good friends and again, another OG of Launch Academy. This is Joshua Lepore, serial entrepreneur. Josh, tell us a little bit about yourself and every state and why you're so passionate about what you're building right now.

Yeah. So, I mean a little bit about myself. Originally born and raised in California, but when we started Retsley, which was in, I think 2012, 2013, that's when I came up to Canada and lived in Vancouver for almost a decade, which was nice. Now we're out here in beautiful and wonderful weather. Scottsdale, Arizona.

Yeah, this is Scottsdale. It's been an amazing week that we've had here. Every state had an amazing golf tournament at TPC Stadium. An exclusive opportunity to go play on the course before it shut down for the PGA Tour.

Yeah, it was awesome. It was the last day of public play before the pros go out there. So it was good.

Yeah. So props to you and your team for putting that together. That was an awesome tournament.

Thanks.

So, yes, for those listening, we are in beautiful Scottsdale. Josh is originally from America, came up to Canada. But what is it about every state that is magical? What are you so excited about?

So I think what is really interesting.

Maybe stop before that. What is every state? What does every state do?

Yeah, sure. So what every state is, is. It is essentially a real estate brokerage, but we've kind of reimagined what a real estate brokerage can be. And we. We turned every state into like, essentially a brokerage as a service. And so we realized that there are people out there that wanted to participate in organized real estate and brokerage services who wanted to buy and sell houses. But the. I think that the. The structure of a brokerage was not something that they're super interested in doing. So we created every state to essentially service REITs, institutional investors. Anybody that wants to buy more than 50 houses a month, we created this business to service them.

So it's not for the average individual buying their own home or their family home. This is for people that are in real estate as a business.

Yeah. And so, I mean, we could. And we've certainly done family and friends deals before, but it really is structured to say if someone wants to go out there and they want to buy houses in 10 or 15 different states, they want to have, like, really precise underwriting. That's what our brokerage is for. It's for those people that, again, want to buy 50 houses a month, have portfolios that have more than a thousand houses in it. So that's who we serviced.

So underlying, it's a big data play. You're aggregating and leveraging a lot of data and insights.

Yeah, it's. I would actually say it's more of a service business.

Okay.

Um, and so again, like this brokerage as a service is like we're providing the brokerage service to them. With that comes data. And so our ability to access nearly a hundred MLS at the same time allows us to help our clients or us to underwrite those properties and help them find properties that they would be interested at a national scale, which most brokerages cannot service.

That and the name every state you are in. Every state? Yes.

So we have every state. Like our, even our logo is it's ally. So technically to be a national brokerage you have to have 51 licenses. So it's all 50 states plus Washington D.C. cool.

And this isn't new to you, you're a serial entrepreneur, but this is your multiple kick at a can in the real estate industry. So tell us about your journey and what is it about real estate that gets you excited and how did you get to where you are today?

Yeah, so I think my journey, it actually starts when I worked in television. So before I was in real estate, I worked in television, lived in Hollywood. And we, I think we saw that like technology was slowly taking over. Like this is like the infancy of YouTube, for example. I remember talking to TV executives and I was just so passionate about like online video and they didn't get it. And I'm like, maybe it's time for me to like go somewhere different. Right, so.

And what did they not get it because it's just technology's too new or they didn't want to listen to you?

They literally said that they didn't believe that people would watch video on their computers.

Yeah, not even the phone on their computers.

Yeah, because back then it was like Sidekicks and you know, Palm Pilots and blackberries. And so I started thinking about like, what's a great way to, to, to move into like a more like tech forward industry. So we created a startup called Pixpree which was. And this actually gets to real estate and this is like, it's kind of.

Like we want to know about the journey. Like how did you get to where you are?

So I think, I think people kind of sometimes they get stuck in the industry and this is like how we involved there. So started called a company called Pixpree. The idea was that people Go on blogs back in the day. So, like, people.com and there's like, a blog called Perez Hilton, and they had these celebrity photos. And when you. When I worked for Entertainment Tonight and the Insider, the number one question we'd ask a celebrity is, what are you wearing? They say, I'm wearing Oscar de la Renta or I'm wearing Gucci or, you know, some brand. And then because people are interested about that. But blogs were never reporting that kind of information. They're always reporting, like, the gossip or the, you know, whatever the headline was. And I'm like, there has to be a way for us to deliver this fashion information. So we created Pixpree, and it took a web app and put clothes on pictures so you could hover your mouse over the photo. And if you saw Angelina Jolie wearing a red dress, you could click on the dress and it would take you to Neiman's or Saks or Barney's to buy that dress, which was, you know, typically, like, extremely expensive. But we also put different price points. So we put the original dress, if we could find it, if it was available, and then we put, like, a dress that costs $200, and then there's.

