BILL BROWN

Bill Brown of Matterport VR is part of this year's Real Estate Professional's Hot List.

BILL BROWN
https://matterport.com/
Matterport VR
San Francisco, CA

Years before Bill Brown became CEO of Matterport, he was director of marketing for bamboo.com, one of the world’s first virtual tour companies. While bamboo.com introduced Brown to both the real estate industry and the game-changing potential of virtual reality, the technology was, and remained for years, anything but an immersive experience. Matterport changed all that.

“It wasn’t an evolution,” Brown says. “Matterport was a quantum leap forward in terms of both the technology and the ease of use for people capturing and experiencing the content.”

Tens of thousands of North American Realtors have already exposed their clients to Matterports’s VR technology, and with the functionality expanding to include embedded multimedia content, Brown’s goal of a 30-40% adoption rate seems within reach.

Brown says there has been little pushback from agents worried that VR will rob the industry of some of its tactile humanity. He compliments the industry for its willingness to implement new technologies and says agents have been able to use Matterport to differentiate themselves by demonstrating their expertise in leveraging a new tool for their clients.

“There’s only one person who’s going to be the first one to introduce you to virtual reality,” Brown says.