The Propcast

In this week's episode of the Propcast, Louisa speaks with Brad Hargreaves, CEO and Founder of Common, a residential brand creating a better kind of multifamily property manager through innovations in technology, design, and operations. This episode covers the differences between the UK and US rental markets, and how co-living has taken off in US markets and what this might mean for the market in the UK and Europe.

Companies Mentioned:

• Common https://www.common.com/
• General Assembly https://generalassemb.ly/
• Kinnevik https://www.kinnevik.com/
• Greystar https://www.greystar.com/
• Quarters https://quarters.com/
• Student Hotel https://www.thestudenthotel.com/
• Noah https://www.noahapartments.com/

Shout Outs

• Brian Lee https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlee860/?originalSubdomain=uk

Key Insights From This Episode

• Our thoughts around value proposition for the customer have always been for co-living for micros in particular, have always been really centered on affordability. Community is important. It's a great value add. The experiences is key. But if you're not offering real value it's going to be very difficult to scale. - Brad Hargreaves

• There are certainly ways where Europe is ahead of the US I would say, in terms of liberalising zoning and, allowing more innovative, mixed operations and mixed uses. - Brad Hargreaves

• I read this the other day and I think it maps perfectly to the real estate industry, is that you generally overestimate what you can do in a year, but underestimate what you can do in 10 years. And I think that speaks incredibly true to the real estate industry, which is not fast moving. But when it moves, it can do tremendous things. - Brad Hargreaves
• I would encourage anyone getting into real estate to really take the long view of it. It is an industry that rewards the long view. - Brad Hargreaves

Keywords: co-living, capital, affordable housing, shared housing, multi family, build to rent

About Our Guests

Brad Hargreaves

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

Brad Hargreaves is the Founder and CEO of Common, the nation's leading residential brand that designs and manages multifamily apartments with more than 6,000 residents in over 10 markets across the country. Before founding Common in early 2015, Brad was the co-founder of General Assembly, a global education institution with campuses in more than 15 cities worldwide. As part of the General Assembly founding team, Brad led the growth of the company's education business from its launch in 2011 into a global institution with over a dozen campuses. Most recently, he was a Venture Partner at Maveron, General Assembly's lead investor. Brad has been named to Ernst and Young's 2020 "Entrepreneur of the Year" award; Vanity Fair's "The Next Establishment"; Business Insider's "Silicon Alley 100"; and Crain's 2017 "40 Under Forty." Common is a residential brand creating a better kind of multifamily property manager through innovations in technology, design, and operations. Common delivers exceptional experiences for renters across twelve cities and nearly 7,000 units in coliving, microunit, and traditional apartments. They are the preferred choice for both residents looking for a stress-free and all-inclusive living environment from a trusted brand, and for real estate owners seeking reliable, above-market returns. The Common platform also includes workforce housing management brand Noah and family-first operator Mily. With over 20,000 units signed and under development and over $110 million in venture capital investment, Common is expanding into 22 cities across the world. To work with us, visit our partners page or follow us on instagram at @common.living.

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.

In this episode of The Propcast, Louisa speaks with Dan Salmons, CEO of Coadjute, the company who is creating a 'National Grid' for the property market to make buying and selling real estate quicker, simpler and a more transparent process for everyone involved by utilising blockchain technology. We discuss why the property buying and selling process is so lengthy and laborious, and how Proptech is significantly changing the game for residential and commercial real estate deals.

Companies Mentioned:

• Coadjute https://www.coadjute.com/
• Pay by Phone https://paybyphone.co.uk/
• Land Registry https://www.linkedin.com/company/land-registry/

Shout Outs

Richard Price, Dezrez https://www.linkedin.com/in/richieprice/

Martin MacDuff, Redbrick Solutions https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-macduff-29a1b717/

