2334 - Why Immersive 3D Mapping Is the New Fast Lane for Real Estate Sales with Simplex Mapping Solutions' Avi Aflalo

0:04Well, hey, Thoughtful Leader. Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. On this show, I interview purpose-driven founders, experts, and change makers who are making a real impact in the world. Want to be a guest? Simple. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click podcast. I'd love to promote your story to our audience of over 100 ,000 and across over 2 ,300 daily episodes and counting. Want to get booked on other great shows like this? Simple. Go to podverified.com and get your free guest authority score. Thousands of hosts are looking for high quality guests and Podverified connects you the right way. Now let's dive into today's episode.

0:58With us right now, it is Avi Aflalo. Avi, you are the CEO and co-founder of Simplex Mapping Solutions. You're found on the web at simplex3d.com. It's great to have you, Avi. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Josh. Great to be here. And before we get going into talking about the work that you do with Simplex, I always love finding out what our passions are of high-level achievers and founders. and I understand that you and I both have done some running in our life. Yes, actually, I did. I had a few long years of running long distances, marathon runnings. You know, I kind of find it similar to running a startup or a company.

1:45You know, we always talk about how it's a marathon run, right? And I just find some similarities between how do you prepare for a marathon, both mentally and physically, you know, the endurance that you need throughout the way, the belief that you need to complete the distance, knowing that you can do it, the training that you do before the event, right? So a lot of that really comes into the journey that we also had in Simplex. So that's one of my passions, longer distance running. I need to come back to these long distances of a marathon, which I haven't done for a while now. But definitely something I look forward to.

2:22I've done a couple of marathons, Disney marathons, here in Orlando. I'm not sure that I'll ever, I mean, it can be taxing on the body for sure. But you're absolutely right that you learn so much about yourself and your fortitude and grit and endurance and the training for the marathon. I mean, running the marathon is one thing. I mean, if you had to, you know, you could end up walk running it. And I feel like a lot more people could actually complete a marathon if they need to do it. It might be a long time, might take you six, seven, eight hours or something like that. But I feel like most of us, you know, in decent shape could probably finish one.

3:04But it's the training for it. It really, I mean, you do, you learn so much about yourself. And then when you, do you remember when you crossed the finish line for your first marathon, what you experienced? Yeah, it was like a big relief, like, you know, like the feeling that I made it. but also I found out that running the event itself was the easiest part to the entire process yeah so I think you are right like training doing that alone you know waking up early before work doing the runs that you need completing the weekends and that's the hard part that's the heavy lifting then when you come and there's 20 ,000 people around you and it's all like you know festival and music that's the fun part that's when you But all of the preparations, that's the hard, the tricky part.

3:52I think a lot of people can't do that. They cannot maintain this endurance for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I would love to talk about running for the next 30 minutes. Let's talk about Simplex. What is Simplex 3D? Right. So Simplex 3D is like an ecosystem for the 3D world. We're working with two systems, one more engineering and one more for sales of new development, pre-construction real estate, which is the main focus on our journey in the US. Basically, we turn the world into a 3D immersive experience where you can then showcase the reality and showcase the building before it's even built and put your buyer in a position where he can not just see but feels how it would be like living in Florida or living in Tel Aviv or living in New York, right?

4:47So we are basically having that technology to create an immersive 3D world with an application to sell, you know, high-rise multifamilies projects with special emphasis on data. It's all data-driven, and we're trying to focus on giving tools, the analytic tools to the sellers to be able to track better and, you know, in the end of the day, close more deals. That's the main subject that we want, the main target. Closing more deals because we give you confidence and we give you data. That's, you know, the main two parts. Yeah. So who is using this? And what is the reason for being able to – I'm on your website right now.

5:33I'm sure you may have come across the game SimCity back in the day. Yeah, of course. But it's basically, that's what I'm looking at. It's a very complex version or a very detailed version of SimCity, what I'm looking at. Exactly. So it's a SimCity for professionals, as we can call it. Or it's a bit like when Google Earth meets Figma, the two companies I believe most of the audience is familiar with. So it's the idea of creating a 3D model, the highest resolution, highest accuracy, best practices for creating a real 3D model. and then upload into it a lot of decision support tools like data layers, like information points of interest, and also new models of new construction that is not built yet.

6:22So if you are now a buyer that wants to understand your view from the 20th floor on a new high-rise, there's no actual way to do so, but we provide you the actual real view from this floor showing you how your landscape looks now, but how it will also look in the future Because, for example, we know how to scrape and visualize all the future developments in cities like New York and Miami and all of the state of Israel, you know, showing you exactly how the view would look like in five to 10 years, which is, you know, you cannot really get that in any other platform. Wow. So why is it, why is 3D planning and visualization, why is that so critical?

7:08Why can't we just do this with spreadsheets? Right. So, you know, I think an important decision like, you know, purchasing an apartment, which probably be the most important financial decision a person would make, most of us would make in our lifetimes, right, buying our dream house. It's something that requires confidence. It requires you want to understand, you know, before you buy. You want to feel the neighborhood, the environment, the views, the neighbors, the facilities, the amenities, everything that, you know, transform that to a home. And we have tools today that can actually, it's a bit like a gaming engine, like you mentioned, and some other reference, GTA, you know, is a similar feeling.

7:52It's like a gaming condition where you can actually understand and feel how it would be to live there. And I think most people need certainty before they make that kind of a decision. Spreadsheet doesn't give it. Spreadsheet gives you numbers, but they don't give you the feeling. They don't give you the enthusiasm to be enthusiastic about this project, to want to buy and invest a lot of your life and money into this project because you want to live there. And this is where we come in with this technology that puts you there. You actually feel like you're now living in a new apartment. Yeah, man, it's gorgeous.

