Darren is an entrepreneur, product manager and real estate pioneer. Long before Zillow and Trulia, Darren co-founded SeattleRentals.com in early 2002, one of the first real estate websites in the country. He has worked on some of the most influential tech products of our time that have achieved massive scale and impact at companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, AOL and more.

We are extremely excited for Darren to join RntX as an adviser to utilize his unique skill set and experience.

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Darren, you co-founded one of the first real estate companies on the internet, SeattleRentals.com, in early 2002. Tell us a bit about what your goal was with that company and how the product worked.

Today we take for granted the ability to advertise rental properties online but at the time, there weren’t many options for independent landlords to advertise their properties. The most common resource for advertising rental properties back then was the classifieds section in the Sunday edition of the local newspaper.

It was a bad solution for landlords who had to pay over $150 for a 3-line, text only classified ad that ran for a single day. It was also a bad solution for prospective tenants who had no ability to tell the difference between a nice property in a great location and a run-down property in a bad location.

The search process for a new apartment was time consuming for renters who would end up visiting scores of properties before finding one that worked for them. It was also inefficient for independent landlords who would have to make appointments to meet prospective tenants at their property only to find out in the first 2 minutes that the property was not a good match for the renter.

So the whole system was terribly inefficient and inconvenient.

Our goal was to use the web to provide a more effective tool for landlords and renters to find each other. We wanted a tool where landlords could showcase the unique value of their best properties and prospective tenants could easily view pictures of the building and the unit and could also see the location of a property on a map, so they could quickly determine whether it was in a location that worked for them.

We knew that we could provide a much better value for renters and for landlords because we weren’t paying for a printing press and we were leveraging a medium (the web) that enabled landlords to feature rich content for each property and would enable renters to quickly search and filter properties based on their needs for a new apartment.

What was your grand vision for the company?

From the start, we were confident that we had a better solution for landlords and prospective tenants than anything else out there, but we weren’t sure yet how to effectively operate the business.

We had the classic “chicken and egg” problem where we needed a critical mass of great properties on our site to attract lots of prospective tenants and we needed lots of renters searching the site to attract landlords with the best properties.

Our goal was to start the business in the Seattle market and figure out the recipe for successfully operating the business. Once we knew how to effectively market and sell and grow the business profitably, our plan was to launch the service in other markets, each with their own local brand.

We had a hypothesis that using a local brand was a better approach than going with a national brand because we wanted our service to be authentic to each market and trustworthy as the place to find the best rental properties for each city.

At the time there were nationally-branded rental sites like Apartments.com and Rent.com but those services catered exclusively to large REIT-owned properties and the experience was impersonal and very “cookie cutter.” Visiting those sites was akin to looking at a generic brochure for a large apartment complex and there were no listings for the cool, vintage properties that are typically owned and managed by local, independent landlords.

What sort of problems between tenants and landlords did you recognize? Do any of these problems still exist?

After operating SeattleRentals.com for a couple of years it became clear that there were many more inefficiencies in the process of securing a new rental property than we were addressing. For example, the application process tends to be unique to each landlord and each landlord has their own unique way of figuring out which applicants are best qualified. The process of collecting rent was outdated as well with very few options for renters to pay their rent outside of a physical check. And of course, finding compatible, trustworthy roommates has also been a challenge which is why I’m so excited about the approach RentHoop / RntX is taking.

Over the years, different solutions have cropped up to try to address various inefficiencies in the rental market, but the market remains very fragmented and the inefficiencies continue to be a problem for many renters and landlords.

How do you see using the blockchain as a solution to the problems that exist for either renters or landlords?

The attractive thing about the blockchain is that it enables a way of providing trust between people who don’t know each other but wish to complete a transaction. When you apply a blockchain solution to any of the problems above, you can cut out a lot of the uncertainty involved in any of those interactions. When you cut out the uncertainty, you also cut out the overhead required to deal with that uncertainty.

Take the process of accepting rental applications. Rather than require applicants to fill out a new paper form and pay a $50 fee to cover a manual background check each time they apply for a lease, a blockchain solution could be the foundation of a reusable rental profile containing all the relevant application information like job status, rental history, and on-time payment information with everything verified by previous landlords, employers, etc. thus significantly reducing the overhead involved in accepting and evaluating a rental application.

The other thing that excites me about the potential of blockchain is that it puts the user in control of their profile and their personal data. Today, we abdicate that control to the dominant social networks, search companies, and credit reporting agencies who buy and sell our information for advertising purposes.

I believe that the blockchain will revolutionize the way we interact online generally and that eventually we’ll see an entirely new model for business and social interactions online that provides each person with the agency to control when and how their personal information is used.

I think the rental market is a great place to start disrupting the inefficient and inconvenient status quo. 😊

What attracted you to being an adviser to our team and mission?

As I mentioned earlier, I think one of the big inefficiencies that exist in the rental market today is the difficulty in finding a compatible (and trustworthy) roommate.

We’ve seen rents skyrocket in the Seattle market and the same trend is happening in cities across the developed world. It’s more important than ever to be able to find affordable ways to live in proximity to good jobs and an attractive lifestyle and making it easier to find a good roommate makes that task easier.

Beyond just the market opportunity, though, the most important thing I look for in a company that I choose to work is the quality of the founding team. I look for a team of people who fuel off each other’s positive energy and make each other better with their diverse talents and perspectives. I like to surround myself with people eager to learn from others and people who have something to teach me as well.

I met Paul in early 2017 and he immediately impressed me with his tenaciousness, his desire to learn, and his fearlessness to experiment and innovate. RentHoop enjoyed its early success in large part because of his commitment to the business and his vision for what it could become.

More recently, I’ve gotten to know Neil and Mo on the team and they have made equally positive impressions on me. I’m eager to help this team any way I can and am confident that I’ll learn a lot from them through our interactions as well.

And finally, you’ve worked on some of the most innovative products for the likes of Microsoft (current), Amazon, Expedia, AOL and Motorola. What is the key to driving innovation?

Wow. That’s a tough question and one on which I think everyone may have their own unique perspective. The recipe for successfully driving innovation is probably different within each company and I’d be taking more credit than I should if I didn’t admit that timing and luck play a significant role no matter the situation.

If I had to identify a common thread across the companies I’ve worked for and across the companies I’ve helped start, it’s the importance of maintaining a sense of curiosity and cultivating what Zen Buddhists refer to as “a beginner’s mind.”

It’s certainly important to learn from one’s experience but it’s also important not to get too comfortable in one’s own worldview of what you think customers want or what you think they will or won’t do.

After a little while working in a particular space, it easy to begin believing that you understand what works and what doesn’t in that market and, as an expert, it’s easy to believe that you have less and less to learn. Given the pace of change with technology and society, though, I’ve found that usually the opposite is true. Regardless of what I am studying or how long I’ve been studying it, I’m constantly surprised by how much more there is to learn.

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RntX is our budding endeavor to build a transparent and decentralized rental ecosystem. Sign up to for exclusive updates on RntX.io and join our Telegram channel.

RentHoop is a mobile app for finding roommates and rooms on iOS and Android phones. We were recently named one of the Most Promising Housing Apps to Watch in 2018 by Forbes and graduated from the Startup Boost(November, 2017) program in Los Angeles.