Legacy industries are not afraid of change - they are afraid of mistakes. If we’re looking at big, traditional industries - real estate, logistics, e-commerce, banking, they are all trillion dollar categories. They tend to adopt technology slower and to be more cautious when it comes to innovation. The reason is obvious and understandable: any mistake in any of these industries costs a lot of money, jobs and impacts many other lives. To avoid extreme scenarios, people tend to stick to what they already know, with the “old” way of working.

As a proptech founder, I see this in real estate, an industry that doesn’t just invest and manage billions - I see real estate as a way of creating generational wealth, of bringing communities together, deeply influencing individuals’ lives. 

What happened in real estate and any other major traditional market, is that since the pandemic, the world as we knew it doesn’t exist anymore. Things have changed - energy systems, education, everything we learned around the future of work, future of living. With the rise of AI and all the new possibilities that advance tech at a faster pace than ever before, the truth is that many people are in kind of a fog. They don’t know what to choose anymore.

So here’s another challenge - a choice paradox. If operating in a high-stakes industry, and you do want to optimise and improve processes, where should you start? In proptech, there seems to be a tech solution for everything - and now, with vibe-coding, it’s even easier than ever to put something out there. 

Everybody uses AI, sometimes for the sake of AI alone. Some are cheaper, some more expensive and in the end, when the user starts to feel tech fatigue, they revert to the previous ways of doing things. Many new developments are hype-driven.

We need to put everything together properly. Real estate is fundamentally a relationship business, it works with people - people with real worries, emotions, with a need to see and talk to and be understood by other people.

In tech - and proptech in my case, I think there tends to be a disconnect between what some founders think should happen and what happens in reality. How users will adopt a new solution and behave. What they need. 

I think a founder’s responsibility is to mitigate fear, by creating safety around their solution, ensuring it works properly.

Most of us don’t like change and fear of mistakes is a big part of that. Especially now, in a global context where everything is changing, nobody really knows what to do. We see things that haven’t happened before, where we're going through a transition and if we don’t adapt, it won’t work. 

Those who don’t accept and embrace innovation risk to be put out of business by more agile players.

So what do you do, as a founder?

First of all, it’s important to understand the nature of the business - selling proptech is also a relationship business. Customers need to trust you, so customer success stands out as one of the core functions of any company, AI or no AI. When customers have a problem, they need to be able to reach out, to talk, to have the support they need to continue to trust you. 

One of the challenges with scaling tech solutions is maintaining the same level of interaction and feedback while growing. We’ve seen this as we went from 10 to 30 to 50 and now over 80 clients and scaling in another continent. 

It’s also very important not to be biased. Not to think people in real estate, for example, want to avoid tech at all costs. They don’t - we have clients who push us to try new things, develop new features. Sometimes we’re the ones slowing them down. 

You need proof of concept, clear expectations, a clear onboarding process, regular testing and gradual evolution. You need to give people a system, more than just a solution. Something they can integrate into their work, champion themselves because they see results, something they trust.

Founders can focus just on sales. Our goal, in proptech and other legacy industries, is to modernise the market. It’s not that what the market does is wrong, but that there are processes now that work better, faster, easier. 

Change needs to be progressive, not panic-driven. It also has to be supported by strong collaboration between founders - no one company will do everything. Some are great at transactions, others at warranties, others at financing, and together we build an ecosystem.

Legacy industries are a puzzle and they don’t get the hype they deserve. They face challenges that can’t be addressed in siloed. It’s a world of trust and relationships, first and foremost, tech and AI are just enablers. The winners will learn to work with it, not against it and will not be replaced by it. 

This opinion piece by VAUNT's CEO & Co-founder, Irina Constantin, was originally published on Hackernoon.

Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash