Asia Tech podcast recorded an interesting conversation with Chee Yeng Tan, Founder of Clicks™. Clicks™ aims to create an online network for everything related to real estate.
Some topics discussed by Chee Yeng:
- Having a mid life crisis and taking the plunge
- How an iPod touch triggered Chee Yeng’s view on how technology was going to evolve
- Why the current real estate business is lagging quite badly
- Chee Yeng’s ultimate vision
- The rationale behind providing free listings for Clicks
- The unique factor of real estate business and its missing gap
Some other titles we considered for this episode:
- I Was Looking High and Low for Help but No One Was Able to Help Me
- Human Beings and Humans Psychology Is Something You Cannot Ignore
- Coexisting Beautifully
This episode was produced by Stephanie Ng.
Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):
Michael Waitze 0:04
Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. Today we are joined by Chee Yeng Tan, the founder of Clicks™. Chee Yeng, how are you doing? Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Chee Yeng Tan 0:16
Yeah, I’m really good. I’m very, very honoured to be with you. Yeah. Thanks a lot for getting me on this podcast. Yeah, I believe you know, you’re one of someone who’s very passionate about tech just like me. Yeah,
Michael Waitze 0:30
a little bit. Um, before we do this, before we get into the main merge central part of our conversation. I want to get a little bit of your background for some context.
Chee Yeng Tan 0:39
Sure, sure. Sure. Okay, I have a very diverse and interesting background. Why do I say so? Prior to starting, you know, this venture, I was with one of the menses us at US Bank. I was doing digital banking, I was hitting the digital banking. Okay, then, then, and but before that I was actually not doing digital banking by some strange twist of fate. I was actually doing learning and development. Yeah. The hell previously I was all alone in learning and development. So by sounds strange, strange twist of fate. There’s this opportunity that I saw that yeah, coming internal transfer. That’s how I got the digital banking. Yeah. So so by me, being someone who is very interested in technology, going into digital banking is something you know, I’ve always dreamed of, you know, come from there actually get to learn a lot of things, including know how are these financial system works in terms of the technology, how to even launch an app, you know, how to even create an application. Prior to that? I have no idea. I have no idea how to even do such a thing. So that experience in digital banking really helped me so then I saw this opportunity I’m currently seeing now. And that’s why I took the plunge. You know, midlife crisis. I took the plunge. You I don’t
Michael Waitze 1:54
you can’t be old enough to have a midlife crisis. Do you remember the first time you realised? Okay, I think technology is going to change everything. Because I can tell you when mine was but I’m just curious when yours was
Chee Yeng Tan 2:06
mine. I don’t restart a little bit cliche, but it was actually iPod Touch. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, you know, it’s really Apple iPod Touch really changed the whole game. But earlier on, I interested in technology, and I bought all these PDAs phone and everything. But it doesn’t let me have the feeling that things will change. So there was one day I was going on, buying my my tech stuff. So I chanced upon iPod Touch. And back then was very, very expensive. I remember spending like 30% of my salary, just on the spot, I bought iPod Touch, because I was so impressed by it. As your no iPod Touch is the first version of in a sense, like iPhone is very similar the first version of iPhone. And from then I realised that that’s the point I realised that no technology is going to change by instead of using everything on a computer, it can go on to the pump. That was that night, my eureka moment.
Michael Waitze 3:10
So you just reminded me because I was sitting here struggling trying to remember like, what the name of my first PDA was. And it was actually a palm five, can you said the word palm? And I’m like, That’s exactly what it was. But let me tell you mine. Yeah, when I was in college, right. And again, I was super poor when I was in college, but I had to write a paper. And I was writing a paper on my typewriter and using Whiteout, which is probably something you’ve never even heard of before. And I saw a guy literally like carrying a Mac, it must have been a Mac to eat. I can’t remember like what year was, well, no, it was it was 86. And he’s kind of like a Mac, you know, one of those little brown boxes. And I was like I said to him, what is that? He goes, Oh, it’s a computer to Macintosh. I’m like, can I just try it? And I wrote my whole paper on that Macintosh. And I was like, okay, when I’m rich, I’m buying one of those things, because that’s gonna change.
Chee Yeng Tan 4:00
I have experience in using typewriters writer versus a Mac, back then, is how lots of difference nice.
Michael Waitze 4:07
It was night and day. And I remember it took me 10 years. That was 1986. It was 1997 I think when I bought my first Mac, so the first Mac I ever bought was an iMac the Bondi blue iMac and I was like, Okay, I finally made it. Now I can actually type.
