Proptech Espresso

How did life on a farm stoke the entrepreneurial spirit of a young kid? What sorts of problem-solving skills were instilled as part of daily life on a farm? How did an advanced engineering degree further complement the entrepreneurial skill set developed growing up on a farm? How did a love for fixing cars and pickups create enough side hustle income to pay for college? What finally compelled a services based entrepreneur to transition to a technology product entrepreneur? How did a teacher dip his toe into real estate investing and property management? What experience with tenants and emotional support animals spark the idea that there must be a better way to manage pet policies for landlords? Is there a reasonability test for determining the validity of an emotional support animal? How big of a business is the online certification of emotional support animals? Today, how many companies are selling online emotional support animal certifications? What restrictive policy did airlines implement to fight the fraud around emotional support animals? How did HUD approach this issue differently than the airline industry? Why have property owners and operators historically been resigned to accepting all emotional support animals? How likely are landlords to collect on damages above and beyond the security deposit? What education can be provided by landlords to tenants on the legitimacy of their emotional support animal?

Logan Miller - co-founder of Landlord Tech, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a career as an agriculture education teacher (which included a diverse curriculum of mechanics, welding, plant science, and construction to name a few) helped create a useful skill of being able to get young people excited about a topic they might off the cuff dismiss as dull and how this has served him well in his professional career while being simple in comparison.

How would one describe the current state of skilled trades in the built world? What are the transitions that the construction industry is facing? How many open jobs in the skilled trades are there at the moment in the US? Why are skilled tradespeople in the workforce aging out faster than new workers entering the profession? How can an increase in diversity within this industry help alleviate some of the resourcing needs? How can we create excitement around the skilled trade profession so more people explore careers in these fields? Is there a pay gap between men and women in skilled trades (spoiler alert, no there is not)? Why are high schools no longer offering courses which help cultivate interest in the skilled trades? Why has it been historically difficult to find/hire women in skilled trades? What is the telehealth but for DIY service that Matriach Build offers? What does it mean for Matriach Build to be a trusted source of truth for home renovation and other real estate related projects? How has Matriach Build become a platform for like-minded skilled tradeswomen to connect and build a community? What are some of the marketplace tools and features that the skilled trades need that aren't being met today?

Lacey Soslow and Gabriella Ainslie - co-founders of Matriarchy Build, join Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a 20+ year friendship starting in college was strengthened by working together early in their careers and ultimately gave them the confidence to found a company together that empowers women in the building trades. 

How has the definition and usage of the term proptech expanded as the space has matured? Why has proptech innovation historically been extremely limited compared to other industries? How did effective data management allow M7 to differentiate itself for other real estate asset managers? Prior to Coyote entering the market, what tools were firms using to manage real estate asset data? Why did M7 decide to spinout Coyote instead of keeping it as a proprietary internal tool? What is the process like to take a bespoke piece of internal software, separate it from the parent organization, and turn it into a scalable platform as an independent company? How was the transition from being the CTO of an established real estate firm to being the CEO of a tech startup challenging on a professional level? What are the greatest technical achievements Coyote has solved during its spinout from M7? How do you successfully transition from appeasing all the customer demands of early adopters to building product to support your platform and saying no to certain customer requests?

Oli Farago - Founder & CEO of Coyote Software, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a corporate acquisition resulting in a difference of opinions led to the unique opportunity to spend six months doing deep thinking on how to correctly build a new asset and fund management platform from the ground up, efficiently and to scale from day 1.

Why is the reasoning from first principles approach so successful in unlocking creative solutions to complex problems? What can you do to differentiate true customer needs from the noise of what customers are asking for outloud? How long does it take the average homeowner to save up their down payment on their first home? Why does the real estate industry thrive on information asymmetry? What is the benefit to the individual investor of cutting out the middlemen currently involved with most residential real estate transactions? How can you achieve transparency with blockchain based transactions without completely forgoing privacy? What is the reason special purpose vehicles in the form of an LLC are commonly used for real estate tokenization? Why is Homebase co-purchasing a small percentage of the homes they are fractionalizing? What are the tradeoffs that Homebase made by prioritizing its legal and regulatory adherence framework? Has the US created significant disadvantages for web3 innovation with its current incomplete regulatory framework?

Domingo Valadez - co-founder of Homebase, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his experience growing up as the son of Mexican immigrants who achieved the American dream of purchasing real estate unknowingly planted the seeds for his passion around real estate and rethinking home ownership.

