The Real Estate Innovators

Ashley Smith is the CEO and Co-Founder of Crowdseekr.  Crowdseekr helps investors with search tools to identify commercial real estate crowdfunding projects that meet the investors investment criteria.

What’s the Big Idea?.  

Crowdfunding is a disruptive technology that is fundamentally transforming real estate investment.

Due to the proliferation of real estate crowdfunding platforms, investors may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of registering and searching on dozens of websites.

Crowdseekr is one stop shop for investment opportunities that match an investors desired returns, geographic criteria, investment thresholds.

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Episode sources

* To learn more about Ashley Smith visit here.

* To learn more about Crowdseekr visit here.

Geoff Nesnow is the CEO and Co-Founder of My City at Peace.  My City at Peace helps communities reduce violence and as people begin to feel safer, local commerce increases, investors start investing locally, local social services become more effective and the neighborhoods become more desirable.

What’s the Big Idea?.  

My City at Peace helps communities reduce violence. When violence is reduced, property values increase – especially multi-family buildings. We invest in these properties to:

1) Deliver excellent returns to private investors

2) Fund My City at Peace’s work

3) Increase My City at Peace’s impact by getting a seat at the table as local property owners

4) Slow the detrimental effects on the community of gentrification.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* To learn more about Geoff Nesnow visit here.

* To learn more about My City at Peace visit here.

Dana Dunford is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hemlane. Hemlane is a next generation property management platform. Hemlane streamlines and automates the entire lifecycle of rental management.

What’s the Big Idea?.  

Hemlane provides rental owners and managers with an intelligent online platform to manage rental properties.  For remote rental owners, Hemline connects them with agents and managers for local support.

Key Learning

Hemlane is able to help property owners accomplish two critical aspects of the rental business:

* Increase Profits by decreasing expenses through software and local agents

* Reduce Risk by sending alerts to property owners regarding legal and financial data.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* To learn more about Dana Dunford visit here.

* To learn more about Hemlane visit here.

Joe Lee is the CEO and co-founder of LocateAI.  LocateAI is a software platform which enables machine learning for the retail real estate industry.  LocateAI has created the first location intelligence platform that’s powered by artificial intelligence.  

What’s the Big Idea?.  

Locate AI fine tunes models specific to a retail businesses needs and iterates through millions of scenarios to pick up insights which are often completely missed by traditional models.

Key Learning

Changes in the approach to site selection are being driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The tools that enable the process are therefore connected to those technologies that enable data mining, visualization, and analysis.

All these elements need to be carefully orchestrated to create an impactful process to help a retailer choose a site to drive maximum profitability.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* To learn more about Joe Lee visit here.

* To learn more about LocateAI visit here.

Elizabeth Redmond is the CEO and co-founder of CoWorkr.  CoWorkr is a software platform that leverages high resolution sensor data and a secure Google cloud environment. CoWorkr gives organizations the data and tools needed to learn and manage dynamic commercial real estate.

What’s the Big Idea?

Optimizing office space can result in increased productivity and significant office space (footprint) reduction helping to increase an organizations bottom line.

Key Learning

Coworker is helping companies deal with activity based working environments which are being driven by the present day workers mobility.  A full integration of IoT devices and real-time workplace technologies will lead the evolution of workplace ecosystems that will breed fully on-demand spaces.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* To learn more about Elizabeth Redmond visit here.

* To learn more about CoWorkr visit here.

Phil Levin is the founder and principal of 99mph, a boutique consulting firm which is preparing policy makers, investors, and businesses for the disruptive arrival of autonomous vehicles. Prior to starting 99mph, Phil was the creator of two international teams as part of Facebook’s internet.org initiative, helping to bring over 25 million people online.

What’s the Big Idea?

Let’s start with real estate. Cars (the Henry Ford kind) completely reshaped the built environment of the United States — giving us the suburbs and shopping malls and pulling people out of cities. What will self-driving cars do to our cities and suburbs? Surely something equally as dramatic.

Key Learning

It was surprising to learn that increased mobility will see the population move farther out from city centers.

Interesting that data shows that the value of real estate between 30-60 minutes from the city center will see the greatest shifts in value.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* To learn more about Phil Levin visit here.

* To learn more about 99ph visit here.

* Check out the Medium article that piqued my interest in Phil’s work.

Yulia Yaani is Co-Founder and CEO of Real Atom. Before founding Real Atom, Yulia managed over half a billion in commercial real estate investments for Amstar Global Partners, a US private equity fund, as well as worked in multifamily sales & marketing for Related Group.

Her experience exposed her to two critical groups 1. a highly fragmented commercial real estate lending industry that lacks transparency and 2. real estate developers and investors that were wasting time and money in order to secure debt for their projects.

“Commercial lending is one of the last frontiers in terms of implementing innovations…Over $500B in new commercial loans are generated annually in the US and almost all are originated offline”

– Yulia Yaani, Co-Founder & CEO of RealAtom

What’s the Big Idea?

An online marketplace for commercial real estate loans—to fix the flaws the founders saw in the industry. Securing commercial real estate debt is often a clumsy, opaque process fraught with inefficiencies. For too many, it seemed like the only way to find a lender was to know the right people at the right time.

