Andrea and her team at Doorify KNOW how to put on an event, but I’ll admit, last Wednesday was ambitious even for them.
We invited the busiest, most skeptical group of people we could think of -the Top 100 brokers- to give us two hours. It was a risk. If we didn’t bring something with a punch we might look like idiots.
Would. Would look like a bunch of idiots.
Remember, we are the MLS, so this group is primarily accustomed to hearing from us about fines, or some rule they broke, or some inane droning newsletter about training they will never attend. So, an invitation to come out to an MLS event is analogous to “Reunion at the DMV”.
We get that. We earned it.
So, how did we get all those powerful brokers to come and stay until the end? Simple. We lured them with hints about secret files, business intelligence in a swanky, exclusive environment with a Top-Producer-Only crowd, plus exposure to the top specialists operationalizing AI in real life.
Most people think of MLS as a simple list of houses for sale, and we have been that, but these days MLS also has a wide spectrum of other data. The most valuable bit is the consumer preference data: buyer clicks, views, likes, shares, registrations, opens, and other events. Once by-products of MLS syndication this “by-product” may be the most valuable part.
Diamonds in the sawdust.
Oh and we promised snacks, and a bar. We are always up for snacks and a bar.
So, while they continue to evolve, this was the eighth event we have done like this, but it’s the first time we have invited the Top 100 crowd. We know there are many Proptech startups in the area and most of them need sandbox data, go-to-market advice, funding, sometimes help with forming a board, or recruiting a leadership team. Doorify is big in the Triangle, working with five local Realtor Associations and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Flagler School of Business internship program. But we are also part of a network of MLSs across the country who collaborate through organizations like CMLS and RESO and NAR’s REACH program.
For these events, we put out the call through our networks and online channels for early stage proptech entrepreneurs all the way through to post revenue companies scaling up. Then at the event we give them a chance to explain their value proposition to the brokers and investors present. And Doorify usually provides an update on the latest ways to access and use MLS data. They’ve been fun and we have met more local investors like Ideal Fund Partners and Riot Labs.
We have also helped at least one new company onto the market, EasyDigz. We met Michael at one of our first events and he had a product idea. After a couple of years of hard work his team launched their product on the Doorify marketplace in November 2025 and is currently scaling up.
At a recent event, a tech founder asked me if I wanted to invest in his start-up. I did. But I immediately felt something off in my “Integrity Meter”. It is not right for me to be the only person aware of this opportunity. This special inside knowledge of the next start-up with a hockey-stick-shaped growth curve could make me a lot of money. So, I decided to tell my Board, and my team, and the people in our market most likely, at least in my thinking, to be Qualified Investors capable of making these kinds of investments.
But I needed more than that. Yes we have four amazing companies each with that hockey-stick thing going on with at least one of their growth metrics. What can I give them that night that is SO valuable that they spread FOMO everywhere they talk about it? What is the most valuable thing we have that they might want? We thought about and came up with this:
Secret Files.
Our secret files contain “Five data-driven things you can do today to help your listings sell for more in less time.”
We came up with that one because of a new alignment of tech capabilities. FBS the makers of the Spark API and the Flexmls platform have changed the game with their release of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Their new MCP product is a friendly wrapper that sits in front of the long-dominant Spark API that makes twenty endpoints accessible from the natural language interface. TLDR; you can talk to it and it will give you quick and insightful answers without fiddling with the drop-downs and scrolling menu options.
FBS allowed us to release MCP access to thebrokers who attended our event, so we gave them all their access that night. I’ll include some screen shots with this post but most of it is too confidential to share. Each broker received a file their listings plus:
- Engagement Signals for all of their listings gathered from all of the top portals and proptech vendors: customer impressions, professional impressions, shopping cart saves, email opens, Click Through Ratios, and other measures of demand.
- For each listing, five specific recommendations to make that listing look more like the listings in the list of the Top 100 Listings by Engagement.
- The new DMI Score for each listing in the compilation, not just their own listings. The DMI is the Doorify Momentum Index and is a distillation of all of the signals into a number that shows how your listing is doing online compared to its competitors. Expressed as a Percentile.
So when the attendees to Wednesday night’s event got back to their offices, they had a file to study. The file was/is a JSON file containing the information I listed above. We encouraged them to download it and ask Claude (or ChatGPT) to import it, evaluate it, and migrate the data into their existing database. Once there, our recommended prompt was something like:
“Hey Claudia (may I call you Claudia?) I went to an exclusive event the other night put on by the good people at Doorify MLS (learn more about them at members.doorifymls.com). They gave me access to two new pieces of information they say will help me produce an even better result for my clients. They shared 1) access to the new Spark MCP server from FBS, and 2) a file with comprehensive engagement metrics from websites where buyers shop for property.
Import the new data using the MLS# to index the data into the information I already have on my inventory. Use the new information to learn what characteristics are present in the top listings that are missing in mine and give me detailed instructions to make the changes.”
We have a follow-up with them this Wednesday, a week after the event, to make sure they got traction. Next steps are to roll a report out to the Dashboard for all Subscribers with a production-ready version of this intelligence. We’ll take a minute to learn from our Top 100 early adopters and deliver that new and improved version.
That’s why we asked them to the rooftop, to learn from them. If we find some diamonds, they will benefit the most.
