Tech Nest: The Proptech Podcast

Tech Nest Final Episode—Thank you!

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 08:25:08 -0800

I never intended to publish over 200 podcast episodes. I truly thought I'd do 30 or 40—at most—and then move on to something else. However, the constant support I received across the entire industry motivated me to keep going. I love this industry and intend on going nowhere anytime soon. But the time has come to set the podcast aside and focus more energy into something else. I want to continue sharing my work so that others can benefit, but I'm also interested in saying yes to other opportunities such as advising and consulting.

I plan on publishing occasionally to my newsletter (Join here: https://technest.beehiiv.com/) and you'll likely see content time to time come from the Tech Nest social channels (until they're rebranded).

As a final glimmer of hope, I reserve the right to reverse course. Previously, I'd shutdown the show, only to come back and publish 150 more episodes since then. I don't intend on doing that again, but ya never know. :)

Find me on socials:

Blueprint Conference Conversations Part 4

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 20:37:48 -0800

In this special episode, you'll get to listen in on conversations I had while attending Blueprint Conference, 2024.

Here's the list of guests in this Part 4 of my Blueprint Conversations series.

Brad Pilgrim, Co-founder and CEO, Parity

Vikas Gupta, CEO, Azibo

Matt Ellis, CEO, Measurabl

Blueprint Conference Conversations Part 3

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 06:58:45 -0800

In this special episode, you'll get to listen in on conversations I had while attending Blueprint Conference, 2024.

Here's the list of guests in this Part 3 of my Blueprint Conversations series.

Pierre Calzadilla, Co-founder & COO at Upfront
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierrecalzadilla
- https://myupfront.com
Mukund Venkatakrishnan, Co-founder & CEO at Upfront
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/mukund-venkatakrishnan-466636a5
- https://myupfront.com
Amber Kahr, Co-founder & COO at Billions
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/amberkahr
- https://joinbillions.com
James Gallagher, Co-founder & CEO at Greenlite
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesabgallagher
- https://www.greenlite.com
Ethan Lieber, Co-founder & CEO at Latchel
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanlieber
- https://latchel.com
Nick Durham, General Partner at Shadow Ventures
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-durham-a3708724
- https://shadow.vc/

Rental Listings Marketplace 3.0 with Anthemos Georgiades, CEO at Zumper

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 06:30:00 -0800

In this conversation I'm joined by Zumper Co-founder and CEO, Anthemos Georgiades. We discuss the evolving landscape of the rental market, highlighting the record supply of rental units in 2024 and the implications for renters and property management companies. I was excited to discuss the latest partnership between Zumper and Airbnb, exploring how this collaboration reflects the convergence of long-term and short-term rental markets. Anthemos has been in the trenches of this industry for quite a few years, stays in the data, and have some interesting outlooks for the industry to come. Do not miss this important episode!

More about Anthemos and Zumper
After standing in the rain in London to try and get an apartment in his 20s, Anthemos realized how antiquated yet massive the rental industry was. So, Zumper was founded in 2012 in San Francisco, kicking off at TechCrunch Disrupt, to modernize the rental industry and they are now the largest privately owned rental platform in North America.

Zumper is the largest privately owned rental platform in North America with more than 76 million site visits a year. Zumper is on a mission to make renting a home as easy as booking a hotel. To date, Zumper has raised over $178 million from Kleiner Perkins, Goodwater Capital, Headline, Dawn Capital, and the Blackstone Group.

Advancing EV Charging Amenities for Multifamily with Nicholas Johnson, Founder and CEO of Orange Charger

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 07:00:00 -0800

In this conversation, I talk with Nicholas Johnson, Founder and CEO of Orange Charger, about the challenges and opportunities in the EV charging industry, particularly for multifamily homes. He describes the importance of user experience, connectivity, and the role of software in managing energy consumption. We also get into the evolving landscape of property management as it relates to EV charging infrastructure and the future of energy management solutions.

More about Nicholas and Orange Charger
Orange Charger is an Energy Management Solution for multifamily homes. Orange's right-sized charging solutions are reliable, affordable, scalable, and purpose-built for these properties.

Nicholas is passionate about enabling humans to live carbon-neutral lives without compromising lifestyle. Before starting Orange, he built A.I. software to optimize traffic signals to reduce congestion. He started his career at Tesla as an electrical design engineer, bringing the Model 3 thermal designs to market.

Creating an Excellent Guest Experience with Peter Gudmundsson, CEO of BeHome247

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 07:51:00 -0800

Peter Gudmundsson, CEO of BeHome 247, discusses the challenges and opportunities in the short-term rental and vacation rental industry. He emphasizes the importance of delivering a consistently excellent guest experience and the need for brand consistency. Gudmundsson also addresses the impact of local zoning regulations on the industry and the role of technology in improving operations and guest satisfaction. He highlights the value of a unified operations platform that integrates various systems and provides real-time visibility for property managers. BeHome 247 provides a unified operations platform for the short-term rental and residential property management industries. The platform integrates various functions such as maintenance, housekeeping, guest communication, and vendor management, improving operational efficiency and customer experience. The CEO, Peter Gudmundsson, emphasizes the importance of thinking systemically and avoiding the purchase of point solutions that lack coordination. He also discusses the role of AI in customer service and the need for a balance between technology and human interaction. Gudmundsson predicts that the industry will see more consistency of delivery and that digital curb appeal will become a critical factor in property judgments.

