Stop Trying to Be the Expert w/ Gabe Einhorn

Gabe Einhorn

And a lot of my posts were just pretty bad too, very cringy. But eventually I started analyzing it and actually looking at what was working and what's not. You can't just post and not actually look at the numbers and see what's working and what's not working, because then you'll never improve. That's the only way to improve is actually be honest and analyze yourself. And I saw, you know, I was trying too hard to be an expert in real estate when in reality I wasn't, right? I was, you know, only in it for two, three years.

I was 23 at the time. And I was like, you know, I could focus this on a different way. Maybe as like a younger person who's trying to learn, who's trying to break into the game, being more myself, talking about sports and you know, other things that I like to do, my faith. And then it started blowing up and I started really being myself. And people were able to connect with that and be like, wow, this kid's not trying to fake it. He's not trying to be somebody he's not. He's just being himself. And people were attracted to that. And, you know.

A year and a half later, we started now posting on Instagram and TikTok, and now I'm just everywhere. And the goal now is obviously I started my company. And when you start a company, you realize you gotta do whatever it takes to make sure that every person knows what your company is. And a good way to do that is social media because it's free. When you're bootstrapping a startup, you don't have a lot of money, and you gotta figure out creative ways to do that. And social media is a free marketing tool. So if I could figure out how to make that work and ensure that

millions of people know who I am and what I do, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make it grow and and make sure it works.

Jeff Albaum

Totally. How how do you think about because I think definitely when when you watch your videos, the thing that comes through a a hundred percent more than anything is is your authenticity, right? Like it feels like you're like, I don't know, like we're we're strangers, we don't know each other, but like by watching your videos, I'm like, like I feel like I know you a little bit more. How do you balance that authenticity part that you said was like super key to the growth with like you're analyzing the numbers? You're like, man, like this post that felt really authentic when I made it just didn't perform. Like, do you ever run into that issue of like how do you balance

being your authentic self and also like like you said, you want it to grow. So how how do you think about the two?

Gabe Einhorn

For sure, it's a great question. And sometimes I'm sure you've seen it. And anybody who posts on social media consistently has seen that they have an a a really good idea. They spend a lot of time on a post, and for some reason that one flops, and a post that you take five seconds and don't really care about ends up, you know, doubling, tripling the amount of numbers. And there's no like rhyme or reason to it. I think sometimes when we overthink it too much and we try to, you know, make it too perfect or be too authentic.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Gabe Einhorn

Then it ends up not being authentic and it doesn't work. So like I've seen some of my best posts have been ones that I came up with idea on the fly. I'm like, my God, like that's a sick idea. I'll type it up on the spot. I won't even like spell check or anything. It might even have like a couple of mistakes in it. But it ends up doing the best. So sometimes that's like the really, really, really authentic stuff that does the best. but it's it's hard and you gotta analyze not just one post, it's hundreds, thousands of posts, so you could see

really what works and what doesn't work. Not every authentic post is gonna is gonna work. Not every, you know, professional post is gonna work. It's gonna be a balance of it.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm. Totally. And I'm sure you're probably helping a bunch of people now, like with the content creation, like specifically for social media, I would imagine, yeah?

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah, I'm sorry, I just froze there for a sec. yeah, I'm I mean, I'm trying to balance everything. It's you know, you're balancing social media with building a company. My goal and my role within my company is more on the marketing and sales side of things. And I view this as, you know, a propeller of all that.

Jeff Albaum

I'm good.

Totally. Totally. Totally. Yeah, dude. So let's let's talk about the company. So you were you were a broker. You were like, okay, there's a big problem. What what was that problem? And then like how did you how did you start thinking about the solution?