Key Insights From This Episode

• The property market is in an ecosystem of multiple professions - the real estate profession, the legal, financial, the government. And they somehow have to work together to get your property transaction done. And yet they have no infrastructure to do that.
• Sometimes the small things are really transformative.
• Blockchain allows a group of people who want to share information with each other to be certain that that information is reliable and that no one's cheating. It allows them to do that without a central authority having to review and confirm all that information.
• Blockchain is a new piece of infrastructure that allows people to securely share data and know it's a hundred percent accurate without someone in the middle telling them it is.
• What I want to come up with something that feels effortless, easy, obvious, simple. Then you'll get fantastic adoption. And then gradually of course you can extend and expand what it is.
• Sometimes people lack the imagination to believe the world can ever be different. you have to have the imagination if you're innovating to believe the world can be better.
• We've got lots to do in the UK. We were number four in the Olympic metal table, but on the world rankings of how easy it is to move property, we're number 42.
• The reception has been really warm and I think it's cause in this case, the bit that we're helping where this is the bit no one likes anyway. The administration, the chasing I mean, who doesn't want to have more up to date information when they're dealing with the property deal?
• Innovation is all about perspiration. They say ideas are really cheap. Anyone can have an idea. What's interesting is what happens when that idea meets the real world and you start actually making it happen.

Keywords: blockchain, innovation, fintech, national grid, property sales, technology, information, connectivity

About Our Guests

Dan Salmons, Chief Executive Officer, Coadjute

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dansalmons/?originalSubdomain=uk

A leader in innovation in Financial Services for 25 years, Dan has held executive roles at Capital One, Barclays, and RBS/NatWest, and has launched ground-breaking products including Contactless Cards and Mobile Payments. He has been CEO and NED of several FinTechs, and an advisor to Roche.

2:54

Company summary Coadjute -

Coadjute's mission is to make buying and selling property a simpler, faster and more transparent process for everyone involved. To do that, we are creating a transformative new piece of national infrastructure for the UK: – a "National Grid" for the property market.

Coadjute connects the software that runs the property market in real-time. Our open blockchain network connects the platforms already used by estate agents, conveyancers, mortgage brokers and lenders, opening up a range of new connected possibilities. These include seeing progress updates in real-time, securely sharing documents and messages, and even automating processes like payments.

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.

In this episode of The Propcast, Louisa talks with Roger Smith, CEO of TermSheet, about how productivity in real estate deals can be maximised through centralised data, workflows and collaboration tools to bring together all functions of a firm, saving time, increasing efficiency and extrapolating data in meaningful ways.

Companies Mentioned

Fundrise https://fundrise.com/

RealtyMogul https://www.realtymogul.com/

CrowdStreet https://www.crowdstreet.com/

Platform Ventures https://platformventures.com/

CRE Tech https://newyork.cretech.com/

Lincoln Property Company https://www.lpc.com/

Shoutouts

Michael Beckerman, CRE Tech https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-beckerman/

Eric Roseman, Lincoln Property Company https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-roseman-ab010912/

Jordan Kovalsky, Faropoint https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordankovalsky/

Jacob Emery, Lincoln Property Company https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-emery-8037a7b1/

Key Highlights from this Episode

• The power of Excel and the excessive use of Excel is interesting, but like the amount of insight and data that's generated, because of my data background, like generated in those Excel spreadsheets is massive and it's untapped right now. - Roger

• first and foremost, our core problem we're trying to solve is to build workflows that help real estate professionals manage their deals better. - Roger
• So our purpose is really to help them surface insights from their own data. Not necessarily for us as a company to surface insights from their data. - Roger
• What we're hearing on is like platform fatigue, where I have to go to all these different places to understand one thing. - Roger
• When you build a tool inside a private equity firm, it's great because you have access to all the problems. But that's not great because you think the world thinks exactly like that. - Roger

About our Guests

Roger Smith

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

Roger Smith is the CEO of TermSheet, which he co-founded in 2020. He is a seasoned entrepreneur with extensive experience in technology companies and deep roots in proptech.

Prior to founding Term Sheet, Roger served as Chief Technology Officer for a real estate-focused private equity firm based in Kansas City. He was responsible for the creation and maintenance of internal, advisor-facing,and investor-facing technology systems.

Previously, Roger was chief technology officer at Groundbreaker, Inc., where he built the firm's white-label real estate crowdfunding product, which powers a number of current applications. Prior to Groundbreaker, Roger was lead engineer for PlotWatt, Inc., a start-up energy disaggregation technology company, growing the client base from zero to several thousand.

Roger earned a Bachelor of Science in Math and Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was a Researcher in Duke University's Computational Neuroscience Laboratory, and earned a Master of Science in Machine Learning from Columbia University.

Sahil Rattan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahil-rattan-88389b15a/

Sahil Rattan is the COO of TermSheet, which he co-founded in 2020. He spent the early half of his career focused on real estate private equity covering diverse transactions on both the acquisitions and asset management side.

