Proptech Espresso

How does the complexity of real estate transactions create an opportunity for technology to improve the overall experience? What similarities exist between the adtech and proptech industries? How can the playing field be leveled for families and individuals that want to purchase homes and build communities? What can be done to empower real estate agents to help their clients in hyper competitive bidding situations?

Lindsay Van Kirk - VP, Sales and Operation at Ribbon joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and address the opportunity for seller agents to support the broader communities in which the live and work by discussing how home sales is much more than just a financial transaction.

Why does being an entrepreneur equip a founder to expect the unexpected? What lessons did Scott learn from losing almost everything in the 2009 financial crisis? What are the unique investment insights that Privy has built into it's solution to help individual investors make decisions? Why should novice real estate investors avoid the lure of gurus and the guarantees that the promise?

Scott Fahl - Founder & CEO of Privy joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share the many ups and downs of his entrepreneurial journey in real estate.

Can the current housing crisis be solved with technology? How have different government policies and social forces contributed to economic and racial inequality in housing? How is the Terner Center advancing innovative policies to influence the way government at all levels is directing money towards creative ways to address housing needs? What successes have the first cohort class from the Housing Lab achieved after the program?

Michelle Boyd - Program Director for the Housing Lab, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and address the need for an equitable recovery from COVID-19.

Michelle Boyd is the Program Director for the Housing Lab, the Terner Center’s program to support early-stage entrepreneurs tackling the high cost of housing. She brings nearly a decade of experience in community and startup finance, organizational design, and urban policy research. Prior to joining the Terner team, Michelle worked as a strategy consultant for the Bridgespan Group, collaborating with nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and foundation leaders across issues of community development, housing, and education. Michelle holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business, an Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Real Estate from UC Berkeley, and a BA in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. Michelle also serves as a Chamberlin Fellow with the Urban Land Institute.

In today's world, should we still be defining businesses along the traditional lines of product and services? How is proptech evolving and accelerating in India and surrounding markets? Can co-living recreate the missing physical connections of communities that increased internet usage has greatly reduced? Ajay Kumar - co-founder and CEO of TheHouseMonk, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the path to building an international platform for centralized rental real estate management.


Ajay Kumar has been involved in the real estate and proptech domains for close to 7 years. He started Cozee Homes in 2014 as a coliving and rental management company in India and scaled it to 1,000 rental units under management. After exiting the business in 2018, he set up TheHouseMonk - The operating system for rental real estate. The platform helps property managers streamline their portfolio operations and enhance the tenancy experience. Currently,  100+ companies across 12 countries use TheHouseMonk to manage their business.
Ajay also runs RealEstateXTechnology - A newsletter about 'Modern real estate and the technologies that impact it', which has close to 3,000 subscribers. 

Are differing US municipal codes causing fragmentation challenges and thus preventing broader proptech adoption? Why isn't the home a more integral part of the financial advisor planning process? What causes people to talk about homeownership as a financial investment but in reality don't treat it as a financial investment? Why is financial flexibility so important for homeowners? Joe Cianciolo - Co-Founder & CEO of HomePace, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and much more.


Joe Cianciolo is co-founder and CEO of HomePace, Inc.  HomePace enables consumers to achieve their financial goals by providing them to access their home equity without taking on additional debt or interest.

Prior to founding HomePace, Joe was Head of Business Development at Unison.

Joe was previously an executive at FutureAdvisor where he joined as its fifth employee and first non-engineering hire.  As Head of Sales & Business Development, he was responsible for creating and leading client acquisition and revenue-generating functions at FutureAdvisor, driving the firm's growth in assets under management from less than $10 million to over $1 billion in less than 3 years.  Following FutureAdvisor's acquisition by BlackRock, Joe led commercial strategy and distribution for BlackRock's Digital Wealth Technology platform.  

Joe began his career as an investment banker at Thomas Weisel Partners and also previously led business development efforts at financial technology company SecondMarket (acquired by Nasdaq).

 Joe graduated from Pennsylvania State University with both a Bachelors in Economics and an MBA.  He currently lives in the Raleigh, North Carolina area with his wife Sarah and their son and daughter.