More about Peter and BeHome247
BeHome247 provides residential and STR/VR real estate owners/operators and property managers with a tailored operations platform. The technology controls smart devices, operating workflows, and resident communications.

Peter Gudmundsson is CEO of BeHome247. He has been running small and medium-sized businesses in technology, content, and human capital for over twenty-five years.

Blueprint Conference Conversations Part 2

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:34:15 -0800

In this special episode, you'll get to listen in on conversations I had while attending Blueprint Conference, 2024.

Here's the list of guests in this Part 2 of my Blueprint Conversations series.

Kenon Chen, EVP of Strategy and Growth at Clear Capital
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenon-chen-72201b4/
- https://www.clearcapital.com/
John Rogers, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at CoreLogic
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-rogers-a4053a38/
- https://www.corelogic.com/
Brandon Peterson, CEO of Geokey
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-peterson-6ab6b997/
- https://geokeyaccess.com/
Amber Kahr, Co-founder of Billions
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/amberkahr
- https://www.joinbillions.com
Nick Schanbaum, Co-founder of Durango Turnkey Services
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-schanbaum-01ab3831/
- https://durangotks.com/

The Next Iteration in Property Management for Self-Managing Landlords with Dana Dunford, Co-founder and CEO of Hemlane

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 06:26:00 -0700

In this episode, Dana Dunford, Co-founder and CEO of Hemlane, joins the show to discuss the evolving landscape of property management for self-managing real estate investors. Hemlane is a venture-backed platform that simplifies rental property management by offering tools for inspections, repairs, tenant coordination, and more, all in one place. Dana shares how Hemlane differentiates itself from traditional property management by blending human oversight with technology, catering to a market where 72% of landlords self-manage their properties.

We also explore how she achieved early traction at Hemlane by leveraging her personal network, testing creative messaging, and focusing on product-led growth. Dana emphasizes the importance of a balanced approach between technology and personal interaction, particularly as AI becomes more prevalent in real estate.

This is a must listen for early-stage founders in the proptech space and those wanting to know what the next iteration for landlord software looks like.

More about Dana and Hemlane
Dana Dunford is the CEO of Hemlane, a venture-backed property management platform with over 27,000 rentals and $1BN in payments processed. She is a strong advocate of purchasing properties anywhere, as the best investments are not typically in your backyard. She supports real estate investors in setting up the most intelligent process to manage rentals from a distance, while connecting them with local, licensed professionals.

Bringing All Systems Together in Property Management with Jason Griffith, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Synco

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 07:00:00 -0700

In this epsidoe, I talk with Jason Griffith, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Synco, to explore how they simplify communication for property management teams. With the overload of emails and messages, Synco offers a real-time messaging platform to streamline collaboration and organize conversations. It lets users control inbox notifications and easily include external parties like contractors. Synco offers include real-time translation for seamless multilingual communication and integration with property management software. Synco is also focused on leveraging AI to enhance team collaboration and efficiency, aiming to lead the way in transforming property management communication. This conversation goes deeper than just product features, as you'll hear Jason break down the importance (and complexity) of industry-specific communication products.

More about Jason and Synco
Synco is the centralized communication platform that allows property management teams to collaborate effortlessly. When it comes to team communication, property management still runs on email (and usually Teams, text and whatsapp). The result is overloaded inboxes, unnecessary liability, slower issue resolution and missed opportunities for collaboration. Synco is the team communication tool built specifically for property management. It brings corporate teams, on-site staff, vendors and clients together in one seamless application. Synco provides the transparency to never have to ask "where are we on this", the peace of mind in knowing that all communications are securely filed and the advantages of rapid, effective team communication.

Jason Griffith is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Synco, the real-time, centralized messaging platform built to help property management teams communicate faster and better. Prior to founding Synco, Jason was the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of SiteCompli, a compliance automation platform used across 1M+ residential units & 70% of Class A office properties in NYC that is now part of Inhabit, a collective of property management software companies backed by Insight Venture Partners and Goldman Sachs. Jason is passionate about building great tech solutions powered by great teams.

3D Printed Homes With Recycled Materials with Gene Eidelman, Co-founder of Azure Printed Homes

Nate Smoyer — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 08:50:24 -0700

Gene Eidelman, Co-founder of Azure, discusses how they are using 3D printing technology to create and build prefab homes. They use recycled polymers and fiberglass instead of traditional materials, making their homes faster to build and more affordable. We also get into the national housing shortage, affordability crisis, and reducing environmental impacts. Gene explains their construction process, which involves 3D printing modules and finishing them in the factory. He also discusses the challenges of distribution and the acceptance of prefab homes by lenders and insurance companies. Gene emphasizes the need for more sustainable construction practices and the potential for tech advances to address the affordable housing crisis.