He spent the latter half doing technology investment banking in Deutsche Bank's San Francisco office focusing mergers and acquisitions, and debt/equity capital raises for leading software businesses.

He holds a Bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Southern California where he graduated with honors.

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.

In this episode of The Propcast, Louisa talks with Tyler Scriven and Maxwell Bonnie from Saltbox about making warehouses and logistics accessible to everyone in e-commerce. We discuss creating hyperlocal logistics centres, what this means for diversity and reducing the barriers to entrepreneurship for everybody across the board. We talk about building a compelling brand and recruiting the right people to deliver a mission which is much bigger than just warehouses and logistics.

Companies Mentioned

Saltbox https://www.saltbox.com/ Techstars https://www.techstars.com/ Shopify https://www.shopify.co.uk/ Bessemer Venture Fund https://www.bvp.com/

Key Insights From This Episode

• 'I'm drawn to really hard problems that have a big impact.' - Maxwell Bonnie
• 'I also encountered this ugly, dark side of digital commerce, which was having to source all of the goods.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'I found that I was, along with millions of other smaller e-commerce entrepreneurs, pushed to the fringes of the real estate ecosystem. And implicitly also pushed to the fringes of the entrepreneurial ecosystem at large, because we were forced to work in basements, garages and self-storage facilities.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'There is this simple reality, which is that e-commerce begins and ends in the physical world. It will always be that way until we moved to purely digital products.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'Logistics begins with the warehouse, plain and simple.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'We're creating access to that infrastructure, and we're doing that in a way that reflects the fact that our primary user, that merchant, is a human… The very basic idea is human centric logistics.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'You could summarise it by saying that what we're doing is we are creating an access to critical logistics infrastructure… in a way that makes it very approachable, very accessible by a normal person but without any sort of meaningful trade-offs to the efficiency or productivity of those tools.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'Very quickly what we realised what's actually happening during the pandemic was this exponential growth in adoption of digital commerce. When people were just buying more online because they weren't leaving their homes. That was like gasoline on the fire.' - Maxwell Bonnie
• 'A small business seeking to work with a very large 3PL is challenging. The incentive structure of that 3PL is just not aligned to meet the needs of that small business.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'One of the things we were seeing is the demographics and firmographics of who our customer base is, reflecting the changing dynamics of people who are business owners.' - Maxwell Bonnie
• 'We're seeing that it's more heavily index with more women as founders of these (e-commerce) companies, and more heavily indexed on people in persons of colour. Where traditionally you see something like 70-80% white males, we see like more of a 50/50 split, which is very interesting.' - Maxwell Bonnie
• 'The issue that we need to address is that when one pursues a business, like the sort of businesses that are built at Saltbox, they often are doing so without operational leverage in a way that's going to help them to grow faster and achieve their goals. And so, we want to solve that.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'As a founding team of essentially three minorities, we're a pretty unique founding team… we are building a culture that is attractive to a diverse array of people. If you asked me that the key to that, if we are doing it well, is to treat everyone the same. It's not rocket science.' - Tyler Scriven
• 'Warehousing is the means to the end. So you have this attractive mission. There's a story that people want to be a part of. And then you have internally a culture where people feel supported and feel that they can be themselves. We talk a lot about self-awareness, talk a lot about vulnerability as key tenants of our culture, so when you have that in place, those are like the little kernels of a culture that people can feel comfortable. With that, we can attract the right people who want to be part of us achieving our ambitious mission.' - Maxwell Bonnie
• Tyler - 'As we think about the future of logistics and in particular, the future of logistics for small companies, we believe in essence that this is something that every company will need in the future, and they'll need it in a way that is much more humanised, in much smaller scale, much more flexible, much more approachable. And that's really the vision that guides us.' - Tyler Scriven|
• 'We think that in a world in which there is some trillion-ish dollars worth of market cap of companies that are enabling things to be sold online today that surely there's a few tens of billions at least for companies that enable those things to get to where they're going. And that's exactly where we're focused.' - Tyler Scriven

About Our Guests

Tyler Scriven

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

A thoughtful, dynamic, and innovative entrepreneur, Tyler is currently the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Saltbox, a venture-backed startup building workspace and logistics infrastructure to power the future of commerce. Saltbox was founded in 2019 and is on a rapid growth trajectory.

