TECH TALK RADIO

In this week’s Tech Talk Radio episode, tech and global reporter Lucy Alderson is joined by Planet Smart City chief digital strategy officer Alan Marcus to talk about a very special project the proptech start-up and affordable housing developer has recently announced.

Last year, Planet Smart City came on the United Nations Human Settlements Programme’s radar for the work they were doing in designing and building affordable housing across the world, and placing tech at the heart of these developments.

Planet Smart City is now working with the United Nations to build an app for two of Nairobi's largest slum communities to use to organise events, access educational resources, advertise business services to develop a local economy, and create a better life.

Marcus discusses the “gold mine of information” that will be collected through the app ,which will be able to give data insights into how slum communities can be best supported. He also outlines the challenges he expects the partnership will face in encouraging the local community to adopt the technology.

On this week’s Tech Talk Radio, tech and global reporter Lucy Alderson is joined by flexible office space provider Mindspace co-founder Yotam Alroy, to talk about how tech is vital to get people back into the office and what the future holds for the flex space market.

Mindspace has developed an app which members can use to book space and order services in their office, keeping human contact to a minimum. Alroy outlines how critical it is for landlords to use tech to navigate their way out of the pandemic, and how it can be used to make people feel safe and comfortable enough to return to the office.

He also outlines the opportunities and challenges that the flex market faces emerging from the initial coronavirus crisis, and whether there is a degree of hype around just how much flex office space is in demand as a result of Covid-19.

On this week’s Tech Talk Radio, tech and global reporter Lucy Alderson is joined by Cubic Lease chief executive James Owusu to talk about how the online property viewings booking company, founded last year, has navigated its way through the pandemic and what opportunities this has presented for the start-up.

Owusu also talks about a subject that has also dominated global headlines – the Black Lives Matter movement – and how it relates to the property industry. Being one of very few black British proptech founders, Owusu talks about the challenges that he faces where white founders don’t, and how to make property a more inclusive place.

What property is doing to tackle its lack of diversity is “quite frankly, not enough”, Owusu says. He outlines strategies VCs can put in place to increase investment into non-white businesses and how to talk about race-related issues if you are a white senior leader.

On this week's episode of Tech Talk Radio Emily Wright is joined by RJ Pittman and James Morris-Manuel, chief executive and EMEA MD of spatial data capture company Matterport. 

The duo talk about the impact COVID-19 has had on the business and the wider real estate sector as social distancing restrictions and global lockdowns have seen a surge in interest for virtual property viewings. "In the month of April alone we added more new customers than in the first eight years of the business," says Pittman, adding that the company had already built up a significant global customer base before the pandemic hit. 

The trend towards virtual viewings was already picking up, he adds, particularly towards the end of 2019 and so Matterport was prepared for the sudden increase in demand. The company also rushed out Matterport for iPhone app to respond to the current situation. 

Tune in to hear more about the launch of the app, how they are handling swathes of new customers and how they are dealing with the team's collective mental health in such strange times.

Also on this week's episode, Wright is joined by Nadia Elghamry, senior product manager at EG. She offers her thoughts on the virtual viewings trend backing up Pittman's predictions that it is here to stay. 

She adds that while COVID-19 might have been a catalyst for growth, virtual viewings were something clients were expecting as standard before the pandemic and that the trend has now simply been fast-tracked.

On this week's Tech Talk Radio, host Emily Wright is joined by CBRE's new head of technology Mike Gedye. 

Gedye, who took on the newly created role this month, talked about how he will approach the position and revealed his thoughts on the post lockdown return to work. 

He said that CBRE expects "fragmented" occupancy in the coming weeks and months as companies promote a blend of continued home working and traditional office use. He added that we could see a 50% slump in office occupancy for up to a year after lockdown due to "phased occupancy and seating teams much wider apart physically."

Gedye added that some companies are even considering seven day working weeks to move away from traditional office utilisation peaks and troughs and explained how occupiers are starting to rethink their longer term space and lease requirements. 

For this plus his thoughts on how this could impact the future of the office more broadly, tune in to this week's Tech Talk Radio podcast.

