2023年8月7日

“百万美元清单:洛杉矶”明星杰克奥特曼搭了很多房地产科技创业公司。奥特曼,连同兄弟马特和妻子希瑟,有投资Matterport摄像头和二手房共有公司Pacaso,等等。但他从不把他的资金投入房地产游戏。改变了今年早些时候,当他听说关闭理论,一个Andressen Horowitz-backed手机游戏启动,使用真实世界的房子,价格和其他数据将用户转化为在线房地产大亨。”对房地产有很多游戏,但不是真正的属性与世界各地的房子,”他说。奥特曼没有透露他投资了多少,但他说“够了,我们很有信心,这将是伟大的。“他加入的房地产业投资者像凯勒资本、私人投资部门对凯勒威廉姆斯创始人加里·凯勒;房地产教练汤姆渡船;Zillow和Pacaso创始人斯宾塞Rascoff在财政上支持羽翼未丰的游戏公司,由Ankith Harathi Nitin Rajinikanth。Harathi是联合创始人兼Rajinikanth工程师成立宏,试图使用过滤器和反应带来的娱乐因素视频会议和2021年被视频演示公司收购嗯。 Rascoff was a small angel investor in Closing Theory’s seed round, which was held after Harathi and Rajinikanth went through Andressen Horowitz’ six-week gaming accelerator Speedrun this spring. That round raised $2.4 million and Rascoff said via email he wished he could have invested more but it was “so oversubscribed.” “People love real estate and they love playing games on smartphones, but no one has built a killer real estate game on the phone — yet,” he said. “By investing in Closing Theory, I am betting that this team will be the one who builds the first truly massive real estate game on mobile.” Fantasy Sports for Real Estate What, exactly, the game play will be like is still under wraps, with play testing in Closing Theory’s Austin offices starting later this month, and online play testing beginning this fall, Harathi said. But he described the basic idea as “Monopoly meets Zillow,” or fantasy sports for real estate. “Browsing Zillow is people’s guilty pleasure,” he said, referencing the 2021 “Saturday Night Live” skit where cast members wear silky lingerie and roll around in bed while they browse the site’s house listings. “I think that hits the core. It’s escapism, and games fundamentally have always been about escaping from the reality that you live in today to a different version of that reality.” Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter SIGN UP By signing up, you agree to TheRealDeal Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. (Courtesy of Closing Theory Studios) The first game to launch toward the end of this year will be called House Rush, which may eventually fit inside a larger game called Neighborhood Rush. Both will be free to download with some premium upgrades users can buy and a social component to the play. How players interact with the real estate is still very much in flux, Harathi said, but it will likely focus on single-family homes and could be “anywhere from collecting to playing mini games and guessing or quizzing or even competing, but all with real property.” He’ll know more after the in-person play tests begin and developers can gauge if players are getting “the right highs and lows of the roller coaster.” The property data in the game comes from “strategic partnerships with people who are investors and other kinds of data sources,” Harathi said. He also added that the game could create data of its own that could be valuable to real estate professionals, adding that players would have to opt in to share that data. There are people who just look at listings for fun, he said, but they sometimes become more serious buyers. Right now, their comments and opinions on a home’s attractiveness or price “gets lost in the ether” as listing sites “aren’t supportive to actually translating that data into anything actionable for the people who actually have a stake in those properties.” Harathi can imagine an option where the agent on the real home would get to reach out to people who are playing with it in the game. He added that player privacy would be their top concern and Closing Theory wouldn’t share any data unless players opt in. But if a player did want to be contacted, he said, “we can help facilitate that eventually.” Harathi’s wife became a part-time agent during the pandemic. He said he so enjoyed attending open houses with her that it gave him and Rajinikanth the inspiration for their new company. “Why do we find real estate so fun?” he asked. “It’s because we can go to these open houses and we can imagine different versions of our lives. So how can we bring that to more people that are already doing it on platforms that aren’t even enabling it?” Read more