Hi, I'm Chase, bootstrapping Appraisal Flow ~ my first product

Hi, I’m Chase Pursley.

I sort of had a different path towards software entrepreneurship. My background is as a commercial real estate appraiser / analyst (not a realtor). While I’ve always been interested in tech (linux distros, gadgets etc), I didn’t realize software development was something I could actually do. Until I discovered Ruby. Over the last few years I have learned Ruby, Rails, Sinatra and JS/CoffeeScript and have been bootstrapping a little product (www.appraisalflow.com) for a year. In a nutshell, it’s Basecamp for appraisers (but different).

Between learning software development, product development, customer development and all the stuff in between like lawsuit threats; it’s been one heck of a learning experience. My market is a difficult one to reach as real estate people are not technical (internet explorer, win XP, blackberry, etc). Finally having some customers trickle in to my paid beta, which is encouraging. Might have to pivot or simplify the product as I may have overbuilt features…

Still a long road ahead. Glad to find this forum.

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Hi Chase. Pleasure to meet you. CRE is definitely a tough nut to crack. I used to work for a company in that space. Best of luck with appraisalflow!