Gabe Einhorn

For sure. So it happened actually, me and my brother, who's a rising senior now. At the time, he was a rising junior last summer at NYU in New York City. And he was going through the rental process. I was going through the rental process. And we just saw so many problems within the process. And we just sat down for a couple of days and we're like, let's let's figure out a solution. Let's build something for it. Because I was already bored of being a broker and I was looking for my next opportunity. My brother's entrepreneurial and he's in school, but

He f you know, felt the problem and he dealt with it and he's like, We gotta do something about it. And we sat down and we measured all the problems. We started building and throughout the months we started expanding and pivoting and getting more feedback and testing it. And now we've arrived to where we are now. We haven't officially launched it yet, but we are changing our name to really include the entire goal of the company. We're not just doing verification anymore. That's what we launched about three, four months ago. We've been working in New York, New Jersey, and Atlanta.

But now we're really launching our full marketplace, which is actually pre-verified renters that get matchmaked to landlords. So it's like a dating app for renting and landlords. We're flipping the whole script of the listing process. And the goal is to help renters find apartments faster, ones that they can actually afford and that they love, and for landlords to fill up those vacancies faster and more efficiently.

Jeff Albaum

Dude, it's so epic. It's so cool. I was like playing around with I did like a deep dive into Claude yesterday and I was just like, search all of the real estate forums and all like everything on Reddit you can find and just like find the biggest problems real estate investors have. And the number one thing it came back was was like tenant verification. And I was like, dude, I didn't prompt this at all, but like this is really sick for tomorrow. So I was like, Gabe's already on it. How I had a question, like how how do you

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah. Perfect. Let's go. Let's go.

Jeff Albaum

What's the monetization strategy? Like, how do you do you see yourself as like you take a percentage of both sides of the transaction? Or like, what's the how do you monetize this?

Gabe Einhorn

So our vision right now is $20 one time for the renter that lasts for about 25 days. The goal is that in New York City, for example, it's $20 per application. Our goal is that instead of you paying that 10, 20 times, you play pay it once, it's good for 25 days. And that includes your income, identity, verification, background, credit, and 25 days is how long it lasts until it's fresh. After 25 days, you got to renew it. So it's actually up to date. so that's like a minimal.

Jeff Albaum

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Gabe Einhorn

minimal fee, but obviously at scale it that you know means a lot more. And for the landlord, we have two different structures depending on the landlord or broker that we're working with. We're working we're working with a lot of leasing brokers because in New York City, mostly brokers actually handle all of the tenant's application process. And it's either a per listing fee. So like what they have for Zillow Apartments dot com, we charge them, you know, a a quarter of whatever the price is normally on those

We wanna be a much less expensive solution. So some people are doing that, other people are doing a success fee. So it's like a referral fee. So we would get a a fixed fee based on what we work out with that specific landlord or broker. Every time the tenant actually signs, we would get not a broker fee because we wouldn't be the broker in the transaction, but just some sort of referral fee, which is just a fixed amount of money per transaction.

Jeff Albaum

Got it, got it, got it. Okay. And who like between you and your brother, 'cause you g you guys are the two co founders, right? You and so wh is there s what is one of you like the technical side or did you like outsource the technical stuff? Like how did you do like the cause data is like you're dealing with, you know, some s pretty serious information.

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah. none of us are neither of us are technical actually. my brother's definitely stepped more into that role. and he spent so much time. He's he's a genius, he's really smart. He's in NYU starting the business school. So he was able to learn most of this coding stuff pretty quickly. Obviously now with AI it's easier than ever. and we built out an in in-house team here in New York and New Jersey that my brother's been just working with twenty four seven, people that are actually like really, really efficient with legit coding, not just like cloud code and stuff like that.

Jeff Albaum

Yeah. Yeah.

Gabe Einhorn

And my brother's basically just been orchestrating them and building everything out.

Jeff Albaum

Dude, that's awesome. Where where do you want to go with it? Like what what is your I don't know, I think like three, five, ten years? Like, where do you want to go with it?

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah, the goal is to basically take over the entire New York City market and then expand nationwide and be in every single rental transaction across the board.

Jeff Albaum

That's amazing, dude. And and then what, I guess I would ask.

Gabe Einhorn

let's see. I mean, there there's a bunch of different things to do. There's obviously markets that I've spoken to people in Canada and Israel and other places that face similar problems. So it's like you could expand international or you expand into other sectors. I've I've spoken with commercial brokers and sales brokers, and a lot of them still face similar situations with verifications, with fraud, with time wasting of people that aren't legit no matter what the transaction is.