Chee Yeng Tan 4:22
So same thing I didn’t have as a eureka moment is with Apple. The interesting thing,
Michael Waitze 4:30
which is weird, since we’re probably not even nearly close to the same age. Let me ask you this. So first of all, I love the fact that you’re wearing your cliques shirt, but more importantly, I love the fact that you’ve actually trademarked the name. What Why did you do that?
Chee Yeng Tan 4:46
I think I learned this from an apply to two I have a lot of different experiences. So prior to CD I was with this local Logistics Agency. So I was quite lucky that I get to work closely with the chairman of the company. He His idea is every time when you do something, if you want to show people that you are really into it, you better put in the effort to say that something is yours. So whenever we launch a new project, and there’s a name note that we come up with, he will say that, let’s go and see whether we can trademark this guy right from the start. Yeah, so that’s the thing that know if I want to do something. And someone clicks. It’s a name that is so common. Yeah. Yeah, just a word. And it’s a very simple word. And in today’s world, something that is so common, it’s not even treatment before I better do it very quickly can get it right.
Michael Waitze 5:33
So Clicks™ itself was a trick because I know that one click buying Amazon trademarked isn’t patented, actually must be like 25 years ago, and I can’t remember. But you literally went and patented the word Clicks™. Is it just patented in Singapore? Is it patented globally, like nowadays? Anything?
Chee Yeng Tan 5:47
For example, globally? Currently, I don’t have the resources. It costs a fair bit. Yes.
Michael Waitze 5:55
Yeah, exactly. It only took you 10 years to get there. Yes, correct. So what got you interested in because clicks is a real estate business? Yeah.
Chee Yeng Tan 6:03
Yes, yes, yes. I will say that I’m trying to bring technology into real estate. What got me the baggu question, what got me interested was that I personally went through my own real estate transaction. In fact, I went through twice. The first time I was relatively young, I was around these. Okay, so I don’t really know much. So everything, leave it to the agent. So this time round. That was like, around a year and a half back. Yeah, I tried doing myself. So when I did it, I regret that. Can
Michael Waitze 6:38
we just run through this so people know what needs to get digitalized? Because I don’t think a lot of people fully understand this, particularly people that aren’t super experienced in real estate, right? So it feels like I got in, I buy a condo. I take ownership of it and I move in. Right? You don’t I mean, but there’s all this stuff in the middle that happens, like whether it’s changing the title getting like all these little things that happen. Can you talk about what some of those things are? And how technology helps make it better? If you don’t mind?
Chee Yeng Tan 7:04
Should? Actually, I’m not sure if we realise the real estate business is, I will say lagging quite badly. Don’t know, I believe no, even though we are in two different countries, you will receive pamphlets in your mailbox on a weekly basis all the time we’ve run out of time. Yes. In today’s world, we are still receiving pamphlets. Next thing, you receive SMS as you use this emails, and with scams going on. So rampant, you know, for SMS marketing, for email marketing, for them to be effective, that needs to be a call to action. And we know nobody’s going to click on it within two days. Well, yeah. Because this, you know, with all the scams going on, and I started to think not even threat from the fundamental, where the start of the real estate transaction, the part where people start to market. Yep, it is still very much backwards. And let’s not talk about the rest of the whole chain of, you know, process in the process. So right from the beginning, the start of it is already not very tight. Riven Yeah, then let’s not talk about the rest of the process. Why not?
Michael Waitze 8:11
I’m just so curious about this, right? Because there’s paying the agent, right, understanding who your counterparty is understanding of the builders, okay, right, understanding all this information about the building. And I’m thinking about this, because I was in Singapore in September, right? All of September, a little bit of October, and I was, you know, going on my daily run, or whatever. And I was thinking, Oh, that’s a new building on Grange. That looks like it’s really beautiful. I wonder how much it costs. But I’m running, right? So I can’t like stop and start having conversations with people. So I look it up. And I literally get to like a website that could not be more lame. And the only thing there is just like, click this box and fill it out. And then you get an email with a PDF from some guy. I don’t know, it just seemed like the whole process just seemed so. I don’t want to say backwards. Because it’s not fair. Like building tech. First off is hard. But it doesn’t seem like it’s entered the modern age. Like there should have been so many more things that they could have done to make it better. Correct.
