Real estate’s next breakthrough might be standing on a San Diego stage this week — and you’ll help decide.
The inaugural Inman Connect San Diego Pitch Battle brings eight of the most compelling emerging companies in real estate technology to the Connect stage for a live, high-pressure competition. The format is unforgiving by design: Each company gets five minutes — a two-minute pitch, video included, followed by rapid-fire questions from our judges. No warm-up, no second take.
When all eight have pitched, the judges will send just three companies to the championship round at Cocktails at Connect, presented by Constant Contact, where the finalists pitch again with the title on the line — and the audience joins the judges in crowning the first-ever Inman Connect San Diego Pitch Battle Champion. If you’re in the room, you’re part of the jury.
The contenders
Upfront — Pierre Calzadilla is rethinking the brokerage back office, modernizing accounting and operations while opening the door for agents to access healthcare and financial solutions through their brokerage.
BrokerBot — Jerimiah Taylor’s AI assistant platform turns a brokerage’s own documents, policies and CRM data into a 24/7 conversational agent that answers the questions agents would otherwise ask their broker at 9 p.m.
LotRoll — Grayson Gibson is building the missing infrastructure for manufactured housing, bringing fragmented data, listings and industry professionals together to make buying, selling, financing and valuing manufactured homes dramatically easier.
Agently — Max Grebenuk calls it an AI Team Leader for real estate: onboarding, training and holding agents accountable on autopilot, so producing team leaders can get back to producing.
AutoReel — Alok Gupta wants every listing to get the cinematic treatment. AutoReel creates high-quality, AI-powered listing videos from ordinary photos in minutes, not days.
Fiji — Rob Wolf gives brokerages and teams a fast, affordable way to value, improve and grow their businesses — starting with a question most broker-owners can’t answer: What is your company actually worth?
Palazzo — Raffi Holzer’s pitch is five words long: real furniture in virtual staging. Palazzo lets agents stage homes virtually with furniture buyers can actually purchase.
Shilo — Justin Benson built the autonomous sales manager for residential real estate. Trained on more than 3 million calls, Shilo grades every call, coaches every agent one-on-one by voice and updates the CRM itself — no manager in the room.
The judges
Sizing up the contenders is a panel that spans brokerage leadership, proptech and marketing technology:
- Andrew Flachner — RealScout
- Lauren Henss — First Team
- Jackie Soto — ehomes
- Stephanie Alfonso — Constant Contact
- Matt Fischer — Lone Wolf
Be there when it happens
Eight companies believe they’re building the future of real estate. By the end of Cocktails at Connect, presented by Constant Contact, one of them will have the trophy — and the industry’s attention. Don’t miss it.
Troy Palmquist is the founder and principal at HomeCode Advisors. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
