Blue Stream Analytics Company Profile (2026)

[00:00] She's a top broker in Minnesota already. Her secret power is the software she built for herself. Blue Stream Analytics generate over $4,000,000 in deal value for her in 2022 of which she keeps 3% up. So call it $120,000 there of commission. Now she has been frustrated investing over a $100,000 of her own money in the engineering on our third iteration, but you know what? Now it's working. It's paying for itself. And the only question is, [00:21] who should she start selling this to? She wants to sell it to other folks, other brokerages, but also doesn't wanna lose the advantage it brings her. We'll see what she does next. Hey, folks. My guest today is Maureen McGarry. She is the she's a realtor and broker since 1995, passionate about working with investors and developed Blue Stream Analytics for software companies. Proprietary software that pinpoints investments and delivers analytics quickly. As a market leader in residential investing, [00:44] she's eager to help investors succeed in reaching their goals. Maureen, you ready to take us to the top? Sure. Absolutely. So so how do you decide to go from, you know, making 6% commissions to you going, you know what? I want I want software margins instead. Let me build software. [00:57] >> That's a good question. It was pure frustration, you know, trying to find investment property for my clients and sitting there with spreadsheets punching numbers, you know, after a few hours of that, you start pulling your hair out. And when you have clients sitting there with hundreds of thousands of dollars saying, find me something and you can't get through the properties fast enough, I literally just one day said, has to be a faster way to do this. [01:24] >> And that's where the idea was born. So I never intended to be a software developer, but that's that's what happened. [01:31] Now is Blue Stream does it have customers or are you the only customer? You use it to support your customers? [01:37] >> Right. So I developed it to support my customers, but then the word got out. And so now we're we're working to, spread it around to other parts of the country and, get it out there to other realtors and eventually other investors so that they can use it too. [01:54] But right now, just you? [01:55] >> Just us. Yes. [01:56] Okay. Alright. Help me understand a little bit about sort of when you made a decision to start writing the code. So you you got into sort of this space in 1995. When did you write the first line of code for Blue Stream? [02:07] >> So we started the the initial code probably let's see. I have to think, like, to COVID. [02:21] 2020? [02:22] >> No. It was probably 2017. [02:25] 2017. [02:26] >> 2017. Yeah. So we you do? [02:29] Did you code it yourself? You learn how to code or you hired No. [02:32] >> No. I I learned the hard way how to get your ideas out of your head to a developer. You know, I had to go through that whole process of learning how to explain to a developer exactly what I wanted to do. And so we had a software that was working for us but it didn't really have a user interface. And so then I learned what a user interface was. Yeah. So that's where we started and [02:55] Who'd hire? I mean, how did you find a first engineer? [02:59] >> Well, interviewed a lot of engineers and security was a big thing for us because as it turned out, obviously, we couldn't find anybody else that was doing this. So we wanted to make sure we had somebody we could trust and that was not as easy as we thought. [03:14] >> So we ended up hiring somebody that was related to me and that was great because I 100% trusted him and we worked with him for a couple of years until he had some health issues and then we went with another recommendation that we had that we're working with now. [03:31] So you source these folks directly yourself? You went on LinkedIn, etcetera? [03:35] >> Right. Right. Yeah. [03:36] Okay. My husband wanted to learn software world. [03:39] >> So he helped and he he kinda guided me too. [03:43] Well, learned You said your husband is from the software world and sort of helped you find the first engineers? [03:48] >> Yeah. Kind of kind of I could talk through, you know, what to look for, what questions to ask, that kind of thing. If I had specific questions on what, you know, what I needed to to be aware of. Yeah. That helped a lot. [04:01] I mean, the the thing with a lot of folks make mistakes here because it's just you're speaking a different language. So you end up spending a bunch of money on a spec that isn't what you need, then you have to fire that person, and the next person needs to start from scratch because they have know, they wanna build on Python instead of SQL or whatever. Right? It's a whole different set. I mean, how did you go [04:17] through these iterations? And, I mean, I don't wanna ask this question. I hope it's no dollars, but how much money do you feel like you wasted sort of before you figured it out? [04:25] >> We're on the third revision of this software. I I would say we probably have a 100,000 into it that was a waste. [04:34] Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect [04:58] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [05:22] get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation. Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is [05:44] not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [06:10] going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but [06:32] if you wanna check this tool out, you if wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into [06:58] the interview. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, look, it's a waste, but also you sorta needed to do that to learn. Right? [07:03] >> Right. Yeah. It's it was it was a process. Because of what we're doing and how we're doing it, it it was tricky to put it together too. Mhmm. Mhmm. [07:13] Yeah. So what percent of your time last year was spent on the traditional brokerage business versus trying to build software company? [07:21] >> I would say [07:25] >> probably a third of my time was just on software. And a lot of that was just making contacts, finding data. Because expanding it nationwide means finding the right data to do that. And that took a while. And then I also but I also used [07:41] some What does that mean? You're identifying sources for the engineer to build into the tool? [07:46] >> Yes. Yes. Okay. One of the one of the pieces that I use here in Minnesota, which is where I am and by the way, today is a snow day, so I'm working from home because we got this much snow. The [07:58] >> we have a direct feed of the MLS coming into our system. So if you've ever worked with the MLS, which I don't know that you have, there's I think 500 or 600 MLSs in the country. And you can't just go in and sign up for that and get that data feed. You have to be licensed in that area. You have to jump through all kinds of hoops. It's not easy to do. So tracking that source down [08:21] >> and figuring out how to expand to multiple markets is not easy. Yeah. So that was spent a lot of time on what pieces do I need to put all this together so that when we roll it out into other markets, we're ready to go. [08:35] Well, so how do you do that? I mean, don't you you either have to sort of figure a way to scrape it or have a local contact in every area who's got all the certifications to get you direct access. And in that case, why do they need Blue Stream? Why don't they just use the the the the MLS? [08:48] >> Well, the first to answer that question, the MLS doesn't analyze anything. It just you just punch in how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, blah blah blah do I want. What our software is doing is what an investor wants. They want to know what their cap rate. They want a specific cap rate out of a property. They want a property that's going to be a good rental. They want to know what the rental rate is going to [09:07] >> be. They want to know what their net income is going to be after they pay their expenses. You know, they want a vacancy rate built in. That's what our software does. So it's it's it's much more advanced than anything you're gonna get out of the MLS. [09:20] How would you compare yourself to some of these tools that are using Airbnb and VRBO data as their data source to get to cap rate around to Arabic and see rate? You know, tools like AirDNA for example. [09:31] >> Well, AirDNA is is a really cool tool if you wanna do short term rental, know, because it because you can go in and you can look around kinda like Zillow, what's going on. But what ours does is it says, Okay, here's all the properties that are for sale in the market. And let's say you want to buy a rental. And this is your budget, this is how much you're putting down, this is your interest rate, this [09:53] >> is the kind of return you want. These are your goals as an investor. That's what I'm putting in to it. It's going out and it's looking at 10,000 properties and it's saying, here are the best eight properties for you. These are the ones that will produce the best return based on what you want. These will meet your criteria. So it's not you're not going in and sorting through hundreds of properties. It's doing all that for you [10:19] >> in a matter of seconds. So for an investor to be so for a realtor, for instance, to be able to go into a market and find a property, find properties like that for investors, there's nothing like that out there. It's a game changer. [10:33] Yeah. So so when do you think that you will be able to release this to the market and start signing up paid paid paid customers? [10:40] >> I'm hoping by this summer. Mhmm. [10:42] Mhmm. And I guess why have you you know, learning when to sort of quit is also just as valuable as learning when not to quit. Right? So, like, how much time and budget have you given yourself before you say, you know what? I'm gonna go back to making whatever you make at the brokerage and just focus on that. [10:58] >> When am I gonna quit? I'm I don't know. I'm I Right now, I think I'm at the age where I just want to see if [11:04] I can do it. I like that. You like a challenge? [11:07] >> Everybody that I show it to I have a coach that I'm working with who's great. His name is Carl Gould. And Carl, he said, alright, go out and show it to, you know, do 10 sales calls, do 10 Zoom calls, whatever. And I did like, I don't know, ten, fifteen, 20 of them. Every single person was like, how do I sign up? Mhmm. And I finally had called my I can't You try and get him to sign [11:30] >> up? [11:31] Do you send him an invoice to sign up? [11:32] >> But I'm not in their market yet. [11:34] >> You know? So I Well, yeah. [11:35] But why look. Your friends are all gonna say yes. I mean, why not? [11:38] >> These were friends. These were people in other markets. [11:41] But my my point is why not, like, lock them in? Right? If they're saying yes on a Zoom call, why not follow-up with an invoice and say, here, pre commit to paying? [11:48] >> Right. Right. Right. Right. We can do that. We can do that. But my point was everybody that sees it. [11:53] I have yes. I have a list [11:54] >> of people that want it. Absolutely. [11:56] No. But my point is though is, like, when we do these user research calls, people will say yes to your face on Zoom. When you follow-up with an invoice and ask them to sign committing to $200 a month for twelve months, then pedal goes to the metal. They tell you the real truth. Have you gotten people to sign invoices? [12:10] >> I have not got them to sign invoices. No. No. But I have a list of people that want it when they when we're in their