Kylie Davis:

Welcome to The Proptech Podcast. It's Kylie Davis here. And I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. It's so great to have you here and to share stories of innovation and opportunity across real estate, property and building services. And the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a proptech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible across how we design, build, buy, sell, rent, and invest in property, and all of the associated behaviour and activities around that.

Kylie Davis:

Now, none of this would be possible without our sponsors. So a big shout out to the Direct Connect team, making moving easy, Dynamic Methods, the innovators behind the Forms Live and Realworks forms, and The Proptech Association Australia. Thank you for your support of the podcast. My guest this week is one of my most favourite people on the planet and a woman I am proud to call a very dear friend, the amazing Kylie Dillon from Realtime Conveyancer. Now, Realtime Conveyancer is a new startup that delivers an end to end transaction and customer management system for conveyancers.

Kylie Davis:

Kylie has extensive experience in this field with more than 19 years running her own conveyancing group KDD Conveyancing in Perth, plus two years consulting with PEXA on the digital settlement universe, doing a strategic analysis of how it impacted on conveyancing. And it was at PEXA that she met her Co-Founder for Realtime Conveyancer, Mike Price. And the two of them took a wild trip to Las Vegas to attend the Inman Connect conference in 2019, where their thinking for the startup got real.

Kylie Davis:

Now in this interview, which we did back in late December, Kylie talks about the disruption happening in the conveyancing space, the need for better conveyancing experiences for buyers and sellers, and the challenges of getting a startup with such a very big vision up and running while also raising capital. But what I didn't realise, nor I think did anyone else, is that while all of these things were going on, Mike had been diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer, and heartbreakingly he passed away in January this year. So at the end of the interview, Kylie and I grabbed a second moment to remember Mike, who was both truly a fantastic CTO, and an absolute rockstar of a bloke. And you'll have to forgive us if we get a little bit teary. But he did tell us all about it, the good, the bad and the crying in the shower. Kylie Dillon, welcome to The Proptech Podcast.

Kylie Dillon:

Thanks so much for having me.

Kylie Davis:

It's great to have you. So the first question we always ask our guests, Kylie, and it's a tricky one, especially when you're startup, but what is your elevator pitch.

Kylie Dillon:

Realtime Conveyancer automates and streamlines the conveyancing process from contract to keys through digital innovation. We bring all parties into the transaction providing complete transparency and visibility throughout the process.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. So if I understand it correctly, conveyancing is a nightmare. It's got lots of moving parts. It's kind of like an AFL game where no one can actually pass or catch the ball, mark the ball, and so there's lots of dropped balls as a result. But how big is that a problem? And I know personally, how painful it is when conveyancing goes wrong, but why do we need Realtime Conveyancer? And what's the problem you're solving? How big is it?

Kylie Dillon:

We all agree that the way people buy, sell, finance, and settle property is changing. The consumer is starting to demand greater visibility and transparency because they have that in every other aspect of their life. What we are aiming to achieve is a wonderful experience for the consumer via technology and human interaction. I think research, and this was probably some of the research that you've actually delivered previously, Kyls, cause is that 34% to 64% of consumers experience a less than ideal conveyancing experience. And they're entitled to expect more from the transaction.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. These are big transactions. Like the medium property price is around 600 and something Australia wide. In a Sydney at 1.2.

Kylie Dillon:

Yeah, absolutely. And the stress of buying and selling property is right up there with death and divorce. So we owe it to the consumer to be able to enhance that experience for them. We need to be able to provide them some comfort and some certainty around the transaction as well.

Kylie Davis:

So tell me a little bit about how Realtime Conveyancer works, because there's a couple of different parts to it, isn't there?

Kylie Dillon:

There is. So Realtime Conveyancer is made up of two components, there is the core platform, which is the platform that's available to the conveyances that's providing the workflow, a full trust accounting, package reporting, business insights, data analytics, and document templates. And then there is the application, which is in the hands of the consumer, the real estate agent and the finance broker. And that application is what provides the ... It pretty much just brings all parties into the one space, and it gives all parties the visibility and transparency over where we're at.

Kylie Dillon:

So it's not just a track it all for the consumer, actually, we're trying to remove the paper from the process altogether. So we're allowing the consumer the flexibility to receive all their documentation through the app. So basically, they can receive it, they can review it, they can sign it, and they can return it.

Kylie Davis:

And that's all through their mobile phone.

Kylie Dillon:

Correct.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. Okay. So instead of having to chase down my conveyancer and the real estate agent and manually get hold of these people to find out what stage they're at, to then have to return 79 different calls and talk to the bank again. All of that stuff's happening in inside the app, and you can see it.

Kylie Dillon:

Yeah. So you'd be surprised by ... Conveyancing has traditionally been a paper process. That the stories behind why somebody hasn't returned a document, we've had snails have eaten it. These are true stories. Snails have eaten their documentation. The weather has damaged their documentation. Clients actually have a couple of different signatures. So they may design with their first name, sorry, their initial and their last name, or they could sign using their full first name and their full last name. So the documentation then that's received by the bank is different to the documentation is received by the conveyancer.

Kylie Dillon:

So what we're trying to remove is the risk in the inefficiencies that come with transacting in paper. Having said that, if the client or the conveyancer choose to still adopt the paper method, that's fine. Realtime Conveyancer actually, we'll allow them to do that, but we are giving them a better offering.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. So tell us a little bit about your background. How did you come to set up Realtime Conveyancer? What made you think we need this.

Kylie Dillon:

I did not have a love affair with school. I didn't enjoy school at all. I left school a very early age, and I fell into an outside clerk role in conveyancing. Very quickly thereafter realised the joy and the satisfaction that I received in playing a really small part in helping sellers and buyers realise that dream of either selling the home or owning their first home. That saw me obviously go through the TAFE process, received my licence. At that time, I was the youngest person to have ever received a conveyancing licence in WA. For someone that didn't enjoy school, it kind of told me internally that this was something that I was destined to do forever.

Kylie Dillon:

I opened my own business in 2003. Was involved with AICWA in a conveyanceship where I was fortunate enough to be able to be involved with, I guess, the introduction of electronic conveyancing. There was a lot of talk around it. I was involved in many of those conversations around the introduction of electronic conveyancing. I was always told that electronic conveyancing was going to take many, many years and I would probably be retired before electronic amazing ever came into play. But here I am living and breathing the dream.

Kylie Dillon:

But I was really fortunate to have a lot of interaction with PEXA. That actually then led me to be able to restructure my business. In 2017, I took a role within PEXA working full time in Melbourne. It was meant to be a 12-week gig which turned into two years. But my time at PEXA uncovered a passion for proptech that I never actually knew existed. So it was during that time I developed a vision for what I thought the future of computing would look like. And I realised that the platforms and the tools that I was using today in my business was not going to get me to 2030, potentially, they weren't going to get me to 2025, hence, Realtime Conveyancer was born.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. How big is the real estate settlement space? There's about half a million properties sold every year in Australia, but what are the costs if you get it wrong? Like, how big a market is this if we can make conveyancing more streamlined and elegant?

Kylie Dillon:

Okay. I guess, prior to COVID, the average number of transactions per year was around 450,000. We're now sitting at around 560-something thousand, I believe. We have approximately 12,000 conveyancing firms nationally. That actually includes lawyers. It's not made up of just conveyancers, it's made up of conveyancers and lawyers. What is the overall potential costs? Honestly, I wouldn't know costs if ... Yeah, I really wouldn't know. I mean, I think it's the cost ... Besides the cost of the damage to the consumer, it's the cost of the everlasting experience. To have a terrible experience for a consumer, it doesn't just go away overnight. It stays with them for a very long time.

Kylie Dillon:

I've actually had people say it's a little bit like childbirth, it'll last for years. And I said, "That's it. I'm never moving house again." And then all of a sudden, that passes and they go and do it again. I should also add that that's not the experience of everybody, that's just when it goes bad, it goes horribly wrong. And the impact is also long lasting for the conveyancer or the person handling that particular transaction. Because conveyancers are traditionally very compliant, they have a lot of care, a lot of empathy. They really do love their job. They're extremely passionate about what they do, and they care about the people. So they care about the outcome. And when the outcome goes horribly wrong, it's devastating for all parties involved.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. But that care comes at a huge, I guess, energy and busy workload cost on behalf of the conveyancers to try and keep things on track, right?

Kylie Dillon:

Yeah, it does. Absolutely. And there's more and more, I guess more and more work is throwing or more responsibilities throwing at the conveyancers or practitioners. Legislation, regulation, it continues to grow, the job does get harder, and there is a lot more for conveyancers to be across than ever before. And I guess in a market like this, if you look nationally, the market has been slower than average for quite some time. I know especially in WA, we had a really quiet period for approximately five years. COVID hit and the market went absolutely crazy. Now it's hard to find conveyancers. You can't find them. They've been out of the industry for so long. And there's been so much change that the low value, mundane repetitive tasks are so time consuming. And that's what Realtime Conveyancer is aiming to remove.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. Okay. So your customers are conveyancers. That's your business model that your conveyancers are purchasing, realtime conveyancing and real estate agents or buyers and sellers have got access to the app free if there are conveyancers using it or how does that work?

Kylie Dillon:

The pricing model is really up to every conveyancing firm. So we don't want to tell conveyancers how to run their business. We basically are saying, here's a platform that you can use, here's an application that you can pass on or make available to your clients. But however they want to price that or pass on that price or absorb that price is entirely up to them.

