Tech Nest: The Proptech Podcast

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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Owning a summer home is a dream for many Americans. The annual costs of keeping a summer home, however, remains a significant hurdle for most. You could try to make your second home a vacation rental to subsidize the costs or even get a return on your investment, but that's a lot of work most are equipped to handle.

Paul Kromidas, CEO and Founder of Summer joins Tech Nest to discuss these topics and more. Summer is working to create a better path to ownership of vacation homes. Homes that owners can use when they want, and rent out the rest of the year. One unique concept Summer is bringing to market is a gradual ownership model—a totally unique offering in the vacation or second homes market.

Vacation rentals have been all the hubbub this year. Listen in to Paul as he'll shed light on where the industry is and where it has room to grow.

More about Paul and Summer
Summer is on a mission to open access to vacation homes by eliminating the headache and risk associated with buying. The company was founded in New York by Paul Kromidas and launched in 2022. To date, Summer has raised more than $30M in equity funding from investors including: QED, Viola Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, 1Sharpe Ventures, as well as a number of strategic and angel investors. 

As CEO and Founder of Summer, Paul Kromidas is a mission-driven entrepreneur pioneering an innovative approach to vacation home ownership. Bringing over a decade of experience in accelerating growth and scaling teams across the technology, real estate, finance and strategy sectors, Kromidas has a proven track record with industry leaders such as Airbnb, Deloitte, Alfred and Moody’s. With extensive experience in leadership at venture-backed businesses in the housing and hospitality industries, Kromidas founded and continues to build Summer with the mission to help American families achieve their long-term goals. 

• Follow Paul on Twitter
• Connect with Paul on LinkedIn
• Follow Summer on Twitter
• Check out Summer

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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Joe Hoppis is the Co-founder and CEO of a startup called Pairadime. Pairadime is working to make co-buying residential real estate much simpler and a better experience. In this interview, Joe breaks down how many co-buying transactions there are, why this trend will likely continue to grow, and what Pairadime is actually doing to help close these transactions. Joe's passion for real estate is self-evident as he's had a 20+ year career, committed to the industry. He also shares his passion and desire to see Pairadime help address some of the housing affordability challenges many are experiencing across the country.

More about Joe and Pairadime
Pairadime works with consumers, are unmarried, purchase real estate together. This includes friends, couples, and families. Pairadime has focused on creating partnerships with real estate agents, lenders, and legal professionals to help assist in completing co-buying transactions. Pairadime sees their role as being are allies in real estate affordability by helping buyers unite with fellow buyers and professionals to easily and successfully purchase property together.  

Joe has spent 22 years in the real estate industry. From top producer to broker/owner, Joe's always had a passion to creatively finding paths to home ownership. 

• Connect with Joe on LinkedIn
• Check out Pairadime 

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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Kenon Chen, EVP at Clear Capital joins Tech Nest for a quick discussion while at Blueprint. Kenon shares some of his thoughts on interesting and exciting tech transformation that's happening throughout real estate, including the appraisals industry.

Aside from his day job, Kenon is a podcast host as well. He co-hosts ClearCast, the podcast by Clear Capital alongside Jeff Allen of CubiCasa.

Clear Capital is a national real estate valuation technology company with a simple purpose: to build confidence in real estate decisions to strengthen communities and improve lives.

• Connect with Kenon
• Check out the ClearCast Podcast
• Checkout ClearCapital

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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From the Audience town website, "Keep up with your real estate audience.
Understanding your real estate customers is everything for your business. Now you can access insights specific to home movers with consumer profiles, interests, and household information, where other analytics tools fall short. Uncover opportunities and take action in every area of your business."

• Connect with Ed Carey
• Check out Audience Town

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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This is a special edition episode filmed and recorded live during the Blueprint Conference at the Venetian Casino and Resort in Las Vegas, NV. It's taken over 160 episode for me to lure and trap one of proptech's most respected voices to come on the show (just kidding, but kind of serious). Drew Meyers is today's guest. He was an early Zillow employee, previously a founder of a hospitality / proptech startup, and is currently founder of the industry's most elite community of proptech founders and investors, Geek Estate. In this interview, we discuss a range of topics stemming off the Blueprint event such as exciting new proptechs, and themes surrounding profitability and raising capital.

More about Drew and Geek Estate
Drew is Founder of Geek Estate. He's an experienced product strategist, writer, and community builder, as well as Entrepreneur in Residence at Second Century Ventures/NAR Reach. 

Geek Estate is a private community, free from sponsored messages and noise, built for independent creatives, doers, and pioneers. 

• Follow Drew on Twitter
• Connect with Drew on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Geek Estate Mastermind Diamond
• Learn more about Geek Estate Mastermind Crystal

This is a special edition episode filmed and recorded live during the Blueprint Conference at the Venetian Casino and Resort in Las Vegas, NV. It's taken over 160 episode for me to lure and trap one of proptech's most respected voices to come on the show (just kidding, but kind of serious). Drew Meyers is today's guest. He was an early Zillow employee, previously a founder of a hospitality / proptech startup, and is currently founder of the industry's most elite community of proptech founders and investors, Geek Estate. In this interview, we discuss a range of topics stemming off the Blueprint event such as exciting new proptechs, and themes surrounding profitability and raising capital.

