Moving fastcame at the expense of foundations
Early on I said yes to almost everything and built on whatever tool was at hand. It moved quickly. It also left systems that only held together while I was there to hold them.
Learning the business from the inside
I joined Drumelia in my early twenties, when it was still a small team. My title was marketing director, but the job was wider than that. I worked alongside the CEO on strategy and operations, and learned the business the only way that sticks: by being responsible for results.
We invested early in our own website, content and search, so clients could find us directly instead of through someone else's platform. That decision still shapes how I think about marketing: own your demand, measure what closes, and build systems that keep working when you're not in the room.
The company grew a lot in those years. I'm proud of that, and careful about how I tell it. A bigger team was a consequence of the work, not the achievement. What I'd point to is what sat underneath: a brand people looked for by name, and a way of working that held up as the business grew.
Bringing order to an operation
After Drumelia I joined Homerun Brokers to do one thing: help a fast-moving agency become an organized one. We wrote standards and SOPs for every department, chose and set up the tools each team needed, and made the business measurable.
It worked. It also showed me the limits of the approach. To get there I had to stitch together generic CRMs, project tools, data services and automations, each built for every industry and none in particular. The integrations were fragile, the licences added up, and agents still spent too much of their day typing.
That engagement is the method behind the Listyco Growth Program, and the frustration behind Listyco itself.
Marketing at the top of the market
In parallel I became CMO of Prestige Expo, a real estate and hospitality group, and co-founded Velmure, the marketing agency through which we delivered that work. The luxury end of the market taught me that restraint sells: fewer words, better images and a clear reason to trust you.
In 2026 we stopped operating Velmure so my co-founders and I could commit fully to Listyco. Part of the team continued at Prestige. Closing something that was working was not an easy call. I'm sure it was the right one.
Why we started Listyco
In June 2026 we started Listyco together: me as Co-founder & CEO, my brother Rais Rafikov as Co-founder & CTO, and Pier Tommaso Chirico as Co-Founder & CXO. We had seen the same problem from different sides: real estate runs on software that wasn't built for it.
Listyco is an AI-first real estate ecosystem. It starts with Listyco Connect, free forever for every professional, and a CRM built for how the market actually works. More products follow, each solving a real problem somewhere in the cycle.
My role isn't to write the code. It's to look at everything through the customer's eyes, connect the right people, and keep us honest about what's worth building.