More about Gene and Azure
Azure is fundamentally changing the construction industry by leveraging 3D printing technology using recycled polymers and fiberglass to prefab homes 70% faster and 30% less expensive than existing construction methods, with a positive environmental impact

From developing multifamily projects to revolutionizing the construction industry with 3D-printed homes, Gene Eidelman's journey in real estate is marked by innovation and impact. After immigrating to the US from Ukraine, Gene quickly made a name for himself, developing over 3,000 condominiums and apartments. At Azure, Gene and his team are breaking new ground with a patented 3D printing process that constructs entire structures from recycled polymers.

Modern Modular Platform for Real Estate Operations with Andrew Becker, CEO and Co-founder of Billions

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 06:42:00 -0700

In this episode, I chat with Andrew Becker, CEO and Co-founder of Billions, a real estate operations platform built for high-volume teams. We explore how Billions automates data tracking and enhances team efficiency, especially in today’s challenging market. Andrew shares his journey from the Air Force to building a successful real estate team and dives into why modular tech and AI are game-changers for the industry. We also discuss his podcast, "Team Lead Talks," where he interviews top real estate leaders (I've got a soft-spot in my heart for leaders with podcasts). Listen in!

More about Andrew and Billions
BILLIONS is a real estate team operating system powered by the world's most powerful CRM platform, Salesforce. Designed and carefully curated around the team model, BILLIONS brings predictable and repeatable processes to a team's operations while seamlessly yielding best-in-class data & analytics for real-time decision-making and oversight.

Andrew started a real estate team back in 2013 in Arlington, VA and built a high volume, high transaction business where we did both retail and investor-type transactions. Out of our own needs, built an operating systems around our team model that is now being used by some of the top producing teams in the United States.

Blueprint Conference Conversations, Part 1 with Bo Lais, Heather Harmon, and Kevin Shtofman

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 10:27:01 -0700

More about each guest in this special episode:

Bo Lais, Founder and CEO at Lula
Bo Lais is a serial entrepreneur and current CEO/Founder of Lula, a proptech company focused on reinventing maintenance for property managers and investors.

Rental property maintenance technology and software powered by a network of vetted contractors.

Heather Harmon, Founder, Investor, and Advisor
Heather Harmon was prior the Head of Opendoor Finance where she led department operations and partnerships. She led the launch of Opendoor’s financing app, which enables home buyers to understand their buying power by providing a pre-approval in 60 seconds or less. She was previously the co-founder and COO of RedDoor, a digital-first mortgage brokerage acquired by Opendoor in 2021, and was responsible for growth and operations of the organization. Her focus areas included scale in process and operations in addition to product initiatives that leveraged integrations, data science, and industry knowledge. As a third-generation broker, Heather has been at the forefront of innovation and technology in the real estate industry since 1990.

Today Heather provides expert guidance to startup and venture capital leaders in structuring successful implementation, investment, or M&A in proptech and fintech. She is often an invited panelist interested in discussing the path for innovation to accelerate efficiencies for the quality of the consumer experience and for the sake of equity in the current crisis across housing and finance.

Kevin Shtofman, Global Head of Innovation at Cherre
Cherre is the leader in real estate data and insight. We connect decision makers to accurate property and market information, and help them make faster, smarter decisions. By providing a unique “single source of truth,” Cherre empowers customers to evaluate opportunities and trends faster and more accurately, while saving millions of dollars in manual data collection and analytics costs.

Kevin is an industry leader when it comes to commercial real estate & technology. With over 20 years of experience in real estate, finance, & consulting, he’s carved out an expertise in solving complex challenges using data.

Kevin oversees all global Partnerships at Cherre, managing relationships with 130 data, application, and channel Partners across 5 countries. The Cherre platform today boasts over $3 Trillion AUM on the platform.

Building for Tighter-Knit Communities with Phil Levin, Founder and CEO of Live Near Friends

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:00:00 -0700

In this episode, Phil Levin, Founder and CEO of Live Near Friends, shares insights on the importance of proximity in shaping our lives and the potential for multiplayer mode housing. He discusses the benefits of living near friends and family, how transportation influences city design, and the rise of cul-de-sac communities. Phil also touches on the role of ADUs in fostering closer-knit neighborhoods, the loneliness epidemic, and the health impacts of community living. The conversation highlights how proximity to happy friends can boost happiness by 40%, and explores the future of urban planning with self-driving cars.

More about Phil and Live Near Friends
LiveNearFriends reinvents residential real estate by focusing on the #1 amenity: people. We address many of today's biggest pain points: loneliness, isolation in raising families, and lack of rootedness in a WFH world. There’s a silver bullet for these problems, and it's living in proximity to people you love.

Today's product aggregates latent demand for living near friends & family, identifies existing housing supply that is a good fit for groups, and greases the behavioral mechanics. It's been covered by Vox, Guardian, Axios, Bigger Pockets and Business Insider. The vision is to become the marketplace where all "proximate housing" is marketed, developed, financed, and sold.

Phil is the CEO/founder of Live Near Friends, the social real estate platform that helps people live within walking distance of friends & family.

Previously, he helped start Culdesac (a developer building walkable, car-free neighborhoods, $200m+ raised).

