Real Estate's Secret (Change) Agent -- It's the People

SF Dot-com Tour ... It's impossible to spend a couple of days wandering around San Francisco's real estate dot-coms without realizing that something big is happening in our industry. And I'm not just talking about technology. I think that the human component is much more important. There literally are hundreds, if not thousands, of real estate dot-com employees who wake up everyday determined to find levers that will grow their businesses into the traditional real estate space. They want to find ways to help you do your job better. And they ain't going away any time soon.

Here's my tour. I started at OpsXchange.com meeting with CEO Rajiv Naidu and his colleagues. Located in several South of Market live-work lofts, OpsXchange recently launched its B2B e-commerce tool "to facilitate the procurement process for owners and operators of real property and their suppliers." ... Then I drove over to the Potrero Hill/Mission area and met with LoopNet's Mark McLaughlin and his new crew of regional directors headed for Houston, Denver, Chicago, Orlando, Atlanta, Baltimore and New York. ... Finally, Chris Hartung chartung@ibuilding.com, iBuilding.com's Chief Strategy Officer, and I shared the traditional dot-com working lunch on the 31st floor of a downtown high-rise. iBuilding, backed by 12Entrepreneuring and Benchmark Capital, is currently in stealth mode developing its "building operating system."

On another day, my colleague Bob Potter and I had coffee with Rob Kossar, CEO of Protegic, currently in stealth mode with its "web-based corporate real estate solution." Kossar, who normally calls New Jersey home, was in town for a few days. ... Potter and I then met with Frank Rockwood, CEO of Vectiv and his team. Vectiv, which announced an $8 million financing round in May, is gearing up for a fourth quarter launch of its "web-based, hosted software application that enables real estate decision makers to identify, evaluate, acquire, and manage real estate procurement." ... A couple of days later Bob and I had lunch with Kathy Huber, who just launched the beta version of Location-net.com www.location-net.com, which matches retailers and business locations through "a correlation of consumer lifestyle and demographic characteristics." ... Bottom line: The future will be different!

PikeNet Expo... Want to learn more? All of the above companies will participate in the PikeNet Expo at the New York Hilton, Oct 23-24, 2000. Register online.Here's the latest program.

--Peter Pike