Tech @ the Top: How Flyhomes is Disrupting Real Estate with AI
Technology Management MBA community hears from COO Ryan Dibble about launch of Flyhomes AI
Written by: Mai Ling Slaughter
If the world starts to change, be ready to make a clear push in that direction. That’s the advice Ryan Dibble, Chief Operating Officer of Flyhomes, gave to members of the University of Washington Technology Management MBA community at its Tech @ the Top Speaker Series on July 17, 2024.
Dibble shared the story of the Seattle-based company’s quick rise in a real estate market crowded with both real estate giants and startups, then its dramatic restructure after rising interest rates saw buyers leave the housing market in droves.
“2023 was a year of deep pain,” Dibble said. “There was a breakdown in our funnel. We needed to make significant changes to our business.”
In June, the company relaunched its website to introduce Flyhomes AI, what it calls the world’s first AI-powered home search portal.
“All that we are doing is taking information that is freely available on government websites and marrying it into our in-house AI,” Dibble said. “Large language models are actually very simple technology. They’re not magic; it just seems like magic.”
Foundation built on solving customer problems
When Dibble first joined Flyhomes in 2017, the company was already disrupting a real estate market that was “a nightmare for buyers,” he said.
“We identified that it sucks to buy a house, it sucks to get a mortgage, and it sucks that the internet didn’t make it better than it had been in the last 30 to 40 years,” Dibble told the audience of Technology Management MBA students, alumni and others. “We said, we’re going to listen to customers, talk to customers, try to understand the situation they’re facing and learn from our customers.”
One of Flyhomes’s first strategies was to create a network of licensed real estate agents available to show homes on a moment’s notice, a crucial early step that helped give buyers an edge when homes were selling in days if not hours.
As the real estate industry continued to evolve, so did Flyhomes’ strategy, as it started paying cash for homes to help qualified customers stay competitive in a fast-moving market.
“We kept solving the little problems that were presented to start driving a better customer experience,” Dibble said.
Making the move to AI
When Flyhomes started to feel the impact of the interest rate increase, the company suddenly had its own problem to solve. “Real estate is cyclical,” Dibble said. “The direct-to-consumer market was not working anymore.”
After dramatically cutting the size of their staff, Flyhomes started exploring an opportunity to acquire the startup ZeroDown backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. “They had awesome AI, but they didn’t know what to do with it,” Dibble said. “Large language models (LLMs) in AI presented an opportunity for us.
“We had spent so much time with the customers creating solutions and turning it into repeatable process. We realized that we could take all that information, create our own unique data set and release our own LLM on it. It could become a really powerful tool for our customers to have any question answered 24 hours a day by tech.”
After acquiring ZeroDown earlier this year, Flyhomes relaunched its website June 11, and is back on its fast-growing path.
“It’s almost to the point where it’s doubling every month, which is really exciting,” Dibble said. “What we are building, you can see a path toward a self-service product for customers — where you don’t need an agent, you can use the software to answer all your questions.”
Tech @ the Top speaker series
The Technology Management MBA program at the University of Washington in Seattle offers the Tech @ the Top Speaker Series to showcase successful leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs from a variety of organizations.
Each event brings together students, alumni, and community members to network and learn from the leadership philosophies and strategies that have transformed a speaker’s career, organization and life.
As your fastest path to an MBA through the Foster School of Business, the Technology Management MBA offers an 18-month work-compatible curriculum taught by world-renowned Foster faculty through the lens of technology. Learn more about the Technology Management MBA at foster.uw.edu/tmmba.
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