(Above) Chris Smith of Curaytor emcees the iOi Summit Pitch Battle. (Credit: National Association of REALTORS®/Twitter)
Curbio, a presale renovation solution, was awarded the grand prize at the National Association of REALTORS® iOi Summit, in a battle between 14 startups. As the competition’s winner, Curbio was awarded $15,000 in cash and a booth at the REALTORS® Conference & Expo, as well as access to business-building opportunities, including a meeting with NAR’s Second Century Ventures.
“Our goal with this competition is to identify and showcase concepts poised to help drive the real estate industry forward,” says NAR CEO Bob Goldberg. “This year’s finalists are among the best new technology startups for real estate. The iOi Summit Pitch Battle is an exceptional platform for these startups to share their ideas not only with the judges, but also with potential investors, clients and REALTORS®.”
With a compelling pitch by Vice President of Marketing Rikki Rogers, Curbio bested other participants, which included Cher, Coeo, CRE Simple, Digs, Earnnest, Go Figure, Homebot, Likely.AI, LulaFit, Propy, RateMyAgent, reConsortia and Staging & Design Network. The competition was hosted by Chris Smith of Curaytor, and judged by Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters; Chelsea Goyer, formerly of Redfin; Alex Lange of Upstream; Dino Vendetti of Seven Peaks Ventures; and Marilyn Wilson of WAV Group.
NAR’s Innovation, Opportunity and Investment Summit, a two-day conference gathering 500-plus investors, REALTORS® and technology vendors, is now in its second year. This year, the event’s highlights included insights from Keith Watts, head of Industry – Real Estate at Facebook, and Dan Siegler, head of Industry – Real Estate & Automotive at Google. In 2018, BoxBrownie.com was crowned the startup winner.
Second Century Ventures’ accelerator program, REACH, was named among the top 25 in the U.S. by The Seed Accelerator Rankings Project (SARP).
For more information, please visit www.nar.realtor/events/ioi.
Suzanne De Vita is RISMedia’s online news editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at sdevita@rismedia.com.
