The Propcast

Summary:

On the the 3rd episode of Season 9 of The Propcast, Louisa is joined by Jonathan Hannam, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Taronga Ventures and Joanna Marsh, GM Innovation & Advanced Analytics at Investa Property Group. They chat about their journeys towards a built environment and innovation space, with a focus on what can be done to bridge the gap between technologists and real estate institutions and corporates.

The discussion zeroes in on how companies can improve diversity and ultimately speed up transformation as well as ESG technologies in the industry. The key understanding from this episode is that there is an incredible opportunity to be in between the real estate world and the emerging technology companies.

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Companies Mentioned:

• SPACECUBE
• Taronga Ventures

Shout Outs:

• William Cosby, Ex Omnia

Key Insights From This Episode:

• There is this incredible opportunity to be in between the real estate world and the emerging technology companies. - Jonathan
• There is a much greater focus on using ESG to actually deliver real outcomes. - Jonathan
• Historically in real estate, the industry has been extremely opaque. - Joanna
• For the last 12 months, every investor and every discussion has been about ESG. - Jonathan
• One of the trends in real estate has been the move from the point solutions to something that is more of a holistic ecosystem as well as the blending of the technologies together. - Joanna
• We build better products and better businesses with diverse thoughts. - Joanna
• Globally, the real estate sector isn't greatly diverse especially at the senior leadership level. - Jonathan
• We tell founders that, "Your business will be more attractive to us from a capital perspective, if you can demonstrate that you've got diversity of leadership." - Jonathan
• In 2019, 2.8% of funding went to women-led startups and in 2020, that fell to 2.3%. - Louisa

Keywords: Technology, ESG, Diversity, Real Estate, Proptech

About Our Guests:

Jonathan Hannam, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Taronga Ventures

Jonathan is a global citizen, having held senior executive and board roles across Asia and Europe in real estate, venture capital, technology, and infrastructure-related investments. In 2015, Jonathan jointly founded Taronga Ventures, Asia's leading technology and innovation investor focused on the real estate sector and the wider built environment. His vision is to bridge the gap between real estate institutions and corporates, and the emerging technology companies that are now targeting the real estate sector. Through Taronga Ventures, Jonathan's focus is on real estate technology (RealTech) investments that drive real and measurable impact across ESG, including carbon reduction, renewable energy, sustainability, and health & safety. Prior to Taronga Ventures, Jonathan has also held executive roles at Mirvac, as a Director at AREIM in Sweden and as the Portfolio Manager Asia for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) during a period when ADIA completed more than 40 transactions across Asia.

In other roles, Jonathan has lived and worked in China, the Philippines and Singapore with Savills, and was also the Managing Director South East Asia based in Singapore for ING Real Estate. Jonathan attended the INSEAD AMP course in Singapore & Abu Dhabi in 2015-2016. He holds an MBA from the University of South Australia, a Bachelor of Planning & Design and a Bachelor of Town & Regional Planning from the University of Melbourne. He also completed postgraduate studies at Tsinghua University and is fluent in Mandarin and Swedish.

About Taronga Ventures

Taronga Ventures is Asia's leading technology and innovation investor focused on the real estate sector and the wider built environment. The group consists of the RealTech Ventures Fund, the RealTechX innovation program and Taronga Advisory and has offices in Singapore and Australia. The Fund is backed by global institutional investors and major real estate owners including APG, Ivanhoé Cambridge, CBRE Inc., PGIM Real Estate, Mitsubishi Corporation, Nomura Real Estate, Patrizia AG, Dexus, Vicinity Centres, amongst others. The Fund invests into scalable technology and innovation that enhances or challenges the traditional real estate and infrastructure sectors. Taronga Ventures is focused on investing in strategic opportunities and providing its institutional partners first mover advantage, whilst maintaining a focus on creating a better built environment, through sustainable and responsible investment practices. Recognising that climate change is the biggest global challenge we all face, Taronga Ventures has been independently certified as being 100% carbon neutral.

Joanna Marsh, GM Innovation & Advanced Analytics at Investa Property Group

Joanna is a leader with 15+ years of Australian & International property experience, across office, industrial and residential sectors. Currently, she is GM of Innovation & Advanced Analytics at Investa and is disrupting the property markets globally though data & AI/ML analytics.

Over her career, she has transformed big property companies and small ones. Grown property businesses through acquisitions, financing and leasing. Sold down assets and restructured portfolios. Created property management & tenant service businesses. Built technology platforms with corresponding systems, processes and people.

Prior to Investa, she led Transformation & Innovation in Property at Lendlease, and Strategy & Strategic Operations at Dexus.

Joanna studied Neuroscience at Harvard University, Design Thinking at Stanford and has a variety of AI/ML and data nanodegrees; as well as attending the entrepreneurial school of hard knocks.

About Investa

Investa is a commercial real estate management and development service provider in the Australian office sector. With more than $11 billion in assets under management, we maximise the value of Australian workplaces for our tenants, investors and the community through our office management expertise and by consistently delivering a superior customer experience, while remaining in industry leader in sustainable building management and responsible property investment.t.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Timestamps:

[02:20] Jonathan: Talk us through your career and tell us how you ended up at Taronga Ventures?

• My career started in China, I did my post-grad at a Chinese University and I started doing Urban Planning and from there I stumbled into real estate working for a Singaporean firm in China (one the first VC funds in that markert).
• After working in VC, I started at Savills and I have now been in real estate for the last 25 years.
• I then worked for Abu Dhabi Investment Authority before moving on to ING Real Estate Finance and most recently Mirvac.

[04:30] Joanna: Can you tell us about your 15 years in real estate?

• I started at Harvard studying neuroscience. Investment banks, consulting companies and banks love Ivy league kids with science degrees so I went to work at KeyBank Real Estate Capital where we did the structural and financial side of real estate.
• I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur and started a small fund where we bought multifamily assets, refurbished them and started a property management company to do that.
• I arrived in Australia at 30, with a failed business and a banking career so I started working on strategy at DEXUS Property Group. I was more interested in the cutting edge and at Lendlease I was doing transformation and innovation, moving further up the R and D curve.

[07:20] Joanna: What are investors honing in on when it comes to innovation?

• We have a broad innovation strategy. Advanced analytics and data underpins all of it.
• One of the ways of innovating is to take on startups and scaleups and integrate new technologies.
• Data and analytics sit under everything that we do.

[09:20] Jonathan: You are currently running an ESG impact program, can you talk us through the program and the mission of it?

• We needed to have both the fund and a growth program.
• The ESG program is for select high calibre quality companies
• We needed to move up to the scalable businesses who already had customers and they had some level of traction because the real estate world actually couldn't deal with startups.
• It is an ecosystem builder.

[13:00] Joanna: With ESG, it is difficult to get good data from it as well as finding technology to support it. What is your take on this?

• Historically in real estate, the industry has been extremely opaque. There's been huge information asymmetry and that's resulted in a massive lack of transparency.
• The information asymmetries are breaking down and what's happening is we're starting to be able to abstract data from other industries and from other data sets in order to back solve and fill in data that the real estate industry either doesn't have or is not sharing.
• The pressure from the investors and the capital regarding ESG is forcing a level of transparency and scrutiny that is going to become akin to financial reporting.

[15:35] On the topic of investment going into the real estate space and ESG, are there any technologies which you guys can share?

• For the last 12 months, every investor and every discussion has been about ESG.
• In the building management, energy efficiency space, there are a lot of Companies that are targeting that as an area, but we are looking for a more complete solution.
• It often isn't a cost, it's actually a benefit and an upside for the corporates that start using this technique

[18:30] Joanna: Are there any major trends that you have seen in the real estate space?

• The move from the point solutions to something that is more of a holistic ecosystem as well as the blending of the technologies together.
• Some technologies simplify a part of something but causes so much extra exhaustion.

[21:25] How do we attract and retain more people into the real estate and data world?

• The first thing is to know that it is possible.
• In terms of diversity, I think it is about honouring diversity of thought and innovation.

[24:40] Jonathan: What are your thoughts on this, knowing that you are in the hiring process?

• What we've tried to do from within our advisory board and from our hiring policy, is to have the most diverse approach hiring that we can have.
• When we've looked through the businesses that we are investing in, we often see that it is male founded.
• We're doing a lot of work to try to positively fund female founded enterprises.

[29:35] Have you seen any change happening when it comes down to education and exploring technology as a career path?

• Jonathan: I moved from Australia from Sweden, and in Sweden there is just a different approach. We have systematic issues in Australia when it comes to childcare.
• Joanna: I think there is a lack of how to even do this and things like how to raise capital.

[32:30] Jonathan: What is next for Taronga?

• In the next three months we will be churning through hundreds of deals to work out the partners for the ESG program.

[33:25] Joanna: What is exciting that is coming up?

• The data, analytics and advanced analytics of ESG and the ecosystem around that.
• Giving the power back to the people where you no longer have to big IT for innovation.

[35:50] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about;

L – Touch on the main lessons you have learnt throughout your career.

Jonathan: Decision-making in the corporate real estate world takes longer and you need to build your business to be able to withstand that challenge.

Joanna: Be really resourceful and find a way.