Phil started a housing cluster called Radish where he lives near 19 friends and 5 of their kids spread across 10 homes. He writes about this on Supernuclear, the #1 newsletter on living near friends (160K reach).

Phil’s mission is to create forms of housing which makes us happy, healthy, and connected. And in doing so rebuild the social fabric of our neighborhoods.

Reshaping Turnover Services in Multifamily with Greg Sack, Partner and CMO of Pinch

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 06:30:00 -0700

Greg Sack, partner and CMO of Pinch, discusses how Pinch is reshaping the multifamily industry's approach to turnover and common area cleaning. Pinch offers centralized solutions for property management companies, bridging the gap and providing efficient cleaning services. The conversation covers topics such as the challenges of finding cleaners, the need for a B2B avenue in the cleaning industry, the role of technology in scaling the business, and the potential for consolidation in the industry. Greg also shares his predictions for the future of Pinch and the real estate industry.

More about Greg and Pinch
PINCH is reshaping the multifamily industry's approach to turnover and common area cleaning! We're disrupting the status quo by providing a platform for high-quality home cleaners to seamlessly transition into this space, and solving a number of challenges that existing cleaning teams are facing in the industry. With stringent vendor requirements in place, finding reliable resources has been a challenge—until now. PINCH is bridging the gap, offering a centralized solution for property management companies nationwide. By standardizing processes, pricing, and invoicing, we're driving significant cost reductions and operational efficiencies across the board. Plus, our network ensures swift onboarding of new cleaning teams, replacing them within hours or days, not months.

Greg is a serial entrepreneur who spent his early career in the logistics industry. In 2014, he sold his e-commerce and logistics business to FedEx, which is the first time in their history that they acquired a start-up technology company. Greg is Partner and CMO for PINCH. He heads up all strategic growth initiatives and helps to drive the direction of the business.

The Impact of Pest Control in Property Management and Tenant Experience with Landon Cooley, Co-founder and CEO of Pest Share

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 11:29:35 -0700

In this episode, I chat with Landon Cooley, CEO and Co-founder of Pest Share, about the crucial yet often overlooked role of pest control in property management. Landon highlights the challenges of dealing with specialty pests like bed bugs and cockroaches, which can cause major issues in multi-family settings.

Pest Share offers a solution by providing tenants with direct, on-demand access to pest control services, bypassing the need for property manager involvement. This not only improves the resident experience but also helps property managers focus on more pressing tasks. We also discuss how property managers can build trust and add value by responding quickly to maintenance requests, which can lead to better tenant satisfaction and easier lease renewals.

Finally, we touch on the future of Pest Share and the impact of technology on real estate, exploring how deep integrations and custom solutions can boost operational efficiency.

More about Landon and Pest Share
Pest Share is a fast-growing, 4-year-old proptech startup based in Boise, ID. Pest Share’s on-demand pest control technology saves tenants 70% on pest services and allows them to diagnose, request, and receive pest services right from their cell phones - without the involvement of a property manager. For property managers, this means a value-added pest control amenity that provides a better rental experience, operational efficiencies, a new revenue stream, and increased NOI.

Landon Cooley is the CEO & Co-Founder of Pest Share. Landon has almost 20 years of experience in pest management and is 4th generation in his family to pursue a career within the industry. Landon has a strong belief that, “There is always a better way”. After years of encountering the same, unaddressed pest control paint points in the property management space, Landon and his Co-Founders decided to launch their most recent venture, Pest Share.

Data-Driven Decision-Making in Real Estate with Jason Lewris, Co-founder at Parcl Labs

Nate Smoyer — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 09:03:51 -0700

In this episode, I chat with Jason Lewis, co-founder of Parcel Labs, about the evolving landscape of real estate data. We dive into the power of real-time housing data, how it's becoming more transparent, and the impact it's having on the market. Jason shares insights on how Parcel Labs is leading the charge by providing unparalleled access to housing information, making it easier for developers and operators to make informed decisions. If you're curious about the future of real estate data and how it can be your best tool, this episode is a must-listen!

More about Jason and Parcl Labs
At Parcl Labs, our mission is to make housing data real-time, transparent, and accessible. We reveal previously hidden aspects of the housing market, including daily price movements and investor activities. All of this valuable information is available directly to you through our easy-to-use API.

Jason is the Co-founder and Chief Data Officer of Parcl Labs. He brings experience from his time at Microsoft and Deloitte, where he worked on large-scale international data standardization and machine learning projects.

Where is Proptech Headed from the Triple Win Podcast with Andrew Smallwood, VP of Revenue at Second Nature

Nate Smoyer — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 08:52:28 -0700

This episode is a bit different. I recorded this as an episode for the Triple Win Podcast with Andrew Smallwood, VP of Revenue at Second Nature. So today, I'll be playing the role of guest and Andrew is host. Enjoy this fun discussion on where proptech is headed.
--
From the Triple Win Podcast:

Few things have changed the property management industry more in the last five years than a growing proptech industry, but that industry continues to go through changes of its own.

Nate Smoyer, host of the Tech Nest Podcast, joins Andrew Smallwood to cover the state of the proptech industry, where things could be headed, and how it’s all likely to affect you as a property manager.

