May 6, 2025

Episode 416 - Building Rollout: AK Lalani's Mission to Simplify Real Estate Integrations

Episode 416 - Building Rollout: AK Lalani's Mission to Simplify Real Estate Integrations

AK Lalani, the founder of Rollout, joins us to share the profound challenges associated with API integrations within the real estate sector. He elucidates how Rollout endeavors to streamline the integration process, thereby enabling proptech companies to focus on their core offerings without the burden of complex API management. Drawing from his rich background, including a formative upbringing in Tanzania and extensive experience in the tech industry, AK shares insights into his entrepreneurial journey and the motivations behind his innovative solutions. Our conversation traverses his early ventures, the lessons learned from working at startups, and the pivotal moment that led him to address the critical integration issues plaguing the industry. As we delve into the future of technology in real estate, AK emphasizes the transformative potential of AI and the imperative for seamless data connectivity across platforms.

The dialogue with esteemed guest AK Lalani unveils a profound narrative of his formative years, tracing back to his upbringing in Tanzania and the indelible impact of his familial background on his entrepreneurial aspirations. Lalani's reflections on growing up in a developing nation highlight the stark contrasts between his educational experiences and those of his peers in the United States. He articulates a burgeoning sense of empathy fostered by witnessing the struggles of those in his community, which ultimately propelled him to initiate a poverty reduction initiative during his high school years. This endeavor exemplifies how early exposure to socio-economic challenges instilled in him a desire to effectuate tangible change, a theme that resonates throughout his professional journey.

Transitioning from his roots, the conversation delves into Lalani's academic pursuits at Stanford University, where he encountered the duality of being both a standout student and a member of a highly competitive cohort. His experiences at Stanford were transformative, shaping his understanding of entrepreneurship and technology. The narrative highlights the pivotal moments that led him to recognize his strengths in economics, steering him away from traditional engineering pathways. This realization set the stage for his eventual foray into the startup world, where he sought to learn from existing enterprises before embarking on his entrepreneurial ventures.


The latter part of the discourse centers on Lalani's current ventures, particularly his role as the founder of Rollout, which addresses the intricate challenges associated with API integrations in the proptech sector. He elucidates the complexities faced by companies striving to connect various software solutions, emphasizing the time-consuming nature of building and maintaining integrations. Rollout's innovative approach—allowing companies to build once and integrate everywhere—represents a significant advancement in simplifying this process. Lalani's insights into the future of technology in real estate, particularly the integration of AI through their recently released MCP server, underscore his forward-thinking perspective and commitment to enhancing the operational efficiency of proptech companies.

Takeaways:

  • Growing up in Tanzania provided AK Lalani with a unique perspective on community and empathy, shaped by the challenges of poverty.
  • His entrepreneurial journey began in high school with a poverty reduction initiative called Prompt, reflecting a commitment to social impact.
  • AK's experience at Stanford was transformative, challenging him to outwork his peers and discover his true talents in economics.
  • Rollout, the company founded by AK, addresses the complexities of API integration in prop tech, aiming to simplify data connectivity for businesses.
  • The MCP server introduced by Rollout enables advanced AI capabilities, facilitating seamless communication between CRM systems and enhancing operational efficiency.
  • AK emphasizes the importance of creating a local monopoly for new agents, advising them to specialize in a specific market to gain expertise.

00:00 - Untitled

00:00 - Starting Fresh: Lessons from Early Stage Startups

02:04 - Journey to Entrepreneurship: Growing Up in Tanzania

16:20 - The Journey of Entrepreneurship: From Stanford to Startups

23:31 - The Journey into Prop Tech

28:45 - The Future of AI in Real Estate

Person 3

And I wanted to go work at an early stage startup to learn and see what that was actually like. Because I figured, hey, I'm going to make all the mistakes. I'd rather learn on someone else's dime and make those mistakes somewhere else first.

Bill RIsser

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers and really anyone with a story to tell.It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me in my 10th year and over 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 416 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Today we're going to talk a little bit about a cool new technology.A shout out to Marcie James for another wonderful guest suggestion. Marcie, please keep them coming. We are going to chat with AK Lalani, who is the founder of Rollout, which solves the issues of API.And trust me, there are lots of issues at times with API, so we're going to talk about that.But of course we're also going to talk to AK about where he grew up and where his entrepreneurial spirit came from and all kinds of other good things. It's a fascinating story. It's going to be a lot of fun. So let's get this thing started. AK welcome to the podcast.

