Ignore the Dot-Coms, Disruption is Hard Work

Guy Kawasaki has an interesting posting by the CEO of Redfin, a company that is disrupting the real estate business by cutting out traditional real estate agents in a handful of U.S. cities.

If ever there is a sector ripe for disruption by the internet, it is real estate sales:

• High fees - 6% in U.S. markets
• Proprietary access to MLS database of non-proprietary information
• Little price competition
• Little differentiation of suppliers or services

In contrast to one or two dot-com entrepreneurs -- the guys who make millions working from home in their spare time -- Glenn Kelman, who joined Redfin in 2005, says hard work is the true driving force behind successful entrepreneurs:

"Lately I've been thinking how hard, not how easy, it is to build a new company. Hard has gone out of fashion. Like college students bragging about how they barely studied, start-ups today take care to project a sense of ease. Wherever I’ve worked, we’ve secretly felt just the opposite. We’re assailed by doubts, mortified by our own shortcomings, surrounded by freaks, testy over silly details."

Kelman lists the top 10 ways a startup can feel deeply flawed without really being flawed at all. A few from the list:

• True believers go nuts at small provocations
• Startups are freak-catchers
• Good code takes time
• Everybody has to rebuild
• Fearless leaders are often terrified
• Competition starts at $100M in revenue

**Other Information**
60 Minutes segment on Redfin looks at the high efficiency of Redfin sales agents and some of the hardball tactics established suppliers used to squash new entrants like eRealty and Redfin.

Podcast with Glenn Kelman on the "feaky addictive" nature of real estate web sites.