Our Story At Archetape
Issue 18 - February 5th, 2021
In our pursuit of continuing to build our brand at my company, Archetape, we added an "Our Story" page to our website this week to help us continue to spread the message of what our team is building for the residential real estate world. The full text of that message is copied below, and I would love for you to visit our site if you have never seen it previously. I am extremely proud of what our team has accomplished in a very short amount of time, and we are as excited as ever about the future ahead of us in 2021.
My name is Sam Sawyer, and I am the founder and CEO of Archetape. I began my career in residential real estate at 19, helping college friends find apartments and rental homes around campus at SMU in Dallas, Texas. Post college, I went to work for Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s international Realty working my way up to Senior Vice President before leaving to help launch a boutique brokerage firm in Dallas called The Collective that was acquired by Compass in 2018.
In 2016, I was named one of the Top 30 Agents Under 30 in America by the National Association of Realtors. Most recently, I spent time in Silicon Valley at an early stage proptech startup called ZeroDown serving as VP of Real Estate Operations.
Now, I am embarking on a journey with Archetape to build the residential real estate brokerage model that is needed in today’s world. If my 15-year career in residential real estate has taught me anything, it’s that the brokerage model is broken and needs to be completely rebuilt. I started this company out of my own problems and complaints with the industry. Residential real estate is stuck in its old ways, and all of the current brokerages are “competitor focused” and not “consumer focused." The large market dominating brokerages today are too focused on protecting their rigid business models and one-upping their competitors - instead of focusing on their agents' happiness to build a better brokerage experience. They choose inertia over innovation. They are true dinosaurs in my eyes, and it is only a matter of time before the mighty fall and the companies with an “agent-first and customer-first mentality” take over the real estate industry.
Our team is composed of diverse backgrounds and skill sets from both the consumer technology and real estate industries, and we are building our company with unique perspectives while constantly pushing ourselves to challenge the status quo in everything we do by asking “why” things are the way they are and how we can do it differently.
Our goal at Archetape is to deliver a best-in-class brokerage experience to our agents at the lowest possible cost, and we execute on this goal with our transaction-fee based model where our agents keep 100% of the commissions they earn. With our low-cost fee model, top notch service, and cutting edge technology tools, we empower our agents to serve their customers to the best of their ability while creating a better transaction process for everyone involved.
Simplicity, transparency, honesty, and innovation are the cornerstones of what we are building at Archetape, and we look forward to continuing our journey ahead to be the best agent-obsessed real estate brokerage in the world.
Newsworthy Links To Share
Wealthtech platform GROUNDFLOOR, which lets people accumulate wealth through real estate, is experiencing some serious growth. The company’s users have invested $145 million in its short-term high-yield real estate projects, marking a 50% increase year-over-year for investor activity. The Atlanta-based company has also surpassed 87,000 registered users and has rolled out several new lending programs. Read more HERE.
Divvy Homes — a startup that is out to help more people realize that dream by buying a house and renting it back to them while they build equity — has just closed on $110 million in Series C funding. Over the course of 2020, Divvy expanded operations from eight to 16 total markets and financed five times as many homes as it had in pre-pandemic times. Read more on TechCrunch.
Lease insurance platform, LeaseLock, announces $52 million funding round to expand into new markets. The Marina Del Rey company eliminates deposit payments for renters by giving them the ability to pay a small monthly fee in addition to their rent. This payment is integrated in enterprise software systems, so that there is no additional paperwork renters have to complete. If any accidental damage to the property occurs, renters are protected through LeaseLock's insurance. Read more on dot.LA.
Moving to Austin soon? Check out this home recently designed and built by my friend, Elizabeth Baird, who has an incredible architecture firm here in Austin called Elizabeth Baird Architecture and Design. Her project was featured in Domino magazine: This Austin New Build Is the “House You’ll Need in 10 Years”. Read the article here!
100% electric Amazon delivery vehicles hit the streets in Los Angeles. The aim is to confirm the performance, safety and durability of the vans before they start to roll out to as many as 16 cities in 2021.The new vehicles built by Rivian are a huge step forward in Amazon's pledge to be carbon neutral by 2040. Rivian is one of the most exciting and least talked about companies in the electric vehicle industry, and I am pumped to see their consumer vehicles hit the streets soon too. Watch a video HERE.