AK Lalani

Happy to be here.

Bill RIsser

Yeah, I'm very, very excited to chat with you. I had a nice conversation with Marcy in Dallas at what was she there for?

AK Lalani

The 1000Watt Summit?

Bill RIsser

Oh, there you go. Were you there for that?

AK Lalani

No, no. But I remember she mentioned she's going for that. Yeah.

Bill RIsser

So we had a nice conversation and, and I'm really excited to kind of get to find out about your background like I do with all my guests, but I have a layman's knowledge of API and I know it was always a hassle and if, if you've created a solution to that hassle, like, that's, that's amazing. So. Well, we're going to talk a lot about that. First question I ask every guest is, where'd you grow up?

AK Lalani

So I grew up in Tanzania, which is on, you know, the coast of East Africa. Yeah. I was born in Kenya and moved to Tanzania as a four and grew up there all the way up until I came out to the US for college. Wow.

Bill RIsser

So my first thought is maybe mom or dad had worked there. Is that kind of why you were there?

AK Lalani

Yeah. So my parents both grew up in Pakistan and they, you know, had to provide for the family. And so my dad basically worked his way up at a bank.And, you know, the bank said, hey, we're going to start a branch out in Kenya and who wants to go? And no one raised their hands. And so he then basically said, well, you know, if you give me a salary bump, I'll go. And they agreed to that.And so that's how we ended up in Kenya. Wow. And lived there for many years and finally got opportunity to go for another work opportunity in, when I was 4 years old to Tanzania.And so that's how we moved.

Bill RIsser

Can you explain to me what it's like being, you know, entering school, let's say, right. Whatever kindergarten or whatever it is in Tanzania. First of all, did you speak the language?Did you learn it because you were there at that young age?

AK Lalani

Yeah. So the entire country speaks Swahili. Right. English is not something that most people speak, and so you had to learn the language.My parents did fortunately send me to an English speaking school. So I was very fortunate in the sense that, you know, it was somewhat of an international school.And so I did get a chance to, you know, obviously speak in English and get more of a traditional education from that perspective.But yes, going to, you know, kindergarten and all the way up through to high school in a developing country was very different from what a lot of my friends have experienced in the US.

Bill RIsser

What do you think it did for you? It seems to me like there's, there's some big value about. I don't want to call it a hardship, I just want to call it. It's different. Right.And so what are some of the things you take away from that going? I'm really glad that I had this experience.

AK Lalani

You know, I think the, the thing that jumps out is we were in the middle of just so many different things happening around us. And so, you know, like, we grew up in this huge context of there's so much poverty around us. Right, right.And we got to, I mean, it was unfortunately very heartbreaking. And so you develop a sense of empathy at the same time because there was a lot of hardship in a developing country. Right.There is this incredible sense of community and there's this incredible sense of, hey, we're, you know, here to help each other.And that is something I think like, you know, was very impactful to myself as I, as I grew up and Kind of like take away from, from that time in my life.

Bill RIsser

I'm going to take you a little bit further than that. You, it was more than impactful.Can you share the, what you did there to, to help with that problem in Tanzania, right, of poverty or, or some of the other issues as well? You, you actually started a, I don't want to call it a company, but an operation, right?

AK Lalani

Yeah, yeah, it was really just a high school club. It's not, you know, we don't have to glamorize it, but, you know, you know, part of that is, look, we grew up in.It was just incredible just to see all the resilient people around me.And so, you know, when I say resilient people around me, like, you know, because it was a developing country, we would have, you know, drivers to effectively, you know, drive us around. We would have maids in the house. It's pretty common there. But these people become a part of your life.So I've visited, you know, our driver's house, I've met his wife, his children, and you get to see, you know, how they live and some of the hardships that they've had to endure. And so for me, a big part of that was I, you know, I became very motivated to help in any way I could.And so, you know, when I was in high school, we started this thing called prompt. It was a poverty reduction organization.And we really, you know, spent a lot of time trying to figure out how do we, how do we actually have an impact on the people around us. Right? And it's funny because in hindsight, a lot of, a lot of the ideas were just from like forward thinking, you know, development economists. Right.We literally, you know, maybe not a common thing that for most people do in high school, but I spend a lot of times reading like these popular books like the End of Poverty by Jeffrey Saxon, a few others. They had a lot of really good ideas in there around health care and providing access to, you know, world producing assets.And so we would do things like buy, you know, hold these big fundraisers, these charity walks and raise as much money as we could, you know, in the tens of thousands of dollars almost, right?And then go and buy a bunch of mosquito nets and find populations that would suffer from malaria and, you know, where we could basically go and prevent that.We would basically go distribute these, you know, household by household, these rural villages or, you know, one of, one of the fun projects we did is we actually built an energy briquette press and we would distribute that to schools in the area so they could produce their own energy. And you know, being a developing country, there's, you know, price of oil goes up and down, fluctuates, really impacts their budget.And this is a way for them to have a little more resiliency and being able to provide high quality education while being affected by the ups and downs of the energy markets.