M - Please give a mention to anyone / product / service.

Jonathan: SPACECUBE

Joanna: William Cosby - Ex Omina

R – What has been the most rewarding aspect of working in PropTech?

Jonathan: The people

Joanna: Partnering

E - What are you excited about in the future of PropTech?

Joanna: Distilling down to the fundamental set of data points.

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Summary: On the 2nd Episode of Season 9, Louisa is joined by Laura Smith, Managing Director at Berkadia and Neda Fields, Director of Product Management at Berkadia to chat about digital transformation within real estate. They discussed how Berkadia went about their own transformation for internal product development and the use of external technologies. They also touched on how to attract a diverse workforce; a key issue during the Great Rehiring that's sweeping the post-pandemic market. During the global Covid outbreak, while everyone else was downsizing, Berkadia's adoption of industry-leading technologies helped them to double their workforce.

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews
• redIQ

Companies Mentioned:

• Dwight Capital (Love Funding)
• Arbinger Institute
• Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
• Jefferies Financial Group
• redIQ

Shout Outs:

• Eric Flohr

Key Insights From This Episode:

• During the pandemic while everyone else was downsizing, we were recalibrating and employee staff sizes had almost doubled. - Laura
• Job candidates are asking about the culture, what does the business contribute to the community, are there different programs, different intentions, what is the whole progression and what do they offer? - Louisa
• It is important to have different backgrounds to contribute to innovations. - Neda
• Diversity is not just about gender. - Neda
• Bring your YOU to work. Be yourself, and have that freedom to express yourself as yourself so that you feel comfortable sharing your ideas and contributing to the innovation. - Neda
• Give people flexibility, especially if we've learned nothing else from COVID, we all have to learn to embrace change and be flexible with whatever comes our way. - Laura
• Business is not usual, there's no more normal. Noone knows what the new normal is. - Laura
• The real estate industry has been an industry that has been reluctant to technology innovation. - Neda

Keywords: Technology, PropTech, Women, Data, Digital Transformation

About Our Guests:

Neda Fields

Neda Fields leads cross-functional efforts and teams in the development of data insight and visualisation tools for real estate market research. Berkadia's Data and Analytics tools synthesise property fundamentals, demographics and market intelligence to optimise the evaluation of real estate investments. Neda was selected as one of Real Estate Forum's CRE Tech Influencers in 2021.

Neda began her career with KPMG in the Information Risk Management practice where she advised numerous clients on their Information Technology internal control frameworks. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems from Missouri State University.

Laura Smith

As Managing Director, Laura Smith is responsible for loan origination of market-rate multifamily, affordable and healthcare properties nationwide. Over the course of her career, she has underwritten approximately $6 billion in FHA, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Wall street conduit transactions. She has originated and closed more than 120 transactions totaling nearly $1 billion.

Laura holds a bachelor's degree in political science from West Chester University and in German from the University of Marburg, Germany. In 1992, she received her Masters of Business Administration from American University with a concentration in real estate finance.

Berkadia

Berkadia, a joint venture of Berkshire Hathaway and Jefferies Financial Group, is a leader in the commercial real estate industry, offering a robust suite of services to our multifamily and commercial property clients. Powered by deep relationships and industry-changing technology, our people sell, finance, and service commercial real estate, providing support for the entire life cycle of our clients' assets. Our unique ownership structure allows us to put our clients' interests first and create a marketplace that delivers a superior experience

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and search consultancy with operations across North America, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast 'The Propcast' where she hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Timestamps:

[01:10] Laura: Talk us through your journey to Berkadia.

• I left Love Funding (Dwight Capital) when the company was bought by a bank and the culture started to change.
• The unique culture and technology blew me away when I met with Berkadia's senior management team.

[02:50] Neda: Talk us through your journey to Berkadia and what your role entails.

• I joined Berkadia about 9 years ago because we decided to relocate to the Philadelphia area.
• I was really impressed with Berkadia's leadership and that is why I joined the company. And the best part is that I have had the opportunity to do several different roles.
• I started in compliance then slowly moved into the data and data science group and then evolved into the product team and through that continue to develop the data analytics tools that Berkadia has developed.

[04:20] Neda: Talk us through the digital transformation at Berkadia.

• Berkadia is sitting on a lot of data, we service over $350 billion in our servicing portfolio right now as well as over 100 bankers and investment sales advisors.
• We have the ability to gather a lot of data from all of the markets across the US and we combine that with other demographics and have built-out a big base for us to build our tools on.
• We started to see, how do we bring value with this data and how do we transform our managers directors into advisors, more so than transaction managers.
• How do we help our clients make sure that they have the right investment strategies through data-driven analytics?

[06:00] Can you give a couple examples of your clients?

• Real Estate Investors of all sizes.
• Mid-market and institutional investors.

[09:50] Your workforce has doubled, where have you seen the biggest growth at Berkadia?

• In Berkadia's technology team, we have had exponential growth over the last few years.
• Berkadia is a privately held company so when there is any type of downturn, we are able to take advantage and attract good talent to accelerate the company's vision.

[11:15] Can you expand on how Berkadia is engaging with people at different levels in the education system?

• We have an employee resource group called Be United, a summer internship program and we are participating in a work-study program.

[13:05] How do you attract people to your teams, what initiatives are working at Berkadia at the moment?

• The DIB initiative has launched and it is management's commitment to diversity.
• Berkadia's commitment is not just about women but all backgrounds.
• Bring your YOU to work. Be yourself, and have that freedom to express yourself as yourself so that you feel comfortable sharing your ideas and contributing to the innovation.
• We are highlighting individual stories.
• Mentoring.

[20:25] What products are you working on?

• We have a lot of internal data visualisation tools to drive the advice strategy of our producers to help our clients be successful.
• We have an external product called redIQ. It is advancing how rent roll statements and operating statements are ingested and analysed.
• We have an internal initiative working on tech startups in the real estate industry.

[26:30] What are the different reactions you have seen from your products?

• The non-profit, mom and pop oriented are the ones we are trying to get on board.
• Larger clients who have portfolios of 20 and more, they get it.

[27:20] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about;

L – Touch on the main lessons you have learnt throughout your career.

Neda: You have to embrace the change.

Neda: Just go for it, whatever you want to achieve, just act like you are already there.

M - Please give a mention to anyone / product / service.

Laura: Our IT and product development team as well as the senior management team.

R – What has been the most rewarding aspect of working in PropTech?

Neda: Seeing the clients face when they see the technology.

Laura: Watching my team grow.

E - What are you excited about in the future of PropTech?

Laura: Continuing to embrace change and working with our technology group.

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On the first episode of season 9 of Propcast, Louisa is joined by Michael Bristow, CEO and Co-Founder of CrowdProperty and Faisal Butt, Founder & CEO of Pi Labs. During the episode, they discuss how Pi Labs started, as well as how the PropTech market has changed and grown. Michael shares his journey from investor to founder, and chats about his specialist property development lending platform, CrowdProperty. With their 'property finance by property people' proposition, CrowdProperty and Pi Labs are disrupting property finance for small and medium sized developers who have previously struggled to access the financing they need.

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Companies Mentioned:

• Spire Ventures
• OfficeRnD
• PropTech1
• Fifth Wall
• GREENPASS
• Okibo
• Lantech

Key Insights From This Episode:

• We're disrupting property finance for small and medium sized developers, where historically financial services underserved them. - Michael

• If you're a B2B SaaS business, it doesn't matter where you are because you can build a globally scalable business. - Faisal
• If you can prove one market, you can arguably have the ability to scale in many markets. - Michael
• Australia has many duopolistic markets which typically drive less aggressive competition between players. - Michael
• Since there was such a dearth of liquidity for PropTech before, I find that there is more coming in now, but I don't think there is too much. I believe that the market needs to mature and that funding is needed at different stages. - Faisal
• Retention is what you need to focus on. When you have someone great in your team, you need to look after them because if not, they will go elsewhere. - Michael

Keywords: Europe, Technology, Venture Capital, Finance, PropTech, FinTech

About Our Guests:

Mike Bristow

Mike Bristow is the CEO and Co-Founder of CrowdProperty, the UK's leading specialist property development online lending platform. With a background in strategy consultancy advising major corporates and private equity funds on corporate strategy and M&A, Mike has been investing in property since 2002, investing in high potential proptech businesses since 2014 and sits on the Investment Committee of Pi Labs, Europe's first and most prolific venture capital fund investing exclusively in early stage ventures in the proptech vertical, in which he is also an LP.

Mike has an MBA from London Business School, is a founding board member of the Innovate Finance 36H Group alongside other leading fintech lending platforms and was named 'Entrepreneur of the Year' at the Midlands Business Awards 2020.

About CrowdProperty

CrowdProperty is the UK's leading specialist property development online lending platform – a fintech/proptech lending innovator, exceptionally efficiently matching the demand (quality property professionals undertaking quality property projects) and supply (major global financial institutions and private investors) of capital for value-creating property projects. CrowdProperty has built the best SME property development lender in the market, changing the game with a distinct 'property finance by property people' proposition, unlocking the potential of small and medium sized developers to build more homes and drive spend in the UK economy on labour, materials and services.