market. Right. [12:16] How did you decide who to get on the phone call to sort of show it to? [12:21] >> Different connections. I I I had different realtors that I knew and then they referred me to other people. I reached out to different markets. I asked different people I know in different I know a lot of entrepreneurs so I would ask different entrepreneurs in different markets. I have clients in different states. So [12:38] And and what's your burn? I just wanna understand how much like how much pain you're feeling here, but until you get it released to the market. I mean, are you spending per month right now in engineering cost to keep building this thing? [12:48] >> Well, right now we're not spending much until we get ready to expand it to the different markets. I think to keep it going in our market, it's not much. It's maybe 1,000 a month. Okay. But we use it within our brokerage. Yep. Once we get it out to the other markets, then it will depend on which markets we're in and what data we're pulling and that type of thing. Yep. We need need more than that. [13:13] To increase revenue at the brokerage? Like, can you quantify how much sale can you quantify how much sales last year came from the software the software identified? [13:22] >> I had yeah. I had so just working part time on sales, I had almost 4,000,000 from the software. [13:31] In closed deals? [13:32] >> Yes. Of which [13:33] you would make, what, 3% of or 6% of? [13:36] >> Well, I I figure 3% on those. Yeah. [13:40] Okay. Got it. Got it. You could say the software generated a $120,000 of revenue for you last year, 3% of 4,000,000. [13:46] >> Right. Right. [13:47] Okay. So maybe it's maybe you've actually already recouped everything you've spent on this on the software. [13:52] >> Oh, absolutely. I have. Yes. Yes. Yeah. If you think about like [13:56] that your own dog food. We love that. [13:58] >> I didn't think of it that way, but, yeah, that's true. [14:01] That's the best way to build a software product. Right? I mean, if it's working for you, then the question becomes, well, wait. Do you even want other people to have this, or do you wanna use it just as your secret tool to build your brokerage to be the biggest? You know? [14:11] >> Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. It works. It it works great. I mean, you know, if you get on a Zoom call with a with an investor, you know, I had one that had to quickly within thirty days buy a $1,500,000 for a $10.31 exchange in single family homes. No brainer. Ten minutes later, we're signing a contract. [14:30] How do you decide though? I mean, it sounds like this is a powerful tool that's an unfair advantage for you to build the largest brokerage Minnesota? If that was the case, you wouldn't wanna sell this to anybody. [14:41] >> There's not a lot of realtors who do investment. [14:46] >> The the honestly, there's a lot of education that needs to happen in the real estate world for this to be a great tool. So there's only certain realtors that are going to invest in the time and the energy to to learn how to do this. [14:59] But my point is if you sell this to a bunch of people in Minnesota, do you lose its advantage? Do you lose the advantage? [15:07] >> I think there's plenty of you know, I think we would limit it to different markets, you know, different zip codes and areas. Yeah. I mean, we're not gonna sell it to, you know, everybody that wants it. But Minnesota doesn't have as much rental as a lot of other markets. Don't have as many MLSs here. You know, say Florida, they have like 15 or 20 MLSs. So it's a much bigger much bigger market down there. [15:36] Well, Maureen, we're out of time though for today. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book. [15:43] >> I'm reading Profit Before People right now. I like that. [15:50] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [15:55] >> No. But I have a lot of friends that are CEOs, other entrepreneurs. So I I rely on that group a lot. [16:02] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Blue Stream Analytics? [16:08] >> No. I'm kind of a numbers geek. I would say Excel. [16:11] >> Yep. [16:12] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [16:15] >> It ranges from two to eight. [16:17] Okay. Fair enough. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [16:21] >> Twenty six years married. [16:23] Wow. [16:24] >> Three kids. Wow. Amazing. One almost 18. [16:28] That's exciting. And do you mind me asking how old you are? [16:32] >> I am 50. [16:33] >> 50. Fair enough. [16:34] 50 she's 50 years young, folks. Maureen, last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? [16:42] >> Study business and software. Guys, [16:46] she's a top broker in Minnesota already. Her secret power is the software she built for herself. Blue Stream Analytics generate over $4,000,000 in deal value for her in 2022 of which she keeps 3% up. So call it $120,000 there of commission. Now she has been frustrated investing over a $100,000 of her own money in the engineering on our third iteration, but you know what? Now it's working. It's paying for itself. And the only question is, [17:08] who should she start selling this to? She wants to sell it to other folks, other brokerages, but also doesn't wanna lose the advantage it brings her. We'll see what she does next. Maureen, thanks for taking us to the top. [17:16] >> Thank you. [17:17] One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on three hungry buyers. They try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it. And the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM [17:42] Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big [18:04] fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign [18:26] up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We [18:46] got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.