Chee Yeng Tan 9:04
Yeah. So so far, have you you mentioned this very, very clearly, clearly. Right? From not from getting leads from not receiving pamphlet payments for your information? Yep, it is really very much very, very bad. Worse. Yeah, there needs to be a change. And moreover, you know, in today’s world, we even buy a simple thing. Like, like, I’m not sure what you buy recently. Unless you hate food. Yep. Then what must you look for something people will there’ll be, there’ll be no tonnes of recommendation based on what you like, based on your recent searches, not based on what colour you’d like based on the agenda being pushed to you with all this information. Whereas for real estate, you’re putting so much money, yet there isn’t such things. No, you have to chance go for a run and chanced upon it to find out this information yourself. How come this information is not up to you? How come you know? This information is not readily available to you? Something is wrong somewhere. That seems to be a very big gap. You know, if you’re telling me we’re paying for, we’re buying something very cheap, it’s not worth it to create such a technology. Totally understand,
Michael Waitze 10:09
maybe, but what about, what about the big real estate portals? I mean, they’ve been stuff around. I don’t need to mention them all. But like there have been real estate portals for two decades now. Yes, yes, definitely. What’s the difference between what clicks is doing and what? And I don’t want to name them because it doesn’t there are too many of them. And like what a traditional real estate portal does?
Chee Yeng Tan 10:29
I think first and foremost, is I you know, when I got into the ideation of this, this business, I went to research quite a fair bit of models, shall I list out, which are the stakeholders that is involved in the real estate business now that you know, we have homeowners, you have the buyers? You have the tenant landlord? Yeah. And even the POTUS I mentioned. So I started to think no, are there any similar products out there? That is our industry that similar yet, at the beginning, was quite bad words. So it got me to research and I found no, the job market link in the word that came in was LinkedIn. LinkedIn was a perfect model that I was looking for. Why do I say so? Around the world? There are many different job boards, marketplaces. Yep, so in Singapore, there is JobStreet. This JobsDB other countries, that’s monster.com, all over the world. Right. There are also agents, which is the headhunters for LinkedIn world. And he committed to think ahead, something is missing the real estate industry, which is a link in a social network that is focusing on real estate. That’s also something when I was doing my transaction I was hoping for, you know, I ran into some issues during the department transaction, I didn’t engage an agent. But after that the post transaction, I went to some issues, I was trying higher low, to look for help. But no one was able to help me. That’s when I realised that it would need to have something where we can go in and ask like, if I have an issue with my job looking for a job, I will go to LinkedIn, I put that I’m sure now you go to LinkedIn, you will see that hundreds of people working in technology, saying that they are looking for a job, because yeah, there was 11,000 retrenchment that does happen. Yep. Yeah. So I was thinking, How come in real estate there isn’t any. But Clicks™
Michael Waitze 12:30
is not just a job board for real estate is akin to LinkedIn, in the jobs industry. So you basil. So this actually gets really interesting for me. So what you’re saying is, because I’ve been talking about this for 15 years, like I think that these big portals start off really good, right? These big social networks start off really good. But at the end of the day, I don’t want to be on a social network, necessarily, with everybody. I just want to be on a social network with stuff that’s interesting to me in a place that’s curated. So like, I want to be in a car social network, I want to be in a camera social network. So what you’re saying is just Yeah, right. That’s
Chee Yeng Tan 13:05
exactly what I was thinking. Yeah. So to your point, in fact, right now, it was ideating. This clicks can even expand to CAR, CAR social network. So you look at the logo here, right? The window is the house window. So if I want to change it in the car, social network, I just changed the window into a car window with a two car window and put it there.
Michael Waitze 13:25
But then you don’t want to mix them together. Right? In other words, I don’t want to go into social No, no, no estate and mixing this stuff about Ferraris and about Porsches and about you know, General Motors just wanted to be real estate. Is that fair?