So if we can then expand into those other markets, the whole goal of our process is essentially you have a pre verified person in the transaction, right? Right now it's renters, but it like in the future, it's just could be anyone in general that is looking to purchase something or be involved in a transaction. They would be pre verified. So we understand that they are who they say they are and they make the amount of money that they say they make. And we've done all their due diligence, all their checks, so we know that they're, you know, clean.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Gabe Einhorn

They're not a criminal, they're not a bad person, whatever that is. And then with RII, we actually learn what they're looking for. So if renting, for example, not only do we know that they want to live in Manhattan, but we know that they work on 33rd Street and they have a family. So they like to go to the park and they eat kosher. So RII learns all of that stuff to help them actually find the best location that they can afford, but that they also want to live in and they're surrounded in the best environment for themselves.

So that obviously could expand into someone who wants to buy a house or buy a car or anything. Like there's unlimited things. Like we don't have one set thing of where this takes us next, but we understand there's a lot of potentials.

Jeff Albaum

Totally. Do you think in like the i in this in this phase, like cause I have no doubt, like you guys are gonna be extremely successful. So it's not it's not like if it's when you guys grow to whatever size you wanna grow. Like, do you have aspirations? Like w I guess I wanna understand like what motivates you? Like what drives you? Is it like, you know, I think a lot of people would say like, I wanna grow it and then I wanna sell it. I wanna have a big, you know, big exit, right? so like does that drive you? Does like the the feeling of just like building something big that outla like what what motivates you? Do you think?

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah, I mean, obviously like an exit down the future, like you know, you you would be lying if you said you're not looking for one potentially. but for us, like I love building with my brother and I think we have this vision of like we want to build something great and successful and like we view the vision of success with millions of users as like that's our goal. It's like we want millions of people using our platform and we wanna also have these numbers of, you know, we helped ex landlords save

Jeff Albaum

Totally, totally.

Gabe Einhorn

five hundred million, five hundred thousand dollars. We helped these tenants find an apartment half the time faster. Like all these metrics that just show the success, like in one, two, three, five years down the line, we want to be sitting back and being like, Wow, we came from zero to here.

Jeff Albaum

Yeah, dude, that's so cool. I you said the the platform's only been up for four months.

Gabe Einhorn

So we launched in February the verification platform. So that was screening. That was live February, March, April, May time. And then like around end of May, we put it on pause for the verification process. And then obviously we went through the whole anti-Semitic situation, which was the last five, six weeks. So we, you know, we paused everything because we wanted to rebrand anyways to expand into this full marketplace. So obviously.

Jeff Albaum

Okay, okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Gabe Einhorn

We view this crazy situation as like, you know, a sign from God that it's time to make that rebrand and take a step back, really build everything properly so that we can come out of it and, you know, launch with our new name, with our new evolved product. And hopefully the goal is we're launching that in the next couple of days with our first couple of landlords that we're piloting with here in New York City. And then we we take it, you know, to the world.

Jeff Albaum

Okay.

That's so cool, dude. Yeah, all right. I think everyone probably at this point knows about what happened, but like, yeah, well w what was that like just going through it from your perspective? Like you got you wanna just give people just a high level breakdown?

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah, it was it was crazy. So obviously the situation was we we were hiring this summer for summer interns and my brother who's also a college student was hiring a lot of college students and he posted it on handshake and a kid applied, he was interested, and my brother was trying to coordinate times with everybody, and then the kid ended up responding that he's not interested in working for a Jew. obviously me and my brother are Jewish, I don't hide it at all. I never have. and that was kind of crazy. I posted about it on X.

I had like a thousand followers on the time, so I I was just like, okay, like I'm gonna post that on X, maybe a couple thousand people will see it, nothing crazy. And all of a sudden it blew up into an international thing. Fox News had us on, millions of people saw it. We were on Israeli news and all this like crazy New York Post and it kind of just blew up like crazy. We had a lot of support, and then after like one, two days, all the anti-Semites started flooding in from everywhere.

