HAMIDREZA ETEBARIAN
AGE: 28 Co-founder + CEO, Offerland Technologies
LIFE STORY: Fresh out of grad school, Hamidreza Etebarian loved the two years he spent at Vancouver civil engineering firm Glotman Simpson. “My job was designing towers structurally to make sure they work under earthquake load, yield load and gravity load,” he says. But something nagged at Etebarian, who had always wanted to build a product from scratch.
Buying a downtown condo, he saw his chance. “I realized that in the real estate space, there's some room for automation, advanced tools that can help people to make things better.”
Etebarian was up to the task. In his native Iran, he ranked 300th out of 300,000 students who wrote the entrance exam for top-ranked Sharif University of Technology, where he earned a civil engineering degree.
Accepted to several North American universities—including Texas A&M and UCLA—FOR graduate work, Etebarian chose UBC for a master of applied science in structural and earthquake engineering. With COO Roz Seyednejad and CTO Amir Abdi, he started what is now Offerland Technologies in 2019, leaving his day job early the next year to focus on the business.
Offerland uses data analytics and artificial intelligence to modernize property valuation, traditionally a manual task. The company, which counts among its clients a Big
Five bank, one of Canada's largest appraisal management companies and the country's biggest private appraisal firm, focuses on residential real estate. Its subscription-based service has two main products: a market evaluation tool and market rent evaluation tool. “Companies can come to our platform and, say, search for an address, and they get a full report,” Etebarian explains. What is the actual value of this property? What are the recent comparables?”
BOTTOM LINE: Offerland now has a team of 16, and the goal is to reach 25 by year's end. Having raised some initial capital and secured $400,000 in government grants, the company is seeking its second financing round. “We're going to use that extra source of funding to tap into other sides of the real estate space,” explains Etebarian, who says Offerland also plans to serve the industrial, commercial and agricultural property markets. –N.R.