Natalia Karayaneva on Propy’s blockchain real estate platform

0:01I'm action Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have Natalia carrion Eva the CEO of proppy a real estate platform that's utilizing blockchain technology welcome to the show Natalia it's great to see you today and great to have you on the show Thank You Ashton hello everyone very

0:24happy to be here today wonderful and I'm glad you're here as well so let's talk about proppy could you please start by giving us an overview of the company and what your guys solute solutions look like for people that are purchasing real estate yeah absolutely so prop is a Silicon Valley based company it's a prop tech startup that is solving the real estate

0:46purchases pain points imagine you want to buy a property today either in Silicon Valley or Paris or London what would you do you know how to rent out a property you would use Airbnb its global understandable but in real estate the process in different countries are very different it's very risky process so as probably use smart contract technology to automate the purchase process great

1:14so I can imagine there's a lot more things involved when you're purchasing a property rather than just renting it so you guys have put the real estate contracts into smart contracts on the blockchain is that the main differentiator between your platform and other real estate platforms that are just selling real estate through a digital platform that's a very good

1:36question so as any we're seeing real big portals is it listing platforms where you can choose a property browse for properties but you cannot actually acquire a property with couple clicks our mission is allow customers to sign a purchase agreement to make a payment on our platform and receive the culmination of the deal is evidence title deed and everything we record on blockchain so if

2:05there are any claims in the future there's an opportunity to go to court and claim that this is the offer I have it's attachment this is the payment which I think on the platform so actually platform of Prague be streamlining the purchase process it's in compliant with over inhalation so it's more or less the traditional process throughout in China online and

2:31smartphones room does not replace purchase agreements very often Matthews conception allows us to align it automate process but and purchase agreements are still in place okay that makes sense when I think of purchasing real estate off the bat I think that you have to deal back-and-forth with lawyers and real estate agents and go back

2:57between the parties and I could imagine internationally that's you know a very long process so as part of that you know making less steps and just making it faster absolutely yeah that's a great point as well looks like you understand the pain points of to the posted process so only the agent the buyer company have to exchange documents within themselves and

3:24normally use emails or scans and prints now platform they have the transparency of which party meet and party needs to execute the next quick notification plan a party on to be aware of steps and everything they need it is why speed up the process very much

3:52great so you guys are utilizing smart contracts I'd love to learn a little bit more about that but as well I know that there's a cryptocurrency tied in with that the prop a currency can you talk a little bit about that currency what is it used for in the platform and is it required by everybody that's using the platform and forced to be using that absolutely so snap contracts are

4:18enabling the entire process odd executed sorry payment and the timing of the title fit you cannot receive title deed if you have not signed the prayer documents or if we didn't receive the payment or is this why smartphones reported to be in place but in order to this set of smart

4:47contracts that we have table to secure themselves we need fuels for those contracts is our proper utility talking and charge our users upon every transaction so they pay us in dollars fraction of the price and then we convert the defers into profit tokens and then of course in the

5:16revision when the mass adoption of cryptocurrency and I will just be directly in profit tokens scow hours always working charge token I'm pulling the transaction so agents and sellers with the property today without front payment and only is an executed deal this is when we paid okay

5:46great that makes sense so with people that are purchasing properties to people and property have the ability to let me just get this clear that they can pay with fiat currencies which would probably be you know more likely since properties can be expensive but they also allow direct purchases with cryptocurrencies only is it are you do have the choice

6:07yeah our users have this great choice of item pain I see it Wayne XRP B&B vine for the four points we are right now also accepting all traditional cards over 30 and also the payments could be hybrid which means that the Bitcoin we exchange the coin into fiat currency and

6:38then the seller doesn't have any moment with privacy before the cell yeah that's great and that that's needed I think for lowering the barriers to entry allowing more people to purchase property and growing the community so let's talk a little bit about the property community and how you guys have grown so far so is the platform running live have people already purchased

7:02properties with cryptocurrency and fiat currencies and you know how big is your guys's community yes a we made our token sale in always in September 2017 and thousand and since that so we have twenty thousand fibers letters we're sitting up and use it two weeks