And I I I've heard that there's like all these bots that get sent that, you know, cause this destruction. I never really faced it like this or knew it. But then next thing we know, I'm getting flooded on all platforms with threats leaking my information, my family's information or addresses, all this stuff. And it really like exploded like with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of these threats.

so it was scary for about like three weeks, like every platform, emails, social media, my my family's business in New Jersey was getting thousands of phone calls daily with threats. So like it was crazy. thank God a lot of really cool Jewish people and non-Jewish people reached out to support and one advice that they said was that the hate is really loud at the time, but it will die over in two, three weeks.

Sean McGuire, who's a really big true and investor, one of the main investors in SpaceX, he called me like one of the first days and he's like, I promise, like in three weeks it'll be gone and and you'll be left with just with just the positive of it. And you know, three weeks later I texted him that, you know, things basically died down and you know, now it's time to move forward.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Dude, that's so crazy. I I don't know like if if was this your first encounter in real life with anti Semitism, like up close and personal?

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah, it was it was pretty crazy. Like I faced a couple of things. Obviously walk around New York City, I wear my keepah. I've gotten my, you know, fair share of, you know, special words that people have said on the streets. nothing crazy. A couple of weeks before this situation I had like my first real situation, which wasn't like terrible, but like I was doing street interviews talking to people about New York City renting and I wear my keepah. I walked up to these three college kids and I was like, You guys wanna do an interview talking about rent? And

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Gabe Einhorn

They're like, Yeah, sure, let's start. So I start talking to the first kid. And all of a sudden the two his two friends behind him start grabbing him. Yo, we gotta go. Look at this kid's head. Like we can't talk to him. Let's go. And I was like, Bro, what? Like and they're like they they're dragging his friend away. His friend like this doesn't even know what they're talking about. And they pull him away and they just run away. And I was just like, I got it on video too. I didn't post it or anything, but I just wrote about it on X and I was like, you know, this just happened. Like people try to say that anti Semitism isn't real.

And you have these, you know, three twenty something year old kids that probably saw that, you know, Jews are evil on social media or something and you know, they they saw me in person and they're like, No, we can't talk to this guy and like it was insane. so that was probably like the first thing that ever happened.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dude, that's nuts. What I know you said like the I'm sure the last couple of weeks have been some of the craziest times ever, but like now looking back, like what are the lessons that you're taking with you going forward? Like how do you that you seem like a very positive person. So I imagine you're not like ruminating too much, but like, yeah, what are the what are the positives you take from it?

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah, I would say like the the strength of Jewish people and the community. you know, when when things get tough, it's cool to see how strong we come together and how people are willing to reach out to support and help even people that never met be met me before. and I would say also just a general thing is that hate is louder than the love usually, but it doesn't mean that the love isn't there and doesn't mean that there's not more love. It's just that the hate always amplifies itself and it usually takes over because it's just so easy to spread.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Gabe Einhorn

but like my message that I spoke to a lot of people about and I'm trying to spread now is that I don't want, you know, young Jewish kids to see this story and be afraid and be like, like this kid was attacked, you know, because he's Jewish and because he stood up for being Jewish. So I don't wanna I don't want this to happen to me. No, I want people to see all the positive that came from it, all the business opportunities that we got, all the cool relationships and support that we got. And I wanna s be more proud than ever before so people be like, wait, like

This kid was attacked for two, three weeks like crazy, threatened with his family. And yet he's still walking around the streets in New York City with his keeper and talking about how proud he is to be Jewish. Like, maybe I should be that too. Like that's really my goal of it.

Jeff Albaum

Yeah. Yeah. That's super cool, man. That's super cool. That's very very respectable and very admirable. And I'm sorry that you had to go through that, but it seems like you got the best case outcome with going through a a hard hard thing.

Gabe Einhorn

For sure, for sure.

Jeff Albaum

So now what is what's next? You said you're rebuilding the platform and like gonna be launching in a couple of days here. Where can people like find out more and and follow follow along?