8:35And so is there a, and I would imagine that this could be really helpful if you're, and essential, if you're attracting investors, for example, do you mind going through, I'm sure that that use case, but do you mind going through a few other use cases of how your clients are using this very tactically in order to accomplish what they need to get done? Absolutely. So we're proud of handling the entire workflow from vision, from planning a project to the end of when you sell it. So we have two platforms. One is the core platform. One is Reels platform. Core platform is a 3D high resolution environment where you can plan your new project.

9:21So now you see that a lot that you have an opportunity to buy a lot and develop something on it. So developers and architects are looking at this, you know, at this lot. And we have all of this information about, you know, the prices that were around it, you know, the mortgages that are available there, the deeds, all of the information about this slot. What's the air rights? How much can you build there? All of that is put on one screen. Right. And then you can make a very, you know, calculated decision on, you know, on the purchasing side. So developers are using it for canvassing, right? Looking for new deals, getting the deal flow, and then understands if that deal makes sense or not.

10:02And they all do it inside a 3D world, which gives them, you know, much more certainty and confidence in their decisions. Secondly, the architects, then they come in and now they have a vision on how this project should look like. But we want them to do this planning in a real environment, which affects, you know, the sunlight, the shading, the viewpoints, It's everything they can analyze on our platform. So they don't need to do it anymore on the Revit screen, which is a black screen in the background. They do it within the city. So different alternatives. And now pitching for the developers. And until this is chosen, now they're going to file it to the municipality.

10:40And the municipality would review it in a much better way to get the decision whether to approve these projects. In Israel, we're working with 150 municipalities. So it becomes like an ecosystem where planners, designers, architects and the city are all working on the same environment, the same platform and makes better decisions for the citizens. and then at the end of this process when the project is being built then the marketers and the sellers and the brokers come in and they want the most immersive tool to show the beauty of this project the beauty of its surroundings and the amenities to put you inside your apartment to show you the future view to show you that you have an ocean view or what have you and we give all of that as well as part of that offering.

11:31So basically, a lot can start with just an open lot with nothing on it and finish with a beautiful 20-floor high-rise, which is now the home of another 100 families, right? So the entire workflow is covered by our platform. I remember a story a while back, and it's over 10 years ago. There was a skyscraper in London, and I wonder if they could have used you. So they designed this skyscraper in London and it had a little bit of a convex side. Well, that convex side was aimed toward the sun. And so what it was doing is it was causing a reflection that was actually melting covers down below. I don't know if they fixed that or not, but is that someone you could have helped?

12:16Yeah, absolutely. We have a sun analysis tools where show you exactly where the sun hits the building in every second of every day of the year, right? So you can know exactly if there is a problem with your flexions. Exactly that. And I'll tell you another story. Like how it closes more deals. We had a customer. We are working in the U.S. with a strategic partner named First American. It's a title insurance company. And our tool helps them to enable more sales with their customers. And we did an onboarding session with their salespeople. And the sales director asked us to join a sales conversation.

12:54they had with a buyer, a seller, and a lawyer to help facilitate the deal. So we went on the call. And the problem was it was a 15 million north of 15 million penthouse in Manhattan that a very rich guy wanted to buy. And he was concerned that his views, that there are air rights in front of him that at some point in the future would block his view. And when you spend 15 million, you want to make sure there's no chance that would happen. Now, the normal way to address this issue was go back to the architects, go to the city, find the layer that explains what can we build there, then build an architectural model and understanding thousands of dollars, weeks of work.

13:36And the buyer was hesitant because he didn't have that certainty of understanding that the view is open. And it didn't close the deal. We went in this call. In Simplex Core Platform, you can do that in five minutes. You just put him where the height of the new building on his penthouse. You just push on the extrude the air rights in 3D in front of you. And immediately you can see that there is no obstruction of his view. It's not going to change even if they aggregate air rights. It's not going to change. After five minutes of conversation, customer was satisfied with the reply. And shortly after, the deal was closed.

14:15So, you know, we really close loops much, much faster. using this technology, and it just enables much faster and more confident deals. Yeah. In terms of business growth, how is Simplex growing? How do you attract clients? Yeah, so this is an interesting story. We started 12 years ago, actually, as a bootstrap company, and been there for very long years. A few years ago, we've taken our first big investment to invest more in technology and go to the international market. We are market dominant in Israel for many years in this space of 3D. 80 % of the market is using us already. But we now take this technology mainly into the U.S., where we have representatives in New York and Miami.

15:06And we sell reels, the new construction, pre-construction projects all over the U.S. We also work in Europe. We work in Italy. We work in Portugal. We work in London. So we expand our technology and our outreach in the last couple of years and expect to grow even further in the next few years. Congratulations on that. Your website is simplex3d.com. To a friend that's been listening and maybe they stumbled upon this episode because they're researching you and they want to learn a little bit more about you. What do they do from here? Like, where do they want to go? I don't know if you've got any resources or what you typically recommend regarding the platform.

15:46Yeah. So, I mean, if you are a developer or an architect, someone that has data, which, you know, is looking for a house, like a platform to integrate into it, all of that is something we know how to, we like a hub of information. So, we know how to integrate a lot of the data sources. So if you have a use case for planning, for architecture, for selling new apartments and new construction, just go on the website, book your own demo. It's all free. You can see all of the virtues of the platform. You can book a call with our representatives. We show you everything that you need. You can actually send us an area of a project you are looking at, and we will do this exercise with you, showing you how faster you can get information and data on your project.

16:35So just go online, click. We have several landing pages there for several projects. Just leave us a message. We'll get back to you, and we can discuss everything from that point on. Avi Aflalo, your website, simplex3d.com. Congratulations on 12 and a half years of market dominance. But again, thank you so much, Avi, for joining us. Thank you, Josh. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

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