Tech Talk Radio is back. In the first episode after a brief hiatus host Emily Wright speaks to Akshay Thakur, head of technology consulting EMEA and APAC at JLL about smart buildings and cyber security. 

As we move towards a smarter future, how vulnerable are we to cyber attacks? How can businesses best prepare for them? And when it comes to protecting smart buildings from potential breaches where does the responsibility lie? 

Thakur addresses all of these questions and more in this episode as he explains how attacks come about and how sometimes the simplest fixes are among the most effective ways to protect smart buildings and cities.

On this week's Tech Talk Radio Emily Wright is joined by former Rockspring chief executive Robert Gilchrist and Dashflow creator Mike Molloy as the pair discuss the former's investment in the app. 

Gilchrist is one of a tranche of angel investors backing the tech company as it targets a £1.5m second fundraise. The funding round follows the app’s initial seed funding offer in 2017, which was 50% oversubscribed and raised £400,000 ahead of Dashflow’s launch in 2018. Since then the app has attracted users including M&G Real Estate, BNP Paribas Real Estate, Orion Capital Managers, Hermes, Derwent London, Delancey, SevenCapital and Amazon Property.

Gilchrist reveals why he has backed Dashflow and discusses the future of tech investment from a real estate perspective. 

Also on this episode, tech reporter Lucy Alderson tells us how she fared when she gave up the internet for a day along with 11 other industry professionals for the Wiredscore Unplugged Challenge.

On this week's Tech Talk Radio Emily Wright meets HB Reavis's innovations and partnerships lead Gaia Arzilli for one of our most high octane podcasts to date. 

Arzilli concedes that it takes a particular type of person to take on her role as she must bring together a community of people across a number of offices and countries and "excite them about new innovations."

She talks about the challenges of the role, the importance of change and urges the industry to be "Netflix, not Blockbuster" as priorities shift from pure bricks and mortar to prioritise humans. 

"Planet, people and productivity are at the heart of everything we do," she says. 

Then, Damian Wild steps in for Sam McClary this week as TTR co-host as he talks all things Mipim and reveals what EG will be up to out in Cannes next month. For this and much more, tune in now.

On this week's Tech Talk Radio, Emily Wright and co-host Sam McClary are joined by Fifth Wall's Brendan Wallace and Tyson Woeste following the launch of the California-based VC fund's $200m Carbon Impact Fund last week. 

The fund will allow real estate companies in invest in sustainable and energy efficient technologies.

The duo talk about why the time for action is now as the general public, capital markets and regulators alike are all starting to ask what the real estate sector is doing to take responsibility for its role in climate change. 

"We want to make the real estate industry more energy efficient than it is currently," says Wallace. "Everyone on planet earth is in the middle of this crisis and real estate owners haven’t accepted the responsibility they have. It is time. The real estate industry has to come together to solve this."

Wallace and Woeste go on to add that the problem will not be solved by hundreds or thousands of real estate owners looking to individually assess technologies and then individually apply them to their portfolios. Rather everyone needs to come together to solve a "collective problem". 

Given the fact that Fifth Wall manages "a billion dollars worth of capital" from 52 real estate corporates across the world already, it feels well placed to be the driving force behind bringing the sector together to help take on "the biggest fight of our generation."

On this week's Tech Talk Radio, EG kicks off the new year and a new decade with a refreshingly honest chat with Mark Quigley of Beaufort Capital. 

The managing director of the firm's UK real estate finance division joined Emily Wright and Sam McClary to talk about how he, along with the rest of his team, is addressing some of the challenges around digital transformation. 

Quigley reveals how he is learning about the impact of technology on real estate despite being someone who has gaps in his knowledge when it comes to tech. 

"I could just ignore all of these tech advances," he says. "But then I would never take myself forward. Learning about technology has meant putting myself out there. I am the oldest member of my team and those younger than me are quick to point out my shortcomings but I also know that all of them recognise I am trying to move with the times."

To find out more, tune in to hear how learning about technology has helped propelled Beaufort Capital forward and listen to Quigley outline plans for an AI breakfast, hosted by the company, on January 28th.