Agents

Guy Gal (yes, that is his real name) the CEO and Co-Founder of Side, the only real estate brokerage that exclusively partners with top producing agents to create, grow, and power their businesses. Prior to Side, he founded three successful companies—Kingmaker, Biz, and Kognitive. A tech entrepreneur, innovator, and angel investor, Guy is an advisor to Vidyard, a YCombinator top 100 company, and was also an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Matrix Partners. Today, Guy is dedicated to transforming the best real estate agents into market-leading businesses. He believes that the future of real estate is local, boutique, specialized, and agent-owned.

Edward Wu is a successful tech entrepreneur and CTO and Co-Founder at Side. Ed heads up the engineering team, developing and implementing best-in-class, proprietary agent and broker technology solutions. His goal is to help agents streamline processes and save time so they’re able to focus on high-value facetime with clients. Prior to Side, Ed was the Co-Founder at Vidyard, an online video platform for businesses. Ed is also a proud alumnus of Silicon Valley startup incubator, Y Combinator.

As Side’s Chief Broker Officer and Co-Founder, Hilary Saunders knows firsthand the growing pains associated with opening your own brokerage. Following a successful career in real estate litigation, Hilary leveraged her customer-service focused nature working as a Broker Associate with Coldwell Banker. In 2012, her entrepreneurial spirit led her to open a boutique brokerage in San Francisco, as well as a law firm focused on estate planning and real estate transactions. At Side, Hilary’s mission is to ensure all Side partner agents have access to top-tier customer service, business management, legal, and brokerage teams to accelerate their success.

Kristopher Taylor is a Bay Area executive known for scaling high-growth technology companies. An expert in working with venture-backed businesses, Kris has raised over $200 million in growth capital. His experience prior to Side includes leadership roles at successful start-ups including Boomtrain, Jibe, and Bonobos, each of which were acquired. In his free time, you’ll find him cooking, frequenting his favorite Sonoma wine clubs, traveling, or tackling home renovation projects. Kris is also a four-time AIDS LifeCycle participant and has two golden retrievers (Lizzie and Davey) who frequent our San Francisco headquarters.

A veteran technology sales executive, Bryan Smith brings a track record of success in emerging business and startup environments to his role as VP of Partnerships at Side, where he heads up the Ambassador team. Prior to Side, he built and scaled a successful sales organization (from three representatives to over 170 sales, service, and business development employees) at LoopNet, the #1 online marketplace for commercial real estate. At LoopNet, he was also instrumental in growing revenues from $3MM to $90MM+, and played a pivotal role in a rare double-exit event (IPO and acquisition). In addition to a passion for leadership, Bryan’s interests include investing, consulting, advising, teaching, and coaching youth sports.