Sydney brothers Frank and Jacques Greeff, who sold real estate marketing platform Realbase to Domain in 2022, are building their next company, AI productivity tool Kinso, with a marketing-first approach that the founders say drew 39 million views in a single month.
The strategy inverts the usual software playbook of building a product first and marketing it later. The Greeffs have instead treated distribution as the core asset from the start, with staff across the company publishing content, a model more common in media businesses than in software.
The previous exit
The Greeff brothers, Frank, Jacques and Ken, started out with a signboard business. “Realbase started as a signboard company… out of our lounge room,” Frank Greeff told The AI Report. That business became Realbase, which Domain acquired in April 2022 for $180 million upfront plus up to $50 million in contingent payments, Real Estate Business reported.
The product
Kinso is an AI tool that pulls a user’s messages, conversations and contacts into one searchable place, pitched as a second brain for founders and operators. Frank Greeff has said leading venture capital firms passed on the company, and the brothers are funding it themselves.
The distribution bet
According to the founders, they have spent about $550,000 marketing Kinso. The 39 million monthly views they cite works out to roughly 50,000 views an hour.
The content is not limited to the founders. Kinso’s engineer, chief of staff and sales lead also post, so each role has its own audience and storyline. Frank Greeff has spoken on the Day One podcast about building distribution before the product, and about filming 20 videos in a row to build volume. He told The AI Report that early on, founders need to get “tonnes of reps on the board”.
The brothers’ stated goal, as reported, is to become two of the best-known names in Australian business within five years.
Jack’s take
The old playbook was build first, market later. The Greeffs are betting the other way: build the audience while building the product, and treat attention as the moat. It’s working for attention so far, and the next couple of years will show whether it turns into a big software business.