Here's how Pacaso founder and serial entrepreneur Austin Allison made his first million

Fortune

Austin Allison, 38, is the cofounder and CEO of Pacaso, a property brokerage firm that buys single-family homes in ideal destinations and sells them to a handful of different buyers who each own shares.

Transcript

00:00 The vision for Picasso is about democratizing access to second homes.

00:05 But when we first started the company, we had to start somewhere.

00:08 And we chose to start at the very high end, ultra luxury homes in ultra luxury markets.

00:14 But the long term vision is about serving more people.

00:17 And the only way to do that is by having more homes across more markets at more price points.

00:24 Hey, I'm Austin Allison, co-founder and CEO of Picasso.

00:27 I'm 38 years old, and this is how I made my first million.

00:30 I grew up in a small town north of Cincinnati, Ohio, and my dad was a carpenter.

00:34 I would say we basically lived paycheck to paycheck.

00:37 I mean, we were fortunate enough to have a home and food on the table,

00:41 so we weren't like completely broke.

00:43 But we didn't have discretionary income.

00:46 Money was always a topic in the household.

00:48 It was always a point of stress and tension for my parents.

00:53 I started working before I can remember, frankly.

00:56 I was at the job site with my dad when I was three or four years old.

01:00 I was working in construction and landscaping when I was a teenager, 12, 13 years old.

01:06 By the time I was 16 years old, I would say landscaping was the primary job.

01:13 That ultimately led to real estate.

01:16 And for whatever reason, I was intrigued by the industry.

01:19 And by the time I was 18 years old, I needed to find a way to pay for college.

01:25 So I decided to start selling real estate.

01:28 I went to college at the University of Cincinnati.

01:31 I studied architectural engineering and construction management.

01:36 And then after undergrad, I ended up going to law school,

01:39 also at the University of Cincinnati.

01:42 While most of the other students were out having fun and partying, I was working.

01:47 I thought of and conceived the idea for Dot Loop while I was selling real estate.

01:53 And what I found is that I was chasing buyers and sellers around

01:59 to get documents signed on the trunk of my car.

02:01 So Dot Loop is a software that enables real estate transactions to happen digitally.

02:08 It's a tool that real estate agents use to create the documents,

02:11 sign the documents with their clients,

02:14 and to manage the entire transaction from start to finish.

02:17 And we built that company over a period of seven or eight years.

02:21 And eventually, we're fortunate enough to sell to Zillow Group,

02:24 where I stayed on as an executive for about four years before leaving to start Picasso.

02:30 So I made my first million dollars by selling Dot Loop to Zillow Group.

02:34 We sold for about $120 million.

02:37 So my wife and I were very fortunate to become second homeowners about 10 years ago.

02:43 And when we became second homeowners in Lake Tahoe,

02:45 it just changed our life in a really positive way.

02:49 I learned that when you buy a second home, you're not just buying a piece of real estate,

02:54 you're buying a second community, a second group of friends, a second life in many ways.

03:00 And I wanted to find a way to make that dream possible for more people.

03:04 And one of the light bulbs that went off for me along the way

03:09 was the realization that most second homes are only utilized about 10% of the time,

03:15 which means that we have a lot of empty homes sitting around the world.

03:19 The whole idea behind Picasso is about connecting those two problems and opportunities.

03:25 On the supply side, it's about making available what would have otherwise been

03:29 empty second homes to buyers or prospective buyers who are interested

03:35 and aspire to find their happy place.

03:38 And we do that through a tech-enabled marketplace

03:42 that enables small groups of people to aggregate around beautiful luxury second homes

03:47 and to co-own those homes together.

03:50 But Picasso manages every detail, everything from design to furnishing to bill pay and maintenance.

03:56 We've created a proprietary scheduling tool called SmartStay,

04:00 which distributes the calendar fairly amongst the ownership group.

04:05 So if you own one-eighth of a luxury Picasso home,

04:09 SmartStay will ensure that you get one-eighth of the peak season,

04:13 one-eighth of the non-peak season, and one-eighth of the holidays.

04:17 Typically, that works out to about five or six weeks,

04:20 but you're not capped at that amount of usage,

04:22 meaning if other owners in the home are not using their full allotment,

04:27 then you would be able to actually use more than the one-eighth that you own.

04:33 Our mission is about enriching lives by making a second home possible and enjoyable for more people.

04:37 So everything that we do is looked at through this lens of

04:42 how do we enrich our customers' lives more often and in a bigger way than we are today.

04:49 So I think the combination of customer focus and great people leads to great business results.

04:55 [Music]

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