Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Chapdelaine.
Matthew, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I had been a commercial real estate broker in Chicago for 10 years heading into 2012. The real estate industry was always fun, and I had my own firm with my business partner Nate. We were paying to much for technology solutions that really did not provide a lot of value. Without any knowledge of coding or how to build a platform I jumped in and learned what it took.
My first product “Commercial Connected” connected commercial properties with buyers and tenants – much like the way Tinder works for the dating world. I had a lot of fun building the platform and learned a lot. While Commercial Connected maxed out at a few thousand users I still considered it a success. From there I continued building smaller in-house solutions for some of my real estate customers, ultimately leading to the CartoFront product today.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No, it has not been smooth. The amount of resources needed to make a company like this work are significant, that includes technical resources, financial resources, skilled human capital and customers willing to pay for our product as it evolves. We have been lucky to have committed investors, great employees, and customers who have stuck with us as the product grows to meet their needs. Even when things are going relatively smooth – there’s always plenty of new things to worry about.
Please tell us about CartoFront.
The first version of CartoFront was a collection of actionable real estate data points that drive the real estate decision-making process. We track things like life events ex: death & divorce) financial events (mortgage and tax liens) and combine that with our own statistical analysis to measure the likelihood of a real estate owner wanting to sell, refinance, or become distressed on their property or properties.
Today every property owner is given a score – the CartoScore – to measure their motivation, and our customers are alerted in real time as those motivations change on targeted properties. CartoFront customers include leading real estate brokerage offices, lenders, and insurance companies.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Tough question – hindsight is 20/20 and this hasn’t been a perfect process – I would have taken the same path but certainly there are things I would have done differently. You can’t lose sleep over the mistakes you make though, if I was concerned with that I would still be doing the same boring job I was doing out of college. If you want to do something that hasn’t been done before that means there’s no blueprint. Learn from your mistakes, hopefully with no regrets.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cartofront.com/
- Phone: (312) 945-8019
- Email: matt@cartofront.com
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