How Pacaso founder and serial entrepreneur Austin Allison made his first million
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.
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00:00I would say we basically lived paycheck to paycheck.
00:03I started working, before I can remember, frankly,
00:05I was at the job site with my dad
00:07when I was three or four years old.
00:09I was working in construction and landscaping
00:12when I was a teenager.
00:13I would say landscaping was the primary job.
00:17That ultimately led to real estate.
00:19So I made my first million dollars
00:22by selling Dotloop to Zillow Group.
00:24It's a tool that real estate agents use
00:26to create the documents, sign the documents
00:29with their clients, and to manage the entire transaction
00:32from start to finish.
00:33We sold for about 120 million.
00:35My wife and I were very fortunate
00:38to become second homeowners.
00:40I learned that when you buy a second home,
00:43you're not just buying a piece of real estate,
00:45you're buying a second life in many ways.
00:47Most second homes are only utilized about 10% of the time,
00:52which means that we have a lot of empty homes
00:54sitting around the world.
00:56The whole idea behind Picasso is about connecting
00:59those two problems and opportunities.
01:02On the supply side, it's about making available
01:05what would have otherwise been empty second homes.
01:07And we do that through a tech-enabled marketplace
01:11that enables small groups of people to aggregate
01:14around beautiful luxury second homes
01:16and to co-own those homes together.
01:19But Picasso manages every detail,
01:21everything from design to furnishing
01:24to bill pay and maintenance.