Kylie Davis:

Okay. Let's just take a short break and your quick word from our sponsors. Imagine a real estate forms and contracts solution that's always accessible, up-to-date with legal changes and cuts admin time by 40%. That's the beauty of the Forms Live platform from Dynamic Methods. With Forms Live, Dynamic Methods have created a form system that is easy, online and best of all, compliant.

Kylie Davis:

Every month, 50,000 agents and property managers use Forms Live in seven and a half thousand agencies across every state and territory in Australia. Plus, Forms Live has over 100 integrations including the industry's most popular CRMs, connection services and digital signatures with DocuSign, making it the national platform of choice for real estate forms. Check them out at formslive.com.au. So you're still a baby startup, right? Like you've only just recently launched. How big are you? Give us a little bit feeling about the size and shape of the business. How far afield have you gone yet?

Kylie Dillon:

So we've been working on the Realtime Conveyancer for two years. We did go live with our very first client in October. So we [crosstalk 00:15:09] in October, which was yay, that was very exciting. On reflection, you look at it and think you've come such a long way. And I think we forget to celebrate the small milestones that come with a startup. I remember speaking to yourself and other people two years ago saying, hold on to your hat, it's a hell of a ride. If they tell you it's going to take this long, double it. If they tell you it's going to cost this much, quadruple it.

Kylie Davis:

It's like a house renovation, right?

Kylie Dillon:

I know I said you need some more hair appointments to cover the greys or the older wrinkles.

Kylie Davis:

Or the crying in the shower, that was something that came up too.

Kylie Dillon:

Unless you've cried in the car on your way home or [inaudible 00:15:58] floor and cried, you haven't truly lived a startup life. But yeah, two years in, we finally launched. We do have a pipeline of conveyances ready to onboard and activate, which is super exciting. But I think that we do get so caught up in trying to achieve that end goal that we do forget to celebrate the small wins along the way, which I guess really aren't small wins, they're huge wins. But it's certainly a journey, one that I have no regrets on. Obviously, benefit of hindsight, it's a wonderful thing. And if I knew now what I knew, then all these things would do differently. But I'm sure my story is no different to any other startup founder out there. Especially the ones that I've spoken to anyway.

Kylie Dillon:

When you talk to them about the peaks and the troughs, the roller coaster ride, everyone understands. They're nodding. No one says anything, but they just nod like, yep, I've been there. I know where you're coming from. I think it's really important to acknowledge the hard times or the challenges or the troughs, whatever you want to call it. Because if somebody stands in front of you and tells you that the role of a startup founder is nothing but roses, they're lying. It's absolutely not the case. I think what, what I've loved most about the journey is the people that I've met, the support, the encouragement, the camaraderie that comes with being in that proptech startup founder space.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. Congratulations. It's a huge achievement to two years of dev to get off the ground and to turn it into your to turn your personal experiences in conveyancing in your broad professional experience in conveyancing into something that's going to really propel the app. Now, here's what I would love to understand, because we had Lisa Dowie from PEXA on the show a couple of months ago. I know you've worked for PEXA. So how does Realtime Conveyancer fit into the PEXA digital settlement universe?

Kylie Dillon:

[inaudible 00:17:59] question. In the beginning, there was a lot of misconception that PEXA were going to replace conveyances, or that you would call PEXA and PEXA would do your settlement for you because they were a conveyancer. PEXA is an ELN, which is an electronic lodgment network. And what PEXA did, and they did really, really well was digitise the last piece of the conveyancing process. So the financial settlement and the lodgment piece is what they digitised.

Kylie Dillon:

So if you can imagine the day of settlement, a lot of people running up and down. I know here in WA we call it the [terrace 00:18:39]. I know in Adelaide, they have a settlement room. So different states, different processes. But basically, it's a lot of people coming together to hand over documents in return for checks, and vice-versa. And then the lodging party takes those documents to the land registry or to Landgate and then they lodge them. That's what PEXA digitised. So it just removes that chaos.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. So how does realtime conveyancers snap into that process? Into that-

Kylie Dillon:

So PEXA is at the last 10% of the conveyancing process. You still have the remaining 90% that needs to be handled by a conveyancer. What Realtime does is provide conveyancing workflow and tools. So whether it's your trust accounting package, your document templates, your conveyancing workflow to the conveyancers to allow them to do their job really well. And then we integrate with PEXA. So basically, instead of at the moment, a conveyancer jumping in and out of a lot of unintegrated systems and tools to be able to do their job, that they're able to complete their transaction digitally, and they're able to bring the consumer and the real estate agent and the finance broker into that digital space. So they're also not jumping in and out of a tonne of unintegrated systems and tools.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, awesome. Okay, so I get it now. Thank you so much. So you're kind of like a CRM or a PMS for conveyancing, right? Workflow solution.

