Proptech Espresso

Can rental leases provide a pathway for building a career as a real estate agent? How did a high school friendship uncover the emerging co-living scene in New York? Why are real estate investors critical for the co-living business model? What sorts of opportunities are multifamily operators looking for to be innovative? Why would a successful real estate agent make the jump to a risky proptech startup? What is causing fewer and fewer renters to fit the ideal multifamily renter profile? Why do leasing agents have so few tools to help renters that don't fit the desired candidate renter profile? What have been some of the contributing factors to multifamily's slow adoption of technology? How did a chance meeting with a tech entrepreneur lead to a career switch? Why is bad debt such a problem for property owners?

Jesse Schmidt - SVP of Sales at TheGuarantors, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his dad's job running The Real Estate Book for the northeast afforded him his first job as the on-staff real estate photographer for the publication, instilling in him a love for real estate and all the various forms on this asset class. 

How does the introduction and application of technology to an industry create a catalyst for change and re-invention? Why did a job at MTV during its heyday lead to a career switch into high finance? How did becoming an intrapreneur create massive opportunities to build new businesses at the intersection of two asset classes? Why can land registry be considered the original blockchain? What has created the trapped equity crisis that American homeowners are experiencing today? How is housing affordability geo-specific? What causes people to think of their home asset differently than traditional financial assets like stocks and bonds? Why is education critical in financial asset decisions? Can you consider EasyKnock a countercyclical business model? 

Jarred Kessler - co-founder & CEO of EasyKnock (and author of Death of a Real Estate Salesman), joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his belief in the innate right of human beings to have access to shelter led to founding his non-profit which provides resources to homeowners to help figure out how to keep them in their homes and avoid eviction when experiencing life situations outside of their control.

How can passion projects outside of work and school accelerate learning a new skill? In what ways do government regulations create so many complex challenges for businesses? Why isn't there more effort to invest in regulation reconciliation to alleviate inconsistencies? How has Microsoft leveraged natural language processing techniques and its global data sets to address hyper local and domain specific problems? What is the compelling reason to index every residential property in the world? Why is getting accurate residential real estate data a challenge and how does it differ between the US and other countries? How does reporting data lag contribute to the challenges of providing accurate and specific information real estate reporting? Where are there opportunities for deep learning to help overcome some of the real estate information gaps that we have globally? Why did Parcl choose to build its marketplace platform on web3 blockchain technology? In what ways can web3 technology improve the customer experience? How can computer vision augment the information set for global residential real estate data?

Jason Lewris - co-founder of Parcl and Parcl Labs, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his discovery of analytics and coding during his MBA program led to a career pivot away from business to the emerging discipline of data science and the future opportunities around leveraging machine learning architectures to solve complex data problems. 

For those listeners interested in learning more about the intersection of real estate and web3 check out the REw3 newsletter!

What is the difference between a proptech company and a venture backable proptech company? How does mixed-income housing support diversity and improve the chance for income mobility? Why is housing NIMBYism so pronounced in San Francisco and how does this contribute to its rampant homeless issue? What is the definition of affordable housing and how prevalent is it in the US? Is creating affordable housing only a big city issue or do rural cities also struggle with this? Why are there so many misconceptions around the affordable housing opportunity? Are affordable housing and public housing the same thing? Why do affordable component lease-ups take so long to complete? Is there a lack of education about affordable housing in university and MBA real estate programs?

Christine Wendell - Co-founder and CEO of Pronto Housing, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how living in a diverse collection of cities across the US early in her career exposed her to various city zoning approaches which later informed her perspective on the positives and pitfalls of different affordable housing approaches. 

What compelled a rising star in GE's management training program to pivot and jump to the real estate industry? How did mortgage servicers look to find positive housing outcomes during the great financial crisis and help keep people in their homes? What is the importance of access to capital for real estate? Are there unique challenges you encounter when taking over a company from a founder CEO? How does a finance professional get deeply knowledgeable about the fundamental technology of an organization so they can challenge and support an engineering team? Are there environmental impact differences between new home construction and renovation? What does it mean to re-invigorate the aging US housing stock? How do speed and scale benefit the real esate investor? Is it possible to recreate the experience of dealing with personal finances for the real estate investor? How does Kiavi help real estate investors make money over 20% more often than other lenders?