A $50 from H& M that looks the same but isn't quite as expensive.

And so people are really interested in that. But in the beginning of affiliate marketing, especially, like, retail affiliate marketing, all of the, like, you go to, like, Nordstrom's backend database or Macy's, and they all did the same thing, but they organized their data differently. So we actually spent a majority of our time, like, normalizing all this fashion data. It got really big, really fast. I think we went to 20 million unique users in, like, under six months. And we were underfunded. We had a competitor that was eventually bought by Google that was just kind of like, blowing us out of the water. They were giving our publishers monthly commitments that we just didn't have the money for it. So that business kind of went away. We sat there and thought about, like, what's next for us? And so we got interested in, like, Facebook apps. The app that took off the quickest was this real estate app. The idea that we could search real estate just like you would search on Zillow or Realtor Ca, and you could take those properties on Facebook and then share them with your friends, like your mother or your spouse or your brother and sister. And you can have private conversations around this real estate, like this listing that you like that you want to buy had hundreds of customers paying us A very small fee. But what the challenge was is that we had to create these integrations with multiple listing services. So in America at the time, there was about 900 multiple listing services. Now there's about 500. And just like Macy's and Nordstrom's, they all do exactly the same thing, but they organize their data differently. And so we made our first app with a really large real estate, really large multiple listing service in Illinois. And then we went to our second one. And my co founder at the time, who's extremely technical, was like, man, this data's really complicated and annoying and not structured. He's like, but I got it figured out. And then I brought him another giant customer, and he's like, geez, this is totally different than the first one. And then the third one, the fourth one, the fifth one came along and everyone was different. And so we started going to real estate conferences to try and sell this product. And after talking to every other startup in the room, we slowly realized that our app was interesting and real estate agents really liked it. But what everyone was super excited about was this kind of like, infrastructure that we built to manage the data. And so we realized that was kind of our pivot, that was like the more interesting business because there's just a lot of demand for that. And nine months after starting that business, we were acquired by Zillow. And then we worked. I worked at Zillow for a couple years and took some time off to get married, have children. And after. After a couple of years of kind of like just like traveling around the country, get bored, as everybody will, if you're young.

And mind you, I follow Josh on Instagram. I saw the videos. He had fun. He had a great time going up in the sand dunes and taking that to RV and just enjoying. Enjoying the road and enjoying life.

Yeah. And it was a great time. But, you know, I think that if you're an entrepreneur, it's kind of a. Boredom sets in. Yeah, you can take the. You can take the. It's like you can take the. The person out of the city, but you can never take the city out of the person. So it's going to bubble back up and then you're going to want to try something new. So did a bunch of consulting, had picked up some really interesting consulting clients. And then that's when I connected with another OG of Launch Academy, and that was Hamanshu. And we, we started picking up some clients and there's a third person who was kind of always. Every client that we had, they would Hire this guy too. And after a while of talking, we're like, what's our next, like startup going to be? And again, instead of just focusing on like what we wanted to do, we just listened to customers, saw the pain points, and that's when we created every state. We realized, because we realized that there are these, these big players in the industry that really want to participate in real estate. They just don't want to be a brokerage. Just like anybody that's writing code or creating apps. They want to be in that space, but they don't want to maintain servers. That's why they use aws. And we're trying to be that kind of base, that base layer platform for, I would say real estate companies that want to, you know, buy, sell, rent, do interesting things in real estate, modernize.

Their own businesses because like the, the infrastructure is just getting more and more complicated as you move forward. But what is it about real estate that gets you so excited? Because it's your second kick of the can Again, arguably very successful companies. But it's not just about the money, right?

Yeah. I think what makes me excited is just because we, I feel like we understand the business so well and we really understand the complexities of organized real estate. So when I talk about organized real estate, some people think about like it's an agent or a broker, but organized real estate is this web of, yeah, obviously individual states in which there's 50 plus DC, then there's 1100 real estate associations, there's 500 plus multiple listing services. And to make that work at scale is really complicated and a little bit burdensome. But we know how to integrate with all those associations and organizations individually and make it work. And we're one of the few companies that do that well. And so I think that's kind of exciting for us. And especially when we see our customers, it's like always about delighting the customer. When I see our customers, like, wow, you are solving a problem that sure, we could solve, but we'd spend a ton of money. It's really, really frustrating. And you're delivering us a service just works. And so they get super excited, they're delighted, and that makes us happy.

Yeah. And I've had a chance to meet some of the team this week and that passion runs through everybody. It's not just, hey, this is just a great way to just kill my time. It's a job. No, they all really believe in what you're building here. Now. That journey is interesting. As a multi or a serial entrepreneur, there are Things that happen, the ups and downs. Share some of your insights into the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur.

