Changing Industries through Innovation - Meet KytherID Technologies
Choosing where to call home is as much about the community you live in as it is about the home itself. Stephanie Jones, long-time Marquette resident and Realtor in the area, gets to enjoy helping individuals and families make it Marquette as they search for their home and community.
Beyond her role as Broker and Owner of NextHome Superior Living, Stephanie is now adding founder to her title and leveraging her more than 30 years experience in the real estate industry with her startup, KytherID Technologies.
KytherID seeks to transform the process of real estate transactions to mitigate fraud, errors, and discrimination that afflict many buyers and sellers. The technology operates as an overlay to the process of real estate transactions to keep buyer and seller information anonymous, ensure only the needed information is shared with necessary parties during the transaction process, limit errors, keep data protected, and prevent fraud.
Whether you’re a buyer or a seller, necessary information for the real estate transaction is uploaded into your KytherID Vault. As the transaction proceeds, buyer and seller information is kept secure and anonymous, so details are only shared on an as-needed basis throughout the complex transaction process.
By keeping real estate transactions secure and anonymous, KytherID addresses significant problems that Stephanie has witnessed in her experience as a Realtor.
“There are bad actors that are constantly trying to phish for people’s information to send them fraudulent requests for their payoffs and have them send the wire instructions to the wrong place instead of paying off the amount they need to buy the house. We see that happen even in the Upper Peninsula,” she explains.
What compelled Stephanie to reapproach the process of real estate transactions and create KytherID was something she witnessed with one of her clients. Back in 2024, when she was helping a couple find their forever home, she learned of the apprehension they felt submitting an offer for a home given they had names of the same gender. Though discrimination laws prohibit their offer being rejected on those grounds, they couldn’t help but worry about the perception and biases they may be faced with in the process that could prevent their offer from being accepted.
“It seemed absolutely surreal to me that people should worry about a real estate transaction because of the names on the purchase agreement,” Stephanie shares. “Whether it is a same-sex couple, someone whose last name might be different from those in the community they’re purchasing in, or whatever that perception of potential discrimination is, that has no place in real estate. We have fair housing laws to stop that, but there’s nothing that stops it emotionally. That’s what started KytherID.”
Since that instance which served as the catalyst for building KytherID, Stephanie has diligently worked to create a technological system that would genuinely improve her industry and the transaction process Realtors support.
She recognizes the endeavor of building a system like KytherID takes, and she’s taken an approach of collaboration and leveraging opportunities as they come to make her idea a reality. Her decades of experience in the real estate industry have built strong relationships which she leans on to help her create a system that’s effective for all parties involved–buyers, sellers, Realtors, and everyone in between.
As she’s gone on the journey of taking KytherID from an idea to a usable system, Stephanie has found Innovate Marquette SmartZone to be an excellent resource for her. In the aspects of building KytherID that require expertise beyond her real estate experience, Innovate Marquette has connected her with what she needs.
“Innovate keeps putting the right people in front of me to keep me going,” Stephanie says. “Building KytherID is so outside anything I’ve ever done or what I know to do. I just keep having meetings with the right people.” While KytherID is still in the development phase, Stephanie continues to make the right connections and take the right steps to making KytherID an essential part of any real estate transaction.
The idea for KytherID was formed right here in our community–inspired by those who do and seek to live here. Stephanie knows what great value the Marquette community holds and how meaningful it is to be a part of it. KytherID is meant to protect buyers and sellers in the real estate process and help anyone who seeks to be a part of this community–or any community–achieve that dream.
After all, Stephanie sees how the Marquette community makes room for everyone.
“When you go to a place like Blackrocks to get the pulse of our community, you don’t know if you’re sitting next to the CEO of a hospital, a plumber, a college student, or someone who just sold their multi-million dollar tech company,” Stephanie describes of Marquette. “And you don’t know because everyone’s there talking about what kind of bikes they ride and what kind of beer they like. And that’s my Marquette.”
A strong sense of community is what inspired Stephanie to create KytherID. And it’s KytherID that will help communities stay secure and welcome anyone who seeks to be a part of it.
To learn more about KytherID, visit https://kytherid.com/