From 2016 to 2018 Tyler served as the Founding Managing Director of Techstars Atlanta, a global early-stage venture capital investment fund. At Techstars he led investments in dozens of early-stage startups.

From 2009 to 2016 Tyler served as Head of Operations and Chief of Staff at Palantir Technologies, the world's leading big data analytics software provider. During his tenure at Palantir he built and led people operations, recruiting, IT, real estate, corporate development, and various other operational functions. His responsibilities led him to build and lead teams across the globe, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and India.

As a key member of the company's executive team, Tyler was broadly engaged in scaling the operations of the business from 100 to nearly 2,000 employees and saw the company grow to become one of the most valuable technology companies in the world.

Tyler currently sits on the board of directors of the Serenbe Land Corporation, a pioneering and nationally renowned wellness community connected to nature on the edge of Atlanta.

Tyler began his career in 2005 with J.P. Morgan, and worked in the fields of private equity and investment banking in New York City prior to moving to San Francisco in 2009. He holds a bachelor's degree in American Studies and Economics from The University of Virginia.

He currently resides in Atlanta, GA with his wife Faith, and son Patterson.

Maxwell Bonnie

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

Maxwell Bonnie is one of the cofounders of Saltbox, currently leading all aspects of the Member Lifecycle and Product. Prior to Saltbox, Maxwell helped build the Customer Experience and Bionic Operations teams at FullStory and was part of the leadership team in the Research and Operations departments at Bridgewater Associates.

Maxwell received his bachelor's degree in American History from The University of Virginia, and his master's in Economic Development from Georgia State University.

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.

Resources Mentioned

Saltbox https://www.saltbox.com/ Saltbox Fulfilment https://www.saltbox.com/fulfillment Techstars https://www.techstars.com/ Shopify https://www.shopify.co.uk/ Bessemer Venture Fund https://www.bvp.com/

I can't believe season 6 is over! I have been out in the US, finally getting the chance to meet many of our clients overseas and taking the opportunity to build on new relationships we have made from a distance in the last year. I had the honour of attending Blueprint, and now I am heading to CREtech New York. So if you are listening to this and will be there - get in touch! I want to see as many of you before I head back to the UK!

My time over here (due to the fact I had to spend 2 weeks in Mexico before being allowed into the US - which i promise has been spent working, not just drinking margaritas on the beach) has given me some time to reflect. I have been looking back over the last six seasons of The Propcast but also reflecting on the last couple years LMRE has had as a business.

The Proptech market received a staggering 9.7bn dollars of VC investment in the first 6 months of 2021 and the pace of the market is not slowing down.

At LMRE we are proud to have reached some record numbers of our own.

Over the last 12 months we have firmly established ourselves as the No1 global talent management provider within Real Estate tech and innovation.

Along with our existing US, UK and European teams we have opened an office in Berlin,, set up our global Tech team as well as a dedicated research function to support our strategic and C suite hires.

We are also in the early stages of launching LMRE in the APAC region which will enable us to offer a truly global talent management solution to all of our clients.

Now it is not only us who have seen some pretty impressive achievements, I want to shout out to some of my previous guests who over the last couple months have been hitting milestones of their own.

Back in Season 5,In April I spoke to Jade Francine from WeMaintain and Deborah Fritz from MYRE about the French Proptech scene. Congrats to WeMaintain on your recent series B raise! WeMaintain has transformed the regulated maintenance market, initially supplying elevator and escalator solutions. Jade will be joining LMRE for an update on the French Proptech market with our Head of Europe Dilan, so make sure to look out for that later this year to hear about the growth, challenges and trends in France.

Also in season 5, I spoke to Cem Savas from Plentific about how property management can be made simple. Huge congratulations to Plentific on their Series C raise of £73m.

For those who aren't familiar with Plentific, Plentific works with landlords to transform how they deliver repairs and maintenance services.

Looking back at season 4 in February, I had the chance to speak with CEO and Co-Founder of Flyhomes Tushar Garg.

We discussed how Flyhomes has reinvented the way we can buy a home. It was really interesting to hear the behind the scenes of the product and how Tushar has built the company.

Now a shoutout to the Rise Buildings Team who have recently been acquired by VTS.