Bill RIsser

I don't think we're glamorizing anything. I think that's, I think that's really impressive.I'm trying to imagine most high school kids here, what are they thinking about and what are they doing? And it's not that. So that's, that's awesome.I'm going to assume though, though, the, the, the early, it was probably much earlier than your time with prompt where you were thinking about technology and entrepreneurship. It sounds like that was baked into you pretty early.

AK Lalani

You know, less technology. But yes, entrepreneurship for sure. Yeah, I would, you know, I'd say entrepreneurship was actually somewhat of an expectation versus like a dream.And part, part of that was, you know, when my dad moved to Tanzania, it was for work opportunities so that he could actually have equity in the job that he was doing and become a partner in, you know, this new venture. And, and that kind of started his journey of entrepreneurship.And so the expectation was always like, hey, he's going to build up, you know, some sort of like family nest egg. And my job is being the only boy in the family to come and work for him and then eventually take over whenever he's ready to retire.Ironically, I have two sisters who both did join the family business and I never did. So go figure.

Bill RIsser

No, you did something different. You attend Stanford. I don't have a lot of guests on the show that have attended Stanford that are working in the real estate space.So my first question is this. That had to be a pretty important milestone in your life at the time, I would imagine, getting that.And do you remember getting the acceptance letter or email or whatever it was that had to be pretty exciting.

AK Lalani

Yeah, yeah, I absolutely do. So I remember it like it was yesterday. It was like a Sunday morning. I was flipping through my email.You know, email is much faster than snail mail, obviously, given where I was. But, you know, at this point I had been rejected by a lot of colleges and so, you know, hadn't gotten into Harvard or Yale or any of the other ones.And so I was expecting to, you know, get rejected as well. And I remember reading the email came through and read it like three, four times before I realized, hey, actually, no, this is Not a rejection email.I actually got in and I, you know, my mom happened to be just in the next room, so I, you know, go and tell her. I was so excited. I give her a hug. She hugs me back super elated. She's like, congrats. What's Stanford? Is that a good school?Just because, you know, this is the time before a lot of social media, the Internet wasn't as pervasive in our lives. You know, they just hadn't heard of it. It wasn't as big of a thing where we lived.And so, yeah, you know, I think everyone was pretty, pretty happy afterwards though, once we figured out what was going on.

Bill RIsser

Yeah, tell me, tell me about time at Palo Alto. Had to just be an amazing part of your life.

AK Lalani

Yeah, it was transformational in many ways.And, you know, I think one of the things I didn't realize I didn't fully understand the history of Silicon Valley and the context of living there and being part of it. And so I feel very grateful that I just kind of randomly ended up there.But, yeah, you know, I think going to Stanford was transformative in several ways.One is, you know, I went from being maybe one of the smartest kids in my high school to being very mediocre and very average in the college context and having to learn that I need to outwork everyone around me if I want to do well.The second thing maybe I learned is I have to work on the right things because, you know, actually moved to, you know, I went to college thinking I was going to be a civil engineer because I wanted to build low cost housing. And I thought that was going to be kind of the arc of my career and realized, wow, there are so many people that are better at engineering than I am.Wow. And that forced me to just, you know, figure out, hey, what am I good at? And turned out to be, you know, economics.And, you know, that ended up being the focus of kind of my studies and whatnot. So that was, you know, another great thing.But apart from that, you know, just being in the middle of Silicon Valley, getting access to speakers, and not just that, like, also seeing their arcs was a great way to learn firsthand what, you know, firstly, like, what the reality is on the ground versus what the media tells you. So, for example, Mark Zuckerberg gave a talk, like the last talk, for like an intern to CS class that I was taking once.And I remember it pretty vividly because, you know, he walks into the classroom, you know, he walks in the classroom, it's fully packed because everyone's expecting this big guest speaker.