More about Andrew and Second Nature
Second Nature has created a new category with its resident experience platform for professional property managers. They work with 1,200 management companies and are the only 3-time NARPM (National Association of Residential Property Managers) national vendor of the year. Their industry-leading suite of resident rewards, credit building, ID protection, filter delivery, utility connection concierge, insurance, and more are helping professional property managers make resident experience their competitive advantage.

Navigating M&A in the Proptech Industry with Ben Lerner, Managing Director of Lerner Associates

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 06:00:00 -0700

Join me as I chat with Ben Lerner, Managing Director of Lerner Associates, about M&A in the proptech industry. Ben shares his unique insights from his background in tech and real estate, focusing on the importance of licenses and the evolving dynamics of user licensing. We discuss the differences between M&A and venture capital markets, highlighting the active M&A scene despite tougher capital raising.

Ben advises founders to prioritize metrics, build relationships with potential acquirers, and remain open to opportunities. He emphasizes customer retention and profitability as key for potential buyers and the importance of a clear scorecard that showcases business value. We also touch on balancing in-person and remote work, owning core technology, and the crucial role of human interaction in real estate. Tune in for Ben's expert advice on navigating the proptech M&A landscape.

More about Ben and Lerner Associates
Lerner Associates is a purely proptech focused M&A advisory firm working with founders/owners/leaders of real estate tech companies looking to sell their company or to raise growth capital. We also work buy-side.

Ben is the Managing Director of Lerner Associates, a London-based boutique M&A Advisory practice, he set up in 2019. Lerner Associates focuses purely on PropTech transactions, global and cross-border, across the spectrum of investment management, corporate, commercial, residential, multifamily, agency, workplace, facilities management, construction and real estate data solutions.

Ben has over 20 years of experience working in the real estate software space, both strategically and operationally as a seasoned proptech executive, and more latterly within corporate development, M&A and investment. From prior to selling his family business, Qube Global Software, to MRI Software, and throughout his time with MRI and beyond, Ben has been actively involved in M&A on deal sourcing, structuring, due diligence and general advisory.

A New Era in Lending with Kirill Bensonoff, Co-founder and CEO of New Silver

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 08:52:16 -0700

Kirill Bensonoff, CEO and Co-founder of New Silver, a fintech company that provides loans for fix and flip projects, joins Tech Nest to discuss the current state of the real estate market, the challenges faced by investors, and how New Silver differentiates itself from other lenders. Kirill explains how their technology, including a pricing engine, streamlines the loan process and offers convenience to borrowers. He also discusses their unique approach to sourcing capital, including their partnership with MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. Kirill shares his predictions for the future of the real estate market and the impact of AI on the industry. New Silver is not your standard lender. Listen in to hear more!

More about Kirill and New Silver
New Silver is a fintech company with a mission to improve local communities by providing fast, convenient, and flexible capital to real estate investors. We use data and technology to underwrite and originate investment property loans with more efficiency and predictability. Our pricing engine provides instant online loan approval and a term sheet so that our many happy clients are ready to make an offer in as little as 5 minutes.

Kirill Bensonoff is an advocate for pioneering fintech solutions, with a career spanning over 20 years across fintech, blockchain, and cloud computing. His entrepreneurial acumen has led to the successful bootstrapping of two high-growth technology companies, culminating in multi-million dollar exits. Kirill's journey exemplifies the synergy between deep industry expertise and entrepreneurial zeal, driving innovation in financial technology.

As the co-founder and CEO of New Silver, a fintech company that excels in providing loans for fix-and-flip projects, Kirill has been instrumental in steering the company through challenging landscapes to establish it as a leader in its domain. Under his guidance, New Silver has made a mark by becoming the first Real-World Asset to be recognized and approved by MakerDAO, the leading stable-coin community project.

The Evolution of Tenant Screening with Steve Carroll, Co-founder and CEO of Findigs

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 08:00:00 -0700

Steve Carroll, CEO and co-founder of Fine Diggs, discusses the issue of rental fraud and its impact on the rental application process. He highlights that 25% of all evictions are attributable to rental application fraud and explains how fraudsters use stolen or fraudulent information to lease properties and wait out the eviction process. Carroll emphasizes the need for comprehensive identity verification and a more holistic approach to underwriting that considers factors like income and behavior. He also discusses the importance of fairness in the rental process and how Fine Diggs is working to provide tools for property managers to make more informed and equitable leasing decisions. Findigs is a company that aims to streamline the leasing process by standardizing qualification and underwriting and using automation tools. They focus on removing bias and ensuring that the rules are applied consistently for everyone. The company recently raised a Series B round of funding, which is a significant achievement in the current startup funding environment. In terms of industry trends, Findigs believes that while technology plays a crucial role in real estate, face-to-face interactions and personal connections should not be eliminated. They also anticipate that regulations around tenant screening will continue to evolve, with a focus on fairness and consumer permission. Looking ahead, Findigs aims to grow their business and expand their services to make the rental process seamless and transparent for consumers.

More about Steve and Findigs
Findigs is the leading property technology company working to simplify rental screening and leasing decisions. Thanks to Findigs’ proprietary tech, it speeds up the rental decision process from an industry average of one week to an average of less than one day.