I interviewed Charlie Wade from VTS back in January and also had Prasan Kale from Rise buildings on in March. I had no idea the acquisition was going on but its Super exciting to see two great products and teams coming together! Both brilliant episodes if i say so myself, so if you missed them, go check them out!

Now throwing it back to season 2 which aired a full year ago! Can you believe it! I spoke to Mike Sroka of Dealpath and John Fitzpatrick of Blackstone about deals and investments within PropTech. I learnt so much from my conversation with them both and have thoroughly enjoyed watching Dealpath grow and Blackstone do further investments in this space to follow on from Dealpath with companies such as VTS, Aquicore and many many more.

There is lots to enjoy from the last 6 seasons, but let me get you excited for season 7, I have a great line up including Tyler and Maxwell from Saltbox, who teach me all there is to know about smart warehouses.

I also have Brad from Common joining me to chat about co living - will it be the new way of living?

Also another conversation which i cant wait to share is with Dan from Coajute, where he explains the value of Blockchain in real estate. So we have got you covered!

So if you are new here make sure to subscribe - so you DO NOT MISS AN EPISODE>

Join me Louisa Dickins and my brilliant lineup on the Propcast , every Wednesday.

Also, if you want to get in touch, we love hearing from you - please reach out at [email protected]

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.

Resources Mentioned

LMRE website www.lmre.tech

Nexus Lab Foundation Course www.nexuslabs.online/courses/

James' Podcast Nexus with James Dice

Nexus Lab newsletter, explore here

JLL Technologies website www.jllt.com

Nexus Labs website www.nexuslabs.online

Keywords

Season 7, Louisa Dickins, LMRE, Proptech, Smart Buildings, Progress, PropTech, Real Estate, Commercial Real Estate Market, IoT, Sustainability, Climate Change, Technology, Digitization

For full episode transcript head to www.lmre.tech/blog

In this episode The Propcast talks to James Dice the founder of Nexus Labs, and Ramya Ravichandar from JLL Technologies, about the Nexus Lab Foundation Course and how it can help further the industry's understanding of smart buildings and sustainability. We also chat through how the smart building space is going to affect the future of our buildings. Explore the course here!

Key Insights From This Episode

• There's a lot of growing momentum in the smart building space – James Dice
• We're looking at bringing in CRE experts with world-class technologists to deliver solutions – Ramya Ravichandar
• Why we need smart buildings depends on the "who" that we're talking about. So what we like to do is start with those humans and the outcomes that they need in order to get their jobs done better – James Dice
• Technology is just only one component. The success of the product really depends on the people and the processes that are in play in that vertical – Ramya Ravichandar
• It took me messing up a project and spending long nights and weekends in the office fixing it to learn a lot of the lessons that we try to bake into the curriculum – James Dice
• Back in the day we were all excited about smart cities and I feel like we've come a full circle today. A decade later, we're still excited about smart cities but we're still grappling with what that exactly means – Ramya Ravichandar
• Leaders are waking up to the fact that you need fundamental infrastructure and domain expertise to support smart buildings – Ramya Ravichandar
• Energy efficiency when I started my career in 2010 as an energy manager used to be a fringe thing. And now it's central to the business of real estate – James Dice
• There's a clear call to action for everyone here in terms of being able to do what we can do to reduce emissions, reduce our carbon footprint and achieve net zero goals – Ramya Ravichandar

About Our Guests

James Dice

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

James Dice, PE, CEM, CMVP is the founder of Nexus Labs, a weekly blog, podcast, online school, and consultancy striving to create smarter, more efficient buildings. Through Nexus, James shares remarkable stories with the aim of educating and moving the smart building industry forward. James created the Nexus Foundations course to share everything he wished someone had told him in his first 10 years in the smart buildings industry, showing how to avoid common pitfalls and roadblocks. James has experience as a professional engineer and energy efficiency innovator, and is an expert in data analytics software for smart buildings, such as Energy Management and Information Systems (EMIS).

Ramya Ravichandar

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramya-ravichandar-ph-d-b919921/

Ramya is VP of Product Management and Sustainability at JLL Technologies, delivering clean-tech products to reduce the carbon footprint of our built environment. In her role Ramya is focused on enabling sustainability goals informed by the dimensions of Environment, Social, Governance, Resiliency (ESGR) through AI, ML, Edge, and IOT technologies. Ramya is a seasoned product leader in identifying blue ocean markets, with special expertise in defining, creating and launching innovative products. Ramya was part of the Nexus Labs course previous cohort of students.