Bill RIsser

Yeah.

AK Lalani

And he, you know, literally like I see him walking next to me, like just walks past me and you know, trying to like figure out, hey, where should I go?How do I get, you know, someone taps on the shoulders that they, they're expecting up there and he gives his entire talk that is very unpolished, very raw, very uncut. It's completely irrelevant for the entire classroom.He's talking about these like crazy technical scaling like technologies he's working on and the entire classroom is like, dude, this is an intro to CS class. We don't know what you're talking about compared to the guy you see today in the media. Right.He is very polished and you know, he's got a point of view and knows who his audience is.And so it's, it's, you know, things like that are just very interesting to see as you get to know people before or you know, at least get to learn from people before they're rich and famous and you know, very successful and see what me, you know, the traits that they had that got them there. Right.And you know, like the, we had a lot of very successful people that I went to school with that it was fun to actually see their arc as maybe dumb college kids to people that are magazines now.

Bill RIsser

Yeah. There's stories you don't share.

AK Lalani

Right.

Bill RIsser

I mean that's all what's done at Stanford, stays at Stanford. I guess I'm just. So you get your bachelor's there, you get your master's as well. And is it behavioral economics? Is that what I find that? Right?

AK Lalani

Yeah, that was, no, that was concentration. I kind of carved that for myself.

Bill RIsser

Okay.

AK Lalani

As an area of interest.

Bill RIsser

Okay.

AK Lalani

My master's was in what's called the management science and engineering.

Bill RIsser

Oh, okay.

AK Lalani

But it was very focused on computer science as well.

Bill RIsser

Okay, gotcha. So what is your plan now? Because you're not going to be working on, you know, you're not an engineer building small, you know, low cost homes.But what are you doing?

AK Lalani

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had in the back of my mind that I wanted to be involved in technology entrepreneurship at some point. Right.And I was basically ready to, you know, explore that as a future career at some point. But I knew I wasn't ready at that point. Right.As I'd graduated and I wanted to go work at an early stage startup to learn and see what that was actually like because I figured, hey, I'm going to make all the mistakes I'd rather learn on someone else's Dime and make those mistakes somewhere else first. My goal was really to find any startup that would hire me.And it was complicated because I was on a student visa and so I would need someone to basically give me, you know, like a sponsored visa.And I literally found one company that was, you know, these two Stanford MBAs that were starting a company in the solar space that were also international and happened to need to like get lawyer to sponsor their own visas.And they were like, well, you know, we don't mind, you know, doing a third one because we were paying the lawyers already, but you'd have to come work with us. And that ended up being startup called Aurora Solar, which is actually proptech adjacent in some ways. Right. They're a solar software company.

Bill RIsser

And so you're with them for how long?

AK Lalani

For about five years. So we started.

Bill RIsser

Did you learn some mistakes along the way?

AK Lalani

I don't want to give anything away, but yeah, absolutely. I mean, we start. So when I started, we didn't have a product, right.We hadn't written a line of code and look, we gotta build the product from scratch. We got to, you know, fumble our way around to getting early customers and then finally building an engine to grow from there.And, you know, we also were. When we started, you know, Aurora Solar was not the first company in their space. They were actually starting behind. Right.They were trying to catch up to other companies in the space. And so we learned how to compete in the marketplace and build better products faster than others and add real value to customers.And so a lot of important takeaways, I'd say from that experience, you move.

Bill RIsser

On to a company called E Granary, which feels like when I looked at this a little bit like you're kind of revisiting a little bit of your previous life.

AK Lalani

Yeah, yeah, yeah. E Granary was basically me starting the journey of saying, hey, I think I'm ready to finally start something.So, you know, I'd spent five years at Aurora. We built a real business. And, you know, I thought I was ready to go onto an actual business of my own.And E Granary was partly something that I was just very inspired to do because we were working with a nonprofit which is called the East African Farmers Federation, who serve millions of, you know, impoverished farmers in, you know, seven plus countries across East Africa.And the goal was to help them, you know, obviously do things, you know, basically give them access to capital and resources that help them, you know, come out of poverty.

Bill RIsser

The.

