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HouseWhisper co-founders, from left: Spencer Rascoff, Luis Poggi and Alex Kutner. (HouseWhisper Photo)
Three veterans of Zillow Group who helped turn the Seattle real estate company into a tech powerhouse have joined forces to launch a new startup that relies on generative AI to help real estate agents be better at their jobs.
CEO Luis Poggi (former Zillow VP of product and engineering), board member Spencer Rascoff (Zillow co-founder and former CEO), and CTO Alex Kutner (former Zillow engineering leader) are the co-founders of HouseWhisper, which aims to use AI to help alleviate the administrative overload that bogs some agents down.
Seattle-based HouseWhisper emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, and announced that it’s raised nearly $10 million in funding.
Poggi called buying a home one of the most emotional and important decisions people make in their lives, with real estate agents at the heart of the process.
“As agents become more and more successful, they also become buried with tons of admin tasks,” Poggi added.
HouseWhisper is a conversational AI that acts as the ultimate 24/7 personal assistant, helping agents stay organized with help on following up with clients, scheduling, CRM updates and more. Agents can call, text or send a voice memo to a number and interact with HouseWhisper’s AI as they would with any human assistant.
On the backend, the technology creates a transcript of the conversation, and HouseWhisper extracts useful information which can save the agent time and ultimately help the agent better connect with the client.
“Every agent would love to have an assistant. Not everyone has that because hiring people, managing people, training people is a lot of effort, and it’s expensive,” Poggi said. “We’re removing all of that. This is significantly cheaper than hiring a human and it’s already trained on real estate and everything that you do.”
See how an agent named Chrissy interacts with HouseWhisper AI in the video below:
HouseWhisper has been in beta for about eight months and is being used by over 4,000 agents nationwide. Poggi said adoption has been broad even for users who are less tech focused, because the conversational model allows agents to just call and talk.
The startup makes money through a subscription model, with different prices for different sized teams.
There are a number of AI-powered tools being used to speed and automate various tasks in the real estate industry, from generating leads to analyzing the market to virtual staging. Poggi said HouseWhisper is unique because of the conversational approach.
He also said HouseWhisper is a “really good compliment” to what his old employer is doing.
“We work with several Zillow teams and they love it,” Poggi said.
Rascoff, who recently took over as CEO of Match Group and its family of dating apps, spent nearly 15 years at Zillow, which he helped launch in 2005. He thinks the real estate industry is ready for a “smarter, more efficient way to work.”
“We see a future where AI-powered assistants are as essential to a real estate agent as their cell phone, helping agents stay connected with clients through better insight, personalization, and efficiency,” Rascoff said in a statement.
Beyond Zillow, Poggi had prior experience at travel giant Expedia. Kutner spent two years at Convoy, the digital trucking marketplace that shut down in 2023.
HouseWhisper raised $6.7 million in a seed round led by Mayfield, with participation from Seattle-based PSL Ventures and Rascoff’s 75 and Sunny Ventures. A pre-seed round earlier in 2024 was led by PSL Ventures.
The fresh cash will be used to drive product development, team expansion, and AI enhancements. HouseWhisper also plans to introduce new AI solutions across the real estate industry for transaction coordinators, loan officers, and brokerages.
The company currently employs 15 people.
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