More about Drew and Geek Estate
Drew is Founder of Geek Estate. He's an experienced product strategist, writer, and community builder, as well as Entrepreneur in Residence at Second Century Ventures/NAR Reach. 

Geek Estate is a private community, free from sponsored messages and noise, built for independent creatives, doers, and pioneers. 

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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Cristine Brown the VP of Partner Success at Rhino, a company that been leading the multifamily industry in creating alternative solutions for the standard security deposits rents must put up to rent an apartment. Cristine shares a lot about the products at Rhino, but also their secret to success: talking to their customers. You'll hear multiple examples of how this has lead to new product insights and understanding who is influencing purchase decisions. Without talking to customers, startups run the risk of pursuing the wrong solutions or attempting to force demand where there is none. Listen in to hear from Cristine on this and more.

More about Cristine and Rhino
Rhino pioneered security deposit insurance to help making renting more affordable by removing the barrier of an upfront cash deposit. The company also offers deposit management services for property owners as well as renter's insurance and credit-building services to renters. Rhino works with a partner network that covers 6 million rental units across the country.

After more than a decade in banking, Cristine Brown joined the proptech industry to help create opportunities for renters and property owners. As Rhino's Vice President of Partner Success, Cristine focuses on reducing leasing teams' administrative burdens and strengthening their competitive advantage while helping renters keep more cash in their pockets and improving renting choices.

• Connect with Cristine on LinkedIn
• Follow Rhino on Twitter
• Check out Rhino

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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Despite my personal affection for self-storage, we've gone 165 episodes of Tech Nest without having someone on discuss the topic. Cory Sylvester, Co-founder of the popular self-storage data platform Radius Plus and Co-founder of DXD Capital is here to break the drought. We delve in to storage specific topics, such as leveraging data to build a self-storage portfolio (which is what he's doing at DXD Capital), but we go further. Right out the bat we discuss Cory's approach to building a tech company by bootstrapping and compare that to building a real estate company via raising funds. I get Cory to compare and contrast the two strategies and what he shared could be very helpful perspective for other founders out there to hear.

More about Cory, Radius Plus, and DXD Capital.
Radius is a comprehensive site selection and location intelligence platform for self storage. Developers, owners, operators, investors and lenders make use of Radius daily for up-to-date pricing, demographics, supply and pipeline information, and drive-time analysis. We've recently expanded our offering to bring news, educational resources and special features. Make Radius part of your next self storage opportunity.

DXD Capital seamlessly integrates data technology to generate outsized returns on behalf of limited partners invested in their self-storage funds.

Cory operates several companies in the self-storage space, a location intelligence company, a development and acquisition company, and a property management software company. 

• Check out Radius Plus
• Check out DXD Captial

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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What if sharing commercial real estate data could be more valuable than holding it all to yourself? This could be things like how the building was constructed, energy usable, roof condition, and more. Think CARFAX, but for commercial real estate. That's what David Kaiserman, CEO of the proptech company Backpack, is discussing on this episode of Tech Nest. David makes a compelling argument as to why data is better for everyone when shared, including reducing costs moving forward. Listen in to what he's got to say on this topic and more.

More about David and Backpack
Backpack Group is a full-service open building data platform for the $16 trillion built environment. This new platform answers the growing call for affordable and accurate asset-level operating data from owner/operators, regulators, lenders, insurers, investors and equipment manufacturers.

Backpack is the first company to affordably make the individualized data of a building and how it operates available in one unified, cloud-based system of record. Unlike current market solutions, which often rely on this data as a means of propriety, Backpack empowers building owners to share data simply and efficiently with parties of their choosing. The result is both significantly simpler and less expensive than the current use of internal and third-party resources. It also lays the path to access for current and future benefits made possible by this data.aiser

• Connect with David on LinkedIn
• Check out Backpack

Subscribe to Tech Nest: the Proptech Newsletter for weekly updates: https://www.technest.io/tech-nest-the-proptech-newsletter

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Ethan Lieber is the Co-founder and CEO of Latchel, a proptech based in Seattle that is working to improve property management companies' response times, as well as helping property managers achieve incremental revenue through resident benefits. Often times property management companies find themselves having to choose between delivering great service to residents or protecting margins of their business. Ethan breaks all this down, and how Latchel is building a solution. 

We cover a range of topics in this interview including what are resident benefits packages, resident NPS, challenges with smart home devices as a property manager, benefits of going through Y-Combinator as a startup, and more. 

Listen in to hear what Ethan has to say.

 
More about Ethan and Latchel:
Ethan is a seasoned entrepreneur who started and sold an e-commerce startup while working full-time at One Planet Ops, running Product for contractors.com - before co-founding Latchel in 2017.

Latchel is a tech-forward property management business that was accepted into the Y Combinator program in 2019 (with alumni companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Doordash and Stripe). We completed our Series A funding (led by F-Prime) in 2021.

Renters today expect better service, more perks, and faster maintenance than most property managers can afford to provide.

Latchel is a software platform that enables property managers to be more responsive and offer better perks while also creating a new revenue stream so they don't have to choose between happy tenants and a healthy bottom line.

• Connect with Ethan on LinkedIn
• Follow Latchel on LinkedIn
• Check out Latchel