When Dave Gooden and Cameron Henkel founded a brokerage for lakeshore properties in Minnesota and Wisconsin more than a dozen years ago, they had only a website they named LakePlace.com. The business grew, expanded and evolved and LakePlace.com now has 18 locations including 12 brick-and-mortar offices (five are franchise-owned) and six satellite offices. With nearly 100 agents, the company is one of the largest independently owned real estate brokerages in the state, and about one-third of its transactions are nonlakeshore residential properties.
Today, Gooden and Henkel, who met in Mrs. Braski's kindergarten class in Eveleth, Minn., in 1976, are going virtual once again. They have launched DaneArthur.com, a stripped down, bare-bones real estate website that includes property listings, including residential, land/farms, commercial and multifamily from every Multiple Listing Service in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Its singular aim is simplicity. So, in a digital jungle of real estate websites built and managed by the most powerful real estate companies in the world, we asked Gooden and Henkel to explain their motives.
Q: What's the idea behind Dane Arthur?
A: When we stepped back and asked ourselves what our favorite websites are and why, our list was filled with utility-type websites that give us what we want quickly, not websites with huge pictures or videos playing on the homepage.
Q: What was the inspiration for the site?
A: It's pretty obvious that Craigslist, with over 49 million monthly users, significantly influenced our design choices. We wanted to build something familiar to the masses. Something where the next step is obvious. Craigslist gives you what you want and gives it to you quickly; it's just simple to use and we love that about Craigslist and how intuitive it is to use. We are trying to do the same thing for real estate with DaneArthur.com.
Q: Who was Dane Arthur?
A: Dane Arthur, which is the combination of our two middle names, sounded more prestigious than CamDave.com.