Kylie Dillon:

We call ourselves a transaction management software is the name that we've run with. Yeah.

Kylie Davis:

Cool. Perfect.

Kylie Dillon:

I'm actually very much awake. That is my dog snoring in the background.

Kylie Davis:

We can't hear it. It's okay. It's okay. What's the competitive landscape been like? Who do you see as your main competitors? And how do you compare?

Kylie Dillon:

We actually try not to get bogged down in this space. We actually compete against ourselves every day. And by that, I mean, we talk about what it is that we do and how will we do it. So constantly trying to out-innovate ourselves. Is there a better way to do something? And our focus in everything that we do is, is this going to provide an amazing experience for the consumer? And if it doesn't, then we don't do it. So I guess that's our biggest competitor, is actually our consumer. Because we want to make sure that what we're building is giving them the experience that they're entitled to.

Kylie Dillon:

We're also hoping that by the way that we've built Realtime is that we're providing a level of education. So largely, the consumers don't actually know what a conveyancer is. They know that they need one because the real estate agent or the finance broker tells them they need one. And then they don't necessarily even know what it is that a conveyancer does. And I'm hoping that by opening up the whole process to the consumer, they actually get to see, right, this is actually what my conveyancer does for me. They don't just send me documents, and I don't just sign them and send them back. But they do all of this other amazing stuff in the background.

Kylie Dillon:

It also, I think it will raise the bar, the level of professionalism will increase because not everybody likes ... They say that visibility and transparency creates trust, which is true it to a degree, it creates trust and authentic relationships. But it also creates anxiety. And by that, I mean, if you've ordered an Uber and you've watched your little Uber car go round and round in a circle on the street, and you're wondering, where he's going and what he's doing, it's that the level of not knowing what's happening that sometimes adds to the stress for the consumer.

Kylie Dillon:

So the aim of Realtime is actually by bringing them into the mix and allowing them to see what's going on that they do develop that sense of trust that the person that is looking after them has got their back. Has got it. They know exactly what's going on, and that they're going to be able to settle their property on time. And if not going to settle on time, they'll get to know why earlier in the pace rather than sometimes last minute in the chaos of it all finding out that their settlement is not going to occur. And that will still happen. Right. That is the world of settlements.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. So if I'm a real estate agent, and I like the sound of this, how do I engage with a Realtime agent or am I looking for, Sorry, Realtime Conveyancer, or am I looking for conveyancers that are using Realtime Conveyancer?

Kylie Dillon:

From a WA perspective, obviously, we're starting here. So we will integrate. We're in the middle of integrating with VaultRE, the amazing Adam [Scott 00:23:38]. So if the real estate agent uses VaultRE as their real estate CRM, they will have the ability to send the contract through VaultRE to their conveyancer, and if their conveyancer uses Realtime Conveyancer, it will land in the dashboard of the conveyancer using Realtime conveyancer, and then the process will flow from there. That's just the starting point for now. But the real estate agent can do is ask to their conveyancer, do you use Realtime conveyancer?

Kylie Davis:

Right. Okay. And you're in WA only at the moment or are you further afield?

Kylie Dillon:

At the moment, we are just here.

Kylie Davis:

Okay. And what are your rollout plans?

Kylie Dillon:

To head into South Australia is next on the road. Obviously, being very, very passionate about conveyancing and really caring about the consumer. I'm not looking to go anywhere until we have the process really nutted out. It would be remiss of me to say that I'm going to go from here to here, to here without first having it locked down, being able to deliver a really slick product here first. Because at the end of the day, it is all about the conveyancer and the consumer and making sure the experience for them is great.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. Awesome. Look, there's a lot of different legislation state to state that affects conveyancing. So there's there's quite a lot involved in, it's not just sort of rolling, the takeout, there's a whole lot of extra stuff that needs to be ticked off in each state.

Kylie Dillon:

Yeah, absolutely. One of the questions I get asked all of the time is, why isn't anybody else doing this? So it's been to great acknowledge that, yes, there is a gap in the market, there is ... What Realtime Conveyancer is building is very much needed and it's welcomed. But the reason people haven't done it is because it's hard. I'm conveyancer in WA, and I'm saying to you is hard. You have a dozen different types of sellers with a dozen different type of property transactions with a dozen different type of buyers, who might be a first time buyer, they might be a pensioner, or they might be an investor, they might be a first time, sorry, an owner/occupier. You have to allow for every one of those variables.

Kylie Dillon:

And then you do that in one state with its own legislation, regulation and compliance, and then you take it to another state. So it's certainly not ... It's not easy. It's not something that I think should be ... There's no shortcuts. You can't shortcut something like this. When you're playing with people's lives, and the biggest purchase of their lifetime, you cannot mess with that. You can't take it anything other than absolutely seriously. There's no 80/20 in this.

