As someone who grew up in a family of real estate investors, landlords and brokers and has 14 years experience as an adult with it, I have to say, and I'm not picking on you because what you are espousing is a widespread belief, but you are wrong.
You are wrong about the amount of time she spent, and wrong about the industry being ripe for disruption. Spending 10 hours on four deals is not physically possible, or you have the luckiest, worst realtor in the history of the broker business.
Many have said the same thing about the industry, where are the results? Realtors are not still in business because of information asymmetry. Redfin has tried, and they have not succeeded. In fact they ended up moving towards the historical model. That tells you something.
I'll let you in on a secret, you can sell and buy any house you own or want yourself! It's called For Sale By Owner and many people do it. You can also negotiate on commission.
But be careful, because there are a lot of laws in place in RE, to protect buyers. It is heavily regulated. You could make a mistake and fail to disclose something that could end up costing you HUUUUGEEE.
What you get with a good realtor is a ton of service. Just the other day I drove 25 minutes each way to go make sure a homes thermostat was on and the house was warm when the temperature dropped. I was doing a favor for a realtor I know, that is selling a house for a family in another part of the country.
A good realtor will do things like that for you. And it's often a thankless job. The house I did that for might not even end up selling, the realtor may not even get a commission and it ends up being a lot of free work.
A good realtor knows attorneys, handy men, plumbers, electricians, landscapers and is a tough negotiator. A good realtor will market your property to a wider audience than would be easy for you to do yourself.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong and disrupt a sale, often times at the last minute. Those connections can save a deal. I've seen it countless times.
The reason the real estate broker business hasn't been disrupted is because it's a service business, it's not a product and its difficult to reduce it to something that scales and can be automated.
There is a large graveyard of startups that have tried.
I gave up my real estate license because of the sentiment you are expressing here, and the amount of competition that was willing to put up with it. It's a crap job in my opinion, it benefits the customers much more than the agents in all but the really hot markets.