AK Lalani

And, you know, there's. We had a slide deck that showed you, hey, this is actually a good business while we do that.And so that was the thing that I was really inspired to go do. And so we spent, you know, a year or so building this platform out.We onboarded about 200,000 farmers, which is kind of a crazy feat given, you know, no one had smartphones. This is literally off of SMS and dispersed, you know, loans kind of in the millions of dollars to them that we had a pretty good repayment rate on.And you know, the company continues to exist and has done extremely well.I had actually just gotten married at that point and so, you know, about the one year mark, it was really a go time decision of, hey, I got, you know, this business is starting to work. Am I going to move my family, you know, my wife, myself to East Africa to kind of like go do this thing.And turned out that that just wasn't the right fit for our family at the time, but it was one of the most fun things we've ever done.

Bill RIsser

Wow. Austin was a better fit. Is that what I'm getting here?

AK Lalani

You know, it did end up working out a little bit better. Yeah.

Bill RIsser

Okay, just checking because, because that's where you're based out of now. Correct?

AK Lalani

I'm actually in Houston right now.

Bill RIsser

Oh, okay. All right, good.

AK Lalani

I am.

Bill RIsser

All right. So you, did you start in Austin when you made your Texas journey?

AK Lalani

Yeah.

Bill RIsser

Okay.

AK Lalani

Yeah. So, you know, part of it was also like, all right, well where do we want to live next? And Austin was a really great place to be.Part of it was I'd just been in Palo Alto for 10 years and wanted to try something new.And Austin was this like, you know, interesting, artsy, but also had some sort of tech presence and just seemed like a fun, fun, relaxed environment to kind of go to. Yeah. And so, yeah, we ended up there for a few years before moving to Houston.Kind of when we want to be closer to family, as we had children, whatnot.

Bill RIsser

Nice, good.You're, you're the founder of Rollout and it's like many startup names, sometimes it doesn't tell you what it does, but it does when you know, if that makes sense. That makes sense.Yeah, I, I, I like to, as a layman just kind of say this is simplifying all the issues that, that people have with API, especially in prop tech, because it's all about the data for just about every proptech company. Am I, am I good there? I'll let you expand on that.

AK Lalani

No, absolutely, that's correct. Right.I think the problems most prop tech companies run into with respect to integrations is you know, they build this amazing product, you know, they're trying to solve a real problem for agents, brokerages, teams and you know, let's just say they're doing something along the lines of nurturing leads or helping you convert existing leads or just generating more leads. Right.And you know they as in the process of selling to anywhere from individual agents all the way to you know, brokerages and franchises, they're going to get asked like hey, can you connect to my existing CRM? Can you connect to the tools that I already use, the source of truth? And you know, they'll say yes, let me go build that.And you know most people will start with the follow up boss integration and they'll build it and they'll realize, wow, this is a lot of work and it's really hard.And okay, now everyone's asking for you know, a real geeks or a sync or you know, another CRM integration and then they have to kind of like solve for several different things that we try to take off the plate. Right? So like the first thing is just firstly budgeting the resources, right? Building an integration will take you weeks to months.And I've literally heard from folks, there is a few that have taken them years to build. Right. Then there's the maintenance of it as well.So it's not just a one time build but as you get more usage you'll realize hey, we have to do all sorts of things for all these edge cases that we hadn't seen. Like oh, this one has it set up as a multi office versus a single person.You know, this company has all these configurations and custom fields that we have to accommodate, et cetera, et cetera. And so you know there's like that budgeting of actual developer resources and engineering resources on their, you know, that they have to like do.The second is hey, every API is different and so you have to standardize the data. And you know what is called leads in one system might be called people in another. Features that exist in one system may not exist in others.And you know, sometimes you basically, you know, literally have to learn the nuances of every single system. So how do pawns work in a real geeks versus how do they work in an another system. Right.There's all sorts of like nuances there that you have to educate yourself on to be able to like create an integration that works for your customers. And you know, the third part of that is sometimes the data isn't even available via API.Right, okay, so what, you know, you might have this incredible robust integration with one system and you want to replicate that for another system. And turns out, hey, the API doesn't actually even give you that data, even though the feature exists.And you know, trying to get someone else to, you know, release the like a new API is, you know, pushing a boulder up a hill. It's, you know, very, very, very hard to do. And then I think lastly, once you have all this working, the APIs change all the time, right.Or you know, the restrictions and permissions around them change.So, you know, I think Ball Bus was just in the news saying, hey, we're going to take away these two APIs that we've offered for years, for example, right. And so that's where a company like rollout comes in.And what we do is we say, hey, look, you build once and connect everywhere and you're basically done. Right. What we do on our side is we fill in the missing data pieces.So we get you all the data, we standardize it into one format and we keep up with all the maintenance and all the changes. Right. So you're never impacted by these. And we've done all the legwork and continue to do so.And we pre solved all these issues that you know, you would have run into if you were building it yourself, but we've pre solve them for you. So it's just plug and play. So you kind of build once with us and you're integrated everywhere.We started with CRMs primarily, we've now added transaction management software and we just released our first loan origination software. And so, you know, we're kind of adding a few more categories over the, over time.