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.

Resources Mentioned

LMRE website www.lmre.tech

Nexus Lab Foundation Course www.nexuslabs.online/courses/

James' Podcast Nexus with James Dice

Nexus Lab newsletter, explore here

JLL Technologies website www.jllt.com

Nexus Labs website www.nexuslabs.online

For full episode transcript head to www.lmre.tech/blog

In this episode The Propcast talks to Serene Al-Momen from Senseware, and Sara Anzinger from Measurabl, to discuss those famous three letters that everyone loves talking about -the ESG - and how technology can really play a part in not only assisting the climate crisis but helping to reduce it. We also find out what changes in the adoption of real estate technology they have been seeing, and some future trend predictions.

Key Insights From This Episode

• Starting a business is never a straight line – Serene Al-Momen

• There's outsized impact and therefore outsized opportunity in terms of transforming the built environment – Sara Anzinger

• The action piece is about implementing solutions that are going to help decarbonize the industry and both protect and future-proof from transitional and physical climate risk – Sara Anzinger

• We believe that getting real time data versus data after the fact is really important to affect real change – Serene Al-Momen

• What we're really seeing is this push for decarbonizing the life cycle of real estate – Sara Anzinger

• 80% - 90% of all buildings that will exist in 2050 already exist today – Sara Anzinger

• Commercial estate is one of the largest asset classes in the world, but less than 1% of CRE space is digital or digitised – Serene Al-Momen

• Within Europe there's a lot of awareness and prioritisation of sustainability – Sara Anzinger

• We're seeing the move towards real estate as a service is a big trend, which requires more digitisation than what's available out there – Serene Al-Momen

• I'm excited for us as a society to continue to move into a world where energy environment, sustainability and tech intersect. And I believe that bringing these sectors together will not only be better for the world, but will also be better for our bottom line – Serene Al-Momen

About Our Guests

Serene Al-Momen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/serene-al-momen-phd-2915824/

Serene Almomen is the CEO and co-founder of Senseware, a complete IoT technology stack that provides modular connectivity for digitization of assets in the physical environment. Serene holds a Ph.D. degree in IT and is a certified PMP, SCM, ITIL, and SCJP. Before Senseware, Serene spent over 11 years managing large, mission critical projects overseeing teams as large as 40 people and managing an annual budget of at least $10M. She has a track record of delivering projects on time and budget and growing revenue by an average of $1M a year. She is an expert in self-managed and control systems, and Serene has been recognised by Forbes as heading up one of their Top 50 Women-Lead start-ups.

Sara Anzinger

https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraanzinger/?originalSubdomain=nl

Sara is a seasoned finance and business development professional at the forefront of sustainability. She has rich experience in strategy and product development, global and cross-sector project management, investor and lender engagement on ESG. Sara is a Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting (FSA) Credential-holder and MSc in International Finance. She is responsible for Measurabl's capital markets line of business, which includes development of business models, GTM strategies, and engagement with banks and lenders, insurers, indirect investors (LPs), and ratings agencies.

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.

Resources Mentioned

LMRE website www.lmre.tech

Senseware website www.senseware.com

Measurabl website www.measurabl.com

For full episode transcript head to www.lmre.tech/blog

In this episode The Propcast talks to Kylie Davis, President of PropTech Australia Association and Scott Willson, CEO of Forbury to talk about the trends in Australian PropTech adoption, along with the obstacles PropTech can face down under. They also discuss the mission of PropTech Australia Association, and find out more about Forbury's CRE valuation software which has recently launched in the UK.

Key Insights From This Episode

• I'm really looking forward to Australian PropTech's potential to transform how we live and work and interact with the built environment around the world – Kylie Davis
• it's not just about investment and dollars when we're talking about residential real estate, we're talking about the most important asset people have - it's people's homes and it's where their hearts and their families are – Kylie Davis
• In the last 18 months is a real awareness of, there are better ways to do things and actually it's not risky to do it. It's risky not to do it – Scott Willson
• I'm excited how quickly Australian PropTech is growing. I'm excited about how our market is really of interest to overseas PropTechs – Kylie Davis
• There will become a time when the effort that goes into avoiding the change, or avoiding learning the thing that you don't want to learn, becomes actually greater than actually just getting into stuck into it and embracing it – Kylie Davis
• Don't underestimate how hard it is to get the true modern product market fit, and really understand what job you're trying to solve – Scott Willson
• So big data's been around for a while, but I think we're starting to make sense of it – Kylie Davis