Small and medium sized property developers and property professionals have been poorly and inefficiently served by traditional funding sources for decades. Actual property development and investment experience lies at the heart of CrowdProperty meaning a hands-on, expertise-led partnership, underpinned by technology for efficiency and deep asset class expertise for effectiveness of lending, increasing the likelihood of success of our customer's projects. CrowdProperty funds property professionals undertaking any sort of property project, structuring the perfect funding product and doing so with greater speed, ease, certainty, transparency and expertise than anyone in the market. As property people providing property finance, we intimately understand market pains and built the business around the needs of small and medium sized property developers.

CrowdProperty has funded over £400,000,000 of property projects and the construction of 2,000 homes. CrowdProperty was recognised as one of the 50 fastest growing tech businesses in the UK (UK #41 and Midlands #1 in the Deloitte Fast50 report) and by the Financial Times as the #132 fastest growing business in Europe. Apply for finance for your property project in just 5 minutes at www.crowdproperty.com/apply View video case studies of projects we've funded at: www.crowdproperty.com/case-studies

Faisal Butt

Faisal Butt is CEO and Founder of Pi Labs, a London-based venture capital firm focused on backing companies that are at the forefront of digitalising the real estate and construction sectors. Faisal founded Pi Labs in 2015, after leading the first round of investments in PropTech start-ups Hubble and Trussle as an individual investor. Faisal and his team have built a portfolio of over 60 PropTech companies across the UK, Europe, North America, and Australia, making Pi Labs one of the most active investors in PropTech start-ups globally. Faisal is also the founder of Spire Ventures, a personal investment vehicle with a focus on investment in traditional property services companies. His traditional property investments include POD Management, Beaumont Bailey, and 90 North, a real estate investment manager which has managed $2bn of real estate assets across Europe and the USA.

Global proptech venture capital (VC) firm Pi Labs backs the innovators revolutionising the future of physical spaces. Connecting next generation technologists with the real estate world and mentoring forward-thinking founders as they grow and scale their startups, Pi Labs' purpose is to solve the greatest challenges facing the real estate world through technology and create a positive impact on our physical environment for people, businesses and communities. Founded in 2014, London-based Pi Labs invests in early-stage proptech startups which are transforming the future of physical spaces across Europe – where it is the most active proptech VC. Its portfolio companies operate in global markets, including Asia and the US. From pre-seed to Series A and follow-on investments in later funding rounds, Pi Labs has grown its portfolio to more than 60 companies which are shaping the future of our physical spaces, with more than 50% of startups focused on addressing environmental and social issues.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps:

[02:40] Faisal: Why did you get into this space and how did Pi Labs come about?

• I started my career in California during the first .com boom and bust.
• At 25, I quit the corporate world to join the entrepreneurial world and set up my own tech business. Being a founder led me to segwaying and deciding to do an MBA at Oxford.
• In 2009, during the recession caused by real estate, I was looking for investment opportunities and I looked at investments into traditional real estate businesses. In 2013, I wanted to focus on the intersection between real estate and technology.

[05:00] How does Spire Ventures come into all of this?

• I made investments before Pi Labs that were in traditional real estate and I decided that if I wanted to continue, I should set up an Investment Management Business - a Fund Management Business- and separate personal investment from business investment.
• Pi Labs focuses on PropTech businesses where Spire Ventures focuses on traditional fee-generating businesses.

[05:40] Michael: You are an Investment Committee Member at Pi Labs, what does that mean and can you tell us more about the move you made from being an investor to a founder?

• My background started in Mechanical Engineering and I went into strategy consulting.
• I did things in the reverse route. I started as an advisor, went on to be an investor, and then went on to be a founder.
• I did my MBA at the London Business School, pre financial crisis.
• Since 2002, I have been investing in residential real estate.
• Once the investment team has filtered a lot of businesses and they pieced together the investment thesis, they put that to the final approving committee called the "Investment Committee".

[09:15] Talk us through finding CrowdProperty and the product.

• We are in full-on growth mode as a profitable FinTech, PropTech business. We fund small to medium sized property developers.
• We've got a lot of debt capital from major global asset managers; over £400M worth of property projects with over 2000 homes being built.
• We have expanded into Australia

[11:05] After your third fund raise, is the focus going to remain in Europe?

• After our first fund was launched in 2015, we were mostly a UK fund and we had one company in Bulgaria which has turned into a global business.
• With our second fund, we started investing in the Netherlands, Finland, and throughout Europe and we wanted to focus on businesses that had a global thesis.
• Our third fund is our most international fund.

[13:30] How much are you looking to invest?

• We can invest anywhere from pre-seed to series A but our sweet spot is anywhere on the seed spectrum.
• Checks can be as small as £100,000 to £1 million.
• This fund has a pretty significant amount of growth capital reserves.

[15:00] Michael: Why is Australia the next point of call rather than the US?

• Most of my consulting career was spent advising businesses on international expansion.
• Australia is a smaller market with 24 million in population and they are in the earliest stage of the evolution of FinTech and PropTech.
• Australia has many duopolistic markets which typically drive less aggressive competition between players. You can drop in and be quite disruptive.

[17:40] Faisal: You've done 25 investments, is there a direction for this fund?

• We are quite a dynamic investor.
• We are publishing our own research on a number of topics such as sustainability and ESG.
• We are interested in robotics and the metaverse.

[20:55] What are the main challenges which are out there for you and other investors?

• Sifting through the volume and identifying the winners.
• There is such a dearth of liquidity for PropTech before that now the market needs to mature.

[23:35] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about;

L – Touch on the main lessons you have learnt throughout your career.

• Faisal: Stay focused, be disciplined.
• Michael: Focus drives expertise, world-class talent and competitive advantage.

M - Please give a mention to anyone / product / service.

• Michael: Pi Labs

R – What has been the most rewarding aspect of working in PropTech?

• Faisal: Watching businesses grow. Watching a founding team build to scale.

E - What are you excited about in the future of PropTech?

• Faisal: Deploying this capital into a batch of really exciting high calibre startups.
• Growing our team.
• Michael: Disrupting property development, finance, and helping more homes get built.

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Summary: For the 10th and final episode of Propcast season 8, Louisa is joined by Greg Smithies, Partner and Co-Head of Climate Tech at Fifth Wall and Jonathan Schulhof, co-founder and CEO of FootPrint Coalition Ventures. They talk through their roles and what their funds are doing within the climate and sustainable technology space. They explain the growth and trends that they have seen in the market at the macro and micro level. Finally, they speak about what the future looks like and what we can personally do to reduce our carbon footprint. The key insight from this episode is the simplest thing you can do for the planet is to switch your thermostat down.

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Companies Mentioned:

• Battery Ventures
• Coldwatt, acquired by Flextronics
• Kleiner Perkins
• GE Conoco
• Turntide Motors
• Carbon Cure
• Sidewalk Labs
• Zero Acre
• Sealed

Shout Outs:

• Rob Soni, Executive Chairman, Founder, CEO & Investor
• Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners, Chairman of the Board at DISCO, Chairman of the Board at The Miracle Foundation
• Stephen M. Ross, Owner of The Related Companies
• Jeff Blau, CEO at Related Companies
• Harvey Spievak, Executive Chairman and Managing Partner, Equinox Group
• Robert Downey Jr.

Key Insights From This Episode:

• Looking at climate tech today, the vast majority of them require some level of industrial tech. - Greg

• The technologies we're investing in on the climate side are good for the planet, cheaper for the consumer and have higher returns. - Greg
• We might be in the golden age of climate and impact investing. - Greg
• We've had a washout of cleantech, 1.0 companies that weren't sustainable without subsidy. - John
• It is a travesty for the planet that for the last 20 years, the world's best and brightest went through, and spent all of their time doing ad click-through optimization. - Greg
• When you look at a problem that no one's looked at in the last 200 years, you can come up with some solutions that are cheaper, better and faster. - Greg
• People are really looking and examining the food supply and thinking about how we can scale in a way that's compatible with the planet. - John
• 70% of the world's natural gas is burnt inside buildings for either powering them or heating them. - Greg

Keywords: Climate Tech, Sustainable Tech, Future, Climate Change, Sustainability

About Our Guests:

Greg Smithies, Partner and Co-Head of Climate Tech at Fifth Wall.

Greg is a Partner at Fifth Wall, where he co-leads the Climate Technology Investment team. Prior to joining Fifth Wall, Greg was a Partner at BMW i Ventures where he led the Sustainability investing practice, investing in companies such as Prometheus Fuels, and PureCycle (NASDAQ: ROCH). Before joining BMW i Ventures, Greg led Finance & Operations for both The Boring Company and Neuralink simultaneously.

Greg started his investment career at Battery Ventures where he covered early-stage enterprise technology startups, as well as industrial technology buyouts. Successful exits from his work there include Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco Systems, Inc.), and IST (acquired by Scott Brand).

Greg was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and currently lives in Oakland, CA. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School where he received a BS in Economics and a BS in Computer Science.

