Real-T was a start-up company that was focused on creating applications that would improve workflows for the Real Estate Industry. I was connected with them through Mr.Cox a professor at FAU. I worked and interned with the Real-T team for a semester and was able to watch them turn their idea into a company that was in the process of getting investors & funding. Through FAU Tech Runway, Real-T was on a program to work with students and FAU’s connections to help fast track the company and launch it into the next stage of their development.

In a start-up environment you have to juggle multiple hats and be able to adapt to new priorities all the time. To best explain my experience I’ll list tasks I’ve worked on throughout my time with Real-T.

 

Tasks I’ve Worked On

 

Investor & Networking Meetings

I along with the team would meet with multiple people to introduce ourselves and the Real-T business idea. Most networking & investor meetings were planned as a simple introduction and it was interesting to see introductions blossom into positive connections or lessons to learn.

For a lot of the time we were asked hard questions, that we could not answer with confidence that had to be addressed later. Here I list some key points that were discussed:

• Legal protection from issues or mishaps
  • We would need to speak with an expert in the real estate industry (legal field) that could give us insight on how to best protect the business from liabilities.
• Product market fit
  • Our test of the application went well with a test group of 30 subscribers. However this was not enough to see how the product would perform in live production with many variables. We were suggested (multiple times), that bootstrapping would be a great approach to sharpen and improve the product.
• Real-T team experience
  • Our team was comprised of two realtors, a few overseas developers, and several student interns (myself included). This highlighted a problem that our team was not capable to scale quickly, with a large hole being present without on-board developers.

With a lot of conversations we were improving holes and coming up with plans to address other issues we encountered. We gather a few investors that requested certain metrics be hit before they would offer funding.

 

Product Design & Testing

One of my favorite tasks was reviewing the actual products. The web and mobile app were full of UI bugs that needed to be tweaked. I would test the product and find ways to improve it. Along with the website (which was under development), I was able to provide a lot of input that made the demo site more easy to use. Overtime the site was able to be used as a marketing landing page, and slowly getting built out to host a live version of the mobile application.

 

Marketing Material & Content

I worked alongside other interns to create marketing content that could be uses via multiple marketing channels. As a start-up the brand styles was still in their infancy, so we were able to experiment a lot on the top of content we could create.

We worked on:

• Elevator Pitches
• Presentation Decks
• Client Deliverables
• Email Campaigns
• FAQs
• Blog Content

 

Takeaway

I really enjoyed this experience because I gained so much first hand knowledge and experience working at a start-up in an incubation program like no other. While the experience was great, the company was struggling to build their product out to start slowly gaining real paying customs and start making revenue. This was a red flag for potential investors, and as it stands I believe that Real-T has since shut their doors.

Creating a start-up business is never easy, but I’m fortunate to have been a part of one for as long as I was able to.