Why is the traditional rental showing experience so challenging and unsatisfactory for all participants? What percentage of a leasing agent's time is spent traveling to and from listings? How are different segments of multifamily leasing managers adopting technology to automate their processes? Chris Kostoulas - co-founder and COO of Peek, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a virtual first leasing platform enables multifamily managers to rent their units much more efficiently, helping them rethink how all of their assets are shown.

Chris is the Co-Founder & COO of Peek, a virtual real estate tour company based in NYC, that’s providing the most seamless way for leasing managers, brokers, and agents to adopt virtual tour technology across their workflow and more efficiently rent apartments.

 Prior to starting Peek, Chris was an early Uber employee (~300) and one of the first in New York. Chris has built an impressive track record in operations, product and business development-- launching multiple US and international markets for Uber, as well as working cross-functionally on a product team, and working in business development for data partnerships. 

Fueled by a passion for social entrepreneurship, Caroline Pinal co-founded  Giveback Homes to empower the real estate industry to turn business into an opportunity for social good. Pinal and team deliver innovation and impact to their network of like-minded real estate agents, brokerages, technology, and service providers. In concert with these companies, Giveback Homes has helped deliver over 200 homes to families in need during the past five years.  Pinal worked directly with Concierge Auctions to establish Key for Key, an award-winning social good program that builds a home in Central America every time a property sold at auction. 

Prior to Giveback Homes, Pinal worked at TOMS, the business that pioneered the one-for-one model by giving shoes to children in need. During her time at TOMS,  she worked alongside Blake Andrews. After a giving trip in Central America,  Blake shared his goals to bring a sustainable giving model to the world of real estate. From this idea, the concept of Giveback Homes was born. Pinal has traveled the globe, leading building trips and conducting impact investigations in areas of greatest need. 

Born and raised in the Mojave Desert, Pinal studied Journalism at Cal State Long  Beach, worked at Fox News and The Walt Disney Company. The path was paved early on for Pinal as she always felt the desire to apply her experiences in storytelling and creativity towards something bigger. Her mission is to guide companies and individuals toward creating more intentional and socially responsible businesses.

What is the rooming house phenomenon? How do you provide housing for segments of the population that cannot afford market-rate housing? Is it possible for landlords to make a profit in the affordable housing market? Atticus LeBlanc - PadSplit founder, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how he is using technology to increase the supply of affordable housing and create a roadmap for affordable housing renters to become affordable housing landlords.

Atticus is the CEO & founder of PadSplit, an online marketplace that leverages shared housing as a tool for financial independence.  PadSplit is a public benefit corporation that has garnered national acclaim as a solution for housing affordability, creating more than 1,200 affordable units in Atlanta in the last 2 years. Atticus has been an affordable housing developer since 2008 and has presented on housing solutions at MIT, UC Berkeley, and the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. He is also the co-founder of Stryant Construction & Management Inc. Atticus serves as the co-chair of ULI’s UrbanPlan Education Initiative, co-chaired the Design For Affordability Task Force in 2018, was a member of Leadership Atlanta’s Class of 2020, and is currently a volunteer with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Atlanta. He graduated from Yale University with a BA in Architecture, and currently lives with his family in Decatur, GA along with 2 dogs and lots of chickens.

JoyHub is a business intelligence platform specifically for professional rental owners, managers and operators. By providing access and connectivity across their existing technology infrastructure JoyHub provides rental operators with a holistic view of their properties, tenants and portfolios. Powered by a proprietary integration layer, JoyHub connects, collects and aggregates data from various data sources to support secure data storage, custom reporting and predictive analytics. With access to data from across their various systems, operators view dashboards, create aggregated reports and develop risk models to capitalize on trends, respond to unpredictability, and maximize NOI to deliver greater overall value to investors.

Victor Hunt is the CEO and co-founder of Astorian, a contractor marketplace for building owners and managers. Victor worked in property management for over a decade at a 5000 tenant portfolio in The Bronx where he was inspired by his own challenges hiring contractors. He and his co-founder started the company from their dorm room at Yale and have raised over $2 million in funding from First Round Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Village Global.