From a professional standpoint, why do people choose to pursue a career in consulting? What were the travel advantages of working with real estate consulting clients versus other industries? What were some of the challenges with working with international real estate clients? How did the opportunity to evaluate proptech companies come about within a real estate consulting role? How do generalized skillsets developed while working for consulting companies translate to being an executive at a tech startup? What are some of the challenges one experiences when moving from a large consulting firm to a startup? How does one overcome impostor syndrome when working at a startup? What does the role of global head of innovation entail? How robust is the M&A pipeline today given the challenging venture capital funding markets?

Kevin Shtofman - Head of Innovation at Cherre, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a timely decision to pursue an MBA (based on aspirations of becoming an investment banking VP at Morgan Stanley) allowed him to successfully navigate the great financial crisis and establish a career in real estate consulting.

Why can there be value in recreating the wheel when first starting out in a new role? How is it that renting an apartment is a much harder and more involved process than people initially imagine? Why have independent landlords traditionally been a neglected customer base for technology companies? How can customer conversations uncover previously undiscovered revenue opportunities? What insights can be acquired by attending customer meetups during the early days of a startup? How can proptech companies build everything you need and nothing that you don't for their customers? What was the lightbulb moment that convinced this aspiring entrepreneur to leave his paying job and make the jump to start his own company? Why does the independent landlord space have such a surprisingly strong community? What are the benefits of live chat vs a ticketing system for early-stage companies?

Ryan Barone - CEO, CTO, and co-founder of RentRedi, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his first experience of trying to rent an apartment in New York City while an intern at Goldman Sachs planted the seed for a product idea that ultimately consumed him and led to the founding of RentRedi.

What are the synergies between crypto and real estate? Why has crypto traditionally lacked good real world collateral? Is real estate's % of GDP as large in other parts of the world as it is in the US? What caused the housing correction in China after the initial privatization run-up? What are the benefits of decoupling housing ownership and occupancy? Can technology innovation help solve many of the structural inefficiencies that exist in real estate investing? Are there similarities between the debugging process in academia, debugging a startup, and debugging code? What are the uncanny similarities between the stages of a startup and the stages in academia? Why should founders think of a startup as a fluid concept? What makes MakerDOA the equivalent of the Federal Reserve in crypto? Which events contributed to crypto's current deep winter? What are the advantages of being able to offer Robinland's real estate offerings through Reg-D and Reg-S? Why have construction loans been a source of good investment debt on the Robinland platform?

Scarlet Chen - co-founder of Robinland, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how her interest in housing and real estate was the result of her parent's regret of missing out on the massive appreciation boom from the privatization of the housing market in China because they did not understand the investment opportunity that real estate represented. 

How did partnering with realtors through creative strategies lead to a successful insurance business being built at an early age? What challenges do real estate investors who intend to be landlords encounter when trying to get real estate insurance products? Why is it important today to be where the customer is and not rely on or hope that the customer comes and finds you? How did the opportunity arise to work with many of the most prominent insurance companies? What are the advantages of partnering with complimentary proptech companies to build a distribution channel? How are entrepreneurs wired differently from career employees? Why do so many businesses forget to ask potential partners or customers how they first might be able to help them grow their business? How does cultivating a reputation as a trusted advisor open doors to new and unforeseen opportunities?

Matt Sutika - Chief Insurance Officer of Obie, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and briefly discuss how his dad's community status and financial stability combined with a healthy work-life balance inspired him to pursue a career in insurance. 

What is Chat-GPT's definition of proptech? Will Chat-GPT be a future podcast guest of Proptech Espresso? What material value has been generated from the considerable investment in proptech over the last couple of years? Has the use of the term proptech been overextended to the point that almost any company that touches the home is now considered a proptech company? How has a unique bond formed as friends contributed to the successful chemistry as co-founders? Why are traits such as grit and authenticity so fundamental to entrepreneurs? Why do so many proptech founder stories originate from a painful home transaction? What is the number one reason that prevents innovation in the real estate space? What would be possible if you put every bit of real estate data in one place and made it accessible to anyone?

Zach Gorman and James Rogers - co-founders of BHR (Blockchain Home Registry), join Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and briefly discuss how a friendship formed at Tutfs led to mountain climbing together across the globe (where they overcame life-threatening situations), and ultimately building a couple of successful tech companies in the proptech space. 

Does the generalization of the term proptech help those outside the industry establish a framework to start understanding the space? How did a background in consulting establish a strong underlying skillset for being a tech entrepreneur? Why is iterative problem solving important when improving processes for complex businesses? What has been the likely cause of poor tenant experience for renters historically? Why is addressing operations for landlords important in providing an improved tenant experience? How do European markets differ from US markets in the residential rental space? What are some examples of differing European rental sub-markets needs? How has a focus on community helped drive the adoption of hococo's tenant experience solution?

William Shaw - CEO of hococo, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a new vision of tenant loyalty can help property landlords and owners move tenants across a portfolio of properties as they transition into different life phases.