46 BCBusiness march 2018 BcBUsiness.ca
personal experience concerning
safety. In 2013, Schutter, a Vancou-
ver agent with Re/Max Canada, was
showing an open
house when
t wo men
e n t e r e d ,
l o c k e d
the door
and tried
to at t ack
her. Bystand-
ers intervened,
but the incident stuck with Schutter.
"I thought to myself, 'Well, I'm
either going to leave this job and do
something different, or I need to
have a solution,'" she says at Re/Max's
Kerrisdale oˆces. "Obviously I have
tons of friends in this business, and
they've had numerous situations
where we've all thought to ourselves,
'Something needs to change.'"
So Schutter hired a group of male
software developers in their early 20s
to build an app that lets users connect
with their closest contacts and alert
them in unfamiliar or emergency sce-
narios.
PROtect combines mobile tech-
nolo‹y and personal networks to act
as a virtual security guard, and its uses
go well beyond the real estate indus-
try. "I have a 13-year-old daughter, and
she uses it almost every day," Schutter
says. "The youth that are striving for
independence, they want to take the
bus, they want to go with their friends,
but as parents we still live with this
nervous feeling that they're still little
girls out rolling around."
The app has only been on the
market for about four months, but
Schutter is already starting to step
away from the real estate business
to look after
PROtect (and the compa-
ny's 've other employees). Her con-
nection with Re/Max will probably
remain strong, though: the agency
has adopted the app for all of its real-
tors in Western Canada, with plans to
take it across the country and to head
oˆce in Denver.
"I had a chat today with the VP of
Re/Max Western Canada," Schutter
notes. "He said, 'You know, I don't
want it exclusive; at the end of the
day I want all the [other real estate]
brands to adopt this.'"
n
CFA Society of Vancouver
CFA Vancouver - 2018 Awareness Campaign - BC Business Ad
4/C
4.75" x 4.9375 – No Bleed
Prepared: January, 2018
C1723 BCBusiness Ad_Awareness
LET'S BUILD A
BETTER WORLD
FOR INVESTING.
LET'S MEASURE UP.
Let's do our part.
Let's start today.
Let's measure up.
A Difference
That Matters
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