Proptech Espresso

How are Norway and the Upper East Side related in Joachim's mind? Why did Joachim decide to pursue a corporate job after initially starting as an entrepreneur? What makes 40 year old entrepreneurs more likely to succeed than some of their younger counterparts? What sparked the entrepreneurial desire within Joachim? How did Joachim and his team turn a customer's bankruptcy into a spinout opportunity for a new product company? Why have shared spaces in multifamily buildings been largely ignored by technology device vendors? What is Defigo doing with AI to help solve building accessibility issues that handicapped residents face? Why is the ease of Defigo installation a major point of pride for Joachim? What is Defigo's integration strategy with other solution providers? Why is Defigo exploring a white label strategy for its access device solution?

Joachim Stray - CEO and founder of Defigo joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the differences between selling and GTM strategies in the US and Europe, including the relative importance of security between the different regions.

 Jenna Louie, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer of Ivory Innovations, joins Proptech Espresso to announce the winners of the seventh annual Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. This year's winners were selected from a record 280+ nominations within Construction & Design, Finance, and Policy & Regulatory Reform. These companies represent the most compelling and novel housing innovation solutions directly addressing the widening housing affordability crisis in the US.

What are the primary differences between Proptech 1.0, Proptech 2.0, and today's Proptech 3.0? In what way did Brian's consulting work quickly change as financial firms navigated the Great Financial Crisis? What was it like to be at the forefront of the technology revolution within investment management that led to quant investing? Why did Brian get the chance to build a reinsurance business from the ground up and how did this work establish his credentials for raising institutional capital? How did a weekend and weeknight personal research project on shared equity in real estate lead to a role at Unison? Why was it important that from the get go the Jubilee Homes solution work within the existing real estate ecosystem? What is a leasehold product and how does this differ from a traditional mortgage? Why is Jubilee Homes focused on markets where there is a high land share percentage for home purchases? What attributes of the residential ground lease asset class make it particularly interesting for institutional capital? Why was it important for Jubilee Homes to build trust with real estate agents? Does the leasehold product work for real estate asset classes outside of residential real estate?

Brian Elbogen - CEO and co-founder of Jubilee Homes, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a conversation with a professor on a recruiting trip around the opportunity to study operations researched tipped the scale in favor of attending Princeton over the Univeristy of Penn.

How does proptech differ for asset classes depending on the customer needs and expectations? Has AI adoption and development todate been more front-of-house or back-of-house? Why are American management consulting firm jobs so sought after by recent university graduates in the UK? What was it like working on a consulting engagement for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London? How did experiencing corporate bloat while on engagements as a management consultant translate into a bias for operating very lean at Zumper? What led Anth to explore entrepreneurial ideas around real estate and technology? Why is hiring the first technical team member so difficult for a non-technical founder? What lessons did Anth learn about online marketplaces from studying the success of Craigslist? Why is it important to make sure you are building a business based on a full solution and not just a feature? What are some brutal learnings for the early GTM efforts of Zumper? Why is professionalization of multi-family still in its early days with lots of innovation still to happen? What consumer AI usage change is now emerging with ChatGPT's recent rollout of real-time web crawls?

Anthemos Georgiades - CEO and co-founder of Zumper, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the difficult evolution he had to work through as a startup CEO once Zumper crossed the $10M ARR level and why this critical leadership change is something that isn't taught at business school. 

What was it about political theory that convinced Julie to study political science at university? What was occurring within the technology industry that created an opportunity for Facebook to do things in new ways for consumers which resonated with Julie and drew her to work there? Why was it so fascinating to be leading corporate development for a well-positioned adtech firm during the period of mass consolidation? What about management consulting strategy work led Julie to definitively know she wanted to be a business operator? Why did the autonomy of working at a startup foster a sense of exhilaration that Julie found herself addicted to? How did Tractable allow Julie to work on innovative solutions that brought powerful new technology to the physical world? What did the emergence of generative AI change that reduced the investment companies had to make in bringing solutions to market? Why isn't there a single source of truth for home renovation projects? What are the assorted challenges that contractors face as small business owners themselves while managing a renovation project? How has Block Renovation built technology to enable transparency and trust between homeowners and contractors? Where has Block Renovation integrated generative AI into its solutions? How is localization and deep real estate market knowledge incorporated into each Block Renovation city launch?

Julie Kheyfets - CEO of Block Renovation, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how working with insurance companies revealed to Julie how bad humans are at understanding risk due to our inability to think probabilistically.

