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Fypio’s New App Introduces Twist to Real Estate ‘Matchmaking’

Michael Koh wants you to forget about the standard way of finding a home online. His business, Fypio, approaches the search from a different angle.

Instead of starting with parameters such as a ZIP code and the number of bedrooms, the Fypio smartphone app starts with personal preferences. It’s is kind of like Match.com, Koh said — except it’s for real estate.

The Fypio app lets people tag what they like about a home, such as a particular type of kitchen, proximity to great schools or tolerance for crime in a neighborhood. As the app learns the prospective buyer’s tastes, it might suggest other options. As time passes, Fypio gains a richer knowledge of its user.

Other real estate apps don’t take the buyer into account and concentrate instead on pushing information out, said Koh, Fypio’s CEO.

Koh and business partner John Kvasnic recently soft-launched the Fypio app in its first market — San Diego. The region is an excellent market to kick off the service, Koh said, since its neighborhoods range from the very affordable (Lemon Grove) to very expensive (Rancho Santa Fe).

Fypio (at http://fyp.io) is now available for iOS phones at the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) App Store. An Android version is coming soon.

So far Koh and Kvasnic have amassed $1.4 million to get the business off the ground. The partners individually put $100,000 into the venture, and then raised $800,000 to make $1 million in seed funding. More recently they took on $400,000 in angel funding. The business has yet to generate revenue.

The app’s other features include a unique glimpse into neighborhood character: It shows what the folks in a particular part of the city post to Instagram. And speaking of social media, the app lets people share home photos and comments with friends and family.

Kvasnic is based in Toronto, as are Fypio’s nine employees. Koh is the sole San Diegan.

Where might Fypio go next? Koh and Kvasnic are looking at Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside, Dallas and Washington, D.C.

Some have suggested that Koh might exit his business by selling to an existing real estate dot-com, such as Zillow. Koh has bigger plans.

“If we do it right,” he said, “Zillow won’t be able to afford us.”

• • •

Software for Smart Spectacles: The lines between the real world in front of you and computer-generated images are blurring.

A San Francisco-based company called ODG announced Sept. 18 that it plans to sell smart glasses powered by a high-end Snapdragon chip and Vuforia software, both products of Qualcomm Inc. It was one of the announcements timed to coincide with the Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) Uplinq conference Sept. 18-19 in San Francisco.

People wearing ODG glasses see computer-generated images in their line of sight, a concept called “augmented reality.” Vuforia software allows “interactive 3-D content to be visually aligned with the underlying world,” Qualcomm said, adding that Vuforia-equipped digital eyewear has applications in gaming, shopping, education and the work world.

Osterhout Design Group, or ODG, said in a statement that its augmented reality glasses are well-suited for government work, including security and emergency response. Such a tool has “innumerable applications for government and industry,” said CEO Ralph Osterhout.

• • •

Short Takes: Stockholm-based Ericsson said on Sept. 18 that it is getting out of the 4G LTE modem business, leaving the market open for other chip makers, notably Qualcomm. According to published reports, part of the challenge for Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERIC) is that manufacturers are putting modems in the same miniature packages as computer processors; Qualcomm offers that combination in its Snapdragon chip line. Earlier this year, Orange County-based Broadcom Corp. said that it was getting out of the modem business. Ericsson said that it plans to concentrate its resources on cell tower equipment, as well as little, highly localized cell network nodes called “small cells” … Catherine Mackey, who many people know as Kitty, has joined the board of advisers for Fhoosh, a La Jolla-based tech company which creates tools for filling out Web and PDF forms. Mackey is a former senior vice president and La Jolla site director for Pfizer Inc. and recently served as chairwoman of Connect. Fhoosh aims to help people manage the mountains of paperwork around high-stakes life events such as applying to college.

• • •

Hush, a company in residence at downtown’s EvoNexus incubator which plans to build the world’s first smart earplugs, plans a Kickstarter campaign in October. This comes on the heels of beating out five other companies and winning the pitch contest at EvoNexus’ Demo Day on Sept. 9.

Send San Diego technology news to bradg@sdbj.com.

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