7:32thousands of Twitter Facebook a lot of counts and most importantly we have over 20,000 registered users including agents that's great wonderful and have you guys sold properties with cryptocurrency or is it mainly a Fiat thing yeah so last year we actually did 12 transactions but the majority of them were in

8:01cryptocurrencies or hybrid will transfer midpoint dollars you'll see ether Bitcoin to Bitcoin with $20 and our recent attractions are dollars obviously the crypto includes a stop referring out for its value and then to consider acquiring a real estate the majority of our property point was a year ago when

8:33Bitcoin with thousand dollars sure honey you appeared million years for considering – which is not today unfortunately but we never know when over definitely yeah I could see how people want to hold their Kryptos until it goes back up and so that's great to see that you guys already have a lot of traction throughout 2018 as well so we mentioned a little bit back about the revenue

9:03model and how you guys are taking a bit on the executed contracts is that your main source of revenue and is that sustainable and you guys have any other secondary revenue sources and models that you're working on inside of the platform you have several opportunities for revenues we're working with several governments were set up where their registries also a subscription-based

9:30model with that consultancy agreements with Council they've been a variety of agreements but the major one is the one in management and I think that's this one two scales which would be the market network or a multi-sided market place where why he acquired without any upfront fees and then we charge only one

9:59transaction like India or Amazon so we focus on that that's great well let's hope that the cryptocurrency comes back up soon and and the platform is flourishing throughout 2019 so if we could branch into that a little bit I'd love to know what are the plans for prop for 2019 and what is your short-term upcoming roadmap look like yeah absolutely so last year we revealed our

10:28roadmap and 90% of the milestones executed it was the year of innovation with our transaction platform and then adapted transaction platform so that we can do transactions in different jurisdictions so we made the first u.s. transaction that will be our Serbian transaction but this year is all about so we have a lot of right now first was

10:58to go doing further integrations needed for agents and brokerages the the main thing now is to sell and we're likely to acquire some performant agents to use our platform and the short term goal author one who is actually to sign up larger brokerages especially those cloud-based virtual brokerages which have to have a solution in place that lines the closing process

11:29agent and respectively for the end user definitely and I could see how onboarding brokerage services and other real estate platforms that already have lots of clients would be a good strategic partnership for you guys to expand rapidly so that's good what what obstacles or challenges do you see in achieving your goals for 2019 whether it's just you know the housing market

11:53going down or specific barriers into trying to get people to use cryptocurrency you know what challenges do you foresee having to overcome the challenge has been an education of course it's a very long cycle of sale will I need to educate and make a little demos the agents and brokers then to the buyer and the seller understand how the words that it's not actually far away from the

12:21traditional processes online secure so that's the main obstacles I wouldn't say that the winter effectiveness will be better it's actually a lot to be more disciplined I you know for most but it would be much better in the currencies will recover yeah so they've been a lot of challenges right when you're pushing

12:54an early stage startup team perspective growth and yeah so so many challenges but I believe they're all nor wouldn't challenges every company either early-stage I agree well and I'm glad that you guys are up for the challenge and I'm excited to see how you guys do throughout 2019 now are

13:23you guys expanding your team are you expanding geographically and are you looking for more people to get involved with preppy our engineering team is located in Bulgaria where I used to be before and properties there so we're always looking for the talent to expand the engineering skill set here in the Bay Area will have several engineers but majority of the team are actual course

13:52us especially advisor and we want to expand into more Sales Executives that I mentioned because of hearing goals yes oh for Moores be staff deep then big thread of courses is you have earned maybe two companies shrink their names last year so obviously we have to also adjust our current budget so we find

14:22some consultants some vendors that were more expensive and that's critical for the current that's great good to hear and if people are looking to maybe become a part of the team or maybe they're just interested in learning more about the project what's the best way for them to get involved yeah so for those who wants to take part of the resolution in real estate involving

14:47obtain a copy of kaboom we have they're explaining how it works and also the field please sign up it'll send us email to info at Providence wonderful Thank You Natalia I will leave that in the description box below for the viewers as well and that's all the time we have for now but I look forward to seeing how

15:15prop flourishes in 2019 and for sure we'll have another interview in the coming months to follow up and see how the platform has grown so thank you for your time today thank you yes thank you very much