The fintech company I describe above had only engineers on its tech team; it had no marketing people and no loan officers who were actually in the trenches.
As a result, the company built awesome technology that impressed other engineers and ops people everywhere, but it did nothing to attract customers.
I see this issue all the time in both the real estate and mortgage industries, as companies pursue and offer technology solutions as panaceas without ever considering whether or not they will improve their business.
We have a “Tech Committee” at JVM that consists entirely of people who are in the trenches at JVM. We have this committee for two reasons: (1) we want to make sure every tech solution we offer actually makes things better for our clients – both agents and borrowers; and (2) we have been burned all too often by companies offering tech solutions that are actually only solutions for the sales reps selling them.
This is just another reminder to beware of too much reliance on technology panaceas.