Agentology, a San Diego-based startup that fields and vets leads, announced Tuesday that it is changing its name and expanding to serve businesses outside its traditional core market of real estate agents.
Going forward the company will now be known as “Verse.io,” which co-founders and brothers David and Avi Tal said in a blog post was “inspired by the power to converse.” The newly renamed company will continue with the same team and ownership, but will also now focus on bringing “the power of conversational marketing and automation to other industries that need us now more than ever.”
“Our new name allows us to go beyond ‘real estate’ into multiple industries without causing confusion and allows us to bring our solution to a wider audience,” the brothers wrote in the blog post.
David Tal
In a conversation with Inman, David Tal said the company’s existing customers will remain a priority. Agents and brokerages that currently use Agentology shouldn’t see much of a change in their experience with Verse.io, and “our bread and butter and focus and priority will remain the real estate industry,” Tal, who was a broker before founding the startup, explained.
“We’re certainly not running away from real estate,” he added. “We’re just branching beyond.”
The rebranding and expanded focus comes after years of steady expansion for the company. The brothers founded the firm nearly seven years ago, and it has since managed to raise millions in funding. Tal told Inman Verse.io is currently well-funded and has recently worked to expand its engineering, product and executive teams.
Earlier this year, the company also debuted a Google Analytics-like information stream for real estate marketing campaigns, as well as an answering service meant to protect agents from missing out on leads when they can’t pick up the phone.
Those products remain in place, and the company will continue to offer agents services such as calling and texting prospects, as well as setting up appointments.
However, Verse.io will also now provide similar services to companies in sectors such as insurance, student loans, education, home services and property management. Basically, any company that might receive leads can now hire Verse.io to manage and sort through them.
“The evolution of this is now going in the direction of, how do we help all businesses create authentic interactions with their prospects?” Tal said.
The blog post adds that “spreading our wings will allow us to dive deeper into our technology, and build more integrations, and provide more engagement solutions that will lift all boats.”
To that end, Tal said that Verse.io’s concierge team is now approaching 100 members, and the company is currently building artificial intelligence and machine learning-based technologies. The idea is to automate parts of the interactions the company handles, though Tal added that the “vast majority” of Verse.io’s conversations with prospects remain “human guided.”
Tal ultimately said that the transition from Agentology to Verse.io has been in the works in one form or another throughout 2019. Prior to publicly announcing the change the company also began reaching out to some existing clients, and Tal said that so far the rebranding has been well-received.
“They’re pretty excited about it,” he added.
