Innovator Network Recaps
August 2025: MLS Innovator Network Recap & Insights
1 day ago
By Arianna Marino
The MLS Innovator Network is an exclusive group of MLS and Association executives who meet monthly to discuss technology trends and hear pitches from leading PropTech companies.
On August 6, the Network welcomed two standout presentations: Voiceflip, bringing AI-driven support to members with “Ardi,” and DepositLink, a digital payments platform streamlining money movement across real estate transactions.
Voiceflip: AI Member Support
Kurtis Cicalo, CEO of Voiceflip, presented their flagship product to the network. “It sucks for members when they can’t get questions answered immediately,” he stated. Agents often work outside of 9-to-5 hours, and waiting for a callback (or leaving a voicemail) just doesn’t cut it anymore. That frustration inspired the creation of Ardi, a multi-channel AI assistant trained exclusively on MLS and Association-specific content.
Unlike other large language models, Ardi is built using private models trained only on your own data: what you upload or what’s crawled from your site. “If Ardi doesn’t know something,” Cicalo explained, “it’ll tell you it doesn’t have the answer. It doesn’t hallucinate.” The system is designed to be direct, trustworthy, and incredibly accessible. Ardi works across eight different channels—Slack, Teams, web chat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more—and responds in over 26 languages. It can be embedded into web portals as well, and works seamlessly across internal and member-facing channels.
The platform also allows organizations to tailor what information is available to members versus staff, maintaining control and relevance across use cases.
On average, Voiceflip customers see a 75% reduction in inbound support calls. Usage reports show not only what members ask and what’s answered, but also what Ardi couldn’t answer, giving staff insight into where to expand their knowledge base. That ongoing feedback loop is central to the model’s success: the more members engage, the smarter the system becomes.
Voice notes were also highlighted as a key feature, particularly popular with agents on the go. The system offers a good level of customization, allowing associations to change the AI assistant’s voice or even its accent to feel more familiar to agents. Implementation is fast. Voiceflip can spin up a new environment in about a week, followed by three weeks of testing. Data ingestion is flexible: websites, PDFs, spreadsheets, API feeds, and internal documentation are all fair game.
DepositLink: Secure, Streamlined Payments
Next up was Jay Rooney, CEO and Founder of DepositLink, who brought a personal origin story to his product. After more than 20 years as a top-producing agent and broker-owner in Boston, Rooney grew frustrated with the inefficiencies and liabilities of paper checks and bank wires. In 2016, he began building DepositLink to modernize how money moves in residential real estate.
DepositLink enables fast, secure digital payments for virtually every type of transaction: earnest money, commissions, buyer retainers, showing fees, and more. The platform supports both sales and rentals, and is completely free for agents and brokerages to use. For MLSs and Associations, it offers a revenue-sharing model that creates a new stream of non-dues income without requiring members to pay out of pocket.
Rooney walked through a live demo showing how agents can request payments in just a few clicks. They enter the amount, set a deadline, and send a co-branded request to the buyer. Payment requests can be split between parties if needed, and all activity is tracked in real time. The agent never handles routing numbers or account information; the system is secure by design. For the end user, the experience is fast, mobile-friendly, and requires only two steps to complete.
The platform is built to scale across teams of all sizes, with five tiers of access: Agent, Team, Office Admin, Company Admin, and Parent Company Admin. A company with multiple branches can view all transactions across its offices, and assign roles accordingly. Even national brokerages like Compass can segment control while maintaining full oversight.
Admins can track all incoming and outgoing payments, issue refunds in seconds, send money between accounts, or transfer commissions without ever touching a check. Refunds, often a hassle in traditional workflows, can be processed instantly with the proper permissions.
DepositLink offers live training for new clients, a responsive support team staffed with licensed agents, and a library of help guides and how-to videos. Onboarding takes just five to seven days, and companies can tailor the product for agents who focus on rentals, sales, or both. As Rooney put it: “We’ve built this to work for companies with two agents or 50,000. The goal is secure, instant, trackable money movement, for every deal.”
Member News:
Greg Manship: BeachesMLS has partnered with new products: Payload and Speculo.AI.
Michael Gazdzik: North Shore Barrington Association of Realtors is moving from Rapattoni after nearly 30 to Relevate One, as well as migrating and redesigning their website from Drupal to WordPress.
Jim Smoak: Stellar MLS’s New VP of MLS Services, Tim Casey, started with the company this month.
Pitch to the MLS Innovator Network
If you are a PropTech company with a product that impacts an MLS, Association, and/or their members and would like to present to the network, please apply to pitch here.