Steve Carrol is the CEO and co-founder of Findigs, aiming to simplify the rental screening process, and sits on the National Rental Home Council. He has deep experience in the proptech VC space as well as being the co-founder and COO of Seated prior to co-founding Findigs.

Prioritizing Data Security and Addressing Biases in AI Algorithms with Lindsay Liu, Co-founder and CEO of Super

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 08:00:00 -0700

Lindsay Liu, Co-founder and CEO of Super, discusses the challenges property managers face with busy work and inefficient communication. Property managers spend a significant amount of time on tasks like email and phone calls, which can be automated and streamlined. Super aims to centralize communications and automate tasks for property managers, allowing them to focus on more important work. The use of AI in property management can boost productivity and provide scalable assistance to property managers. However, it's important for companies to prioritize data security and privacy and be aware of potential biases in AI algorithms. Embracing technology and change will be crucial for property management companies to succeed in the future.

More about Lindsay and Super

Property managers are inundated with more and more text messages, emails, calls, and work orders. With Super, they get an AI assistant that centralizes all of these communications into one hub that then automates triage and tracking, saving 6+ hours of weekly manual and repetitive work.

Lindsay Liu has turned a passion for real estate from a side hustle into an industry she seeks to transform. For over a decade while working in tech, she managed multifamily rentals, vacation rentals, and flips—including three stints on HOA boards. Now, she’s one of the founders and CEO of Super, a company transforming the industry through AI-powered tools for property managers.

Demystifying Real Estate Auctions with Steven Jacobs, President at Ten-X

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 11:00:00 -0700

In this episode of Tech Nest, I explore commercial real estate auctions with Stephen Jacobs, President of Ten-X. Stephen shares his journey leading Ten-X (which is a really cool story, BTW) and debunks myths about auctions, explaining their strategic advantages beyond just distressed properties.

Learn how Ten-X leverages data and technology to streamline the auction process, ensuring faster and more certain sales. Stephen also discusses the evolving role of brokers and current market trends, providing valuable insights into the future of commercial real estate transactions. Hint: brokers are still very much relevant in today's transactions.

Listen in today!

More about Steven and Ten-X
Ten-X is the world’s largest, online commercial real estate auction platform. Our platform empowers brokers, sellers and buyers with data-driven technology and comprehensive marketing tools to expand market visibility and decrease time to close.

CoStar Group’s online property auction platform, Ten-X, is the leading example of the rapid growth of online property auction marketplaces. Each year more and more buyers, sellers, and brokers are using this proptech tool to exchange properties. Events like its Battle of the Bids, which feature thousands of players duking it out for $3.1 million in prizes over 6 rounds to correctly guess how much various properties will sell for on the Ten-X platform, are a way to highlight the innovative ways that CRE marketplaces are drawing attention to their ecosystems. Battle of the Bids is also an example of the notoriously staid industry having a little fun and using gamification tools to drive awareness of new trends.

A Fresh Approach to Fractional Homeownership with Frank Rohde, Founder and CEO of Ownify

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 07:19:22 -0700

Here's a fun one for y'all. Frank Rohde, Founder and CEO of Ownify, a company working to revolutionize homeownership through fractional ownership joins the show.

Frank shares insights into Ownify's innovative model that helps first-time homebuyers with good income and credit but limited savings gradually build equity in their homes. You'll hear about Frank's diverse background, including his roles at FICO and Nomis, and how these experiences helped shape Ownify. He explains the dual nature of Ownify's operations, balancing PropCo and OpCo dynamics to benefit both consumers and investors.

We get practical, outlining steps for using Ownify, the challenges and opportunities in the current real estate market, and Frank's predictions for the future of homeownership and proptech. Listen in!

More about Frank and Ownify
Ownify is rebuilding the path to homeownership to make it achievable for the next generation of homebuyers. Our fractional ownership platform partners savvy investors with qualified first-time homebuyers to buy their home "brick by brick" - zero debt & no surprises. With Ownify, homebuyers and investors together reap the collective benefits of building equity, creating stability, and investing in the health of local communities for years to come. For our "Ownis", Ownify offers a low down payment of 2%, a powerful cash offer to compete against corporate buyers, no unforeseen costs & surprises, and evergreen equity in their home. For our investors, Ownify offers fractional ownership in a single family home generating income and real estate returns, shared equity & shared purpose with the Owni, and positive community impact by helping first-time homebuyers.

Frank originally hails from Germany. Early attempts at becoming a child prodigy violinist were unsuccessful which forced his parents to abandon any hope or supervision. Left to his own, Frank quickly became famous for wrestling rattlesnakes and kayaking. His sister meanwhile became the child prodigy violinist. Looking for a brighter future, Frank moved to California where his first job was a choice between watering marijuana plants in the Northern California mountains or building a neural network-based prediction engine for horse racing results. Ever focused on doing the right thing, he built the neural network for horse racing. Several other lucky turns led him to stay in the US and eventually graduate from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Economics. Since then, he’s been a consultant at Oliver Wyman, started an online insurance company, spent 4 years at FICO, and grew Nomis from <$2M to $25M+ in ARR before selling it. His most recent challenge is building Ownify - a new path to ownership for the ~2M first-time homebuyers each year.

