TechCrunch Party In Hollywood, The XBroker Post Party Review
April 11th, 2008 Categories: Random, Techcrunch, retrove
Quick observations and notes about the TechCrunch Party in Hollywood last night:
- Ate at Roscoes Chicken and Waffles prior to the party, which was sooo good despite the odd combination of foods. Not the healthiest meal but…
- The venue (The Vanguard on Hollywood Blvd) was Chic, as advertised. Many geeks inside, as advertised.
- There was an open bar all night. It’s a good thing the conversation was good, inhibiting me from pouring more alcohol down my throat, which would have lowered my inhibitons, which would have caused next day embarassment. Too many cameras around to act a fool.
- Mike Arrington looks like he’s lost weight.
- Perry Ferrell of Jane’s Addiction fame was the DJ, I had no idea that it was him until Jeff Turner pointed it out via his Flickr account. He’s really toned his look down (Perry that is, Jeff’s still flambouyant as ever).
- Lot’s of smart people with great ideas. Lot’s of head scratching stuff too, not going to call anyone out here as I appreciate the entrepreneurial dream.
Hung out around ‘the couch area’ of the club which looked like VIP but was for anyone to sit and chill, with Dustin Luther, Jeff Turner, Justin and Robert from DiverseSolutions.com (plus all their lovely wives), ‘Jessie B’ (thats what everyone called him, not just Jessie) an enigmatic guy who has a striking resemblance to Dennis Miller both in looks and smarts.
Jessie B. has some interesting ideas, one of them called ReTrove an aggregator of the listing aggregators, for lack of better description.
It’s still in early beta (= a little slow and glitchy, but cut it some slack) yet the concept is clear: To become a singular starting portal for consumers looking to Search real estate related information, mainly listings.
As major players (Prudential, Realogy etc) submit their listings to the Zillows and/or Trulias and/or Roosts etc, I as a consumer must visit multiple sites to find all of the listings in a given area. ReTrove is attempting to address this problem.
Type in your city and state, related links populate the page from many of the larger aggregators.
Searching Irvine, CA I received results back that included: Zillow, Realtor.com, Cyberhomes, Movoto, and Windemere (2873 links total). The number of indexable pages the ReTrove is creating must be massive, thus creating some serious SEO juice as the site matures. Looking forward to seeing how ReTrove evolves. Jessie B says late July is his target for greater site refinement and a broader announcement to the world.
Finally, a big thanks to Loren Nason (FutureofRealEstateTechnology.com) for organizing the TC get together, it was a blast.
Sphere: Related Content
First off… pleasure meeting you also and looking forward to your Ratespeed service release!
Thanks for the feedback (users can leave feedback about each of our individual search results as well as suggest sites)… we are always looking to improve. I think its important to note that the search also returns real estate listing results to FSBO’s, bank-owned REO’s, RE auctions and local newspaper classifieds like the OCweekly, Recyler, OCRegister in Irvine, CA.
These types of listings are almost completely neglected by most of the major RE players. This transparency provides the consumer the most complete picture of all available properties in a particular city allowing them to make the most educated purchase decision - much like your Ratespeed will do to mortgage consumers.
Again, thanks. Looking forward to hanging out at the pre-Inman Barcamp.
Great points Jessie…thx for firming things up.
Great post, Great party, and Great people we had an awsome time.
I had a blast as well! We need more reasons to get online real estate people together!
[…] Corbett - The X Broker has a good write up of Jessie B. of http://www.retrove.com and the […]
You California people have all the fun…
Jeff… it was great to see you again and to find out you’re now in CA. Looking forward to more meetings. I’ll be sure to wear my boa next time.
Take me shopping Jeff?