G. Austin Allison
As president and chief executive officer of DotLoop, G. Austin Allison is responsible for setting and implementing the strategic direction of the company and ensuring that
DotLoop provides cutting-edge technology and innovative solutions to its clients.
Austin's combination of life and work experiences has shaped his successful business career. In addition to contributing to the development of several start-up businesses and non-profit organizations, he is a licensed realtor in the State of Ohio, and practiced commercial real estate leasing and development for a publicly-traded real estate investment trust. He founded The DotLoop Company after being burdened by the inefficiencies that existed in every real property sale or purchase.
Austin is leading DotLoop's quest to secure its position as a technology innovator and solutions provider for a variety of industries, with an initial focus on real estate. DotLoop's web-based software propels the real estate industry's embracement of technology for better client service and results. The product promotes a significant amount of savings in the form of time and money for brokers and real estate agents, and advances corporate environmental contribution by becoming more Green-friendly through the reduction and eventual elimination of paper waste.
Implementing DotLoop helps reduce the amount of fuel burned by agents and their clients when having to drive multiple trips to initial documents. It also reduces the user's carbon footprint allowing professionals to do more work from home. Additionally, it eliminates excess document storage costs.
Mr. Allison earned his B.S. in Construction Management with minors in Architecture and Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude at the top of a nationally-ranked program. He is currently pursuing a J.D. at University of Cincinnati College of Law as an Honor's Scholar.
As a rising star in the technology industry, he is frequently sought after by local and national trade organizations to provide fundamental real estate and entrepreneurial advice and education. As a longtime member of the University of Cincinnati community, he is often called upon to speak to and mentor students in the University's technology and entrepreneurship programs. His commitment to leadership excellence and his passion for helping young entrepreneurs contributes to his personal goal of contributing to a sustainable business community. Austin was recently featured as one of Ohio's most talented young entrepreneurs in Columbus CEO Magazine.
Austin is an avid volunteer and encourages DotLoop and its employees to contribute time and service to the communities where they live and work. He is currently involved with numerous charitable organizations, but spends the majority of his time with Habitat for Humanity and the Mr. Bob Foundation, a non-profit established by Austin to provide books for elementary-age students in need.
Posted By: G. Austin Allison
Posted: 2/18/2010
When DotLoop travelled to San Diego for its national debut during the National Association of REALTORS Conference back in November, we got a lot of surprised reactions when we told them that we were from Cincinnati.
"Wow", they'd say. "I didn't realize Cincinnati had any tech companies."
The funny thing is, of course, Cincinnati has plenty of tech companies (the ubiquitous
ShareThis was founded here; their satellite office is in San Francisco) and has several Fortune 500 companies right here in town. Cincinnati is in the nation's Top 10 markets for number of Fortune 500 headquarters per million residents, and is home to several of the most prestigious universities in the world. In fact, the Queen City is one of the best business environments right now in America and was recently voted the third best housing market in the country.
Cincinnati has a lot going for it. The recent Soapbox
article on the bevy of illustrators in the area and its recent spotlight of
Sculpco go to show you how underground a lot of our treasured businesses are. Cincinnati has plenty of bragging rights, but doesn't wear it on its sleeve. Hopefully, we can all help change that perception.
DotLoop is proud to call Cincinnati home and is excited to join the ranks of businesses such as P&G and Macy's who do the same. We will be just one more voice championing our fine city, so when we arrive at the 2010 NAR Conference later this year, those who don't know how excellent this city is will say, "Cincinnati - I heard that's a great place for business."
Posted By: G. Austin Allison
Posted: 2/17/2010
When I began my business, I just wanted to solve a problem. I didn't know others had already tried. Luckily, DotLoop's solution was not only easier, it was better.
We designed DotLoop specifically to overcome the challenges of the traditional real estate negotiation process. Real estate is one of the last industries to still be using such antiquated technologies as fax machines and Bic pens. And, with today's Green Revolution, wasting mounds of paper just to complete a transaction is not only wasteful, it's downright ignorant.
Other online real estate negotiations software companies have been tried before. There's form software out there to create PDFs and there's separate electronic signature software out there to allow users to get rid of their pens, and there's even client management software to help track your clients and offers. But they are all cumbersome and none of them really work together seamlessly.
So we knew we were onto something when agent after agent would tell us how much better DotLoop worked compared to everything else they've tried.
The secret was to not change the process for getting things done, but to change the tools. In that regard, DotLoop marries the technology with the traditional, allowing people to do things the old-fashioned way, in a whole new way. Much like online banking changed the way you pay your bills, but didn't change the underlying need for transferring money, so too does DotLoop change the way the real estate industry collaborates and negotiates, but doesn't get rid of the need for either.
So now, instead of agents fighting traffic to meet a client in a parking lot in order to initial some minor change to a contract, or faxing illegible copies of contracts over and over again, the same back and forth can take place online. This makes for a single clean, secure, and trackable contract that can be adjusted and approved from anywhere on the globe. And it wastes less paper and ink to boot.
It hasn't been easy, but then again, anything worth doing right never is.
Allison shares how DotLoop just might change perceptions of Cincinnati's innovative capacity in Thursday's blog.
Posted By: G. Austin Allison
Posted: 2/16/2010
Every entrepreneur's dream starts with a problem. The trick is to solve the problem.
Like every other real estate agent in the world, I was chasing down buyers and sellers to get paperwork signed, dividing my time between tracking down clients and organizing mounds of paper. I would find myself having to re-write ten-page contracts two or three times just to make it legible. My clients worked during the day, so I would spend my evenings tracking them down to get signatures and initials, using the trunk of my car as an office desk.
In a world of e-mail, Facebook, and text-messaging, it seemed crazy to me that we were still faxing documents. Fax? What's that?
I knew that this antiquated way of doing business was a problem. There had to be a better way.
So, I went about solving the problem. I sought out the best and brightest partners, surrounded myself with people smarter than me, and forged our company’s path to create DotLoop, the world’s first and only online, collaborative transaction environment for real estate. Now, our system is being used by some of the largest brokerages in the region and we are expanding across the nation at a pace I could never have dreamt of.
But it all started with a problem.
And with every problem comes the opportunity to either solve the problem, or walk away. Luckily for me, I couldn’t walk away and a business was born.
Learn how DotLoop revolutionizes real property transactions in Wednesday's blog!