Mike Chambers launched Ridley in mid-May. Since, the business has listed $270 million worth of homes through its site. (Courtesy Ridley)
Mike Chambers wants to lift the veil on selling your house.
“It really isn’t as complicated as the industry would lead you to believe,” the entrepreneur said. “All these roadblocks and confusion are by design to funnel people back into a system that’s charging them tens of thousands of dollars.”
In May, Chamber launched a startup called Ridley, which aims to make selling your home on your own easier through the help of an AI-assisted checklist. Instead of strategizing with Joe Realtor, and giving them 3% of the sale price, prospective sellers can hop on Ridley and go through stages like pricing, home preparation, listing and showings with an AI chatbot.
“It’s a task-oriented, actionable list that has a lot of cool stuff happening behind the scenes,” Chambers said. “For you, it’s as simple as hitting a button.”
Chambers said $270 million worth of properties have been listed through Ridley since it launched, and $30 million in sales have closed. The majority were in the Centennial State, but Ridley also went live for a nationwide beta in July, giving anybody access to most of the business’ tools.
Mike Chambers (Courtesy Ridley)
Ridley’s AI is trained on local data, which helps it recommend pricing. Users pay $999 for that and assistance booking vendors, like photographers. Legal support is also available for an extra $200 within Ridley or a la carte for an outside lawyer. For another $2,000, they can get access to a multiple listing service, a private marketplace of buyers and sellers typically only available through brokers.
Depending on how the beta goes, Chambers will decide which states to fully launch into next. A key factor will be access to MLS, which syndicates to most major listing sites like Redfin or Homes.com.
Access to MLS varies by state. In Colorado, Chambers said, it costs up to $10,000 to get access without going through a broker. In other states, sellers can pay closer to $100, he said.
The difference comes from Colorado being a “minimum service state,” which means brokers have to perform a base level of things, like negotiation, pricing or representation, to put a property on the MLS.
Ridley itself is a registered brokerage, Chambers said, which means it can give its customers direct access to the MLS rather than go through a middleman.
Chambers said the average Ridley customer has saved $20,000 versus what they would’ve been paying in brokerage fees.
Frustration with that discrepancy led Chambers to founding the business in the first place. He set out to sell his Boulder home several months ago, but the biggest roadblock was the price tag to get on the MLS.
“Because there’s more work required by state of law in Colorado, brokers have used that to charge really high amounts. The lowest fee was $10,000,” he said.
Chambers’ grievances led him to Instagram, where he’s since garnered tens of thousands of views documenting his homeselling process.
“I would’ve had to pay a huge fee and get all these services I didn’t want. And that’s what really pissed me off and led me to make that first video at 9 o’clock at night,” he said. “I had no intention of starting a company. But (Ridley) is the product that I wish existed when I started this process.”
Chambers, a serial entrepreneur who founded both educational nonprofits and tech and media startups, was thinking of moving to Costa Rica full-time. His startup is named after the Ridley sea turtle, an animal Chambers has been enthralled with since visiting a beach in the Central American country.
But when Ridley — the business — took off, Chambers decided to stay in Colorado to keep building the company. He didn’t sell his house. He said he raised an undisclosed round of funding led by Boulder-based Moxxie Ventures.
“Boulder is an amazing place to build companies,” he added. “There’s limited competition from tech startups, you have a lot of funding opportunities and you don’t have to compete in the same way you would in New York or San Francisco.”
Though Ridley’s initial rollout is focused on empowering homesellers to market and close deals on their own, Chambers doesn’t want to get rid of agents completely. He sees the platform as a way to optimize the entire industry.
This fall, he’ll start rolling out Ridley for agents. He said it will likely be a subscription model and will be tailored for brokers to come in during “high stakes moments” in the home buying and selling process.
“Our goal is not to get rid of real estate agents,” he said. “Our goal is to make a more efficient model for the entire process and allow technology to be at the center of the transaction and agents to be in supporting roles.”
