September 25, 2007

Terabitz To Expand Beyond Home Searches Today

Michael Arrington

30 comments »

Palo Alto-based Terabitz launched in July 2007 as a sort of Netvibes/Pageflakes for people searching for real estate.

A search on the site pulls up a basic Google map of the area and nothing else. But users can then drag in modules to add information - local foreclosures, recent sales, listed homes, schools, even fast food restaurants. Every module that is added by a user also adds the appropriate information to the map as well. It’s a very convenient way to get a feel for the neighborhood.

The original idea for the company came from seventeen year old Kamran Munshi, who is now a freshman at Cornell. His father, Ashfaq, ran with the idea and raised $10 million in funding. The company has 42 employees (12 in the U.S., 30 in India).

Later today the company is launching a new feature - the ability to create a map with various modules included and then embed it on another website. So any site that wants to add a Google generated map that includes, say, local businesses and restaurants (a hotel, for example) can now do so easily. The tool is free, but will be branded with Terabitz.

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  1. Fashion Network

    I didn’t really find it that useful myself…guess because I was just testing really didn’t need it for any type of project or actual solution.

  2. Eric Marcoullier

    $10M doesn’t buy you a whole lot these days.

  3. theSaint

    This trend of parents who claim their kids are founder is an annoying marketing gimmick.

    What’s a 15year old doing visiting real estate sites?

    Come on…

  4. Ian Bell

    I like the idea and the site. It definately needs some polish and more complete information. Some of the home information in various areas (especially here in Oregon) seems to be missing. I wouldn’t mind seeing a module from Zillow in there (unless they are viewed as a direct competitor).

  5. helge

    12 + 30 employees makes 42, not 32.

  6. Salaudin

    Quote from Michael Arrington:
    “The company has 32 employees (12 in the U.S., 30 in India).”

    Ehm, pssst, Michael, hey, 12 plus 30 is 42.

  7. Mike

    Not a bad idea but the information seems very incomplete. I tested it on my area and a lot of items are missing. For example, the house across the street from me has been for sale for several month, but doesn’t show up in the MLS listings.

    Needs work.

  8. Ted

    Mike Arrington fails math.

  9. David

    I agree with Mike. I think they need to do a better job with data validation. In addition to being incomplete, they also seem to show a fairly large number of listings for homes that are no longer on the market.

  10. Alan Wilensky

    “Ehm, pssst, Michael, hey, 12 plus 30 is 42.”

    that kind of old line thinking would never foster innovation here in the ‘valley’.

    WTF.

  11. vanG

    Eric Marcoullier is spot on. Yahoo paid $10m for a small java script widget site mybloglog.com with virtually no technology and a community that is lucky if it was more than 50k users.

    $10m doesn’t buy much these days.

  12. Erik Hersman

    I’m not sure how a second-rate real estate app like Terabitz gets written up 2x on TechCrunch in one summer. Mind boggling really, as there are a lot of other great innovative real estate apps out there that don’t get any attention.

  13. Andrew

    slow news day. Lame product.

  14. John

    So they are going to take google’s map data, add their own data (which looks like it gets scraped from someone else as well), and then re-brand it with their name? Sounds a little crooked to me. I like mashups and what they are doing from a user perspective, but when all your data is coming from other sources what do you really have? If I were one of the companies having their data scraped and used I don’t think I’d be too happy with that.

  15. Mark Madsen

    I like the d&d interface for different types of businesses along with the homes for sale / rent. I did run into bugs, like one pin on the map for all twenty data points when there should have been twenty, and as someone else mentioned the data quality isn’t that great. Showing 70% of the homes for sale isn’t that useful in a real estate search site. The data sourcing and quality is the part they need to spend time on. Liked the features but wouldn’t use it because of that.

  16. Startup News

    Ashfaq Munshi has a good track record .. infact back in da day he sold SpecialtyMD.com, for $110 million.

    Ashfaq Munshi is the CEO of Level5 Networks. Ash brings a unique mix of 20 years of entrepreneurship, engineering, marketing, and management experience to Level 5 Networks. In addition to his current CEO position at Level 5 Networks, Ash has founded four other Silicon Valley companies: Radiance, Vivecon (where he currently serves on the Board), SpecialtyMD (acquired by Ventro), and Commerce Engine (became Ariba).

    Earlier in his career, Ash served as a corporate vice president at Applied Materials, where he was responsible for software and automation. Prior to Applied Materials, Ash was Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Business Unit at SGI. Ash began his executive career at Oracle Corporation where he was director of development and marketing.

  17. mr obvious

    so…

  18. David G from Zillow.com

    Ian -

    Look closely at the Financing tab; Zestimate values are available via Zillow’s open API. More details on the API here: http://www.zillow.com/howto/api/APIOverview.htm

    Erik -

    Word!

  19. Mohan

    We are working feverishly to go region by region around the country and get property listings so that the site has accurate data. Today’s entry is about a toolkit that allows one to embed all the neighborhood and local information relative to a location on a webpage. By the way, we have licensed a variety of data from our partners.

  20. Ian Bell

    Thanks Erik!

  21. lawrence

    @3, lol - i agree

    but hey, alls fair in love and war.
    if it works for them, good for them.

  22. phenom

    Concept sounds similar to wikimapia
    http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

  23. cweeb

    Just checked TC40 for videos, nope, looks like Demo will have the videos out before TC, no surprise, the whole event was so poorly organized and executed

  24. cweeb

    Just to clarify, TC40 was a whopping success despite being poorly organized and executed…it just could have been so much more

  25. Eric Marcoullier

    @vanG I think it was more like 40K users at the time of acquisition. I think it was the 200M cookied users that set the valuation.

  26. Chris Jacobson

    theSaint: I couldn’t agree more. It makes me laugh everytime I see something like that.

  27. Ross

    Sounds like none of Erik’s ventures are getting any love………now what are they called again??

  28. Kristina

    Great stuff

  29. Mark

    Micheal-thanks for the post on a great product. I guess the TechCrunch crowd is little cynical and pissy! Anyway, they have raised 10M and spent maybe 4M. The widget world with drag and drop is the ultimate UI vehicle to display unlimited data on a Map and Terabitz has figured it out. Terabitz’s total above the fold view with ability to create unlimited bitz or widgets from unlimited data API’s is genius. There’s alot more to this site then meets the eye.

  30. Ah Yer!

    Thanks for this post. This is why I’m glad I read TechCrunch. Like so many others, I came with the wild hopes of getting featured, but stayed for the articles.

    These guys were off our radar totally. Their product is similar to that of a lot of US-based startups in the real estate market.

    Ironic that the Indians are doing a US startup, as we are moving into India next month. That’s the difference between rolling in ten million, and bootstrapping it (we have so far raised just over $1,000, from my ex-wife).