About Our Guests

Kylie Davis

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyliecdavis/?originalSubdomain=au

Kylie Davis is a leading commentator and speaker on Proptech and innovation in real estate in Australia. She is the founder of the Proptech Association of Australia and has successfully established and sold two startups. Her most recent ventures have been HomePrezzo and Real Content which were acquired by ActivePipe in July 2020. Kylie has an MBA from the University of NSW and a 25-year career across media and big data, holding senior editorial and marketing roles at Fairfax, News Corp and CoreLogic. Kylie is an advisor on advisory boards including Cribz, Property Investment Professionals Australia and consults to the Real Estate Institute of NSW and OpenAgent. She was a finalist in the thought leadership category of the 2019 REB Women in Real Estate Awards

Scott Willson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/willsonscott/?originalSubdomain=nz

Scott is the CEO of Forbury, the market leading valuation platform for commercial real estatae in Australia and New Zealand. Scott grew the Forbury business from the ground up, and as CEO he has developed analysts, software developers, and product, sales and marketing managers into a high-performing team. Using a highly analytical approach, Scott undertakes process improvement, forecasting and financial modelling, and strategy development. His ability to simplify complex information extends to his management approach. He is proud of Forbury's achievements and status as the number one business of its kind in Australasia. Scott speaks passionately about this success, conveying the power of the Forbury product and the Forbury people. Scott holds an Honours Commerce Degree specialising in Operations Research.

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.

Resources Mentioned

LMRE website www.lmre.tech

Forbury website www.forbury.com

Proptech Association Australia www.proptechassociation.com.au

Link to Kylie's articles: www.proptechassociation.om.au/author/kyliecdavis

For full episode transcript head to www.lmre.tech/blog

In this episode The Propcast talks to Vik Venkatraman, founder of Blueprint, real estate's premier event for tech startups, VCs, and industry players to connect. Blueprint is hosting an in-person live event this autumn in Las Vegas! They are joined on the podcast by Matthew Boras, from RXR Realty and Nima Wedlake, from Thomvest, both of whom are speakers at the Blueprint 2021 to find out what to expect from Blueprint 2021, who is attending, and some top tips for PropTech pitching to investors. Get your ticket for Blueprint here!

Key Insights From This Episode

• (Blueprint '21) is going to be a gathering not to miss - Vik Venkatraman
• We are bringing together what we believe is the very best, the very brightest, the most active, the most prolific collection of folks who are on the technology side, the investor side, and the industry side of real estate – Vik Venkatraman
• We are focused on and excited to meet entrepreneurs that are building companies which ultimately serve as the backbone of the industry – Matt Boras
• This has been a very interesting time for the built environment, but we have also seen a lot of amazing advancement, adoption, and strength from the technology community – Vik Venkatraman
• At events like this, the density of connections you can make is really valuable – Nima Wedlake
• We are excited about the opportunity that tech is unlocking across all aspects of the industry – Matt Boras
• There's always stuff to learn and that's one of the pleasures of this role is that I get to learn from talented entrepreneurs on a daily basis – Nima Wedlake
• One-to-one networking is a really important part of Blueprint – Vik Venkatraman
• My recommendation for folks is, be proactive about reaching out and making connections – Nima Wedlake
• Knowing your metrics as a founder and knowing where to invest your resources as a company in order to achieve your goals for growth is pretty important (when pitching) – Matt Boras
• There's no replacement for tenacity. I think in this game, just sticking with it can take you a really long way – Vik Venkatraman
• By almost any metric there's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur – Matt Boras

About Our Guests

Vik Venkatraman

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

Vik is a strategy and innovation management consultant, and a seasoned general manager. He currently serves as the general manager for Blueprint - the preeminent platform at the intersection of tech, venture, and real estate. At Bionic, he worked with a team of serial entrepreneurs to create and go after huge opportunities with F500 c-suites. He has lead multiple teams through the deployment of dozens of ecommerce sites, built multiple B2B sales & outreach machines, designed 2 hardware IOT products, and evaluated models ranging from SaaS to Marketplace. Vik has played a key role in building the $50MM Business Insights unit at American Express, and engineered the savings or growth of over $50MM in value for clients at Deloitte Consulting. Additionally, he built a beverage company, Star Power, to a business with over 500 accounts on no outside financing, and even published a book, Inspired! (Wiley, 2008). He graduated with honors from Columbia University with a degree in Biomedical Engineering.