What sort of building inspections are required in Europe before a building is taken down? As someone new to tech startups, what were the lessons learned from building the Airbnb for boat holidays from the ground up? What did participating in Antler's startup accelerator program lead to for Ieva? How does circularity in construction prolong the life of a material and prevent it from entering a dump? What are the factors driving the recent surge in interest in circular construction? How is Material Mapper leveraging big data to bring forecasting capabilities to circular construction? Why have traditional construction reuse marketplaces failed to scale in Europe? Why have construction material producers emerged as the first large scale adopters of Material Mapper? How are municipalities leveraging the Material Mapper platform? What new European regulations are being introduced which will drive future opportunities for Material Mapper? Why is Dubai running out of sand needed for new construction and where is it now importing it from?

Ieva Sibilla Strupule - CEO and co-founder of Material Mapper, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how her mom's background in architectural investigation coupled with her childhood spent conducting treasure hunts while inspecting historical buildings led to a deep appreciation for the built environment and a desire to preserve the materials used to construct it.

Why is there no user manual to run your house? Are the critical thinking skills you learn as an English literature major valuable in your work and personal life? How did Katie never study in college and become an auditory learner? What about the auditory learning skill set that Katie picked up in college lead to a career in tech? How did a summer job in Manhattan between high school and college lead to an interest in business? Why was developing a streamlined implementation process for a hospital back office software company so critical for sales success? How did promotions from customer sales lead to company executive leadership with golden handcuffs? Why are key man life insurance policies so essential for businesses to have in place for CEOs? How did a home ownership maintenance nightmare on her first property lead Katie to found and build Yarlow? Why is digital storage for home-related items and expenses so important for homeowners? What classic first-time entrepreneur mistake did Katie make when building the initial MVP for Yarlow? How is the trend of PE firms buying up home service profession businesses impacting the service upsell of unneeded services? Where is Yarlow integrating AI into the platform? How is regional customization important for homeowner maintenance and recommendations? Why was it important for Katie that Yarlow be a free app for homeowners?

Katie Shahan - CEO and founder of Yarlow, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a group of college classmates who she did not know convinced her she needed to become an English Lit major.

Has proptech over the last decade or so become largely an attempt by entrepreneurs to throw process optimization software at real estate operations? What are micro-apartments and why did this approach of better space utilization largely fail to take hold within the built world? Why haven't innovations such as moving walls and transforming furniture become mainstream components in multi-family living and residential housing? What is data driven architecture? Why are we designing and building homes that do not match how households are utilizing them in everyday living? How has poor home design led to the urban sprawl dilemma we are currently faced with? How did coliving emerge from the micro-apartment movement and what were the forces that drove this evolution? Why did the shared living properties that historically existed in San Francisco largely disappear? Why did the venture debt that was pumped into the coliving space ultimately doom this model from achieving long-term success? Why has PadSplit been the one bright spot to emerge in the tech driven coliving space? How are housing and mental health directly related? 

David Friedlander - co-founder and CEO of Urban Machine, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how the housing needs of current generations are not being reflected in the homes being built and are instead driven by the returns of the capital providers.

Did Bryan coin the term IoT? Does a built world vendor ecosystem framework of Design, Finance, Build, and Use cover all categories? Why do proptech startups take a while to validate and establish? How has Autodesk become so integrated in today's built environment projects? What led Autodesk to invest heavily in construction tech? Why is there almost no payroll in the residential homebuilding industry outside of public homebuilders? Why is timely payment so important for homebuilding GCs? Is there a difference between hard money lenders and private lenders? What is a draw in construction lending? Why is commercial software so much of a greenfield frontier in private lending? How come almost every technology startup pivots from its original idea? Why are robust mobile apps that take advantage of phone hardware so difficult to maintain? What are the benefits to construction finance startup employees personally experiencing a construction job site?

Bryan Kester - co-founder and CEO of Sitewire, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a collection of family member real estate experiences growing up created a likely pathway to a career in the built world.

Did Mark Andreessen's famous essay about software eating the world lead to the term Proptech being coined? How did having family members who were real estate investors, developers, and property tax collectors establish a deep foundation of real estate understanding for a young Joseph? What allowed Jospeh's grandfather, an immigrant hairdresser, to become a land baron in the northeast? Why are the off-the-shelf assessment models used by tax districts inherently flawed? What early entrepreneurial hustles did Joseph dabble in growing up and why was it important to ensure these ventures paid for themselves? Why did Joseph forgo a role at Nvidia to continue his PhD track at UCLA? Do overassessment protests result in cities and municipalities getting less tax revenue necessary to balance annual budgets? What does the property tax appeal process look like and why are there opportunities to digitize and scale this? What were Ownwell's initial quick wins from a technology perspective? How do differences around local tax districts impact the information mined and presented to Ownwell's in-house tax protestors? How are the needs of individual homeowners different from those of large commercial real estate portfolio owners around property tax savings?

Joseph Noor - co-founder and CTO of Ownwell, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a chance encounter at a UCLA startup pitch competition brought about the convergence of his computer science studies and family heritage in real estate resulting in the launch of Ownwell.