Chee Yeng Tan 13:35
All right, correct. Yeah. And anything related to real estate? What I mean by that is, you know, for example, now you say you have a burst pipe in your house, you don’t know what to do? Yeah, you need to look for, you know, trusted some plumber to come in, but there’s no way. So normally what we do is we go to WhatsApp, we ask, but not everyone, you know, has that experience before? Yeah. So I envision next time if I have an issue called the clicks, then based on our algorithm, or if we have enough vendors in you recommend to you based on your needs at that point in time, and based on your price range. Yeah. But
Michael Waitze 14:09
it’s not just a poor. So what’s the overall vision for what the social network for real estate shouldn’t be? Like, what else can I do when I get there? And like, how do I join? Is it just for listings for properties? Or is it literally for, like, hey, if I want to find a lawyer for my real estate transaction, or if I want to find an agent for my real estate transaction, or if I just have questions about like, how do I fix my roof? Like is that is it just to be all encompassing all about real
Chee Yeng Tan 14:31
estate? That’s the ultimate vision. Yeah, but as of now, I only have agents inside. Yeah. Then in the future, yes. I’m bringing all these people into this whole ecosystem. The whole idea is bringing auditor in this ecosystem. And at the same time also, I would like to make it global because I’m sure you have lived in different countries. Yeah, I can imagine you having lots of issue when at the beginning when you when you were living in Japan language issue is very hard for you to even try A way to, you know, communicate or find people that knows your language. I personally experienced this before, because back in about 10 years ago, I was working in Taiwan. So for me, it was okay. My wife, she had issue because she, Mandarin was really bad.
Michael Waitze 15:16
So she, I won’t tell her you said that nobody else will hear this.
Chee Yeng Tan 15:20
No, no, no, no, she she knows. She knows. She knows that’s so bad. So she was there. She was having issues there. So doesn’t realise that No, yeah, we need something that is global that you know that that can help help people around. Yeah. So that’s why it comes to the concept. Yeah. And to your point. So what else can we do other than listing? Yes, I’m currently offering fleet free listing. Now, the whole point is trying to give free listing to get people of this kind of content. That’s the whole idea. Yeah. After that, you know, I believe you move a few houses, you also become a bit more steady mentor like me, I hope. So. For me, it’s I so moved to a few places from a few places before. So I start to think that no, sometimes I want to relive those moments in those places. So I actually could have something that’s similar to listing but not really listing about is akin to a job profile in LinkedIn. But I call this the property virtual profile PvP. So you can create so the concept PPP is, we can create profiles of your past property, your present property, and even you know, when you have a new property, you are going to move in, I know couples are usually very excited, they start to envision how it’s going to be like, you can create a PDB for your Bucha property, where you can put all these different articles, these different pictures inside. So next time, you can refer to them something like a dream home that you’re building towards. That’s the vision of PDP. And hopefully, when I’m big enough, with all the data being captured, you know, this PvP will help you know in recommending services like your interior designer, the kind of viewers I know they can be what you want to build at the same time within your budget region. Then for those past PvP Yes, is for someone who is very sentimental like me. Yeah, but I can go in and take a look. I know there are Instagram, they are, you know, Facebook already there. But for me, it’s not for Facebook, Instagram is just not intuitive for you to go in and look at your past pictures of your past homes. For me straightaway. Now with clicks I go in, I just go in through my property profile.
Michael Waitze 17:18
Is there an app there as well? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I
Chee Yeng Tan 17:20
am. We are now where we are, which is clicks dot real estate. And we are on iOS and Android. So for iOS, iOS and Android need to search for clicks SG and it should
Michael Waitze 17:32
pop up. But for the web, it’s clicks dot real estate. Yeah.
Chee Yeng Tan 17:35
Carter. As you can see, what I’m trying to drive through next time will be clicks dot pass.
Michael Waitze 17:43
Let’s see. I see where this is going? Yes, but I do. So I do believe that bespoke social networks are going to be a thing. I think people get tired of kind of filtering through all the noise, right? And if real, I say this a lot, but like engineers are really trying to solve this problem of discovery. Right? How can I find signals in a sea filled with noise? Right? How can I minimise that noise? And that’s kind of what is bespoke social network does? No.
Chee Yeng Tan 18:07
All right, correct. Interestingly, you know, a lot of these giants, they are trying to build this type of social network within their main network, but human beings human psychology is something they cannot ignore. I’m not sure you know, he Facebook, they already have quite a good listing in the marketplace for for properties. But for a human being, you know, for anyone on the web, you won’t be intuitively going into Facebook to look for house. No, it’s just not intuitive. Same thing for cars, I believe you’re interested in cars, they won’t go in your Facebook to look for a car, even though they have a very established marketplace. Yeah, but I’ve
Michael Waitze 18:40
been thinking about it. So Facebook, and I’ve said this, for the longest time about Google as well. No one’s going to Google to buy stuff. They’re going to search for information to maybe where to buy it and stuff like that. You don’t want to transact on Google in the same way that I don’t think people are going to people are going to Facebook to like for a bunch of different things. But it’s not really for the marketplace, no matter how good that experiences, they go to Lazada or shopee, or cars.com, or Carson or something like that to do their car shopping. And they go to real estate sites to shop for real estate. So this idea that quadrangle, which makes like 90 something percent of its revenue from ads, and Facebook, same thing is going to somehow take over some of the business Tommy’s anathema. But here’s what I want to know, too. Like you do have big portals out there like property guru, maybe the most famous one in Southeast Asia. But how do you compete against them? Because they’ve been doing this for 15 years? I don’t know what the number is, but their listings there too. Are they going to branch out into this too? And then do you see getting involved in the transaction as well?
