Drew Thompson explains why the era of complex, expensive real estate tech is over — and how you can build exactly what you need, right now.
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The air inside the Hilton Midtown during Inman Connect smells of exactly three things: burnt espresso, Santal 33 and the electric hum of people pretending they aren’t reading your nametag.
If you have never been, imagine a few thousand real estate professionals trapped in a ballroom, vibrating with ambition and blistered feet. It is a specific frequency of chaos designed to liquefy the human brain.
I was standing in the center of this maelstrom yesterday, watching a vendor pitch a new CRM to a glassy-eyed agent.
The screen looked like the control deck of the Starship Enterprise. It had pipelines. It had automations. It had buttons for scenarios that I am fairly certain have never occurred in human history.
“I know I should use it,” the agent shouted to me over the noise, looking like he had just gone 12 rounds with a spreadsheet. “But honestly? It makes me want to throw my phone in the Hudson.”
He wasn’t wrong. We have optimized ourselves into paralysis. We have built tools so powerful that they require a pilot’s license to operate, leaving us to do the only logical thing: Ignore them completely.
And right there, amidst the flashing lights and the frantic networking, I had a thought: What if we just made it stupid? What if we stripped away the dashboard, the analytics and the guilt? What if a CRM was just … a button?
I closed my eyes and pictured it. A screen the color of a Xanax pill. Big text: “Call Lisa.” Context: “Ask about her dog.”
One giant button. You press it, it dials. You hang up. You swipe right. Tinder, but for prospecting. (Side note: My wife and I actually met on Tinder, so I am statistically biased toward swiping right on life-changing decisions.)
In 2022, this idea would have died a quiet death in the graveyard of my Moleskine notebook. I would have told myself the usual lies: I need a developer. I need venture capital. I need six months.
But it isn’t 2022.
I walked out of the conference and hailed an Uber to get to dinner at Reserve Cut on 55th and Park. The app said I had 18 minutes. I slid into the backseat of a Toyota Camry that smelled faintly of pine trees and aggressive merging, and I decided to test the limits of reality.
Could I build this app before the driver hit the brakes at the steakhouse?
I pulled out my phone. I didn’t open a code editor. I didn’t call a “tech guy.” I opened an AI chat, and I started “vibe coding.”
Now, if you think “coding” requires a hoodie and a dark room, you are living in the past. I don’t know Python. I thought “Java” was a slang term for coffee until recently.
But I know English. And right now, English is the most powerful programming language on earth.
I didn’t type code; I worked with the AI, directing it to give me an output that I wanted. Here’s my prompt (I elaborated on this one quite a bit, but you get the gist):
“I want to build a CRM for people who hate CRMs. Make the background one solid, calming color. No menus. No dashboard. Just a massive button in the center that says ‘CALL LISA.’ Connect it to the phone dialer. When I hang up, I want to swipe right for the next lead. Make it addictive.”
The first version popped up on my screen three minutes later. The swipe animation was clunky. It felt like a PowerPoint presentation.
Old Me would have panicked. New Me just typed:
“Fix it. Make it smooth. Make it feel like a dating app.”
The AI didn’t ask for a scope change. It didn’t bill me for overages. It just rewrote the code — in 51 seconds.
We pulled up to the curb at Reserve Cut. I paid the driver. I stepped onto the sidewalk. I looked at my phone. It was done. A fully functional, swipe-based CRM. It dialed. It swiped. It logged. Total development time? Eighteen minutes.
I walked into the restaurant, sat down, ordered a drink and slid my phone across the table to my dinner date. “Check this out,” I said. “I literally just founded a software company in the car.”
The death of the excuse
Here is why this story matters to you (and it’s not because you need another CRM). It matters because the gap between imagination and reality has officially evaporated.
For the past 20 years, we have lived in a world where the “Idea Guys” were held hostage by the “Tech Guys.” If you couldn’t code, you couldn’t build. You were a passenger in the digital economy.
Don’t believe me? Look at this.
I actually put this live so you can see it. It has dummy data in it, but go ahead, click around. See what 18 minutes of focus looks like.
We are living in a moment where you can build anything.
- Need an event dashboard? I just helped a friend build one. We didn’t use a spreadsheet. We vibe-coded a dashboard that looks like the Netflix interface, so he can see his entire event at a glance.
- Need a productivity calculator? Check this out. I built this yesterday. It physically counts down the dollars I am losing every second I waste. (Nothing motivates you like watching your net worth evaporate in real-time.)
Most of us walk around with a voice in our head saying, “I can’t build that app,” or “I can’t launch that website,” or “I don’t have the technical skills.”
That excuse is now obsolete.
If you can describe a problem in detail and if you can use natural language to explain what you want, the AI can build the solution. (Side note: These AIs train on what you feed them. So please, don’t paste your client’s Social Security numbers.)
You don’t need to be a genius. You don’t need to learn C++. You just need to be the human who connects the dots.
Drew Thompson is the head of agent performance and head coach at Real. Connect with him on Instagram and LinkedIn.
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