70% of the Data You Buy Is Already Dead Before You Use It with Alicia Jarrett
Alicia Jarrettis a former real estate investor turned data infrastructure founder who spent a decade fixing and flipping homes from Australia, running vacant land deals, and building a data and marketing company before launching Sifter Solutions Inc., a platform sitting at the intersection of data aggregators and the apps that use them. Based now in Florida after relocating from Australia, she brings a decade of operator experience to a company purpose-built to solve a problem she lived firsthand: the real estate industry wastes between 50 and 70 percent of the $30 billion it spends annually on data because nobody is managing that data once it's bought.
In this conversation with host John, Alicia breaks down what Sifter does across three layers — data processing as a service, AI-powered record verification through a product called Sifter Truth, and blockchain infrastructure for tokenizing real world assets — and why every piece of it traces back to a simple belief: if you don't trust the data, you shouldn't be buying it. She also goes deep on entrepreneurial pivoting versus shiny object syndrome, why your North Star matters more than any strategy, and what she sees happening in the real estate market over the next six to nine months. If you're a real estate operator who's ever bought a list and wondered whether it was worth anything, this conversation will change how you think about data forever.
Episode Highlights
[0:41] – Host John introduces Alicia Jarrett, now living in Florida after a decade of real estate investing from Australia
[1:56] – How Alicia thinks about her business journey: not a series of new starts but a decade-long evolution from fix and flip to vacant land to data and finally to Sifter Solutions
[3:49] – Why a decade of doing real estate deals yourself makes you a fundamentally better product builder for the people still doing them
[5:13] – Alicia's take on what failure actually means for an entrepreneur and why pivoting is a skill set that takes real courage to develop
[6:28] – The difference between shiny object syndrome and a true strategic pivot and how a clear North Star is the only reliable filter between the two
[8:08] – Why some people chase the next thing not because of opportunity but because they can't tolerate difficulty — and what that pattern costs them
[9:06] – How Sifter is built on three pillars: big data, AI, and blockchain, and why Alicia's job is not to be the expert but to find the people who are
[11:45] – The $30 billion problem: how much the US real estate industry spends on data annually and how much of it gets wasted because no one manages the lifecycle
[13:05] – What Sifter's platform does before you buy data: analytics, fall-through rates, assessed value versus sale price, and FHA/VA/conventional splits so you know what you're purchasing
[14:55] – How Sifter sits in the middle of data aggregators and marketing systems to manage compliance, skip tracing, DNC checks, refresh cycles, and CRM delivery
[16:29] – Sifter Truth: the AI-powered truth layer being built to verify individual records, and why a verified data record could soon be worth far more than the $0.05 to $0.10 people pay today
[19:11] – Web2 versus Web3 in plain English and why blockchain puts the data consumer in control of access, payments, and smart contract management for the first time
[20:11] – How Sifter's partnership with TX (formerly Solar) is tokenizing every US property across 2,000 data points per property to lay the groundwork for DeFi real estate lending
[26:23] – Alicia's three-part framework for deciding whether a business pivot is real: who does it help, how big is the problem at scale, and do you have the skills or support to actually execute
5 Key Takeaways
Your North Star is what separates a pivot from a distraction.Shiny object syndrome doesn't hit people with a clear direction and strong internal resilience. It hits people whose vision isn't defined clearly enough to anchor them when things get hard.
If you don't trust the data, don't buy it.Between 50 and 70 percent of real estate data purchased in the US gets wasted because investors buy first and ask questions later. Understanding what data is telling you before you purchase it is the foundation of a smarter acquisition strategy.
Doing the thing yourself first makes you better at everything that comes after.Alicia's decade of running real estate deals from Australia is what separates Sifter from a software company that guessed at what operators need. Operator experience is a product advantage most tech builders never develop.
Pivoting is a skill, not a failure.Moving from one business model to another requires courage, self-awareness, and the discipline to carry your learnings forward rather than leaving them behind. People who call it failure are usually watching from the outside.
The market always has deals for people willing to work with it.Whether rates are rising or falling, divorces and deaths and financial distress still create motivated sellers. Investors who catastrophize over market conditions are often competing against the smaller group who simply adapted their strategy and kept going.
Closing Remark
Alicia Jarrett represents the kind of operator-turned-builder this industry needs more of: someone who lived the data problem, got tired of it, and built the infrastructure to fix it. If you're doing deals and wondering why your marketing keeps underperforming, the answer is almost certainly in how your data is being managed — or not managed — after you buy it. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure torate, follow, share, and review The PETE Podcastso more investors can learn how to build smarter real estate businesses.
