In the real estate industry, one of the brightest stars is Ben Kinney. I have admired Ben since the day that I met him. I have been amazed at his development of the three key areas of success in his real estate businesses, and now also at the business services and technology platform, PLACE. Ben and his team have developed an impressive tech stack. The company delivers excellent training and sales support. They have built the first national network of teams and top producing agents across the nation – most of whom work for other brokerages, but benefit from the same tools and services used to power the Ben Kinney Team.

One missing opportunity for success at the Ben Kinney Companies is a dominant consumer facing website – something that will compete with Redfin, Movoto, etc. A ‘Place’ (pun intended) that provides consumer home search and delivers support from realtors. Kinney recently announced the hiring of two rockstars who are going to drive the company forward and make PLACE a success. They have piles of funding to work with, so money is not a barrier.

Abby Powell was brought in as the Chief Marketing Officer. The Dallas resident and University of Texas Alum was at Apple for 6 years before leading iconic consumer brands at PepsiCo, Reckitt, and Keurig Dr Pepper prior to joining PLACE. Abby purchased her last home through a Keller Williams agent referred by a friend. She is excited about tackling new opportunities in the real estate industry. The consumer experience in home ownership is not easy to navigate, and she looks forward to joining all of us who are passionate about making it better. She understands that success will come from addressing the needs of both the consumer and the agent, and is excited about the challenge.

Emiliano Delucia joins PLACE as the Chief Technology Officer, based in Austin, TX. He spent the bulk of his career in the Houston area working for startups and major companies such as Haliburton (he loved the data quality at HAR.com). Austin was a popular getaway spot where he enjoyed the lake, rolling hills, and great entertainment scene. He relocated to Austin to work with Live Earth where he excelled in native cloud software development, building data pipelines for IoT devices, mapping and visualization technologies, integrating with third party APIs, etc. Three years ago, he joined Red Ventures, the international media and marketing powerhouse, where he led technology and engineering for consumer financial brands like Bankrate.com, Lonely Planet, The Points Guy, NextAdvisor, Sage Mortgages, CreditCards.com and other brands.

It was truly fun to jump on a call with Emiliano and Abby and welcome them both to our goofy industry. They are both delightful people with radiant character and deep skill sets. I really appreciate the spirit of leaders like Ben Kinney who attract fantastic talent to bring fresh approaches to the unsolved dilemmas that we face every day. I am certain that their contributions will be remarkable. I look forward to meeting them both at the next lobby bar.