Innovative Solutions for Risk Assessment and Loss Control in Insurance with Valkyrie Holmes, Founder and CEO of Faura

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 05:39:37 -0700

In this episode we dig into the side of real estate that seems to be the big, sleeping topic: insurance.

Valkyrie Holmes, Founder and CEO of Faura, discusses the impact of natural disasters on insurance, the challenges faced by insurance companies, and the innovative solutions offered by Faura. The conversation covers risk assessment, loss control solutions, the impact of climate change, and the future of insurance tech.

More about Valkyrie and Faura
Faura provides loss control solutions for insurance companies with high-risk books of business. We specialize in risk assessments in disaster zones on everything from wildfires to hurricanes and are available all over the country.

Valkyrie is the CEO and Co-founder of Faura, an insurtech startup that creates loss control solutions for insurance companies with high-risk books of business. She began her work as a data analyst and engineering intern at SpaceX before being awarded the 776 Fellowship to work in sustainability. Since then, she's launched both wildfire and wind assessments to add climate resilience data to the insurance market and is now operational across the country.

Assumable Loan Opportunities in Residential Real Estate with Raunaq Singh, CEO and Founder of Roam

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 09:27:22 -0700

We've got a solid interview for y'all this week. Raunaq Singh, Founder and CEO of Roam, comes on the show to discuss their platform for purchasing homes using assumable low-rate mortgages.

Raunaq digs into the history of assumable mortgages, the potential size of the market, and the challenges and opportunities for buyers and sellers. Raunaq also explains how Roam is working with agents, and is addressing misconceptions about assumable mortgages. We discuss the potential impact on real estate transactions as a whole nationwide—but also how much education is necessary to drive that impact. We also get into the benefits for both buyers and sellers, the underwriting process, and the future trends in the real estate market.

Listen in!

More about Ranuq and Roam
Roam is a platform that enables homebuyers to purchase a home with an assumable low-rate mortgage included and save up to 50% on monthly payments compared to buying the same house with a traditional mortgage. To date, Roam has helped buyers save $12k per year and $350k over the life of their loan compared to taking out a new mortgage. To date, over 500k buyers have used Roam to find their next home with a low-rate assumable mortgage.

Raunaq Singh is the founder and CEO of Roam, the platform for purchasing a home with an assumable, low-rate mortgage included. Prior to founding Roam, Raunaq spent a decade in various product and operations roles across Uber, Opendoor, and Culdesac. He received a Bachelor's degree in Political Economy from NYU and currently resides in New York City.

Uncovering Hidden Inventory in Real Estate with Amanda Orson, Founder and CEO of Galleon

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:05:00 -0700

Have we all been ignoring opportunities to uncover inventory? Amanda Orson, Founder and CEO of Galleon, reveals the hidden potential in the real estate marketplace by exposing inventory not visible on the MLS. She shares insights on industry challenges and opportunities, and how technological advances are revolutionizing real estate transactions.

Amanda discusses why the traditional 3% buyer's agent fee may soon be obsolete and the need for a pragmatic industry outlook. That's not to say buyer's agents can't or won't be paid in the future—just that it's time to re-evaluate how we're doing things. She addresses the detrimental trend of denying the need for change and emphasizes preparing for a dynamic future.

Listen in to learn about Galleon's goal to become the largest network of off-market, non-MLS inventory in the U.S.

More about Amanda and Galleon
Galleon is reshaping real estate by providing a commission-free, by-owner marketplace where anyone can list their home in minutes and transact on their own terms.

Amanda Orson is the Founder and CEO of Galleon, the direct consumer-led real estate marketplace. As a serial entrepreneur and tech executive, prior to Galleon, she was the CEO of Curve US, leading the British fintech's expansion in the United States.

Churn Prevention in Property Management with Lior Abramovich, Co-founder and CEO of Blanket

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 11:26:33 -0700

I'm super excited for this episode's guest, Lior Abramovich, co-founder and CEO of Blanket. Blanket is a property retention platform, designed to help property managers reduce churn and better inform owners.

Discover how Blanket launched to immediate acclaim and rapidly assembled a team driven by a shared mission. Lior outlines the dual aspects of their service: an owner investment dashboard that offers real-time metrics, educational tools, and AI-driven insights, alongside a marketplace exclusive to property managers. This marketplace not only facilitates property sales, enabling managers to maintain management and earn commissions but also acts as a potent tool for client retention and lead generation.

Amidst a shifting financial landscape and evolving industry regulations, Blanket's approach redefines property management as investment management, positioning property managers as essential, trusted advisors in the real estate sector.

More about Lior and Blanket
Blanket is a Property Retention Platform that helps property managers keep their owners happy and their doors under management so their businesses can thrive.

Lior Abramovich is the Co-Founder & CEO of Blanket, bringing a decade of experience in the single-family rental market with over $150 million worth of acquisitions for over 1,000 individual investors.
Lior served for 8 years as Naval Commander in the Israeli Navy and has co-founded a non-profit organization that renovates homes of senior citizens in need, and a foundation that has set on a mission to ensure every child in the world has access to clean drinking water.