Yeah, it's not always fun and especially I think in the kind of the time that we're talking right now, it's definitely going to be challenging for a lot of entrepreneurs, but you have to be okay with that. You have to be okay with knowing that, you know, funding is going to be tighter. It's not non existent, it's just going to be tighter than it once was. Your customers are going to be tightening their purse strings and so you have to always be, you have to be okay with that. You know? Six months ago Knowing that it's not always going to be rosy, things aren't always going to be perfect. And so if you can get yourself in that mindset, I mean, I think it helps you manage those up and downs. But I think that if I, if as an entrepreneur, if you want that, that, that stagnant life, then obviously like being an entrepreneur is not for you because it's not going to be that like, regardless of how hard you work, some things are going to be out of your control as I think it's how you manage those opportunities. So yeah, there's always going to be ups and downs. There's going to be like times when you're too busy and not busy enough. When you're not busy enough. It's probably frustrating because you're likely a person who wants to operate like you know, you want to be always busy, always running, always running. And when you're forced to walk or slow down, that can always be frustrating. But you just have to. There's a million podcasts where. Podcasts or books where it's just, you got to have that mentality of being okay with that.

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There's also one other aspect I kind of want to get your insight on. Scaling and growing a business is challenging. Yeah, you get a lot of people that want to sell obviously to consumers across the US because it's probably the one with the most active consumer bases in the world. But your business is a little bit different in that you're selling into different regulated markets across the U.S. it's like every state is different. What's some of the complexities or even hacks that you came up with to help you address that?

So I don't think we have hacks necessarily the way that we address like scaling our business across, you know, 51 jurisdictions and across, you know, a couple hundred, like multiple listing services. So we have a hundred, but we like integrate with other ones as well. It's just not being so tied to the service that you're offering that doesn't allow you to be fungible when you try and acquire either when you try and expand your business or try and expand to new customers. And so a lot, I think that what we see is a lot of people, they build these services or experiences that work really, really great in one market, but they haven't considered that there's other markets out there. And so we've really been in the mindset that there's certainly rules at the state level, at the local level, the association level and the MLS level. On paper, in black and white, they seem the same, but we always know that people are going to have different interpretations of how those should be executed or how people should follow them. And so we try and create this really loose system that allows us to adapt either both new markets or at the same time to new customers. Who are, I would say, at the bleeding edge of what most people would define real estate as. That's awesome.

Is. Is there a chance that it's going to become every state is going to become every country? Is the US Just the market that you're focusing on or. Yeah, I think your aspiration.

I think we have to focus on the U.S. like, we, we obviously understand a little bit about organized real estate in Canada, but we've had like, many, many calls with overseas companies both in the Middle east and Europe. And when they describe how real estate operates in their country or in, you know, their, their locality, like, it, it reminds us of everything that we're dealing with here. We just don't at the time know enough about those markets to like, say, like, that's some. That's a place that we want to go or can go just because we just don't have the experience there. So certainly if the opportunity presents itself and there's the ability to operate an efficient real estate business in other places, I think we consider it. But, you know, there's still a lot of growth for us in the States. It's probably a decade of growth at least.

Yeah. Focus, focus, focus.

Yeah.

All right, Josh, this has been awesome conversation, really interesting founder journey from entertainment to fashion to multiple real estate tech companies. Um, what would you like to leave as your parting words to our audience? What. What are some of the tips and advice that you can give to budding entrepreneurs, even serial entrepreneurs that are ready to get back into it and get on their second startup?

Yeah, I think the advice that I always give people is don't like, fall in love with the space. Don't fall in love with your business. Cause sometimes falling in love with your business, it. It becomes. It's not like a toxic relationship, but you, like, you want your business to succeed so much that you. Sometimes you're ignoring the space that you're living in.

The blinders, come on.

Yeah. And so we, again, we, we. We talk to entrepreneurs all the time and they're so smart and they're. They probably work harder than we do. They. They are doing something that's really, really interesting, but they get stuck in that. They love the business so much, they can't listen to, like, what the outside voices are telling them and they can adapt. Where we have always been like, hey, listen, we'll be whatever you guys want it want us to be. Like, we don't. Every state is here to be anything. And so, like, we're not selling a product again. We're selling this Brokerage as a service type type of business. So it's a SaaS business and we want to not let our egos or our perspectives on where we think the industry should go to get in the way of the success of the business. And so again, might be a great idea, but listen to your customers, which everyone said since the end of the time, somehow people still don't do that. More often than not. It's kind of shocking. But again, love your space, you know, date your business, hopefully get somewhere and then, you know, just don't get in your own way.