Michael Bourque - CEO of Kiavi, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a 15 year career at General Electric gave him the toolset to dig in and understand new and complex businesses, as well as allowed him to travel the world and experience many diverse cultures. 

Which industries rely on real estate data beyond the home transaction itself? Why has almost no one heard of RELS? What are the benefits and downsides of being acquired by a co-owner? Why did the appraisal industry need innovation and what was fundamentally broken with it? How did the modern appraisal project come about at Clear Capital and what were there the challenges the team faced? What was it like partnering with the GSEs (Fannie and Freddie) to transform the home appraisal process? Why are floorplans critical in appraisals and why is this a linchpin in the process? What lessons from prior acquisition experiences did leadership apply to Clear Capital's deal with CubiCasa? Were there unique challenges due to the global pandemic around acquiring a company on another continent? Why has the US not digitized floorplans as much as Europe and Australia? What property data attributes are not common today but are likely future elements?

Jeff Allen - President of CubiCasa joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how the freedom granted to him by his first employer to explore housing data led to spinning out his first company building market reports for the broader MLS community. 

Has Amazon morphed into a proptech company? Is the US transforming into a warehouse nation? How did getting punched in the face by the 2008 financial recession force a career pivot into managing bank owned real estate assets? What learnings came from working through the foreclosure process with multifamily properties? Were virtual tours happening in New York City as early as 2006? How a lightbulb moment led to launching a startup developing storefronts into touchscreens for real estate companies and landing Ryan Serhant as an early customer? Did the desire to invest in a resilient real estate sector lead to uncovering profitabile opportunities within affordable housing? Are government contracts around real estate a lucrative opportunity and provide a pathway to positively impact local communities? How will blockchain technology revolutionize the financing of real estate in the future? What is the best way to educate oneself about web3? How can helping disadvantaged families get access to safe housing positively impact communities?

Vernon J - Co-founder & CEO of EquityCoin, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a scholarship opportunity to attend a New England prep school led him to uncover a recurring theme of family real estate businesses amongst his peers which he parlayed into real estate jobs during his high school years where he earned monthly commission in excess of five figures.  

For those listeners interested in learning more about the intersection of real estate and web3 check out the REw3 newsletter!

How do you evaluate ideas on a quality scale to make sure you are pursuing those that will actually result in a successful business? Does perceived risk impact the willingness of a customer or individual to adopt a new technology? Can the pursuit of one's passion impact the staying power of a tech founder? Should the real estate asset class drive different customer engagement models? What AI initiatives are underway in supporting property management businesses? How does fostering community benefit the broader housing ecosystem?

Demetri Themelis - CEO & co-founder of Knock, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his experiences entering the workforce at the start of the financial crisis shaped his desires to move from investment banking, and dreams of lucrative bonuses, to tech entrepreneurism and the opportunity to create a transformational business. 

How was working as a management consultant at McKinsey similar to going to college? What was the intellectual challenge that compelled a deep tech engineer to change careers and go to work for a private equity firm? How essential is indoor air quality to physical well-being? How did trips home to Beijing uncover a rapid negatively changing air quality? Why have human senses not adapted to sense changes in air quality? How much worse can indoor air quality be than outdoor air quality? How did fear of the unknown in the early days of COVID force people to clamor for better instrumentation and cleaning of indoor air? What are some of the challenges of maintaining a retail channel for a consumer technology product? How has the education level around indoor air quality changed over the last couple of years? How can you improve indoor air quality but require minimal time investment from homeowners? 

Ray Wu - Cofounder and CEO of Wynd Technologies, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his curiosity as a child led him to constantly take equipment apart and pretend to invent things, creating his later desire to start and build a technology company from scratch. 

How did working for a highly ethical financial services company benefit a recent college grad? What practical life skills did jobs in finance and new home sales hone? What compelled a successful financial service professional to pivot and move into the homebuilding space? Why has the homebuilding space historically been reluctant to adopt visualization technologies like virtual tours? Why is there an online pricing transparency issue within homebuilding? What does the ideal customer journey for buying a new home online look like? 

Anya Chrisanthon - Chief Brand Office at Anewgo, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how her discovery that there were no women producing podcasts about selling real estate despite women being the majority of employees in real estate led her to fill this void.