Yulia knew there was a better way to connect developers and investors with lenders. By combining our 40+ collective years of experience in commercial real estate finance and technology, they’ve created a marketplace that enables borrowers to access the largest network of commercial real estate lenders in the nation. It also empowers lenders and borrowers with the tools to better manage loan process.

The Challenge of the Loan Process

Matching the borrower and the lenders.

It can take borrowers weeks or months to even find the right borrower never mind the time and energy to complete the loan process

Lenders have to review $1B in loan requests to loan $50M

Key Learning

With an integrated solution, Real Atom connects borrowers and lenders to create a centralized place for logging conversations with multiple parties. The added transparency of the marketplace means that institutions can better service customers and borrowers have a means by which it can hold multiple lenders accountable for progress toward a goal or completion of a loan.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

*

To learn more about RealAtom, visit here.

Kobi Wu is Founder and CEO of VisuWall. Wu is the former SVP of Strategic Planning at Combs Enterprises where she was responsible for managing the business and creative strategies including Combs Wines & Spirits and Sean John.  Some of the global brands she’s affected through her unique lens of entertainment and planning include Spotify, Google, Yahoo!, Converse, Pepsi, JetBlue Airways to name just a few.

“We developed two forms of tech that now live in our platform.  Its comprised of a computer vision sensor and mobile proximity sensor that allows an advertiser to measure the number of people engaging with the window [advertisement].”

– Kobi Wu, CEO & Founder of VisuWall

What’s the Big Idea?

VisuWall is an online b2b marketplace that simplifies the media buying process and monetizes the downtime of vacant commercial real estate. Through a simple user interface and turnkey process, media buyers can access vetted locations and deploy rich advertising at eye level. Real time traffic information is captured using a unique technology metrics system providing quantifiable results for campaigns and experiential media buys.

The Challenge of the Pop Up Shop

A pop-up shop is a temporary storefront space operated by an online merchant. Pop-up stores have become more prevalent in recent years and continue to grow in popularity. These short-term retail environments enable customers to experience products firsthand.

Challenges:

* The pop up space is very competitive which pose challenges for differentiation.

* Pop Ups are extremely immersive and labor intensive.

* Difficulty in determining value for brands and adverstisers

Lessons learned from this episode

Retail building owners and operators will have increased access to short term solutions to monetize vacant space or transition periods between leases.

VisuWall has increased the speed to market for advertisers while delivering measurable results and connecting consumers to brands in a new and powerful way.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* Learn more about VisuWall by clicking here.

* Learn more about Kobi Wu Pasmore by clicking here.

A former NYC commercial broker, Michael Mandel founded Compstak to fix the inefficiencies of data sharing in the CRE industry. Michael is a regular speaker on the future of commercial real estate, real estate technology, and data transparency. He graduated from Babson College in 2005, where he led the Babson Entrepreneurial Exchange and was a member of the world’s first live-in business incubator, the e-tower.

“We took this offline process of people sharing deal information informally and we moved it online.  Now they still share the information but they earn credits for doing it, we made it a more fair and equitable process”

– Michael Mandel, CEO of Compstak

What’s the Big Idea?

Compstak is the world’s first comprehensive database of commercial lease and sales comparable data. Compstak collects and verifies actual, deal-level transaction records reported directly to Compstak by brokers, appraisers, and researchers on the ground. Compstak combines those records with critical property-level details, leaving you with lease, sales, and property comps that are recent, accurate, and searchable.

The State of Commercial Lease Comps

Traditionally, comparable’s were being traded over the phone and via email.  The information was guarded and driven by market insiders with limited ability to verify accuracy.

A Reward Systems for Comps

Compstak has a network of 16,000 real estate brokers, appraisers and brokerage firm research analysts who share data on Compstak, earn credits for sharing data and use the credits to get data back out of the system.  The primary data is lease comps, sales comps and property level data.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* Learn more about Compstak

Kyle Bainter the Co-founder & CEO of Call Box Storage, an alternative to traditional self storage. He has 15 years of experience as a real estate executive – focused on auditing, accounting, underwriting, and private equity.  Previous to Call Box Storage, Kyle was the CFO of Silverado Interests, a boutique real estate firm focused on value-added commercial real estate projects.

Let’s find some efficiencies on the real estate side to then provide a bunch of extra service and all that would be wrapped into the monthly cost of storage.

–Kyle Bainter, CEO of Call Box Storage

What’s the Big Idea?

Self storage made easy. Call Box Storage changed the traditional self storage model by leveraging the lessons learned from the on-demand economy. “Uber for Self Storage”

The State of Self Storage

The United States has over 2.3 billion square feet of self storage space.  Number of self storage facilities in the U.S estimated between 44,000 – 52,000

Self Storage for the Future

Call Box Storage is designed to simplify the self storage process.  With a suite of offerings including free pick up and delivery, an online photo inventory, moving services, climate control and security, Call Box is rewriting the script for consumer and business storage.

Thank you for the podcast reviews!

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast. If you appreciate the podcasting information I share, please write your own review on iTunes or Stitcher!

Episode sources

* Learn more about Call Box Storage 

* Seth Godin, Creating Awareness