So we are here in beautiful Scottsdale. I'm here because you invited me to this, every state golf tournament that we had at TPC Stadium. But this was just not about having fun. This is, this was a strategic event for you. Tell us about how it came about and why.

So the space that we're in, again, we're appealing to institutional investors, people with very deep pockets and the conventions that we go to, like sponsorship, especially when you're bootstrapping. So we bootstrapped our startup. It is. We took no investors. We just, you know, put in a couple bucks and then hoped we had people pay the bills. And so we've been very tight and super lean. We, you know, hire very slowly. And we're like, how do we have time with our customers without spending $25,000 on a conference sponsorship or spending $7,500 to sponsor drinks? Because the reality is for us, like, the conversations that we want to have, because our business is. Even though it's like our real estate brokerage is very, very complicated, it's hard to have those conversations with loud music.

Yeah.

And so we got.

Even if you do. Yeah, it's like you're flying to Miami or flying to Vegas. You might only get like 10, 15 minutes with that person because there's a hundred other booths that they need to go visit.

Yeah. And so we've been. So. Yeah, so that's exactly the points where, like, what do we do? And there's a really famous golf tournament in Scottsdale called the Waste Management Open. It's like the, you know, the most attended golf, golf event in the entire world. And we. Last year, for the first time, I was like, I should invite some people to play this golf course. And it went really well. So this is our second annual golf event. But the end of the day, it's like, it's. It seems extravagant, but when you do it, like a comparison of what it would cost us to like have that same level of visibility at A conference, it's like half the price, maybe even a third of the price, which is. Which is great. And we get to spend, like, really quality time with all of our customers. And so that's kind of like, when I think about, you know, what every state does, it's like, we're very, very creative. And so we can be like, when we have customers that say, listen, we want to. We want to do a, like a fractional ownership type of real estate business. How does that work in real. In organized real estate? Like, we're creative, we understand the rules. So we think about it. We kind of apply that same thinking to, like, our marketing budget and say, what's how? What's the best bang for the buck that we can do? And that was this golf tournament. And we get to spend four or five hours with all of our customers, have these really interesting conversations, and they're not going to remember the, you know, the vodka tonic they have. They're going to remember playing with us, being in the stadium, trying to hit, you know, closest to the hole on 16. And it was like, you know, we did. We did a kind of a postmortem, like, wow, this is awesome. Like, we've already gotten business out of it. Our customers are very happy. It's.

It's just experiential marketing. It's awesome. Like, they're not walking away with a brochure. They're walking away with a memory. They're walking with photos that they're putting on Instagram and. And their. Their colleagues are looking at, like, how the. How did you get that? Yeah, every state, they. They set this up, right? Like, they're like, it is. It is a bucket list moment to be not only on that golf course, but to be in the scenario where you have the PGA stands all set up, all the monitors. You're basically playing a PGA tournament.

And they're not going to just tell their family about it. They're going to tell all their coworkers. Every time they're at a conference, like, chit chatting about golf, they're going to tell the story and they're like, how'd you do that? Then we're going to get brought up. It's just. Yeah, it's just being, like, really creative, like with your budget and your marketing.

Dollars, which you have to do in this market. Right. It's like people's budgets are getting tighter and tighter. So getting somebody to come to a conference and hoping that they show up at your booth may not be as possible, as opposed to, okay, our Budgets are tight. But I do want to go to this tournament because I know so and so is going to be there and I'm going to have four hours to play with them or you can have a lot more FaceTime with them.

And none of our customers are like, they're competitive when it comes to probably raising fund dollars, but they're not competitive in their buying structure. So all of our, even though all of our clients buy houses, you know, some people are in workforce housing and some people are in build to rent and some people are in, in a different space. And so they can all kind of just trade their ward war stories. And the reality is like everyone's just so close. They're happy to be there. They get to learn from other people. Like people in their construction and the renovation teams and their acquisition teams. They're, they really aren't competing against each other just because they have these really specialized focus and like what they're trying to buy and everybody like enjoys it. And so it's, and it's also a way for us to really learn things about our customers that we had no idea and just sit there and ask questions and then listen. And you can spend five hours with a customer on a golf course.

And I know each other as well from the industry and so it's a great opportunity for them to connect.

Yeah, I think almost like there's like a large majority of our customers that have worked at one, two or three of the companies that were there and.

They all spin out, do their own thing.

Yeah, well, they all, I mean, again, it's just, you know, it's finance, man.

Yeah, awesome. With that, it's another episode of Founder Journey. Josh, if people want to get in contact you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, they can just hit us up@everystate.com hit hello at every state. Send us an email. We get it. Or you can find me. Just send me an email@joshuaerystate.

It's easy. Awesome.

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