The journey from tracking properties in Excel to building Homi, and how the right timing, AI breakthrough, and real user needs created the perfect storm for a new category of real estate tools.
Kristian Elset Bø
Author
There I was, in 2022, staring at yet another Excel spreadsheet. Row 47 of my "House Hunting" workbook, trying to remember which property had the excellent school district versus the one with the suspicious smell in the basement.
Cell A47: "Address"
Cell B47: "Price"
Cell C47: "Notes: ??? Something about schools?"
I was exactly the kind of person who should have been good at organizing a home search—I'd spent years building software systems, managing complex projects, and thinking analytically. Yet here I was, drowning in the same chaos I'd later learn affects 63% of home buyers.
This isn't just my story. It's the story of how a persistent problem met its moment, and why sometimes the best startups aren't about having a completely original idea, but recognizing when technology has finally caught up to a challenge that's been waiting for a solution.
The Reality: Despite being a software engineer with years of experience building complex systems, I found myself using the same primitive tools as everyone else: spreadsheets, bookmarks, and hope. The problem wasn't a lack of technical skill—it was a lack of purpose-built solutions.
Let me paint you a picture of my 2022 house hunting process:
Monday: Find a Zillow listing. Screenshot it, add to Excel.
Tuesday: Partner sends me a Finn.no property via WhatsApp. Screenshot it, add to Excel.
Wednesday: Real estate agent emails three properties. Copy-paste details into Excel.
Thursday: Remember "that great place with the good commute" but can't remember which row it was in.
Friday: Spend 45 minutes scrolling through Excel trying to find the property for this weekend's viewing.
Sound familiar?
The spreadsheet looked organized from the outside:
But it was a house of cards. One wrong sort, one accidental deletion, and weeks of research vanished. The real problem? Excel wasn't designed for collaborative, visual, multi-stakeholder decision-making.
I realized I was fighting the wrong battle. The issue wasn't that I needed a better spreadsheet—it was that I was using a financial modeling tool to solve a human collaboration problem.
Here's where the story gets interesting. I actually tried to build a solution in 2022. I spent months working on what would become the first version of Homi.
The vision was clear: A collaborative platform where families could organize their home search, share properties, and make decisions together.
The execution was... impossible.
The technical challenges were overwhelming:
I shelved the project. The timing was wrong. The technology wasn't ready.
Failed Attempt: My first version in 2022 required manual data entry, custom scrapers for every listing site, and had unit economics that would never scale. Sometimes the right idea at the wrong time is still the wrong idea.
Fast forward to late 2023. Large Language Models had evolved from experimental technology to practical tools. I was working at Wordware, one of the hottest AI startups in Y Combinator, watching firsthand how LLMs were transforming industries.
That's when it hit me: The technology that killed my 2022 attempt had been invented.
Suddenly, everything that was impossible became possible:
But here's the crucial insight: I wasn't building AI for AI's sake. I was building the collaboration layer that real estate desperately needed, and AI happened to be the breakthrough that made it economically viable.
The Norwegian article about Estatelab resonated deeply because it captured something I'd been thinking about for years: sometimes the best problems to solve are the ones you've experienced personally.
Erik Brustad, Estatelab's founder, didn't set out to revolutionize commercial real estate management. He set out to solve his own frustration with Excel spreadsheets and manual processes. That personal connection drove the solution.
Similarly, I wasn't trying to "disrupt real estate" or "build the next unicorn." I was trying to solve a problem I'd lived with, researched for my master's thesis at NTNU, and failed to solve multiple times before.
The difference this time: I had the right technology, the right timing, and the right market conditions.
The Insight: Personal problems often become universal problems. When you've experienced the pain deeply enough, you understand nuances that market research misses.
When I started building Homi in earnest, I made a conscious decision: throw away everything I knew about how property management "should" work.
Instead of replicating spreadsheet functionality with a prettier interface, I asked a different question: How would you organize a home search if you were starting from scratch, ignoring all existing tools?
