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Tommy Sowers

Chief Innovation Officer, UNC-Chapel Hill · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

academicfounderexecutive@TommySowers ↗tommysowers.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Tommy Sowers served as Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs under President Obama and co-founded real estate startup GoldenKey. A former Green Beret who taught at West Point and Duke, he serves as Chief Innovation Officer at UNC-Chapel Hill.

14statements → 11claims → 3claims resolved → 33%fully supported → 3.93/5average certainty → 1.71/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

1 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 8 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

11 assertions · 1 opinion · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 8 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Tommy argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Tommy Sowers: Real estate agents generate $60B in annual commissions
“So agents make about sixty billion dollars of commissions.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 3:10 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Top 5% of real estate agents earn 90% of commission income
“It's super Pareto inefficient. The top five percent earned 90%.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 3:25 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
25% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Tommy Sowers on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Tommy Sowers said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Real estate agent fees destroy over 50% of home equity
“If you use an agent to buy and sell a home, you actually destroy over 50% of your home equity and the fees that they charge.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 3:15 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey claims zero customer acquisition cost for supply and demand
“I, you know, customer acquisition costs on both supply and demand is zero.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 13:34 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey's agent network is 60% larger than Redfin's after one year
“To give that some level of context, Redfin has about 1100 agents. So we, in a, in about a year, we're 60% bigger than Redfin.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 5:02 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Contradicted
Top 5% of real estate agents earn 90% of commission income
“It's super Pareto inefficient. The top five percent earned 90%.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 3:25 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Partly supported
Three-quarters of the 2 million US real estate agents are part-time
“There's two million agents out there, and three out of four of them are in some sort of part-time capacity.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 10:30 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Supported
Tommy Sowers: Real estate agents generate $60B in annual commissions
“So agents make about sixty billion dollars of commissions.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 3:10 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey has grown to 1,798 real estate agents across 47 states
“We've gone from zero to 1798 agents in 47 states.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 4:57 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey transaction volume grew from 100 to over 900 in 2016
“In February, we had executed about a hundred service transactions and now we're well over 900.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 5:41 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey closed a home every other day in Q3 2016
“This last quarter we closed a home every other day and we've saved consumers about 600,000 dollars of commission income that has gone back into their pockets”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 6:05 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey nets a 10% to 20% take rate on services
“So most platforms, you know, they vary somewhere between that and usually it's in the sort of 10 to 20% and that's about what we net out at.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 8:07 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey users pay an average of $2,000 for agent representation
“So on average, the consumer's Pay about 2000 dollars to have agents represent them through the transaction.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 8:49 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Disclosure
GoldenKey raised $3.4M with Lowe's Ventures as largest investor
“We've raised 3.4 million dollars. Lowe's venture capital is our largest investor.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 11:59 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
GoldenKey has executed real estate service transactions across 22 states
“We've executed transactions in now 22 states.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 13:26 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers
Disclosure
GoldenKey targets Q2 Series A with six months of runway remaining
“So for us, we are going to be targeting our series a raise and Q two, and we'll have about six months left of cash on hand at that time.”
Tommy Sowers Nov 26, 2016 ▶ 15:23 EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO Tommy Sowers

The other half of the tape: Tommy Sowers's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112016episodesmentions
0112016episodes it came up in
000.50.5112016episodesmentions per episode
2016 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
EP 490: GoldenKey $3.4M Raised, 1000 Units Sold By Agents Using New Technology with CEO To Nov 26, 2016 12m
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