Founded in 2016, Fifth Wall, a Certified B Corporation, is the largest venture capital firm focused on technology-driven innovation for the global real estate industry. With approximately $3.0 billion in commitments and capital under management, Fifth Wall connects many of the world's largest owners and operators of real estate with the entrepreneurs who are redefining the future of the Built World. Fifth Wall is backed by a global mix of more than 90 strategic investors from more than 15 countries.

Jonathan Schulhof is co-founder and CEO of FootPrint Coalition Ventures, a digital publishing and venture firm he started in partnership with Robert Downey Jr., to back environmentally focused sustainable technologies. FootPrint is a cross-platform digital publisher that features sustainable technology in news and short form video content for social media, and long-form series for streaming networks. FootPrint uses its publishing activity to originate and add value to investments in high growth companies. FootPrint then makes these investments accessible to investors that want to join in our movement through funds and through co-investment syndicates. We invest in areas such as alternative proteins, biodegradable plastics, electric vehicle motors, and energy storage.

Jon has over 20 years of experience investing in clean technology startups. He was a founder and lead investor in Motivate, which owned and operated Citibike and the other leading North American bike sharing systems (sold to Lyft). He started Loom Media to finance the rollout of free public electric vehicle charging systems, and other smart city amenities sponsored by corporate media (now part of WPP). Earlier in his career, Jon created ColdWatt, a high efficiency power 81 Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1J 8HY electronics company (sold to Flextronics); and Glori Energy, a microbially enhanced oil recovery business (IPO).

In addition to his cleantech work, Jon serves as non-executive chairman of GTI Capital Group, a permanent capital investor in India. Jon started this company while living in New Delhi from 2010 through 2012. GTI's holdings include Air Works (aviation maintenance), Samhi (hotels), and WebEngage (B2B SaaS tools for ecommerce). GTI has several prior exits including Brattle Foods (refrigerated logistics, sold to Future Group), National Stock Exchange (sold through secondary trades), Sandhar (autoparts, IPO), and Nova Medical Centers (healthcare services, sold to Apollo).

Jon was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served on the Board of Northside Center for Early Childhood Development for 10 years. He is now a mentor at iMentor. Jon holds a law degree from Stanford, and attended Dartmouth College.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps:

[02:05] Greg, can you talk us through your journey?

• Currently, I co-head the climate investment team at Fifth Wall.
• I set up and founded the climate investing team for BMW.
• Prior to BMW, I was an Elon Musk world for a number of years. I was head of finance and operations at two of his companies.
• I started my investing career at a fund called Battery Ventures.

[06:10] John, can you talk us through your journey?

• I didn't set out to be a climate tech investor.
• I have a law degree from Stanford.
• I started several companies that were venture-backed, the first was Coldwatt.
• I started my first asset management company as an investor in India and set up a permanent capital vehicle for investing.
• I partnered with Stephen M. Ross, Jeff Blau and Harvey Spievak and we turned around Citi Bike.
• Finally, I set up Footprint Coalition with Robert Downey Jr.

[14:20] Greg, can you talk us through impact investing and how it's going affect our built environment?

• Impact investing has historically gotten little bit of a negative connotation to it because in the capital markets people have always said there's real investing and then there is impact investing.
• A lot of these technologies that people used to think were expensive are now incredibly cheap.

[16:50] John, in your 20 years, what major changes have you seen?

• We've had a wash out of clean tech, 1.0 companies that weren't sustainable without subsidy.
• Technology is accelerating, the world looks nothing today, like it did 15 years ago.
• The talent that has followed the capital that is flooding into this market is truly amazing.

[22:30] With technologies such as Carbon Cure and cross-laminated timber, it is expensive for buildings to put into practice and will the cost of these building be higher?

• This technology is safer because these things are lighter and they're easier to transport. You need smaller foundations for the buildings and they naturally are able to band with the wind and high-rise buildings.
• It's cheaper, it's better for the planets, your buildings go up faster and they weigh less.
• We've got to climb up a little bit of a mountain when it comes to training engineers and getting permitting done.

[24:50] John, you have experience in alternative proteins, can you expand on that and give an example of a technology in that space?

• People are really looking and examining the food supply and thinking about how we can scale in a way that's compatible with the planet.
• We look for investments in areas where through alternative methods of production, we can create more denser sources of the very things that we need to eat and that are healthier and just better alternatives.
• Zero Acre Farms ferment in this case, vegetable oil and if you're able to do that you have a much more energy dense way of producing that food without having to go and cut palm forest.

[28:00] Is there something our audience could be looking in to play their part in the future of the built environment?

• The simplest thing you can do, inside buildings is turning your thermostat down.
• What we need is to allow people to voice their opinions and give CEOs and the people who make policy decisions, the power and the space to change how they do business.

[30:55] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about;

• Lessons learned in your career
• • Greg: Catch me if you Can and Inventing Anna, these people were to do outstanding things because they had the moxie and the guts to try.
  • Greg: You fail at a 100% of the things, you don't try.
  • John: Never underestimate the power of human incentives.

• Mention a person, product or service
• • Greg: Sealed.com
  • John: My wife

• Rewarding parts of working in the space:
• • Greg: When you work on anything in climate tech it is quite rewarding inherently because the, technologies you're working on are here to try and save the world.
  • John: I love the community feedback.

• What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?:
• • John: I drove a 1968 Volkswagen bus and this one was kitted with a salvaged Tesla engine.

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Summary: On this episode of Propcast, Louisa speaks with Jeanne Casey and Jacinda Lofland from Nuveen Real Estate. They talk about what led them to the innovation, sustainability and technology space at one of the largest real estate investment managers globally. Jeanne and Jacinda explain what works in creating a diverse and inclusive powerful team, and how to avoid the issue of tokenism. They elaborate on needing strategy and investment decisions and how ESG, technology and community play a part in all of it. Lastly, they'll give us some home truths about what they think needs to change in terms of adoption and integration. The key takeaway from this episode is that the crux of the diversity issue is around retaining, promoting and genuinely empowering diverse talent that's already within the organisation.

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Companies Mentioned:

• Nuveen
• Morgan Stanley
• Cisco
• Remote Year
• PwC
• Selina
• Fitwell
• Cushman & Wakefield
• Industrious Office

Shout Outs:

• Zander Geronimos, Head Of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at MetaProp.vc
• Abigail Dean, Head of Strategic Insights Nuveen Real Estate

Key Insights From This Episode:

• In 2021 we saw a 30% increase in ESG consultants and a 26% increase in ESG analysts. We also saw a 20% increase in innovation. - Louisa

• The crux of the diversity issue is around retaining, promoting and genuinely empowering diverse talent that's already within the organisation. - Jeanne
• It's so important that sustainability is not a side job. - Jacinda
• There's wide recognition that technology is going to play an outsized role in achieving fairly ambitious net-zero carbon and other sustainability goals. - Jeanne

About Our Guests:

Jeanne Casey is the Global Head of PropTech and Innovation at Nuveen, and leads investments and insights in PropTech for the firm. Previously, Jeanne was a Principal at MetaProp, a leading PropTech venture capital firm based in New York. Prior to joining MetaProp, Jeanne was a founding team member and Vice President at Digital Alpha where she worked on the launch, fundraising, and deployment of a $300 million growth equity fund focused on digital infrastructure. She has previous experience with Cisco and Morgan Stanley, and holds a MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA with honours from Johns Hopkins University.

As Director of Customers & Community, Jacinda Lofland works with Nuveen Real Estate's operating partners to improve customer experience and productivity, engage with customers around ESG initiatives, promote and collaborate with community organisations and local businesses, and to measure, analyse, and act on customer feedback. Jacinda helped develop and roll out Nuveen Real Estate's smart, sustainable building blueprint for various sectors. Prior to Nuveen Real Estate, Jacinda was a Director on the Real Estate team at Selina and prior to that, she led the Finance team at Remote Year. Jacinda has previous experience in real estate equity and debt investments with TIAA, auditing with PwC, and she holds a B.A. in Business Economics from UCLA.

Nuveen Real Estate is one of the largest real estate investment managers in the world with $142 billion of assets under management. Managing a suite of real estate funds and mandates, across both public and private investments, and spanning both debt and equity across diverse geographies and investment styles, we provide access to every aspect of real estate investing. With over 85 years of real estate investing experience and more than 600+ employees located across over 30 cities throughout the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific, the platform offers unparalleled geographic reach, which is married with deep sector expertise.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps:

[01:45] Jeanne, how did you get started in this space and your role?

• I have been in venture capital for over 10 years. Half of that time I have focussed on PropTech and most recently at MetaProp.
• I started my investing career in FinTech at Morgan Stanley in the early 2010s and then I worked at a fund that spun out of Cisco. We were investing in digital infrastructure, including smart cities and IOT and that's what led me to PropTech.

[02:55] Jacinda, can you tell us about your journey?

• I started out at PwC and I worked mostly on commercial real estate clients.
• My first time with Tiaa was back in 2013 and I did commercial mortgage originations as well as equity investments on the West Coast.
• I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina and was the first finance hire for Remote Year. I worked for Selina for about 10 months after that.
• After that, I came back to Nuveen where my focus is customers, community and the experience of our end users as well as engaging around ESG.