The answer was radically different:
The results of moving from spreadsheets to Homi were immediate and measurable:
Before (Excel + Chaos):
After (Homi):
But the real transformation wasn't just efficiency—it was outcome improvement. Users weren't just finding properties faster; they were finding better properties and feeling more confident about their decisions.
There are three key insights from this journey that apply to anyone building in a traditional industry:
If you're deeply frustrated with how something works, you're probably not alone. The Norwegian Estatelab story exemplifies this: Erik's frustration with Excel-driven property management became a solution for thousands of property managers.
My 2022 attempt failed not because the problem wasn't real, but because the technology wasn't ready. The timing difference between 2022 (manual extraction nightmares) and 2024 (AI-powered solutions) was the difference between impossible and inevitable.
It would have been easy to build "Excel for real estate" or "Airtable for properties." Instead, I threw away spreadsheet logic entirely and designed for the actual workflow users wanted.
Building solutions for problems you've experienced deeply ensures authentic understanding of user needs
Success often depends on recognizing when technology has caught up to persistent problems
Don't digitize existing processes—design new workflows that actually match how people want to work
Use AI to solve underlying technical challenges, not as the primary user interface
Reading about Estatelab's journey resonated because it highlighted something important about Norwegian entrepreneurship: we solve problems we've experienced personally, often starting with local markets before scaling globally.
Erik's experience managing Norwegian commercial properties led to insights about data management and automation that translate across markets. Similarly, my experience searching for properties in both Norway (on Finn.no) and the US (on Zillow) revealed that the organizational challenges are universal, even if the listing platforms are different.
This is why Homi launched as a global platform from day one. The problem doesn't change based on geography—only the data sources do. With AI handling the localization, we could focus on building the collaboration layer that works everywhere.
Global from Day One: By solving for multiple markets simultaneously, we discovered patterns in how people search for homes that were invisible when focusing on just one geography.
Today, Homi has grown from a solution to my personal spreadsheet chaos into a platform used by thousands of families, real estate professionals, and property investors globally.
But the journey isn't over. Every week, I see new ways the "spreadsheet mentality" still creeps into real estate workflows:
Each of these represents an opportunity to apply the same transformation: from isolated, manual, error-prone processes to collaborative, automated, insight-driven systems.
The story of moving from spreadsheets to Homi isn't just about real estate—it's about how traditional industries transform when the right technology meets the right timing.
The pattern is consistent:
This is happening across industries:
The companies that win in digital transformation aren't those that build the best technology—they're those that understand deeply how people actually want to work and then use technology to enable those workflows.
Maybe you're reading this and recognize yourself in my 2022 Excel nightmare. Maybe you have a process at work or in your personal life that feels like it should be simpler, more collaborative, more intelligent.
Here's what I'd tell you:
Start with the problem, not the solution. Don't ask "how can I improve this spreadsheet?" Ask "what am I actually trying to accomplish, and what would make it work better?"
Watch for technology timing. Sometimes the right idea at the wrong time is still the wrong idea. But keep revisiting problems you care about—technology moves fast.
Think collaboration-first. Most of our problems are human problems that need human solutions. Technical tools should enable people to work together better, not replace human judgment.
Embrace the iteration. My path from spreadsheet chaos to Homi involved multiple failed attempts, wrong turns, and dead ends. Each failure taught me something crucial about the problem and the solution.
The journey from spreadsheets to a real solution isn't straightforward, but for problems worth solving, it's always worth the attempt.
The Result: What started as a personal solution to spreadsheet chaos has become a global platform helping thousands make better home decisions. Sometimes solving your own problem is the best way to solve everyone's problem.
The Norwegian Estatelab story and my journey with Homi share the same foundation: recognize when you're fighting the wrong battle, leverage technology at the right moment, and build solutions that match how people actually want to work.
From Excel cells to AI-powered collaboration, the transformation continues. The question isn't whether your industry will be disrupted by better tools—it's whether you'll be part of building them or adapting to them.
Founder of homi and real estate enthusiast.
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