Bill RIsser

What, what was the trigger for you to even start this company? I mean, you know what, it obviously it sounds amazing.I, I, I had a brief fling with a startup out of Australia for a few years and yeah, it was a big deal trying to move data around the right data at the right time. And so I completely feel for the people that have that struggle. But what you had to be, were you thinking about prop tech?Was there something that said, you know what, there's a, this is space and there's a ton of stuff going on there and if you can solve a problem maybe that no one's really ever looked at before, I think that's massive and maybe that's part of your journey.

AK Lalani

Yeah, you know, we started off building horizontally before we focused in on prop tech. Right. And so we started off building a white labeled zapier. Right. And we, you know, grew that to, you know, let's say 100 plus customers.We were doing about 10 million API calls a day.And once we had built our first 100 plus integrations, the every single customer would now ask us, hey, don't build, you know, something more generic like a Gmail or a Slack or a Salesforce. But they wanted their industry specific integrations. And what we had realized is we can't do that for every single industry.There's just too many, there's too much context that we'd have to learn. And so we started looking at, hey, where do we have the most customers? And it happened to be real estate.A lot of real estate companies already used apeer. And so I think that's why our product was very appealing.We had a lot of customers in that space and we basically said, all right, this is interesting, let's dig in a little bit deeper.And as we kind of started to go deeper in there, we realized, wow, there, there are such large problems and you know, the sources of truth for a lot of brokerages, you know, those are not connected to all the other systems that they want to use. And there's a lot of opportunity if we are able to solve that in a way that makes the lives of proptech founders and companies much easier. Right.And so we started going down that journey and had, you know, this product pulled out of us. Really.

Bill RIsser

MLS data is, is a big piece of the puzzle. Are you able to work in that space as well? I mean, obviously if it's brokerage, they have the right, you know, they have access to that sort of data.But then there's when it's another sort of a company that has to then acquire the data with permissions and things. Do you play in all that stuff too?

AK Lalani

Yeah.You know, it's funny, you could basically think of what we currently do as like an analog for what some folks like the Constellation Ones or the Atoms have kind of done for MLS data where they give you a single API to connect to all the different MLS feeds. Right. We don't do that, you know, and really part of that is just because it feels like it's a solved problem.We would just be another vendor in a space where many exist already.

Bill RIsser

Gotcha.

AK Lalani

You know, our goal has really just been to solve unique problems that just haven't been solved yet and just do them better than anyone else.

Bill RIsser

What's your most common integration? Is it, is it CRM because that's where you started or.

AK Lalani

Yeah, you know, I think there's just a lot of products that help with the leads Kind of like in everywhere between, like generating, nurturing, converting, scoring, you know, everything kind of to do with leads. Right. And so CRM has been a very, very common use case for us.

Bill RIsser

You mentioned loan origination. They feels to me like they were like, we really early in the game when it came to kind of moving information around.They, they, the LOS were always there. Back in, when I first started in the industry in 2000, they were doing some stuff already.So does that make it easier or more complex for you as you try to roll out that industry?

AK Lalani

Yeah, you know, loan origination is a super interesting space.

Bill RIsser

Yeah.

AK Lalani

There's one large player who dominates, right. And I want to say they have 50% market share and then everyone else is, know, 10% or less, right?And so it's like if you kind of get one of them, you hit most of the 80, 20, and then everything else is pretty fragmented. But the issue is the large player in the space, right?If you were to go to them and say, hey, I want to integrate with you, they'll basically tell you to give them about 15% of your revenues, if not more. Right. And like, you know, the numbers that you'll get quoted to even build integration is actually insane.And so part of the innovation that we've had to come up with is like, hey, how can we enable an integration here without, you know, any one of our customers having to fork over basically like all their Runway in order to be able to integrate? Right. How can they grow their business without doing that? And so we've had to kind of like do a bunch of innovative things around that front.