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah, I mean, I I post most things on social media. So as long as you follow me anywhere on social media, you'll you'll probably stay up to date. We'll we'll we're working on like the full launch soon of like actually announcing the name change and and all this stuff. So I'll keep the world posted on when that's gonna launch and let people know what the name is when we do launch it, the new logo, and when it's fully live for everybody. And that's the goal right now is to just build to get more clients on board and

launch it live in New York City and once we take over New York City, we gotta figure out which city we're going to next.

Jeff Albaum

That's amazing, man. Who who are the like social media people you look up to? Like who who are the people that you are like, man, like I want to be like them?

Gabe Einhorn

Gary V's my number one for sure. And I actually got to meet him this past Friday for the second time, but this was like the first time I actually got to talk to him and do an interview and video with him. he's definitely my number one because I listened to him last year, like a year and a half ago before I started posting. And I remember he said something around like LinkedIn being like the last untapped social media market, like where there's still a lot of opportunity to grow in there.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

Gabe Einhorn

And when he said that, I was like, Okay, I gotta go for it. Like I'm I missed the boat on all these other platforms that I wasn't posting on. But I like, if LinkedIn is still, you know, some room left for me to to get involved, I'm gonna go for it. And I just remember him saying, like, just gotta post and post and post. and I've stuck to that and now I'm I'm posting a lot more than I ever would have thought. But thank God it's working. So Gary V is definitely my number one.

Jeff Albaum

Mm-hmm.

That's so cool, dude. Do you do you ever like, you know, like this phrase, like, you never want to meet your heroes? Like, how how do you think about like, obviously, there's people you want to look up to and respect, but then everyone's human. So, like, no one, no one's perfect. like, how do you think about like balancing that? Not with Gary individually, but like with people that you admire and look up to, and then balancing with, like, but they're also human. So, like, I don't want to be like them entirely, but I want to be like a little bit of them.

Gabe Einhorn

Yeah.

Yeah. I th I think like one thing a a lot of people talk about is like you don't want to be the next somebody. You you don't you wanna be yourself. You know, you could utilize the Gary V's and the Lionel Messi, like all these people that you I look up to, like I could use them and and use the good parts about them that I wanna implement in my life. But like I don't wanna be the next Gary Vee. I wanna be Gabe Einhorn and I wanna utilize some of the tips and and advice that Gary V talks about and the things that he does that I admire and implement that into my own life to be

Jeff Albaum

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Gabe Einhorn

The best gay vinyl and I could be.

Jeff Albaum

Totally. Totally. dude, you're a beast. Thank you so much for for coming on here, man. I appreciate you.

Gabe Einhorn

Big though.

For sure. I appreciate you having me.

Jeff Albaum

If someone's looking to they hear this and like, man, Gabe's awesome. I wanna I wanna help him. I wanna send him someone. Like, what what are you looking for? What would be helpful for you right now in this kind of season of life as you guys are as like about to launch?

Gabe Einhorn

That's a great question and I appreciate you asking that. landlords or brokers in New York City, we definitely want to be connected with. We're looking for a couple more to build around, you know, in real time, like real feedback and and really, you know, give them a product that will help them as much as possible. so we're working with a couple now and we're looking for a few more that really wanna work with us and show us, you know, their process and how we can help them as much as possible so we can build the best product for them. But that will also be helpful for

the world of real estate to come. that's pretty big. And then, you know, we're looking for a couple cool real estate people that are very experienced, very successful, that might want to join, you know, our board of advisors or something like that. because we we have a couple of really cool ones that have reached out and we're looking for a couple more that want to support us and guide us because, you know, we're still young and we got a lot more to learn. And we understand that we're not the most experienced in a lot of these rooms and we're not not the most knowledgeable yet in these rooms too. We still have a lot to learn

in real estate and tech and money investing. So looking for a couple more that wanna come on board and and guide us.

Jeff Albaum

Very cool. Very cool. Well we'll link to all your all your socials in the in the show notes and description. And thank you again for being here, man. You're you're awesome.

Gabe Einhorn

Course, brother. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Albaum

Hundred percent. Bye everybody.