Early Origins of SaleFish — It was a classic, problem-solution start up…

SaleFish Software was born more than 15 years ago in the conference room of RN Design, in Toronto, Canada. Rob Nicolocci started doing design work for residential real estate developers back in 1991, and over the years he kept hearing the same complaint from his clients…

Rob would deliver all the renderings and floorplans for a subdivision or condo project, but the developers never had a way to organize those and sync them up with the available lots, restrictions, options, and other variables. Pre-siting was a mess.

Keep in mind, the residential real estate market at that time, was very hot. The sales offices were jam-packed and the sales managers had no way to keep track of anything. There was tons of paperwork and mass confusion… deals were getting lost in the shuffle.

Rob and Rick Haws, current SaleFish CEO, both had some experience with software development, and thought there might be an opportunity in that mayhem… a chance to devise some sort of programmable fix for that problem.

They started talking with the RN Design clients to learn about their frustrations with the sales process, with the existing tools and with technology in general. It turned out to be a much bigger issue than they ever imagined.

Talk about a can of worms. The more they dug, the more problems they exposed that needed fixing.

Start ups can be messy, especially when you’re trying to keep your day jobs, like Rob and Rick were. Their initial inclination was to solve everything, all at once. But the problem was just too complex… too nuanced. The more they worked on it, the bigger it got.

But when it comes to design and technology, you have to keep things simple.

They always refer back to that famous Einstein quote: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

So through a process of trial and error, they started weeding out the issues they couldn’t realistically address and honed in on the required elements…

It had to be intuitive, easy to learn and easy to support. So elegance was very important.

As Rick likes to say, “If the software is elegantly designed and programmed, you hardly need any support.”

SaleFish’s Active Matrix System

It had to easily manageable from the back-end, so they developed an “Active Matrix” system that displayed the entire residential real estate project at a glance.

It had to provide comprehensive, real-time data, so salespeople wouldn’t duplicate their efforts or lose a sale.

It had to be user-friendly for prospective buyers, so we built it originally for iPads. Just touch and click.

In 2012 we released the first version of SaleFish Software with considerable success. Our beta testers were our clients at RNDesign, and the feedback they provided was invaluable.

Then it was just, iterate, upgrade and listen. Iterate, upgrade and listen. We’re still doing that today.

The latest iteration of SaleFish real estate technology is  better than ever.

We’re taking all the inventory from our developer clients and we’re putting it online for people to browse, select and purchase. So if you’re a real estate investor looking for new construction that’s sure to have a great ROI, you’ve come to the right place.

Or if you’re dreaming of a new home for your family, and you want an alternative to Zillow or the other online real estate buying options, you’ve come to the right place.