[06:30] Jeanne, what do you think can be done to attract more diversity to this space?

• The crux of the issue is around retaining, promoting and genuinely empowering diverse talent that's already within the organisation.

[07:20] What is Nuveen doing in terms of their hiring?

• Jeanne and I sit on the Insights Team which is led by Abigail Dean and that team includes our research team, sustainability, PropTech, Customers & Communication and Innovation.

[09:40] There is a lot of women leadership at Nuveen, what do you think can be done to increase this?

• I think it's beyond just attracting and recruiting diverse talent. It is about retaining, promoting and empowering the talent that already sits within an organisation.
• Our DEI initiatives are more genuine and actually reflect what our teams look like.

[11:45] Jacinda, you are from more of a real estate side, what have you seen in terms of diversity and inclusion?

• We're making meaningful progress.
• There have been a lot of reports around the benefits of diversity.
• Implicit bias training has been a really important step for us.
• It's important to hire outside of the same sets of colleges that might have strong, finance or real estate programs.

[19:50] Is there anything more you want to delve into about what you've seen in the more VC (corporate side), or within the startups?

• I've seen a lot of genuine improvement over the decade.
• I've always been at the intersection of finance and technology and both of those are historically very male dominated, very white dominated and a little bit older. I think that's largely, or at least in the process of changing quite a bit.
• Boardrooms and investment teams look quite a bit different than when I started just 10 years ago.

[19:10] Talk us through the focus for 2022.

• Our tomorrow's world strategy, there are three key things that we focus on; sustainability, technology and demographics.
• We have what we call a smart, sustainable building blueprint (SSBB) and there are a number of categories that we think really tied to those three overarching themes; energy, water, waste, resilience, health, and wealth, tenants & community, leasing and data & digitalisation.
• We want to build on our partnership with Fitwell.
• We'll be launching a VC strategy in the coming months.
• The two, overarching themes are;
• • a data strategy and tools and new technologies that help unlock our own proprietary data across our massive portfolio.
  • the intersection of sustainability and ESG with PropTech

[27:40] What do you think the industry could do better as a whole to move things forward in terms of adoption/integration?

• Incentives alignment is an area that is still fairly nebulous.
• Cascading goals around our own compensation targets that are specifically tied to sustainability and innovation goals.
• Rethinking how our buildings work, but also rethinking how we work.

[31:40] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about:

• Lessons learned in your career

• Jeanne: Throw out for a 5- or 10-year plan.

• Mention a person, product or service

• Jacinda: Our asset management teams and then the properties that sign up and do pilots.
• Cushman & Wakefield and Industrious Office

• Rewarding parts of working in the space:

• Jeanne: I love real estate and PropTech because I love seeing the tangible impacts on the ways that people work, live and spend all of our time.

• What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?:

• Jacinda: Data Standardisation and Climate Tech.

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Summary: In episode 8 of season 8 of the Propcast, Louisa is joined by Benjamin Miller, CEO and Co-Founder and Alison Staloch, CFO of Fundrise. They talk about their journey in PropTech and how they built the Fundrise product to make high-quality real estate investments available to everyone at a low cost. They also discuss the benefits to the everyday user and how they've grown since they launched in 2012. A key takeaway from this episode is that most financial products are built for institutions, so how can we democratise private market real estate for individuals?

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Companies Mentioned:

• Blackstone
• Starwood Capital
• Sequoia
• WHOOP
• Blueprint

Shout Outs:

• Vik Venkatraman

Key Insights From This Episode:

• Consumer products are built for people but most financial products are built for institutions. - Benjamin

• Most people invest in stocks but that is only half of the investment world. The other half is the private investments; venture capital, real estate, private credit and private equity. - Benjamin

• Good investment performance is usually a long undertaking and the outcome is a result of years of work and many people's contributions. - Benjamin

• I dream about disrupting the old-fashioned institutions. If we could tear down the system and rebuild it from scratch, we would all be better off. - Benjamin
• Two reasons which have accelerated our ability to find the right team members over the last year are; we've moved to being a remote-first company and we're focused on expanding our source of talent in order to continue to increase the diversity of our team. - Alison
• As the business scales; the CFO needs to be thinking about what resources we need, what capital we need so that we can continue to innovate, to pivot and to find breakthroughs. - Alison

Keywords: investment, real estate, portfolio, venture capital

About Our Guests:

Benjamin Miller is Co-Founder and CEO of Fundrise, the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform.

Fundrise's mission is to use technology to build a better financial system for the individual, one that is simpler, more reliable, lower cost, and transparent. Since launching America's first online real estate investment in 2012, Fundrise has become the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform with more than 1.2 million users, more than $2.4 billion worth of equity under management, and $7 billion worth of real estate transacted, including over 18,000 residential units. Thanks to their robust proprietary technology and vertically integrated infrastructure, they've continued to democratize private market real estate for everyone.

Prior to Fundrise, Ben has decades of experience in real estate and finance. As Managing Partner of WestMill Capital Partners and President of Western Development Corporation, Ben was responsible for acquiring, developing, and financing more than $500 million worth of property.

Alison Staloch, CFO at Fundrise. Alison joined Fundrise in April 2021, she characterises her workload as typical of a late-stage company. She's focused on accounting and reporting, alongside more strategic work, like improving revenue models and managing diversity, equity and inclusion goals. Prior to joining our Fundrise, she served as the Chief Accountant of the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from December 2017 to April 2021, and before that, served as Assistant Chief Accountant from November 2015 to November 2017. From 2005 to 2015, she was with KPMG LLP in the Asset Management practice. Alison has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Miami University and received a Master of Accounting from the Ohio State University.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps:

[02:15] TO BEN: Prior to Fundrise, you were managing partner of WestMill Capital Partners and President of Western Development Corp. Can you tell us about your journey and how you ended up founding Fundrise?

• I have been in real estate for 20 years but the first half of my career was very different to the second half. My first half was the 'normal' real estate, development and investment.
• When the financial crisis of 2008 happened, it changed how I viewed the industry. I was not happy with the system and wanted to come up with a solution and Fundrise was born.
• Most people invest in stocks but that is only half of the investment world. The other half is the private investments; venture capital, real estate, private credit and private equity.
• It was strange to me that individuals were excluded from the private investment industry so we started a mission to go about trying to break down that barrier.

[05:35] TO ALISON: What's the transition been like going from the traditional capital markets investments zone into a fast-growth tech company?

• My entire professional life has been in investor protection roles as either a regulator or as an auditor. The investor-centric mission at Fundrise resonated with me as well as that mission focused on building what's best for the individual.
• A CFO role obviously encompasses much more than my previous roles.
• At Fundrise, our business encompasses much more than in a normal CFO role because we're a real estate operator, we're an asset manager and we're a software technology company.

[08:45] When you say the 'normal investor', can you describe that profile?

• In any of the private world investments, the normal investor in that world is somebody with a billion-plus dollars and if not, you're not served, you're not a customer of those institutions.
• If you have tens of millions, maybe they made a little sleeve for you, but you're not really their core customer.

[09:55] What is the profile of someone who uses Fundrise?

• A person uses our product. Institutions use places like Blackstone, Starwood or Sequoia.
• We have investors who have tens of millions of dollars and we have investors who have tens of dollars.

[11:50] Fundrise announced that the average annual return for all Fundrise clients' accounts was 22.99% for the year, can you tell us how you made that happen?

• Good investment performance is usually a long undertaking and the outcome is a result of years of work and many people's contributions.
• We pursue two strategies; a fixed income strategy and a high growth strategy in real estate.
• Under those two strategies, we have two main parts; structural technology advantage and teams of people who are doing the work to drive great results.

[13:40] How have you gone about growing the team and attracting people from all other industries to Fundrise?

• We have doubled our team since I joined in April 2021 and hiring is a daily effort for our entire team.
• We're looking for smart people with a strong work ethic, low ego and who really care about the individual investor.
• Two reasons which have accelerated our ability to find the right team members over the last year are; we've moved to being a remote first company and we're focused on expanding our source of talent in order to continue to increase the diversity of our team.

[16:40] What is next for the whole sector as well as Fundrise?

• One thing that I didn't expect as we achieve scale is that we can do so much more than I imagine, so we now have new initiatives underway that are distinct from the original idea.
• The goal is to change how investment analysis and operations are done in real estate and finance.

[17:50] From the CFO point of view, as the business scales, there are lots of extra bits of structure you're putting in as well to make sure the business can continue to grow and make money.

• We need to continue to build out our resources, to support all of that growth including from a financial perspective and as portions of the business continue to mature.
• Thinking about what resources we need, what capital we need so that we can continue to innovate, to pivot and to find these breakthroughs.

[19:15] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about:

• Lessons learned in your career

• Ben: One of the operating principles is; you have to build your business on bedrock. You have to keep asking why until you get to bedrock.

• Mention a person, product or service

• Alison: My Whoop

• Rewarding parts of working in the space:

• Alison: It's such a nascent part of the tech industry and then being able to see all of the unique and innovative ideas at this stage.

• What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?:

• Ben: I dream about disrupting the old-fashioned institutions. If we could tear down the system and rebuild it from scratch, we would all be better off.

