SXSW Pitch Finalist: Lofty AI
The Forrest Four-Cast: February 24, 2020
Lofty AI serves both full-time and part-time real estate investors by helping them make more data-driven decisions yielding higher returns.
One of 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2020, Lofty AI shows potential buyers in 30 markets properties primed for rapid appreciation. As Jerry Chu, CEO and one of the Lofty AI Founders, explains, “our results speak for themselves. If you had bought one of our A.I.’s suggested properties a year ago, you would have made over 24x higher returns on appreciation alone compared to if you bought a property not suggested by our A.I.”
See the Lofty AI pitch in the category of Innovative World Technology, 5 pm to 6 pm Saturday, March 14, before a live audience and a panel of expert judges.
Winners in each of the 10 categories will be announced at the Pitch Awards Ceremony, at 6:30 pm Sunday, March 15. SXSW attendees are also invited to Meet the Finalists from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm Monday, March 16. All SXSW Pitch events take place at the Hilton Austin Downtown.
Chu shared the words he lives by, why he’s excited about self-driving cars, and why he thinks being polite is overrated.
What is your top goal for Lofty AI for 2020?
Become profitable enough to grow without venture funding.
What has the startup experience taught you about life?
That life is a marathon and not a 100-meter dash. Sometimes we get so caught up in the moment, both good and bad, that we forget that the experience is a simple blip in our life. I’ve learned not to give in to stress, anxiety, and overthinking during these small blips — they simply don’t deserve that much attention or energy.
If you weren’t working for Lofty AI, what would you be doing?
I would probably been working at another startup I founded. I’m one of those weird people who get so bothered and angry at problems without good current solutions. It’s so bad that it sometimes affects my sleep and ruins my mood for the entire day. I’m also very independent, so instead of waiting for someone else to do something about it, I’ll usually take a crack at it myself.
Tell us your favorite thing about being based in San Francisco.
We’re actually a distributed team, so we’re in both SF and LA. But my personal favorite part about San Francisco is the energy of the startup founders and the investor network. As a founder, the energy there pushes you to think smarter and work harder, because you know that if you’re slacking off, other founders won’t be, and your company would be left behind. The investors are typically more experienced with venture investing, which is great for founders. They won’t demand a five-year pro-forma revenue projection for a 10k pre-seed check.
With the exception of Lofty AI, what tech trend is your team most excited about?
This would have to be self-driving cars. We have a distributed team for a reason, which is that if you cut your travel time to work completely, you actually have a lot more time to work efficiently. We dread the days where we have offsite meetings, because the traffic makes our entire day unproductive. We’re hoping that, in the near future, you can simply continue to work with wifi coverage in a self-driving pod that will just take you to your final destination automatically.
What was the most overhyped tech trend of 2019?
Believe it or not, I think artificial intelligence was the most overhyped tech. This is because a lot of companies used A.I. as a marketing term, when in reality they don’t use any deep learning techniques. Additionally, not everything has to have A.I. More simple traditional algorithms often perform the same if not better for certain tasks — a product does not automatically become better with the term “A.I.-enabled” slapped in front of it.
Which living person do you most admire and why?
Currently I admire Elon Musk the most for two main reasons. The first is his tenacity in the face of naysayers. His quote about how starting a company is like eating glass really resonates with me. There were some truly dark days over the last two years and I’ve not even encountered a quarter of his difficulties. The fact that he didn’t quit, even when loved ones were discouraging him from starting his own rocket company by sending him videos of exploding rockets is really admirable.
The second reason is his ability to leverage capitalism for social good and tackle some really big problems that even some governments are afraid of. If SpaceX was founded as a non-profit relying on government funding, it probably wouldn’t have done too well. I think it’s important for people to see that making money and doing social good are not mutually exclusive anymore.
What do you think is the most overrated virtue?
Being polite. I don’t think we should purposefully insult others, but I also don’t think people should waste so much time with nice formalities. For startups, time is our most precious commodity. People should be direct and say what they mean or want. It’s very frustrating to be led through a long conversation with no substance to be told no. We don’t need to be let down easily with random banter to distract us initially. Just come out and say no.
Which talent would you most like to have?
I would love to be better at sales like my co-founder Max [Max Ball, COO]. The more I run a business, the more I realize how crucial being good at selling is.
What’s your actual super power?
If I’m interested in a subject, I have the ability to be hyper-focused on a single task for an abnormally long period of time. I might forget to eat or sleep in some cases. A lot of people wish they could concentrate more, but that’s the one thing I don’t need more of.
What motto or quote do you live by?
I’m a big fan of Andrew Carnegie and his dictum:
“To spend the first third of one’s life getting all the education one can. To spend the next third making all the money one can. To spend the last third giving it all away to worthwhile causes.”
I think this quote lays out a very simple blueprint people can base their lives on in order to live a fulfilling life.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten — or given?
The best advice I’ve ever received was from my mentor and professor Ken Abbott who was a Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer at Barclays. He taught me to always “trust but verify.” People can write anything on their LinkedIn profiles or their resumes; they can say whatever they want over the phone; they can promise whatever they want with their technology. In all of these cases, if one simply performs even an ounce of due diligence, over 90% of bad actors can be filtered out. The few times where I’ve not followed this advice at Lofty has led to some big headaches.
Tell us about something you love.
I love the “How I Built This” podcast from NPR. People are often distracted by all the funding news on TechCrunch and think that unicorns are built in a year. But, when you listen to some of these successful founders, you start to see how similar they are to the rest of us in their early struggles, and you start to feel less lonely on this journey. It’s also enlightening to see that while some companies do see massive success in a year or two, it often takes them many years to get there, but we never hear about that part in the flashy articles. It’s also amazing to learn from so many great entrepreneurs out there that are not in the technology space.
What do you do when you are low on energy?
I drink a lot of water. We sometimes don’t realize that the headache we get throughout the day is literally because we’re dehydrated, especially if we drink coffee.
If you were offered the opportunity to colonize Mars (but with no guarantee that you would ever return to Earth), would you go?
Depends on the situation on Earth. This is the planet where we evolved to live on. If Earth is doing well then I don’t see a reason for me to go to Mars, but I do think it’s important that we colonize Mars, so that humanity won’t be wiped out from galactic events outside of our control. But, if an asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, then I’d gladly move to Mars as one of the first groups even if conditions there are terrible. It’s my biological impulse to survive I guess.
Look for more interviews with other finalists in this space between now and the start of SXSW Pitch on Saturday, March 14. Visit this page to see all previous interviews in this series as well as a list of all finalists.
If you are an entrepreneur, check out the SXSW 2020 Startups Track, which runs March 13–17. This track brings together founders and funders and showcases exciting new companies, products, services, and business models across different verticals and industries.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