Kylie Davis:

No. That's a great philosophy. So you just recently closed your first funding round, tell me about how that went.

Kylie Dillon:

Oh, my God, that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. So originally, the project was bootstrapped. And we were plodding along quite nicely. And I honestly hadn't really given any thought to capital raising. It sort of came about fairly quickly, actually, then we were like, okay, hang on a second. We've done really well and we've put all this money into it. But we are going to need more to get us to that next step. So met with a couple of advisors, we decided to go with one advisor. He said, "How much do you think he need?" With absolutely no science behind it, we said $2 million.

Kylie Davis:

Feels about right.

Kylie Dillon:

And so we sat down, we put together ... We already had our business plan, obviously, as you do. But I'd never had to put together an IM or a pitch deck. So we set about putting together both of those documents. So when I say it was hard, they were the things I found actually the hardest. Because they were just outside my comfort zone, not something I'd done before and I didn't know which people to go to, to help me bring those to life. Saying that now, you look back in reflection go, actually I have so many amazing proptech startup founders around, I could have asked any one of them. And there was definitely a couple that I reached out to for certain pieces, but not realising the enormity of what was going to be involved. An IM isn't in a two-page document.

Kylie Dillon:

So I was working with these advisors. And after about eight months, these advisors said, look, we're really busy. And we only take on this number of clients a year and we're really not too sure that we're going to be able to get you the money you need, but we could probably get you maybe $250,000. And by then, I had a really good understanding of what I was going to need. So all the science in the world was put behind it at that point. And became very clear, okay, this is what I need and these are the people I need on my team to help me get to this point.

Kylie Dillon:

So I just thought, well, I'll just head out there on my own, speak to a few people, get some feedback. And all of a sudden, I'd have people saying, yeah, I'd love to invest. I think it's an amazing idea. It's a great idea. And our IM was actually, we were looking for $1 million in our IM. Our IM allowed to take up to 1.5. I raised the full 1.5 and then had to turn people away because we had reached our limit. Whilst I say it was the hardest thing I've ever done, it was the documentation preparing for the capital raise. I actually found the capital raise is a lot of fun in the end.

Kylie Dillon:

I got to the point where I wanted to pitch to people in the street because [inaudible 00:29:50]. I guess I loved the vision so much and I was being ... I had that, I don't know, not the confidence but the confidence from the people around, from total strangers saying this is absolutely what the market needs. And that just the momentum setting, I suppose, and got the ball rolling. And then yeah, I love talking about it, I can talk about Realtime ... I could talk about conveyancing the weeks on end. So that was my capital raise experience.

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic. Congratulations. That's awesome. Fantastic. Let's just take a short break and your a quick word from our sponsors. Do you run a proptech business or are you the founder of a proptech? Make sure you join The Proptech Association of Australia. It's Australia's new not-for-profit association made up of tech people who are passionate about the property industry and committed to improving experiences in how we buy, sell, rent, manage, build, and finance property. Joining will give you access to events and networks across Australia and globally to help you promote and grow your business. Go to proptechassociation.com.au and follow the prompts to join. So Kylie, tell me how do you visualise the perfect settlement? What does the perfect settlement look like in your head?

Kylie Dillon:

I think the perfect settlement would see a consumer having a really good understanding of why they were engaging and conveyancer. Like we know why we need an accountant. We know why we need different people in our lives. But to really understand why I needed that conveyancer I think would be the start. So I think all good really ... A perfect settlement or a perfect outcome generally comes because there's a level of respect between the parties upfront. So we've engaged each other because we know that we want to achieve a really good outcome. We know that the really good outcome might still involve some bumps in the road.

Kylie Dillon:

But when you're confident of where you're heading, where you're heading, who you're heading there with, and the person that you're heading there with has the tools to do their job really well, that to me is a good outcome. It's not just about a seamless transaction, or a smooth transaction, or a fast transaction. It's about empowering all of the people that touch that transaction. And I guess getting their buy in early on that we're all on the same page, we all want to achieve the same end goal, and to get there with everybody committed to doing what they're engaged to do to get to that outcome.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. And throughout that whole process of being transparent and easy to check on where you're up to, and you're getting prompted about what the next step is, and you're able to understand why that's important, and you can flag early on if you think snails have eaten your title deeds. Right?

Kylie Dillon:

I will give this as an example, because I've got really comfortable getting vulnerable. And that's something that took me a little while to get used to. We don't often talk about the things that we don't know or the areas that we need a little help in. Or areas where we've even done things wrong. We tend to keep out, especially in conveyancing, we tend to keep it quite private around the way we run our businesses or the things that occurred to us. But one of the things that happened to one of the girls in the conveyancing business during the week was that a client told her she was being Big Brother. She felt that there was a lot of pressure on her.

Kylie Dillon:

The conveyancer had sent documents to the client six weeks prior, they had been calling them, emailing them and texting them to try to make sure the client had received those documents and that they understood those documents. Did they need any help with those documents? Or could they please return those documents because they set them up was looming. And the conveyancer was told she was like Big Brother and it was a terrible experience for the consumer.

Kylie Dillon:

But that was because the consumer didn't understand everything in the background of why the conveyancer was asking for these. And because the conveyancer couldn't see that the client had even received these documents, that was ... She was just trying to do her job. She was trying to do her job as best as she could. And then that was the response. That leaves a bit of a bad taste for both parties now, because both parties still need to communicate to get to the end result. But already there's a bit of a thing, I suppose, between the two of them.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. What do you see the next five years holding for the settlement space and for conveyancing?

Kylie Dillon:

I see the role of the conveyancer changing. I do see the role of the conveyancer becoming more of an advisory type role. I would think that through the tools that will become available to everybody involved in the property transaction that will allow the real estate agent, the finance brokers and the conveyancers to develop more deeper, more meaningful relationships with the consumer, and to really help understand what it is the consumer wants from the transaction. I know there are other industries where before engaging somebody to represent them, they were talking about, what sort of person do you want? What do you want that relationship to look like? And it's not purely transactional. I think that's where conveyancing will go.

Kylie Davis:

The guidance.

Kylie Dillon:

Sometimes if it's been 17 years since you last bought or sold property, you forget who your conveyancer was. So you just go ahead and use another one. If you develop those deeper, more meaningful relationships, and you really understand everything about your client, I think that's where we'll see the client start to come back time and time again. Because you'll develop a really ... It's not just about the relationship, but it's about understanding the needs and the wants of the consumer. They don't want to be telling that same story over and over again.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. What would success look like for you?

Kylie Dillon:

Adoption. Market adoption. I think that's going to be the answer to every startup founder is, is once people start using it. I feel like I'm already their calls. To have the support of your industry, to have the support of REIWA, to have the support of your peer body, your peers, your colleagues, industry, industry members, to have people say to you, that this is a great idea. And they support and encourage, or how can I help? People often reaching out, how can I help? What do you need? That to me, I already feel ... That makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I feel like already we've been successful and just bringing it to life. For me, it's not about having every conveyancer in Australia using the product, it's about having people that have the same ... Conveyancers that share the same values that I do, and share the same vision using Realtime. That to me is success.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. Kylie Dillon, thank you so much for being on The Proptech Podcast. This has been fabulous to talk to you.

Kylie Dillon:

Thank you for having me.

Kylie Davis:

Hey, it's Kylie Davis from The Proptech Podcast here. Shortly after doing that a fantastic interview with Kylie Dillon, we learned that very tragically, her business partner Mike Price, had passed away. So before we went live with the interview, we just wanted to take a little moment to acknowledge and recognise Mike, and so I've got Kylie back to tell us a little bit about him because he was an amazing man. We had many nights together in Vegas, the three of us, with my partner, Mark. So I know what a great guy he was. But Kylie, tell me how you and Mike met.

Kylie Dillon:

Yes. Kylie, thank you for giving me the opportunity to touch on and I guess reflect on Mike and remember Mike, because he was a huge part and obviously the whole foundation of this platform. So we met in, actually, I was in my role at KDD Conveyancing Services and Mike was working for PEXA. Mike was part of a team that flew across from Melbourne to Perth to understand a little bit more about conveyancing. And we got to spend some time with him here in Perth, myself and a few other conveyancers. And when you just meet someone, and you just know that they are a really decent human and that a friendship is going to form from that initial interaction. And that's exactly what happened.

Kylie Dillon:

So we did have a few emails going back and forth while Mike tried really hard to understand the role of the conveyancer. Then I went to work for PEXA. And at the time that I first landed in Melbourne, Mike was actually in New Zealand, but he knew that I was in the Melbourne office. And he was like, "Sit tight, sit tight, I'm coming." And I was really looking forward to catching up with him. And when he did come in, I remember we did this big run from opposite ends of the hallway seeing each other. And we did it in real slow motion, and we just had this like great, big hug. It's quite unique when you look back on it now and think, this was the guy I'd actually only met once or twice, but we had a lot of email and phone call conversations. But yeah, we just really clicked.

Kylie Dillon:

So he was FIFO from New Zealand to Melbourne, and I was obviously FIFO, from Perth to Melbourne. And he lived probably around ... I still lose my bearings with Melbourne. But I think it was around what? It was about a 15 minute tram ride away. We quite often used to date. We didn't obviously get to spend very much time together during our days. We were both in really different roles. But at nighttime, we would pack up from work and we would walk home together. Usually the wind would blow us into a bar somewhere and we would sit down and talk about all the things that I really loved about conveyancing. Mike would tell me all the things that he really loved about IT and technology.

