Accelerating Real Estate Sales Cycles 

Founded on the belief that visual content is the key to successful property marketing, Backbone has developed a technology that generates all necessary visual content for property marketing. "We have a huge network of highly skilled photo and video professionals we collaborate with. Then we add speed to processing the visual material by by implementing post-production tech automations and generative AI," explains Dorian de Vinck, co-founder and CEO of Backbone. "Our approach and technology can shorten the property sales cycle by 75 percent. That starts with delivering all visual content needed within one day. Our software then automates content distribution and generates more leads."

From side hustle to over 50'000

With Antoine Tomasini and Federico Leis, Dorian started this business at the end of 2018 as a side hustle and made it a full-time job when they had their first few clients. The beginnings weren't all glamorous; in fact, Dorian remembers well how they had to manage everything as founders and jump in when they could find neither a photographer nor a drone pilot for a new client. "As a result, this task fell back on us founders, and we were such poor drone pilots that we crashed the drone at one of our first clients and had to get a new one to finish the assignment."

Today, Backbone counts 50'000 successful transactions that the startup has accompanied by a visual experience that goes beyond conventional boundaries. Unlike other real estate marketing platforms, Backbone understands that every property has a unique story to tell, and their approach is tailored to bring out the distinct personality of each listing. "Next year, the goal is to enable 100'000 more successful property sales with the help of our technology and data", says Dorian. The short-term goal of Backbone is to become profitable, and by 2025, the scale-up wants to cover the entire Europe.

Continuous iterations to perfect the offering

Since its inception, Backbone has evolved into a comprehensive solution for real estate professionals seeking to elevate their property marketing strategies. At first, Backbone only offered photography, but soon added videos, 3D tours, augmented reality for virtual tours, and more. This development shows that the company has continuously invested in research and development, staying at the forefront of technological advancements in virtual tours, 3D rendering, and augmented reality. In the future, Backbone will enhance its offering by adding more automated services like AI integrations, performance marketing, and more.

But not everything went as planned when the Covid pandemic started unexpectedly. The event sector that Backbone had also been covering at that time had to cancel the events and the collaboration with Backbone. "Due to Covid, we lost industries, but it also forced us to re-evaluate our product-market fit and understand the needs of this industry much better. This had a strategic shift as a consequence. Though it was a decisive point, it turned out to be a blessing as we started to focus on real estate only, which is in fact a massive market, and became experts in that field", explains Dorian.

Perfect visual production evokes emotions

In real estate, the perfect production of visual content is a game-changer. Backbone recognizes that potential buyers form their first impressions based on what they see. High-quality, immersive visuals not only capture attention but also evoke emotions, making it more likely for a viewer to connect with a property on a deeper level.

"While two years ago, there were more buyers on the market than sellers, this has completely changed since the interest rates have risen significantly. Now, renting is more attractive again. Those who already own a house or apartment need to be able to renew their mortgages at higher interest rates. This led to the current market situation where fewer people want to buy a home and more want to sell. As a result, finding buyers and getting their attention is now the challenge. Backbone makes its priority to support our clients in getting the attention of potential buyers", says Dorian proudly.