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Community as Your Growth Engine: How Radius Agent Built a Tech-First Real Estate Platform Without Spending on Marketing

The conventional playbook for scaling a PropTech company typically involves raising massive amounts of capital and spending heavily on customer acquisition. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Radius Agent CEO Biju Ashokan revealed a counterintuitive approach: spending four years building a community before monetizing it.

While other PropTech companies were raising capital at “150X revenue multiples” and paying agents to join their platforms, Radius took the path less traveled. The result? A thriving platform with 85,000 agents, expansion into seven states, and 5X growth in a down market – all without spending “a dollar on marketing.”

The Anti-Pattern That Worked

Most tech-enabled real estate brokerages follow a predictable pattern. As Biju explains, they “wine and dine with agents and teams, even pay them to join a company.” Instead, Radius invested their first four years building and nurturing a community through their mobile app platform.

This wasn’t just about playing the long game. It was about fundamentally rethinking how to acquire customers in an industry where acquisition costs typically run high. “We have pretty very low acquisition costs because we haven’t spent a dollar on marketing,” Biju notes. “It’s just the agents in our community raise their hand and say they’re interested in using some tools.”

The Operating System Play

Rather than positioning themselves as just another tech-enabled brokerage, Radius made a strategic decision to become what Biju calls “shopify for real estate agents.” This positioning solved a crucial pain point in the market: agents’ need for independence within a supportive technology framework.

“If you’re an agent working for Compass, you need to use the Compass brand. But with us, that’s not the case,” Biju explains. By allowing agents to maintain their independent brands while accessing enterprise-grade tools, Radius created a unique value proposition that set them apart from traditional brokerages.

Building for the Real Customer

One of the most interesting aspects of Radius’s strategy is their approach to product development. While many tech companies build for early adopters, Radius deliberately targeted the mainstream market. “The typical real estate agent is like 45 to 50 years old and it’s a woman,” Biju points out. “We need to target that audience… we want to make tech so simple that anyone can use it.”

This understanding led to a crucial principle: don’t force technology on users. Instead, as Biju describes, “we would ask them what they want and we give them exactly what they need.” This user-first approach has shaped everything from their product development to their growth strategy.

The Feedback Loop That Drives Product Development

Perhaps the most valuable insight from Radius’s journey is their approach to product development. Rather than relying on traditional feedback mechanisms, they built it directly into their platform. “There is an audio and video conferencing application within our mobile app and web app,” Biju shares. “I love to get in those calls and see what they’re saying, because they’re basically giving me my next steps to build whatever I need to build next.”

This built-in feedback loop creates a virtuous cycle: better products lead to more community engagement, which leads to better products. It’s a stark contrast to the traditional approach of building features based on competitor analysis or market research.

Scaling Without Breaking

When scaling across states, many companies rush to capture market share. Radius took a more measured approach. “It takes about three months to get licensed and be ready to go, but we kind of approach it earlier than we want to be there,” Biju explains. “So if we want to get to Texas in three months, we would have done all the work three months ago.”

This methodical approach to expansion reflects a broader philosophy about scaling: “We kind of make sure any problem that is thrown at us, we have a tech solution so that it’s scalable. We don’t want to make a solution for just five people. We want to make it for 50,000 people.”

For B2B tech founders, Radius’s journey offers a masterclass in sustainable growth. Their success demonstrates that even in traditional industries, technology can be a powerful enabler when deployed thoughtfully and in service of clear user needs. The key isn’t just building great technology – it’s building it in a way that creates and nurtures community, drives organic growth, and scales efficiently without breaking.