Chee Yeng Tan 19:34
Very good question. A lot of people when I first shaved them a clicks, they will say, Oh, you’re fighting against PropertyGuru you’re paying for fight against Zillow or Redfin in the United States. Yeah, you’re fighting getting these big boys. No, I’m not. I think that’s why the whole idea of LinkedIn comm so beautifully. You know, LinkedIn is like the huge network for jobs yet it co exists beautifully with monster.com eco exists beautifully with John St. JobsDB. So the whole idea is Sunday, if property guru creates an account with me, I succeeded. I’ve gathered enough people, real estate interests onto my portal and as to whether they can copy definitely, in today’s world, whatever you do, anyone can copy. Yeah, but huge companies, as you know, it’s like a Titanic, you want to switch direction, you got to pivot a little bit tough. We’ve been into big corporations, we know, for big companies, big corporations, you want to pivot you want to switch direction is really, really very, very tough. You try to do something that is totally different. You know, next thing, you know, if you’re listed, yeah, all your shareholders will start telling you don’t do it. As we can see now, some big companies tried to do something special in web 3.0. And then the shareholders came in and now you know, yeah, that’s why 75% of the share price has gone over p of one year.
Michael Waitze 20:54
So you did mention and I wasn’t going to go there. But you did mention web 3.0. Yep. Yes. So is there a web three aspect of this? And what is it and how does it benefit people? Right? Like, is there value in web three for the real estate business? And particularly for real estate? Social Network?
Chee Yeng Tan 21:12
Yeah, yes, yes. So think of it this way. You know, 1.0 is a very traditional, what you need direction, kind of web portal, or just you have social media. Yeah, yeah. Which is web 2.0, then move to web 3.0. So unique thing about the real estate business now is that there seems to be a missing gap between one and two. So there isn’t real estate focus web 2.0, which is social media. So very much the most popular platforms in the world. They are all marketplaces, all marketplaces. So marketplaces sits in between two and what sorts of 1.5. And now the whole world is trying to move into 3.0. Yeah, there’s so many talks about fractionalization of real estate. It is good idea. Good. Definitely will work in the future. But you know, to jump from 1.5, straight to 3.0. I will say it’s very tough. Yeah, a lot of people Yeah, can can do it. The analogy I can give you as you know, in FinTech world, there is a cuts business, then there is digital payments. Right. So the only country that really skipped the cut phase, as you know, is China. Only China can do it. Why? Because they have the mandate at how everyone do it, you do it, you have no choice but to do it, reach out there. But the rest of the world? No, there’s no way we are, you know, even though now China is is way ahead of everyone, the rest of the world are still trying to catch up, you know, for for in the FinTech world. So, likewise, for real estate, I would think is the same. Yeah, so what Plex is trying to do is I am my base, my foundation is 2.0, which is a social network and incorporating 3.0 Energy insights. So as we are speaking, now, we are in production tax testing of our smart contracts. So as you know, smart contracts on blockchain, what are you going to use the smart contracts for for rental contracts? Yeah, as of now. So we are testing out in Singapore for the HDB contracts, rental contracts. Then from that you can you just
Michael Waitze 23:07
explain to people that don’t know what HDB is? Okay. It’s
Chee Yeng Tan 23:11
HTV is the US housing development board. In? In other countries, it’s government sponsored housing.
Michael Waitze 23:18
Yeah. But in Singapore, it’s different, right? Because government sponsored housing in most other countries, you just feel like, Oh, I could die in there. But housing development board housing in Singapore feels like Okay, everybody, not everybody, but like a large percentage of people live in HDB buildings. And they’re nice. Like, it’s not like a terrible no one’s it’s not a horrible place to live. It’s a nice place to live.