Kylie Dillon:

These conversations went on two or three nights a week for about 12 months. And then we obviously heard about the Inman Connect conference and great people like yourself was going. And I was like we really wanted to be involved in that event. And at that point in time, I was in a role in PEXA, which was an R&D role, but really had me, I guess, travelling and spending a lot of time researching what the future conveyancing looked like. And that was a passion of my own personally, as well as something that I really loved doing within my role.

Kylie Dillon:

So Mike and I got together, had a bit of a chat, and I said, "Look, I'm going to go." I took some annual leave from PEXA. It wasn't something that I actually did as part of my PEXA role. I took some annual leave to do it for myself. I knew at some point in time, my role at PEXA would end and I would come back to my conveyancing business here in Perth. Again, Mike and I had been having these many conversations around the platform that I was using at that point in time wasn't necessarily going to get my business to where it needed to get to. Back in that day, we were saying my business isn't going to get me to 2020, let alone 2022. And here we are today in 2022. So it's amazing how quickly that time has flown.

Kylie Dillon:

But yeah, so Mike's like, "Well, if you're going, I'm going." So we set off on the trip to Inman and Mike really got to hear from a lot of amazing speakers, a lot of amazing technology, which helped him more so understand what it was that I was thinking I would like a conveyancing platform to look like. So after having spent four days in Vegas, he was like, I absolutely agree with you. I think that we should do this. Probably after too many glasses of Pinot, it was like, absolutely, let's do this, let's do this. We were surrounded by so many like-minded people, and that whole likes attract likes, and being getting caught up in or not getting caught up in because we all very much believed in our own vision, but the affirmation that what you were doing, that vision that you had, was very much reality. And it just really takes working with the right people to bring that dream to life.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. Look, Kylie, I think maybe you have this influence on people because I do remember you and I meeting for the first time and it being just like a clique. And we've been inseparable ever since.

Kylie Dillon:

You just do just know.

Kylie Davis:

You just do just know, you do. So what were his strengths like as your co-founder?

Kylie Dillon:

Mike had this uncanny ability to just see ... So solution focused. Very, very solution. I used to always say, we talk about how people clique, I used to I say, "Give me a solution, don't give me a problem." And Mike, the moment we met, I think he said something very, very similar. I'm like, this is amazing. We're going to be friends for life. So he was very solution focused, very positive. Never a glass half empty kind of guy. He would make a friend wherever we went. Sometimes I'd say to him, "We're not here to make friends. We're here to [inaudible 00:44:31]." Everybody needs a friend.

Kylie Dillon:

So he was super happy, super welcoming, and he just had the ability to make everyone around him feel very comfortable and very reassured that they were in good hands. So he was a great sounding board for me. Never gave me advice. Just always let me go to him. I would offload, so sometimes just shared, and I'd be like, "Actually, I don't need you anymore. I've solved that problem myself. But thanks for listening." "Okay, great chat." And he said nothing. I'm sure sometimes he didn't even get a word in. His mannerisms, just being around him was just really inspiring.

Kylie Davis:

So Kylie, what was his vision for the business? How did he see Realtime Conveyancer going? Hang on. I'm just going to say that again. Completely stuffed that up. So Kylie, what was Mike's vision for the business? How did he see Realtime Conveyancer?

Kylie Dillon:

He was brilliant in being the support person. So he asked me many, many times, "What was your vision?" What was my vision. Because the vision was so grand and you can't ... You can have a high level understanding of somebody's vision, but to really be able to understand how I can best support that person, because he was the CTO. So how do how does he make sure that he had the right people on his team to help bring my vision to life? So he was very, very happy to be that support person. And every day, he would just keep asking me the same question or a similar question just to make sure that he was always of the understanding of what it was I was trying to achieve, and being able to then articulate that to his team.

Kylie Dillon:

I'm sure we're not the only people in this position, but we founded in Realtime prior to COVID. So never in a million years, did we expect that we were going to be able to see each other once in two years. So we founded Realtime in January 2020. I flew to New Zealand the following month. The month after that, COVID hit, and I never got to see him again. So that's ...

Kylie Davis:

I'm not crying. You're crying.

Kylie Dillon:

That's probably the hardest part, is never actually been able to get to say goodbye. So whilst we spoke every day, and thank God for video calls and FaceTime, because building technology when one person's in New Zealand and one person's in Australia is hard enough as it is.

Kylie Davis:

Wen you're in Perth, there's a pretty big time gap between those two.