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Summary: In the 7th episode of season 8 of the Propcast, Louisa is joined by Julia Paolucci, Managing Director at HqO France and Samuel Warren, Managing Director of HqO UK Ltd about how tenant engagement can slow down the resignation movement and help landlords meet ESG targets. They touched on what tenants can get out of HqO's product, the acquisition of Office App and how ESG plays into the tenant experience. They also discussed what HqO has planned for 2022 as well as JLL Spark being a key investor. The key takeaway from this episode is that the focus in the current era is all about the employee experience.

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Companies Mentioned:

• HqO
• WorkWell
• Insight Partners
• JLL Spark
• Navitas Capital
• Cushman & Wakefield
• Suffolk Capital
• Office App by HqO

Shout Outs:

• Chase Garbarino - Cofounder and CEO at HqO

Key Insights From This Episode:

• In a tech company, or a very service-driven company, things do change considerably month in, month out – Samuel
• When we started delivering something to the office market, it was something that was predictable, something pretty stable, and now we've seen everything transforming. - Julia
• In this era right now, the focus is really being directed at the employee and what their experience is as well as engaging with them and making them see the benefits of the workplace. - Julia
• 48% of the working population in the US are seeking new employment, therefore employers really need to understand what an employee wants. - Louisa
• The trend right now for us is; what can the landlord give to their tenant to enhance that tenant experience, to make the experience in the building as attractive as possible? - Julia

Keywords: ESG, tenants, landlords, real estate, office, future of work

About Our Guests:

Julia Paolucci

Julia Paolucci is Managing Director for France at HqO, where she is responsible for establishing and growing the French business.

Julia brings forward a property technology expertise, and a track record of leading greenfield organisations. In her previous role, as Head of Sales for Workwell, she was tasked with building the organisation's client base in the proptech sector's nascent stages, developing a thorough understanding of the landlord, tenant, service provider, and end-user experiences.

Julia started her career in banking, working in New York, Paris and London for the New York Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bank, and lastly HSBC Corporate Bank where she spent 7 years.

Julia graduated with a BComm from McGill University in Montreal and an Executive MBA from IE University in Madrid.

Samuel Warren

Samuel Warren is the Managing Director of HqO UK Ltd, our London based business. At HqO Samuel is responsible for the growth of our platform in Northern Europe, including Germany, Netherlands and Nordics.

Prior to HqO, Samuel spent 12 years in the real estate market specialising in growing new businesses and high performing sales and marketing teams with companies such as CBRE and Chesterton Global and developers such as Berkeley Group and Country Garden. He worked in the Middle East, Singapore, China and Russia.

He is a graduate of Exeter University and also commissioned into the British Army, serving as a Bomb Disposal and Search Officer in the Royal Engineers.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps:

[01:50] Julia, how did you become the managing director of HqO France?

• I started my career in finance, working for different financial institutions in New York, Paris and London.
• I was one of the first members of WorkWell.
• I joined HqO in November 2019 to launch the French market.

[03:15] Sam, how did you end up at HqO and what experience do you bring to it?

• I have a varied career, I worked for the British army and now my career in real estate has been focused on growing high-performance sales teams.
• I started at HqO and set up a country from the start, I grew the team and brought everything together.

[04:30] Tell us more about the product and how has the product pivoted over the last few years?

• One of the underlying things at HqO is regardless of the product, it's working with our customer base to really understand what they're trying to achieve.
• We've done a huge amount of work on analytics and data.
• When we started delivering something to the office market, it was something that was predictable, something pretty stable, and now we've just seen everything transforming.

[06:20] Say I'm one of the tenants, what value do I get out of this product?

• An individual employee in a building is going to have the technology on their mobile phone and will be able to do a whole range of things in that workplace; from booking different meeting spaces, being able to work in different places to being able to use your phone as an access badge.
• Connecting you to those services and features as well as making your day in the building a lot happier and easier.
• Bringing perks to employees, thinking of discounts in the vicinity, or promoting local foods and beverages.

[09:25] You have some well known investors; Insight Partners, JLL Spark, Navitas Capital, Cushman & Wakefield and Suffolk Capital. This has allowed you to grow across North America, UK and Europe. Are there any areas of focus or growth for the business which you are looking at?

• It varies from region to region so in Europe, we are consolidating what we deliver across those territories.
• Making sure that we can service a customer in all the different languages, all the different territories and all the different technologies.

[11:20] You acquired Office App. How did that come about and what does it mean for the business? You also have a fantastic culture; how do you sort of balance that with the acquisition?

• They were a direct competitor of ours in the European market but our cultures weren't miles apart.
• What they brought to the table was where we had gaps and vice versa.

[13:25] How does ESG play into obviously tenant experience?

• It is a necessity right now for real estate because they actually have to take action, they have to reduce their carbon footprint but they don't necessarily know how to do that yet.
• From the employer's perspective, this is becoming more important because we are in a great resignation period and people are looking for new employment opportunities.

[15:50] Can you talk us through how HqO can help clients achieve their ESG goals?

• ESG = environmental, social, and governance.
• Social: Our customer success team can implement for our clients can be things like events that are going to bring about inclusion or can push a different cause.
• We've been able to include a lot of guidance to users.

[17:00] JLL Spark has made an investment into HqO, what does this mean for the whole of HqO?

• Their knowledge of the marketplace has been put forward by them in the early days when no one knew who we were and it was really fundamental.
• They provide introductions that ratify who we are.
• Our clients know and trust JLL and their evaluations.

[19:25] What's next for 2022 in HqO, in each of your regions?

• The great resignation and people in work spaces are really driving that more holistic experience for both users of our product and people in buildings.
• With our acquisition of Office App, we have acquired a lot of knowledge about the corporate market. The trend right now for us is; what can the landlord give to their tenant to enhance that tenant experience, to make the experience in the building as attractive as possible.
• Enriching the experience for the employee and creating that engagement for them in their workplace in general, not just the building.
• Landlords and corporations desperately want to understand more about their population.
• A big trend of 2022 in the real estate world, in France, is satisfaction, how do we gauge satisfaction?

[23:40] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about:

• Lessons learned in your career

• Julia: Revolutions don't happen overnight but they do happen. To make revolutions happen, you need to keep pushing, you need to have energy, but you also need to have patience.

• Mention a person, product or service

• Samuel: Some of our early adopters, some of our customers that have got innovation teams that wanted to test the product and innovate, evolve, work with us.

• Rewarding parts of working in the space:

• Julia: Seeing my clients not refer to tenants anymore but rather as users.

• What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?:

• Samuel: A more holistic approach. The big goal is the way that physical space will be totally connected, be it whether you are in a residential component of it, whether you're in an office component of it, whether you're a public visitor. It's not about tenants anymore, it's about customers.

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Summary: In the sixth episode of season eight, Louisa hosts the first Propcast on the Italian PropTech market. She is joined by Giorgio Tinacci, Founder & CEO and Fausto Maglia, Chief Product Officer at Casavo to hear about their journey of founding Casavo in 2017. We'll learn about how the product enables the residential community to buy and sell quickly, conveniently and simply. Giorgio talks us through their series C raise back in March 2021 and they discuss how they've adapted their product and their marketing for different European markets.

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Companies Mentioned:

• Casavo
• Greenoaks Capital
• 360 Capital
• Picus Capital
• Exor Seeds
• Boston Consulting Group

Key Insights From This Episode:

• The Italian PropTech market has been growing rapidly since 2018, the number of PropTech companies operating in Italy has been doubling year by year. - LouisaIn Europe, it's a sellers' market. - Giorgio
• It was a hyper-growth journey and it still is. - Giorgio
• Digitalisation in real estate is really green. - Giorgio
• I was always keen on investing in human capital before technology and business. - Giorgio
• It's important that new technologies can lead to a disruptive innovation or a new market. - Fausto
• There are a lot of existing technologies that should be applied to old problems. - Fausto
• 20 years ago you had to go to a travel agency if you wanted to go to Japan. Today, you can book a ticket with your smartphone. That is the level of simplicity we are looking for in real estate. - Fausto
• The next three to five years will lead to a substantial change in the real estate market. - Fausto

Keywords: PropTech, Italy, Real Estate, Europe

About Our Guests:

Giorgio Tinacci graduated with a degree in International Management from Bocconi and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2015. He then joined BCG, where he worked for 2 years focusing on digital transformation projects in banking, insurance, and industrial goods. Giorgio left BCG in September 2017 and founded Casavo, the leading digital residential platform in Europe.

Fausto Maglia, is currently Chief Product Officer at Casavo, after leading the Marketing Team in the first phases of the company growth. Fausto has a very variegate background, with the tech world as a constant, as he has been part of product/tech teams in startups and large corporations in the travel, telecommunications, and real estate industry.