Mike Chambers launched Ridley in mid-May. Since, the business has listed $270 million worth of homes through its site. (Courtesy Ridley)
Mike Chambers wants to lift the veil on selling your house.
“It really isn’t as complicated as the industry would lead you to believe,” the entrepreneur said. “All these roadblocks and confusion are by design to funnel people back into a system that’s charging them tens of thousands of dollars.”
In May, Chamber launched a startup called Ridley, which aims to make selling your home on your own easier through the help of an AI-assisted checklist. Instead of strategizing with Joe Realtor, and giving them 3% of the sale price, prospective sellers can hop on Ridley and go through stages like pricing, home preparation, listing and showings with an AI chatbot.
“It’s a task-oriented, actionable list that has a lot of cool stuff happening behind the scenes,” Chambers said. “For you, it’s as simple as hitting a button.”
Chambers said $270 million worth of properties have been listed through Ridley since it launched, and $30 million in sales have closed. The majority were in the Centennial State, but Ridley also went live for a nationwide beta in July, giving anybody access to most of the business’ tools.
Mike Chambers (Courtesy Ridley)
Ridley’s AI is trained on local data, which helps it recommend pricing. Users pay $999 for that and assistance booking vendors, like photographers. Legal support is also available for an extra $200 within Ridley or a la carte for an outside lawyer. For another $2,000, they can get access to a multiple listing service, a private marketplace of buyers and sellers typically only available through brokers.
Depending on how the beta goes, Chambers will decide which states to fully launch into next. A key factor will be access to MLS, which syndicates to most major listing sites like Redfin or Homes.com.
Access to MLS varies by state. In Colorado, Chambers said, it costs up to $10,000 to get access without going through a broker. In other states, sellers can pay closer to $100, he said.
The difference comes from Colorado being a “minimum service state,” which means brokers have to perform a base level of things, like negotiation, pricing or representation, to put a property on the MLS.
Ridley itself is a registered brokerage, Chambers said, which means it can give its customers direct access to the MLS rather than go through a middleman.
Chambers said the average Ridley customer has saved $20,000 versus what they would’ve been paying in brokerage fees.
Frustration with that discrepancy led Chambers to founding the business in the first place. He set out to sell his Boulder home several months ago, but the biggest roadblock was the price tag to get on the MLS.
“Because there’s more work required by state of law in Colorado, brokers have used that to charge really high amounts. The lowest fee was $10,000,” he said.
Chambers’ grievances led him to Instagram, where he’s since garnered tens of thousands of views documenting his homeselling process.
“I would’ve had to pay a huge fee and get all these services I didn’t want. And that’s what really pissed me off and led me to make that first video at 9 o’clock at night,” he said. “I had no intention of starting a company. But (Ridley) is the product that I wish existed when I started this process.”
Chambers, a serial entrepreneur who founded both educational nonprofits and tech and media startups, was thinking of moving to Costa Rica full-time. His startup is named after the Ridley sea turtle, an animal Chambers has been enthralled with since visiting a beach in the Central American country.
But when Ridley — the business — took off, Chambers decided to stay in Colorado to keep building the company. He didn’t sell his house. He said he raised an undisclosed round of funding led by Boulder-based Moxxie Ventures.
“Boulder is an amazing place to build companies,” he added. “There’s limited competition from tech startups, you have a lot of funding opportunities and you don’t have to compete in the same way you would in New York or San Francisco.”
Though Ridley’s initial rollout is focused on empowering homesellers to market and close deals on their own, Chambers doesn’t want to get rid of agents completely. He sees the platform as a way to optimize the entire industry.
This fall, he’ll start rolling out Ridley for agents. He said it will likely be a subscription model and will be tailored for brokers to come in during “high stakes moments” in the home buying and selling process.
“Our goal is not to get rid of real estate agents,” he said. “Our goal is to make a more efficient model for the entire process and allow technology to be at the center of the transaction and agents to be in supporting roles.”