Chee Yeng Tan 23:37
It is it is in fact, I will say I’ve been to many countries, Singapore’s HDB is other than the external facilities. That was a interiorly apos HDB is really, really good. Yeah,
Michael Waitze 23:47
I just want to make this point to people so that they don’t get the sense that it’s like, you know, some project in a dodgy part of town, which is what it would be in every other country.
Chee Yeng Tan 23:55
Yes, Singapore is and each HDB is very, I would say it’s very well designed. There’ll be facilities for your kids to school and facility there’ll be bus stops around there’ll be definitely market within walking distance and even sports facilities.
Michael Waitze 24:14
Let’s go back to the smart contracts right? So smart contracts for HDB rentals means that if I see a building that I like and I want to rent it the whole transaction happens automatically it happens on chain on your platform.
Chee Yeng Tan 24:27
Yes on my platform currently now we are not using our we don’t have our own blockchain yet. Yeah, future we do but currently we are using polygon one of polygon polygon Yes correct. Yeah, but in the future Yes.
Michael Waitze 24:40
How do you get paid like how do you make money off of this
Chee Yeng Tan 24:42
I can’t really share but that definitely is similar LinkedIn I’ll be definitely going down the route of advertisement Yeah, definitely going down
Michael Waitze 24:52
premium memberships and stuff like that. So like he definitely be memberships and
Chee Yeng Tan 24:55
very spot on various products.
Michael Waitze 24:57
But would you have the other thing that I want to know? Right? So many real estate portals have kind of left this opportunity for somebody else to take. And that is you have all these listings and all this information. And in some cases, you have feedback, right? So like, yeah, this property is really great, or that property is terrible. But they’re not involved in the transaction. So they’re not taking a commission? Do you want to be involved in the transaction? Because there’s so much stuff to build, from a paperwork and structural side for any real estate business where I can find a place that I like to the listing, right, I can actually find an agent as well, I can actually pay the agent if you have a payment platform on your thing. So that like, you don’t I mean, so they like it never has to leave the platform. I’ve already talked about premium memberships, he talked about smart contracts for the HDB buildings. Yep. But how about for sales and stuff like that, where I like a building, I agree with the agents, and I’m gonna buy it, and you’re, and I’m gonna buy it, I click on a few things, all the legal framework, all the legal documents are done, they get sent to the right, like agencies and stuff like that it’s properly signed using DocuSign, or some other mechanism. And then the money goes into escrow. And then it gets transferred to somebody else, again, via smart contract. And the whole thing is just like seamless. Is that what you’re building as well,
Chee Yeng Tan 26:07
that’s ultimate vision by being in a financial industry? Yes, the challenge is always regulation, especially the regulation as at least from mine, when it comes to properties transaction can be quite bad. I will say that I will take one step at a time. I did speak to one of our regulator with regard to smart contracts for rental. So the advice was, yes, it’s actually okay. Proceed with that. So that’s why I start off with that first. I will foresee in the future. Yes. What you’re saying will happen. How long? I don’t know. But I hope to be the one doing that.
Michael Waitze 26:39
Got it. And have you been funded as well? Or just bootstrapping this yourself?
Chee Yeng Tan 26:43
No, no, I have been funded. I forgot to investors not to fund my project the rest after that? Definitely not. As with any startup, it will not be enough. We still bootstrap also.
Michael Waitze 26:55
So what how else are you taking advantage of web three?
Chee Yeng Tan 26:58
Another key component is immersive technology. I wouldn’t say it’s really a web feed thing. But since Metaverse came in no immersive technology has become another talking point. Well, I understand it’s there. For the longest time, I will say that it’s not so common. So in real estate business are the only get to get a 3d walkthrough of the house if you are listing it. And after you list it, that 3d, you know, getting off your house is going to get over listing. So what I’m trying to do is I’m also trying to bring in this kind of scanning technology in to on to our platform. I’m currently partnering with one of the local businesses doing 3d scanning. So hopefully, you know, we can work out something, do you have a very nice option, which is a DIY option. No, as of now, 3d camera is quite relatively cheap, accessible now. Okay. 3d camera. Yeah, it’s a couple of hundreds. I think even if you go to you buy an older version, I think you can get it less than $206. For secondhand go, okay, that’s
not bad, actually. Yeah. So
So with that, you know, I’m a very sentimental person. So I sometimes, you know, start to look back and think about my past houses that I lived in. Right now, I was thinking how good if I could have a VR tool that I can ask them when I want to, I want to visit it virtually, I can go in and visit it. But sadly, knowledge technology wasn’t didn’t exist back then. And even now exists. Nobody knows how to do it.