About Casavo

Casavo is a digital residential platform that is redesigning the experience of selling and buying homes in Europe leveraging proprietary technology in each step of the transaction process. Whether you want to sell or buy a home, Casavo makes it simple, fast and convenient, providing the best solution for your needs. Casavo offers integrated home-related services, providing a turn-key experience with an inclusive approach towards real estate operators (brokers, contractors, banks. etc). Founded in 2017 by Giorgio Tinacci, Casavo currently operates in Italy (Milan, Rome, Turin, Florence and Bologna) and Spain (Madrid and Barcelona), rapidly expanding into other European markets thanks to the work of an international team of over 300 people and the support of top-tier global investors. As of November 2021, Casavo has carried out more than 2,000 transactions for a value in excess of €600 million.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps:

[3:20] Tell us more about your journey: you have founded Casavo and studied globally. You've worked at one of the leading consultancies, Boston Consulting Group on digital transformation. Where did your passion for residential tech come from?

• I grew up in a small village close to Florence with a family of small entrepreneurs. My passion for real estate and entrepreneurship came from my dad.
• During my studies abroad I met several startups and I joined some of them as an intern.
• After my studies, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur but I hadn't found that big opportunity yet so after working for 3 years in consulting, I was looking at what was happening in the residential markets globally and in Europe and there hadn't been a lot of innovation over the last 10 years so I decided to found Casavo.
• I had a passion for the intersection between the real estate world and the technology world.

[5:15] Fausto, you started out in the marketing world and have now moved over to product as the CPO. Can you tell us a little about the product as well as how you made that transition and if you have any tips for people looking to make that transition?

• Before joining Casavo, I had a career in product and it had been mainly in travel.
• A few months after Casavo launched, Giorgio was looking for someone in marketing and I had a bit of experience in that so I decided to start at Casavo in marketing. After 2 years, it was time for serious and important investment in technology so I moved over.
• Coming from marketing, I had a lot of understanding of some dynamics and that would have been harder to get if I was just a product person.
• What we offer to the markets is the ability to receive a purchase offer on their property without any kind of human interactions.

[7:40] Who was your first major client that you brought on board?

• It's a consumer platform, not a B2B platform.
• We really understood that in Europe, it's a sellers' market so there is no presentation, everything starts from the seller. We started with a very strong and disruptive value proposition in order to solve the issue of a very lengthy, inefficient, and inconvenient traditional selling process.
• We did so by changing the paradigm; proposing ourselves to buy the home directly in a matter of days, instead of going through the whole process.
• Our first clients were the first family who sold us their apartment in Milan.

[9:25] Let's talk about your series C, you raised €200 million led by Exor Seeds. You also have some other good investors including 360 Capital, Picus Capital and Greenoaks Capital. What were some of the major challenges when you looked to raise and how did you go about it?

• There were three key challenges;
• • Digitalisation in real estate is really green. The number of investors that were willing to be the first one betting on that category were few.
  • We started with a very asset-heavy model that requires a certain level of understanding of the balance sheet dynamics and the residential dynamics in order to not be skirted by volatility.
  • We are a leading technology company in Italy, but the ecosystem is pretty underdeveloped if you compare it to other markets.
• It always starts with the team and with a clear vision and executing that vision well.

[12:10] Why was the product so successful in Italy? You have expanded to Spain, what are the differences in what the buyers and sellers want? Do you have to change your marketing technique from country to country?

• We are the first movers with the AVM (automated valuation for models) so we were the first ones in Italy to provide free, online real-time valuations of residential properties.
• We added to that a very strong value proposition, which was you as a sender can sell immediately to us and you don't have to look for a buyer.
• The residential stock in Italy is generally quite old and we propose to customers renovated, nice looking apartments.
• There are some differences but what we want to do is to build a European platform, a single platform in terms of product but of course, there are some local nuances both in terms of product development and in terms of marketing.

[16:35] How long does it take to buy a property in Italy?

• In terms of selling a property in the large, metropolitan cities in Italy, the time needed is around six months. More or less the same applies to Southern Europe in general.

[18:30] Do you have some exciting news to share with us about a potential launch into a different market?

• We have just launched in our third country, Portugal.
• We started our internationalisation journey in the beginning of 2020 in Spain.

[19:40] How have you managed to grow your headcount over 300 people and what are your cultural values?

• It was a hyper-growth journey and it still is.
• My personal mission from the beginning was to be able to have an impact on the market, be the category-defining business, but with a strong team and building really a talent hub within our markets, all sharing the same vision from the very beginning and being focused on executing on that vision.
• I was always keen on investing in human capital before technology and business.
• When you are growing at the speed of light, launching new products, new markets, you cannot afford processes. You have to trust people, you have to empower your team and let them do what they think is the best for the company.
• We have our list of values and we live and breathe them in every way:
• • Focus on customers: our customers come first and we want to create long-term value for them.
  • Share the drive to innovate
  • Learn to adapt: continuous, direct, upfront feedback

[23:15] Is there any advice you would give to an aspiring entrepreneur?

• Just jump and do it - if you start to analyse everything and overthink it, it's not going to work.
• Be optimistic - turn challenges into opportunities

[25:15] What's next for the Casavo products? Are you planning or developing any new technologies?

• There are a lot of existing technologies that should be applied to old problems.
• The challenge is to be able to make portfolio-based decisions and market-based decisions for our investments, rather than transaction-based ones and we have to keep in mind changing consumer preferences that will affect the price properties.

[28:40] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about:

• Lessons learned in your career

• Change and self-development are very important.

• Mention a person, product or service

• A company in the FinTech industry called Scallop.

• Rewarding parts of working in the space:

• To start with no understanding of this industry, which is very complex with a lot of incumbent players, very traditional. Thinking about how to solve problems for our customers within this industry with an out-of-the-box and naive approach.

• What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?:

• The next three to five years will lead to a substantial change in the real estate market and we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this change.

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Summary: In episode 5 of this season of the Propcast, Louisa is joined by Tarush Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of 5x. He is one of the leading experts in leveraging data for exponential growth and has over 10 years of experience in the field. In this episode Louisa and Tarush talk about his journey through data and his involvement in WeWork that allowed the business to grow 10x in 3 years.

Tarush shares how to convert data into dollars, and how his business does exactly that. They discussed the data trends that he has seen over the years and Tarush gives some tips on how to get into the data space and make it a serious career path.

Companies Mentioned:

• 5x
• Salesforce
• WeWork

Shout Outs:

• Nelson Lau, CEO at PropertyQuants

• Adam Neumann, Co-Founder of WeWork

Key Insights From This Episode:

• What is super interesting about the data revolution is that we are still living through it. - Tarush
• Growth is something that takes time. You can grow really quickly, but at some point, it becomes unsustainable. - Tarush
• If you are serious about adding business value by being data-driven, you have to develop a data stack, and you are going to have to store it, structure it and clean it. - Tarush
• We saw a 46% increase in people being hired in data roles... I think this year it is going to increase even more. - Louisa
• In today's age data is no longer a nice to have, it's an essential part of any company's business proposition. - Tarush
• It is easy to have poor company values. - Tarush
• It's important to have values and write them down, but what are you doing to action them? - Tarush
• I think sequel is probably the most important skill in any of the data professions - Tarush

About Our Guests:

Tarush Aggarwal

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarushaggarwal/

Tarush is one of the leading experts in leveraging data for exponential growth, with over ten years of experience in the field. After graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon in 2011, he became the first data engineer on the analytics team at Salesforce.com. Data was in its infancy, and the log metric framework which Tarush built was critical in allowing Salesforce to analyse data across customers and provide benchmarks across different industries and verticals. Most recently Tarush led Data for WeWork, one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. WeWork leveraged data to be able to grow 10x in 3 years, supporting a footprint of 800+ offices in 120+ cities in 23+ countries with over 12,000 employees. Tarush scaled the data org from 2 to 100+ and their unique approach allowed them to stay lean while supporting every functional area of the business. In 2019 he moved to China to help establish WeWork's Asia operations and focus on the hyper-growing Chinese market.

About 5x

https://5x.co/ The biggest challenge for most businesses is converting data into dollars. Businesses lack the expertise to build the data engine (infrastructure, data collection, self-service reporting) That's why we created 5x. To enable companies to answer business questions, without having to worry about building data infrastructure or bringing in the right team. Because of our prefabricated data blocks & network of remote data engineers, we deliver data reporting faster, cheaper, and of higher quality, than anyone else in the industry.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps

[2:35] Can you talk us through your career? You started off at Salesforce, then went on to be the Global Head of Data at WeWork, you have founded and grown your own business. How did you scale the data from two to a hundred plus at WeWork and how did you get Adam to prioritise this as a business need?

• We are still living through the data revolution. 10 years ago, at Salesforce, no one in the valley had a data team. 10 years later at WeWork, it was completely different, we had an established modern data stack.
• When I joined, WeWork had about 100 offices and a few years later we had close to a thousand. The business was growing so quickly and we had to scale the team as well. It was slightly unsustainable.

[6:10] What does your business do and how does it come together with the modern data stack? How does it drive more value for customers and can you give an example of who one of your customers might be.

