Hiking along the 500-mile Camino trail in Spain last year gave entrepreneur Taylor Casey plenty of time to think.
After moving between Raleigh, Denver and Atlanta over the past several years, Casey had failed to find the perfect neighborhood that suited her lifestyle, so she chose to rent homes instead of buy.
A yearlong sabbatical in Europe and a cross-country hike gave Casey the time and space to develop her product idea: Cary-based startup Kahmino, an AI-based platform to match homebuyers with neighborhoods based on lifestyle preferences.
“If you are someone who wants to be a home buyer, who wants to move and relocate permanently, we want to make sure that you feel confident about that decision,” Casey said.
When looking to purchase a home, prospective buyers can use Kahmino’s AI services to filter neighborhoods based on their preferences. Buyers fill out a survey that asks them about their priorities. Questions include their typical weekend activities, their preference for a home’s character, and preferences for the quality of a school district, among others.
For example, a homebuyer looking for a historic bungalow in a good school district with trendy brunch options will have their preferences submitted to Kahmino’s AI model, yielding results that show neighborhood matches for that buyer.
“When it comes to Kahmino, we’re providing instant, personalized information that you can’t get from current real estate tools or sourcing on the internet,” Casey said.
After launching in March, Kahmino has since been awarded $10,000 from NC IDEA’s MICRO grant cycle, a program that gives project-based grants to young startups.
Casey said the NC IDEA partnership has helped Kahmino accelerate, not only from the grant money but also from the network that the program provides. Casey said she has been able to learn from the 15 other entrepreneurs in this grant cycle and bounce ideas off of them.
“NC IDEA has a wealth of experience to provide and a wealth of resources to assist with making sure that we’re building in the right direction,” she said.
Agents pay, not home buyers
The product is sold via subscription service to real estate agents, and it is free for home buyers to use.
Casey said she has received feedback from real estate agents that matching home buyers to neighborhoods used to be extremely time-consuming, and they often wouldn’t get the level of detail about neighborhood preferences that Kahmino provides. Now, this process happens instantly with each home buyer receiving personalized and detailed recommendations.
Looking forward, Kahmino will be partnering with a real estate brokerage firm in the Raleigh area. Casey said expanding their product to an entire real estate company will give Kahmino a wide range of users and new feedback about their product.
Kahmino is currently based in Cary, and Casey said she’s looking to soon expand Kahmino’s services across North Carolina. US News ranked Raleigh and Durham as the third-best place to live in the country, and Charlotte is ranked eighth, so Casey wants to tap into the market of home buyers as more people move to North Carolina. Anyone interested should contact the startup via email at neighborhoodmatch@kahmino.com.
On Spain’s Camino trail last year, Casey met many other hikers who, like her, sought self-discovery and the pursuit of their passions. Completing the 500-mile journey at the Atlantic Ocean, she felt confident in her plan to build her company.
“Camino” means “path” or “way” in Spanish, and now, Casey said, Kahmino helps home buyers find their way home to the community they love.
