00:05:59 · Andres Figuera
[00:05:59] S1: And I can only imagine that it would be one of the top drivers that you have for generating demand, but it's also because I feel like the real estate industry in general is one that doesn't change that much because it has its tried and true ways. And with AI nowadays, people really are valuing a lot more the face time that they could have with other people in real life, since we are just being slammed by AI slop or messages, or even a sales funnel that the AI is the one that reaches out, and you read through the email you receive, and you already know it was written with AI, and it's like, is this really that tailored or personalized to what I'm doing?
00:06:34 · David Cardiel
[00:06:34] S0: You just mentioned it there. Right? I know I'm inundated daily with emails and in mails and adverse things. I'm just like, oh, man. So... But some of it can be very good. I don't want to dismiss the entire thing. I'm very much one that has embraced go to market AI in terms of just bringing it in and making it part of, it's one of the tools in the bag. Right? Especially myself as a fractional marketer, a lot of times I'm walking into an organization and I'll walk in as marketer one. Right? And there's been a couple of instances that's been the case. And it's like, okay, in order to create the resources, I've got to turn to something that's going to help me kind of get that up and running. Right? So... But I'm a believer if done correctly, it can have its place. To your point there, sometimes, yeah, sometimes it can be a bit as it was, say, the AI slop that does come through and you just sort of wonder, oh, man. If you just spent a little more time tweaking it, give it a little more of a human element to it, this would have worked. Right? I think there's opportunity there, but I do keep it as as part of my... It's part of my daily flow is is nudging in.
00:07:30 · Andres Figuera
[00:07:30] S1: No. And I agree with you completely there. It's like, I love AI. I use AI so much as well incorporated in my day to day task even when I'm trying to compose emails and stuff. But what AI can't replace yet, and what we always need to remember is that the human taste and curation that we have for what it spits out, it's what we always need to make sure that we embed into whatever it gives us, because it's the only way that our voice can still be heard through the way that AI speaks. So I understand, and I totally see the value of always using it. It's like, who's not using it nowadays if it's making us so efficient. But now, David, switching over with like... To keep on speaking about NetVendor per se, you also mentioned that you're working with AI, like appearing in engine optimization for AI LLMs. How are you managing to get NetVendor to appear in first... As the first option if somebody were to ask their chat GBT or Claude about real estate tech such as NetVendor?
00:08:25 · David Cardiel
[00:08:25] S0: Yeah. Just continuing that conversation there. Yeah. The trying to move this into the needle into where becomes more transformative in our workplace. Right. And buy into that. The AEO piece of it, the search piece of this, again, I say this, it's like a broken record. I'm say this, it wasn't this sort of like moment necessarily to say, we just needed to get to writing. Right? We need to get to very much like you do with search is like, we need to get some content sort of like in space and doing this. So one of the bigger areas that has helped with that, or at least helped us get to a measurable point with search across LLMs has been to beef up our blog strategy, a big driver of it. And then use the inputs and the stats that we're gathering from that. We do that, we've got a platform that we've invested in that helps us to look at that and then just try to continue to augment on top of that. So the human element is very important in that, right? I'm a firm believer in having a strong content strategist on your marketing team. So plug to all my content marketing friends out there, you are still extremely valued, but we've got a great content marketer that is continuing that cycle, keeps that cycle up, and then filter it into some of our larger content strategies, longer form pieces of content, how we leverage it on the site in various parts of our site and so forth. That's probably been the biggest driver, the biggest spike we've seen When we've done any measurement in terms of where we fall, in terms of somebody plugging in something around property technology, around property compliance and so forth, that's where we've seen the biggest jump.
00:09:51 · Andres Figuera, David Cardiel
[00:09:51] S1: And David, also out of curiosity, you just mentioned it. How big is your team at NetVendor? Mean, how many people do you have helping you out with this in-depth? [00:09:58] S0: We're up to six. There was, what, three or four when I started. So team's growing. Yes. [00:10:03] S1: And how big is NetVendor as a whole? [00:10:05] S0: How many employees are we now? Up to... About 65, 70 employees now. [00:10:09] S1: Oh my goodness. Okay. It's like, you guys are big. I thought it was a bit smaller since it was more of like an app and stuff. With AI, everybody's like slimming down, but that's a bunch of people in mind. Cool. [00:10:18] S0: Some solid growth over the... Over this last year. It's just sort of refreshing from an industry standpoint. They've made a ton of investment in the technical side to build up a product over the last couple of years. And then this year, there's been a nice bump in building up just sort of the go to market. So a lot of new AEs coming in, customer success, and then, you know, love that marketing is getting some love this year as well at NetVendor. [00:10:43] S1: I get that. And David, for potential customers who were, like if they were interested in NetVendor or anything like that, how does the customer journey look like if they find you or if they find NetVendor online and they're interested? Like, how would that look if somebody wanted to know further and wants to work with you?
00:10:43 · Andres Figuera, David Cardiel
[00:10:43] S1: I get that. And David, for potential customers who were, like if they were interested in NetVendor or anything like that, how does the customer journey look like if they find you or if they find NetVendor online and they're interested? Like, how would that look if somebody wanted to know further and wants to work with you? [00:10:59] S0: Finding us, I think, however they come into into our space through one of our channels, whether it's an email or or paid or search or an event and so forth. I I guess is the... Is it traditional maybe? I don't know. They'll come in. There's obviously... We we have all the markers and call to actions within the site if someone who wants to schedule a demo and what have you. And we are SDR based, so we have an SDR team that does a qualification. Once somebody comes into our space through a marketing activity, and then they're qualified and then brought into an AE conversation to be further qualified, and then the site goes into the buying cycle after that. So. [00:11:33] S1: Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Understood. Understood. And now, David, I'd love to switch the conversation over to ArcWright and learn further about that. Would you be able to maybe tell us then how you are generating demand for your work that you're doing at ArcWright?