• Businesses find it difficult to extract value from data because startups today have 10-12 different sources of data. Hiring an ad hoc analyst who builds a few dashboards isn't good enough anymore, it doesn't lead to long-term business value.
• If you are serious about adding business value by being data-driven, you have to develop a data stack and you are going to have to store it, structure it and clean it.
• 5x stitches together the data stack with all the best-in-class vendors, across data collection and Deshon storage modelling and reporting.
• We interview and hire engineers and we get to hire the top 1% of these engineers. We can pre-train these engineers on the platform.
• 5x is faster, cheaper and higher quality.
• Our sweet spot is a company that has found some success and then they need to go scale the business and they need to go deploy an entire data comprehensive strategy and do so fairly quickly.

[11:10] You are 8 months old and you've already raised, are about to raise again and you have over 50 employees. What's the secret to maintaining a good culture?

• A lot of it comes from the Founder.
• It is easy to have poor company values.
• It's important to have values and write them down, but what are you doing to action them?

[14:45] Are there any macro trends that you have seen in the 10 years that you have been working in data and what does it mean for companies?

• 10 years ago, no one was doing digital marketing and no one had a website for their business and Google came along and said that if you don't have an online presence, you are not going to exist.
• In the next 10 years there will be the evolution of digital marketing and digital marketing will go more mainstream and that will evolve into data.
• In very early rounds, venture capitals are asking what's your data strategy.

[17:50] You started off as data engineer, now you are a Founder and you have started a new profession. How can people learn more about it?

• We are early in the space and when I started the playbook of data hadn't yet been written.
• Ramping up in your tech skills, SQL is really important. Something like Python or any analysis language are skills that are extremely valuable.
• Understanding the best practises and being able to shadow a company. Doing it well and spending time to really understand the best practises and the trends.

[22:55] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about:

• Lessons learned in your career

• When you look at what data it's adding visibility organisation that's kind of one side of the spectrum and on the other side is being in flow, extremely creative and intuitive. We tend to be either or.

• Unless you actively try you're just going to move more and more on that spectrum. If you're a data-driven person then likely you're just going to make everything in your life even more data-driven.

• Moving more towards the middle is something that will serve everyone.

• Mention a person, product or service

• My assistant, Tricia

• To-Do-List and Google Calendar save my life on a daily basis

• Rewarding parts of working in the space:

• Impact is a huge one. Being able to leverage data for growth is not something which is trivial.

• Being able to take something, spend time in it and work towards helping commoditise it.

• What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?:

• The evolution is going to continue. In the next few years, we're starting to get more into decision-making, recommendations and insights.

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Summary: On the fourth episode of Season 8 of the Propcast, Louisa speaks with Liza Benson, covering her journey to becoming a partner at one of the most prominent female-led Venture Capital funds in the Real Estate Tech space, Moderne Ventures. In this episode you'll hear how Liza balances the time being a board member of several companies whilst also raising $200 million in 2021. You'll also hear about the plan for deployment and what Liza and the team look for when evaluating a PropTech business or a tech company. Lastly, you'll hear about Liza's personal experience with being a woman in the Proptech space, as well as a woman in Venture Capital and the effect of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives within some of their portfolio companies.

Companies Mentioned:

• Moderne Ventures
• DocuSign
• StarVest
• Avalon Bay Communities
• Greystar
• Oak Tree Capital Management
• Icon
• Hippo
• Better Mortage
• Widevine
• Webify
• Blackstone
• Xeal

Resources:

• LMRE Global Recruitment and Search Consultancy
• LMRE YouTube Interviews

Shout Outs:

• Constance Freedman Founder and Managing Partner at Moderne Ventures

Key Insights From This Episode:

• April 2000 was an interesting time to join venture capital at a very instructive time in many ways, because we've seen over the last 5+ years everything is up and to the right. - Liza

• We actually don't use the term PropTech. We use the term Real Estate Tech. - Liza

• We think about Real Estate Tech in a very broad way. We actually like companies that have multi verticals because the more verticals, the bigger the market, and also not subject to the cyclicality of real estate. - Liza

• There are so many different verticals in PropTech, that it touches anything in the built environment, whether it's mobility, ESG or the content. There is a new vertical coming out every month. - Louisa

• You could have the greatest market, the greatest business model but without the right leaders to execute on it, it won't work. - Liza

• What we're not seeing as much of, unfortunately, is women partners. It is still a very, very low number. I always tell people to make it your advantage. Everyone will remember you when there's eight guys and you on a Zoom call. - Liza

• We're in a unique time right now where it's become easier to balance that work-life balance. I think that is going to be a huge benefit for women going forward. - Liza

Keywords: Venture Capital, Real Estate Tech, Women, Investing

About Our Guests:

Liza Benson is a Partner with Moderne Ventures and helps lead and manage investment activity with particular focus on high-growth technology companies that can achieve rapid adoption and scale. Prior to Moderne, Liza was a Partner with StarVest Partners, focused on expansion stage B2B SaaS investments. Previously, Liza was a Managing Director of Highbridge Principals Strategies and invested primarily in online video, digital media, and marketing technologies and prior to that she was a Managing Director with Bear Stearns' Constellation Growth Capital and an investment banker at Patricof & Co and First Union where she started her career.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/?originalSubdomain=uk

Louisa started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech Association (UKPA).

About LMRE

www.lmre.tech

LMRE believe there is a better way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are passionate about the industry and passionate about people's careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an extension of the business, and their transparency and core values help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech community.

Timestamps:

[02:00] You started off in investment banking, at First Union and then a part of StarVest partners. How did you come to Moderne Venture and meeting your partner, Constance?

• I have been in venture in growth equity for 20 years. I started in investment banking to learn the technical aspects of modelling and I joined my first fund in April 2000.
• I joined StarVest, a B2B SaaS investor, and that is where I met Constance.
• I have been at Moderne Ventures for 4 years. We have had a great run, we finished investing the first fund which was $43 million. Then, last summer we raised our second fund, where our original goal was a $125 million and our cap was $150 million and we're able to blow through that cap, get our LPs to agree to go to $200 million.

[05:50] What makes Moderne unique, besides the 2 female leaders, and what does that mean to you? Is there a set mission behind the fund?

• The fund was originally conceived by Constance as a strategic fund out of the National Association of Realtors. The basic premise was; "How can I stack the deck? How can I help my companies in the most in the most profound way?"
• We're an early-stage investor in real estate home services, FinTech and InsureTech having to do with real estate.
• DocuSign is very interesting because it's really not a PropTech company in any way. It has a lot of applicability in our industries, but has many other verticals as well. DocuSign became in the model for how we work with companies.
• We love companies that have these multi vertical applications.

[8:05] Some of your strategic investors include; Avalon Bay Communities, Greystar and leading real estate companies such as Oak Tree Capital Management. Constance generated a lot of these herself but how do you continue to support them?

• They are investing in us to improve the operations and ultimately the NOI of their businesses. Therefore, we need to make sure that we're bringing the best tech to these companies so that they can fundamentally innovate right.
• We have systematized corporate programs that we work with our LPs on.
• We also have another program that we call Passport that is our business development group. It is systematised approach, over a seven-month program, where all of our companies are led through a mentorship with our LPs and larger advisory group of 700 real estate execs.

[10:10] You have got about 700 real estate execs of which some notable names are Icon Port, Hippo and Betta Mortage covering real estate, mortgage, finance and insurance. Is there anything Moderne Venture looks for when evaluating a company?

• Late seed to early B stage companies.
• Founders are the number one thing. You could have the greatest market, the greatest business model but without the right leaders to execute on it, it won't work.
• Total Addressable Market (TAM), we look at it in a very systematic way.
• We love companies that have a foothold in real estate or want to have a foothold in real estate but also have multi vertical applications.
• We also look at the business model, what is the cost to acquire a customer? What is the long-term value of that customer? What are the fundamental economics of the business at scale?

[13:10] You are on various boards as well like Widevine and Webify. What is it like balancing all of this and being on the board of various companies?

• I am on 8 or 9 boards as a board member or board observer.
• I keep in touch with all of my CEOs on a bi-weekly or monthly basis for one-on-one phone calls.
• From the perspective of the executives who are running the companies, they think of Moderne Venture as a strategic investor. We're not necessarily going to help them with their budget, but we will help them get customers.

[16:15] Is there any advice that you can give to woman looking to get into the investment space, whether they're coming from the banking side, the consultancy side, the venture capital side?

• There are 2 ways to come into venture capital; you work for a particular startup or multiple startups that are successful, or there is the investment banking and consulting route.
• Core skills of modelling, deck building and strategic thinking are beneficial.
• What we're not seeing as much of unfortunately is women partners, it is still a very, very low number. I always tell people to make it your advantage. Everyone will remember you when there's eight guys and you on a Zoom call.

[17:55] Are there any positive experiences personally for you or any successful changes your various portfolio companies have implemented to ensure DEI?

• Giving people the flexibility, they need to balance work and life.

[19:55] The 'LMRE' part, Louisa asks the guests to talk about:

• Lessons learned in your career

• Never have religious beliefs in either a company or an idea. I think you always have to be open to the information that comes in open to criticism, open to other thoughts.

• Mention a person, product or service

• Xeal. Electric Vehicle charger that does not need WiFi or cell service.

• Rewarding parts of working in the space:

• It changes every day. There is no schedule that has to get done necessarily.

• What are you most Excited about for the future of the space?:

• Being at a venture fund that is focussed on the real estate industry.

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