Kylie Dillon:

One hour time difference. So that sometimes meant a start for me of 3:30 a.m. But it sometimes meant a late finish for Mike, while I wrapped up what I was doing here in my day to then be able to chat to him. So sometimes that was 10:00 or 11:00, sometimes midnight for him as well. So we did that up until he passed away, pretty much, or until he got sick, should I say, when he just wasn't able to commit to being available for that length of time. So, yes. And not only did we go into business and COVID hit. No one goes into business thinking there's not longevity in the relationship between yourself and your co-founder either. So I really feel that we certainly had our challenges, but I'm really proud of where we stand today. That is largely because of the leadership that Mike displayed to the development team.

Kylie Dillon:

I know that may seem terribly what ... I think, again, we were really fortunate to have the people that have jumped into Mike's shoes had been part of his team for many, many years, and had a lot of knowledge and experience in that field. So the transition, whilst it was incredibly sad for Mike to transition out, it was a smooth transition because he had developed his team in to a degree that I guess we needed him to be developing. And he knowing when he first became aware that he was unwell, I think he knew that whilst he never wanted to admit it, and he kept telling me he wasn't ready to go, I think he knew that time was short. And it was critical that he got as much out of his brain and into the brains of other people as he possibly could in the best interest of Realtime. He was incredibly selfless. He was known as being a math professor. He was absolutely ... He is absolutely irreplaceable and just a really unique human.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. And what we missed the most?

Kylie Dillon:

That warped sense of humour. The times that we were in Vegas and we would get into a lift, and his daughter, Megan, actually touched on this in her eulogy at his funeral, and as soon as she said it, I laughed out loud. Because we would get into a lift and he would close the door and say, "Now that I have all your attention or now that I have you all here." I'm like, "Mike." It's so incredibly awkward and creepy at times. Because not everybody here. Some people would look sideways going, the guy had an Australian accent for a start, which I think used to always freak people out during the Vegas trip.

Kylie Dillon:

But yeah, just incredibly welcoming and a man with absolutely no ego, but the biggest heart that you could possibly imagine. A great listener. A really great shoulder and just a huge support person. like I said, he didn't have so much of the vision because he's not in the conveyancing space, but he knew that he had the skill in the background to deliver on that vision. So, yeah. The bad dad jokes. Yeah, he was just hilarious. Just a really great human.

Kylie Davis:

We will raise a glass of Pinot to him because he did love a Pinot. And it has been absolutely wonderful to ... He will be very sorely missed. And it's been lovely to hear all this from you and to spend a little bit of time to honour him. Mike Price, you'll be really missed.

Kylie Dillon:

Yeah, thanks, Kylie, I really appreciate the opportunity. Let his legacy live on through real time.

Kylie Davis:

Fantastic. All the best. I hope everyone is okay after that. And even listening to it again now, I start to lose it a bit. So Mike, Kylie and my husband, Mark and I spent several nights on the town in Vegas together in 2019. And he was an extraordinarily gentle, thoughtful, intelligent, and super fun man. And he did love a Pinot. It often comes up about how hard it can be to be a proptech entrepreneur, there are so many balls you are constantly juggling. The vision, the team, the development of the tech, the money, the sales, the funding, every single one of these things alone are huge pieces of work that are thrilling, and in combination and over time, they can become completely exhausting.

Kylie Davis:

But to have to deal with them all, plus, the knowledge that your co-founder is dying, and that you can't see or hug him or say goodbye properly due to COVID lock downs, and that you need to transfer all of his technical knowledge into your team at the same time that you're dealing with a major funding round and launching the new tech. Well, that takes extraordinary strength of character, resilience and EQ to be able to deal with all of that. So my admiration for Kylie Dillon knows no bounds. Although, I know it did take a hell of a lot out of her to not being able to say a proper goodbye to Mike. And under the circumstances, a little bit of shower crying, it's perfectly okay. So veil Mike, you will be very sorely missed.

Kylie Davis:

And with so many of us experiencing loss over the past few years due to the pandemic and to lockdowns, and being separated from those that we love, if this episode has triggered any feelings of grief within you, know that you are not alone, and that it does help to talk to someone. And I've included some of the helplines in the show notes if you need someone to reach out to. Please don't suffer in silence. Now if you have enjoyed this episode of The Proptech Podcast, I would love you to tell your friends or drop me a line either via email, LinkedIn or on our Facebook page. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor and Apple iTunes.

Kylie Davis:

I'd like to thank my Podcast Producer, the fabulous Charlie Hollands, and our sponsors, Direct Connect, making moving easy, Dynamic Methods, the name behind Forms Live, REI Forms Live and Realworks, and The Proptech Association of Australia, Australia's industry bodies supporting the flourishing proptech community. Now if you're an Australian or a New Zealand proptech who would like to be on the show, drop me a line via LinkedIn or kylie@proptechassociation.com.au. Thanks, everyone. Until next time, keep on propteching.