Michael Waitze 28:25
I find the experience of like 3d renderings of apartments and houses just such a bad experience. Because I never know what I mean. Like I want to I literally want them and it’s not just on the real estate portals. If you look at like even Google Streetview, he just shut it down. Because it’s like impossible to use, and you don’t know where you are. And you don’t I mean, like in the real world, I stand somewhere, I can just look around, and I know exactly where I am. And I can back up a few steps or walk forward a few steps, but all this like, clicking to go into the bath like am I in the bathroom? Now? Did I go to where I thought I was? I don’t know. I just find that whole experience pretty bad. No. Is it just me?
Chee Yeng Tan 29:01
No, no, no. That also because of the person who scan it is a little bit lazy. So yeah, I would say the analogy I can give her is like, you know, pixelation or picture, you need to know you can imagine the whole house is like a huge picture. You take bit by bit. Yeah. So depends on how, how many points you go around. So if the person is lazy, yeah, we’ll just need to do instead of 20 points only go to 10. So you get half the kind of resolution.
Michael Waitze 29:31
I think most people just do three. But yeah, just to be honest.
Chee Yeng Tan 29:35
Because, yeah, that’s also the thing, but but if I’m able to bring it to a consumer and with their own 3d camera they have the whole time, you know, to go around and do it in different place in the house. I think that 3d view will be very, very nice. Yeah.
Michael Waitze 29:51
Yeah, I think so. I think so. What else do I need to know about this? Like, what are the other things that are coming that that we haven’t already talked about?
Chee Yeng Tan 29:59
Actually We have touched on almost everything, the immersive technology part, is there something I’m working on hopefully by the end of this year, you’ll be in a portal. We actually build already. So we are just in the testing phase.
Michael Waitze 30:11
How long have you been building this in total?
Chee Yeng Tan 30:13
In total? I think we started business we incorporated last year I think April so not alone and alone. Yeah. A year plus of building Yeah. So but we only officially launch in May this year. Okay, relatively new. So if for those people who are really interested in technology, I think no less join this movement. You know, we are you know, we know that the real estate industry is very, very bad words, just come on to the portal first. Whether you want to create a property virtual profile for you for your property now, doesn’t matter just come on it first. Yeah, and see how things develop and unfold I want a good use of the virtual profile is that you know, while we are trying to sell the process of trying to sell a house can be a little bit daunting. Why do I say so is once you decide, you only have this little amount of time to take pictures, snap pictures, you need to shift we are still staying in the house. The snapping of the picture is alien not so easy. So what happens is actually moving of different things we move all the mess from one room to the other each time we take a nice picture yeah. Yeah, shouldn’t take supposed to take me months but you know, but because of the process where you need to engage an agent or you you you chose and you chose to engage, engage an agent, you will need to do everything has to be from few months, you string it out to maybe one or two days, just to take nice pictures. So actually, we have this property virtual profile. So when you feel that your house is in good condition, just that picture posted, then so when you feel that you decide to sell, you just convert your property virtual profile into a listing, we have an option. Yeah. So you can just select the pictures that you want to appear on the listing from your property but your profile, you will just seamlessly combine the listing for you.
Michael Waitze 32:05
I get a sense you really enjoyed doing this. Like I can voice Yeah, most people just like talking about their business like it’s drudgery like yeah, I gotta build oh god I haven’t done that yet. It’s so tiring but I feel like you’re gonna hang up the phone and like take more pictures and do more stuff and
Chee Yeng Tan 32:20
yeah, cuz like I’m someone who’s very sentimental and and the house is like not the place where you spend the most time in Yeah, the things that we post the thing that we keep you know, in our memories is everything that’s outside but whether within your own house it don’t really bother and only when your house is no longer yours then sort of thing back that you know how I wish that I have pictures of the house How I wish that I kept moments of the house that I spent in moments of spending the house I find it’s very weird when it comes to human behaviour. So I hope clicks change this Yeah,
Michael Waitze 32:57
I’m gonna let you go, Chee Yeng Tan , the founder of Clicks™ that was a really interesting, super interesting I gotta come back when you do Clicks™ stock cards as well. Yes, sir.
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