Nima Wedlake

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

Nima Wedlake is a Principal at Thomvest Ventures, focusing on investment opportunities across the real estate & financial technology verticals. He currently serves as a Board Observer at LoanSnap, a mortgage technology company, Wholesail, a B2B payments network, and Singular, a marketing attribution provider. He also spearheaded Thomvest's investments in Ribbon, Tala, Blend, Mynd, Obie and PeerStreet. Nima was previously a Board Observer at Vungle (acquired by Blackstone in 2019) and DataXu (acquired by Roku in 2019). In 2020, Nima was recognized as one of 25 Rising Stars of Fintech VC by Business Insider. Prior to joining Thomvest, Nima worked as a management consultant advising technology clients on issues related to go-to-market strategy with the firm ZS Associates. He was also on the founding team at Sponge, a venture-backed customer engagement platform, where he led product development efforts. Nima is originally from the Bay Area and graduated from UC Berkeley, where he studied Business Administration and Operations Research.

Matt Boras

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

Matt serves as Senior Vice President on the Investment team at RXR Realty and leads the RXR digital ventures investment strategy. RXR offers a dynamic array of innovative investment products across the risk spectrum for its investors. Coupled with a rich history of office and industrial development, our funds benefit from our strategic increase in the construction of residential, storage, telehealth and transportation facilities across the US. Prior to this Matt was Vice President a Colony Capital, VP at NorthStar Asset Management Group, and Associate at Five Mile Capital.

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.

Resources Mentioned

LMRE website www.lmre.tech

Blueprit website www.blueprint.connectiv.com

Blueprint October 4-6 2021 event - get your ticket HERE

Blueprint list of event speakers www.blueprint.connectiv.com/#speakers

RXR website www.rxrrealty.com

Thomvest www.thomvest.com

For full episode transcript head to www.lmre.tech/blog

In this episode The Propcast talks to Jeremy Sicklick, from HouseCanary, about how we can use data to maximise value in real estate. Jeremy chats us through how HouseCanary keeps their real estate product competitive in the market, predictions from the data that is emerging, and how the role of technology is changing the real estate space.

Key Insights From This Episode

• I saw a need to bring it into the modern age, try to do it in a much more digital, faster way to ultimately value what properties are worth and make the decision-making factor – Jeremy Sicklick
• 4 of the top 10 major lenders in the US use and depend on HouseCanary - Jeremy Sicklick
• We've continued to invest around not just having good data, but really driving great insights off of that consistently and continuing to push the extreme of what is possible - Jeremy Sicklick
• What we've seen as we went through COVID it is the demand is that demand for real estate is outstripping supply – Jeremy Sicklick
• We're seeing we're at the early stages of millennials and millennial household formation – Jeremy Sicklick
• There's more demand coming on the institutional side because real estate is a great inflation and it delivers a great yield in a yield starved market – Jeremy Sicklick
• My sense is we're going to see a pretty strong roaring twenties for quite a while, especially with the strong job market. Jobs drive households, people need somewhere to live - Jeremy Sicklick
• You are going to see "automate everything"- Jeremy Sicklick
• There's just more focus on how to take and leverage information to better automate decision-making - Jeremy Sicklick
• Every business that we see and work with is continuing to infuse more and more information into automating a set of processes that drive more productivity
• Did we make a 1% improvement? And if you can keep making these little 1% improvements every day, they start really stacking up and compounding -

About Our Guest

Jeremy Sicklick

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-sicklick-216a861/

As co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at HouseCanary, Jeremy drives the company's vision, strategy, and growth to identify interesting and unique ways to use data to maximise value in real estate. Jeremy was previously a Partner & Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group, where he helped leading real estate investors to deploy billions of dollars in capital. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, their three children, and two energetic dogs.

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.

Resources Mentioned

LMRE website www.lmre.tech

HouseCanary website www.housecanary.com

Contact Jeremy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-sicklick-216a861/

For full episode transcript head to www.lmre.tech/blog