Bill RIsser

Wow. What's on the horizon for rollout?I mean, I know you're always forward thinking, like you're probably three, four steps down the road, but what, what can you talk about? I'll say, you know, on a podcast.

AK Lalani

Yeah, well, you know, I'm happy to share that we just released our MCP server, right.And so anyone that's building an AI, which a lot of folks are right now, MCP is kind of the, the protocol that everyone is using to communicate with APIs and do very interesting and innovative things. Right. And so I'll give you an example.Just yesterday I was playing with our little, you know, our internal demo and I connected to my CRM and I asked it, okay, well, firstly, like, you know, give me a list of leads. Tell me more about this one specific lead.And for that one specific lead, it not only pulls in the basic information, but it pulls in all the notes, all the tasks, all the email communication we've had. So it gives you the full context. And then I'm able to ask it complex things like, hey, who is my best lead source in the last month?And it will, you know, because it's connected to an AI engine that has the ability to process logic, it's able to create a table of, hey, these are all the different, like, lead sources you've had. You know, here are all the different categorizations, and this is the one that is best.And then I can ask it to do even more, you know, like more complex things like create a node, do this task. Right. I can actually ask it to fulfill or do things that I would do. Right.And so if you're an agent out there, imagine kind of having this voice enabled. Right. And on the road you could basically just tell it to do all the things versus having to manually update your CRM at the end of the day. Right.While you're on the road. And I think there's just a lot of very interesting possibilities here. And so we're starting to pilot this with some early customers.I imagine this will be commonplace a few years from now, if not a year from now. But, you know, we're the first people to enable this, and I'm really excited to see what people end up doing with it.

Bill RIsser

Wow. Yeah, you think about it, the fact that you could talk to AI was a big deal, but it's like warp speed for all this stuff. Right.It's incredible how fast we're moving down a path. You know, there's.I don't know if, you know, again, Jason Pantana, right, who's works with Tom Ferry, and his focus is, for the last few years has just been AI and to watch his YouTube channel and just see. You're kidding me. We're doing that now already? You know, because I thought that was just a few years down the road, but that's. That's really cool.Yeah. The ability to. And you could iterate on those prompts, Right.You could, you could just continue to narrow down to be exactly what you needed for that upcoming meeting or whatever it is. Right?

AK Lalani

100%. 100% super cool.

Bill RIsser

All right, well, okay, look, I've, I've. I've had you here the time I, I asked you for, so I. But I have to ask you the same final question I've asked every guest. This is.And I know you're not a realtor, never have been a realtor, but you know them well, now you're working with them and all that good stuff. What one piece of advice would you share with a new agent? Just getting started.

AK Lalani

Yeah.So I've been a home buyer, and I can tell you from my experience from that perspective, you know, so one of our customers is this guy called Mark Choi, who is. Yeah, yeah. You know, he's an industry veteran from having started climb and, you know, most recently. High Note. Yeah.He had this amazing strategy when he was starting climb, which was he dominated this one building. Right. And he literally bought a house there and then sold all the units in the building.And that would be kind of my advice, which is just create your local monopoly. Right. Because I bought a house in neighborhood that was. That's literally like two square miles large.And we ended up hiring the realtor that literally had the monopoly on this market because she knew everything about it. She was the local expert. She could get a transaction done faster and better than anyone else. And that's.That's the advice I'd give anyone, which is like, find a small area where you think there's an opportunity and then be the person, be the realtor. Explore that area.

Bill RIsser

That's a fantastic answer. I'll tell you, I been doing this since Jay Thompson was the first guest.And so you're episode 416, and no one's ever said that yet, so congratulations. I feel like I should be sending you a prize because it's hard mostly. A lot of mentors find someone to help me, which makes perfect sense.That's a great thing too, but I love that. And Mark Choi is amazing. Yeah. So he's been on the show before when I started High Note.I think High Note's amazing with what it does, so that's very cool. Ak, if somebody wants to reach out to you, is there an easy way for them to do that?

AK Lalani

Yeah, just akollout. Com, send me an email or feel free to add me on LinkedIn. Happy to chat there too.

Bill RIsser

Awesome. This has been great. Once again, Marcy comes through. She says she's amazing, and I. It's.It's been really fun to watch what you've done so far, and I can't wait to see especially how that MCP and AI stuff's going to work together. That's going to be a lot of fun. So thank you so much for sharing your story.

AK Lalani

No, thank you. And thank you for inviting me. It's been a long journey for you as well, and so happy to be part of that for.