Context with Mike DelPrete What Didn't Work: Aalto
Oct 5, 2025
Nick Narodny, a proptech entrepreneur and founder of Aalto, shares hard-earned lessons from his journey in residential real estate. He discusses the crucial mistake of underestimating buyer emotions, which led to customer drop-offs when the stakes were high. Narodny highlights how traditional agents often won over clients at the offer stage due to perceived trust and familiarity. He also emphasizes the importance of being meaningfully different in a competitive market and gives candid advice for future founders on navigating emotional complexities and achieving product-market fit.
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Emotion Rules Real Estate Decisions
- Real estate purchases are uniquely emotional and often one-way decisions that make people cling to tradition.
- Fear and risk aversion drive buyers to favor familiar local agents despite better or cheaper alternatives.
Buyers Drop Out At The Offer Table
- Hundreds of buyers would progress through Alto's funnel and then switch to the agent they'd been seeing.
- They preferred an agent with local relationships when making the actual offer, even after using Alto earlier.
Different Trumps 'Better' For Category Change
- Being different matters more than being incrementally better when changing big industries.
- Consumers distrust cheaper or radically different offers for high-stakes decisions like home purchases.
