Floored

We’re working hard to prepare for next week’s WebGL hackathon and hope you’re pumped as well for 28 hours of eating, drinking and coding.

Check out the attached schedule for the full program, featuring tech talks from Floored & Seatgeek and food from Taim, Bagels/lox & an amazing BBQ spread from Kitchensurfing.

Have a great Independence Day and we can’t wait to see you next week!

Cheers,

The Floored Team

Schedule

Day 1 — 7/11

5:30PM Opening Ceremony
Introduction
Short Tech Talks: Graphics

6:00PM Project Pitches
Idea Collaborations
Team Formations

6:30PM Dinner
Rosetti’s Pizza

7:00PM Hacking Begins!

Day 2 — 7/12

8:30AM Breakfast
Bagels & Lox

12:00PM Lunch
Taim Falafel

6:15PM Hacking Concludes

6:30PM Closing Ceremony
Presentations
Prize Ceremony

7:30PM Dinner
A rooftop barbeque catered by Wild Feast.
Here’s the menu, straight from chef Mirijana Ujkic:

BBQ Beef — A combination of short rib and brisket, slow cooked until incredibly tender with hand ground spices and served with a smoked paprika sauce.

Pulled Pork — Our take on this classic includes the use of Heritage Breed Durok Pork Shoulder, and an asian pear and apple cider vinaigrette.

Pulled Chicken with Rum Sauce — Free range grey red and white chickens, slow roasted and hand pulled with a dark rum and blood orange glaze.

On the side — Local summer salad, honey roasted sweet corn, pickled onions, cabbage slaw, extra sauces, and a collection of hard and soft rolls.

And for dessert — Meyer Lemon and Olive Oil Cakes with fresh Berries.

It’s a salesman’s dream: pitching hundreds of qualified and engaged decision-makers at the same time. Blake would be proud.

A few months ago, we found out about a start-up competition Realogy was hosting at its HQ. It was the first innovation summit for their top executives and salespeople in the company’s history. Realogy is the largest real estate services company in the world, owning nearly 26% of the residential real estate brokerage market. They own and operate brands such as Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran, and Sotheby’s. So, of course, we applied to participate. And, very fortunately, we were among the 15 start-ups invited to compete at the summit this past Tuesday.

We weren’t really sure what to expect from a start-up competition held by a really large, public real estate company, but we came away both impressed and humbled. We were struck by just how seriously Realogy took the event and how engaged the summit attendees were. The judges asked thoughtful, tough questions, the audience was engaged throughout the 4 hours of presentations, and one got the sense that Realogy was geuinely open to being entrepreneurial in working with us, the tiny start-ups.

Throughout the presentations, Daniel and I were trading notes on how good the other start-ups were (we kept thinking: “who wouldn’t use BuyerMLS or HomeZada or Updater or…?”); we were completely surprised that the judges chose us as one of the three finalists. We’ve been saying it to ourselves, our investors, and our customers, but is was extraordinarily validating that 5 very smart (and very senior) real estate folks thought we had a compelling product to offer Realogy, and the real estate community at large.

But it got better: the grand prize winner was chosen by audience vote, so when we were brought on stage and handed told we would be receiving a very large novelty check, we couldn’t help but feel excited that these hundreds of Realogy employees also believed that Floored could improve real estate marketing in a major way.

Over the past few days, it’s been hard to process the impact that this event has had on us. We’ve been overwhelmed with support from the industry and we’re emerging with a few new friends to boot (one is so prominent that she even has her own Pantone color…)

We’re incredibly grateful to everyone at Realogy for believing in us. We’re working hard to build an innovative technology and we promise we won’t let you down.