The Future of Venture Capital in Proptech with Nima Wedlake, Managing Director at Thomvest Ventures

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 06:08:00 -0700

He's back! Nima Wedlake, Managing Director at ThomVest Ventures, about the current state of Proptech and the themes he is tracking for 2024. We focused on an essay Nima penned, covering several topics including control point software, AI's impact on construction productivity, and the rise of home services businesses.

Nima discusses the challenges and opportunities in scaling tech-enabled service businesses and the potential of AI in the construction industry. The conversation also touches on the impact of COVID-19 on real estate tech investments and the future of venture capital in the space. We also explore the role of real estate agents in a changing market and the impact of technology on the industry (spoiler: uncertainty exists, but so will the agent).

More about Nima and Thomvest Ventures
Nima has published his 2024 proptech themes and would love to discuss them with you. Here is the link to the full report: https://blog.thomvest.com/real-estate-technology-themes-were-tracking-in-2024-124a5280c3dd

Below is a very quick overview of the three key themes that will play a dominant role in 2024 for Nima.

“Control point” software businesses in real estate: These crucial systems are core to how businesses operate and are difficult to displace. Three strategies for new entrants to compete in this space include targeting new customer segments, building value around existing control points, and selling complete tasks or processes instead of just software tools.
AI’s impact on construction productivity: There is growing excitement around startups focused on using AI in various aspects of construction, from pre-development analysis and permitting automation to design cycle shortening and physical robot automation on construction sites.
Residential real estate in a post-NAR world: Following the NAR settlement on residential real estate, lower commissions may lead to agents seeking efficiency measures and could pose challenges for existing real estate companies, while also creating opportunities for innovation and competition in the industry.

Nima Wedlake is a Managing Director at Thomvest Ventures, focusing on investment opportunities across the real estate & financial technology verticals. He spearheaded Thomvest’s investments in Baselane, Blend, Glide (acquired by Compass), Keyway, Maxwell, Mynd, Obie, Pine & Tala.

Thomvest Ventures is a San Francisco-based $750M evergreen venture capital fund by Peter Thomson (Thomson Reuters).

Modern Deal Coordination for Agents with Vijay Gopalswamy, Founder and CEO of Trackxi

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 18:22:49 -0700

This episode is focused on tech providing the means to execute the basics, at a high level, for real estate agents, teams, and brokerages. Vijay Gopalswamy, founder and CEO of Traxy, a deal-tracking tool for real estate professionals, shares his story of why he started Trackxi due to a void in the market for a great transaction coordinating platform. Vijay got into real estate as an agent, so he's very familiar with the pain of transaction coordination and that led him to create a solution.

Vijay discusses the challenges agents face and how Trackxi aims to simplify transaction management. We also go into some of the trends impacting brokers, as well as touch on AI usage in real estate. Tune in to learn how Trackxi is working to change how agents handle deals and enhance their services.

More about Vijay and Trackxi
Trackxi is Real Estate's # 1 Deal Tracker, designed for Agents, Teams & Transaction coordinators. Transparency for everyone else. Demonstrate your value to your buyers & sellers, automatically.

Essential tool for agents. Designed by a practicing agent team. Simple and elegant user interface packed with powerful features that can truly help your business.

Greener, Smarter Buildings with Jean-Simon Venne, CTO and Co-founder at BrainBox AI

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:00:29 -0700

More about BrainBox AI and Jean-Simon
Founded in 2017, BrainBox AI was created to address two critical issues currently facing the built environment: carbon emissions and energy consumption. As innovators in the decarbonization movement, BrainBox AI’s game-changing HVAC technology leverages AI to make buildings smarter, greener, and more efficient. Through strategic global relationships, BrainBox AI elevates real estate clients across various sectors from office buildings and hotels to commercial retail, grocery stores, airports, and more.

BrainBox AI’s tech results in up to 25% reduction in total energy costs, up to 40% decrease in carbon footprint, and up to 60% improvement in occupant comfort, and extends HVAC equipment life by up to 50%. The tech provides intuitive data visualization of automated emissions data collection, tracking, and reporting via dashboard or downloadable documentation.

In 2020, BrainBox AI was recognized by TIME as one of the Top 100 best inventions and by CB Insights as one of the Top 100 AI start-ups redefining industries in 2021. The company is also a member of the MaRS Discovery District, the largest urban innovation hub in North America. BrainBox AI was selected as the winner for the Tech For Our Planet Challenge from a cohort of ten finalist start-ups at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2022.

Jean-Simon Venne is a co-founder and CTO of BrainBox AI. BrainBox AI’s technology leverages artificial intelligence to improve building operational efficiency while reducing energy consumption and costs. Combining machine learning, cloud-based computing, and self-directed decision-making, BrainBox AI enables the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system in a commercial building to operate autonomously and in real-time, generating up to a 25% reduction in total energy costs, 20-40% reduction in carbon footprint and 60% increase in occupant comfort.

As a technology expert specializing in the fast and efficient migration of technological innovations to commercial applications, Jean-Simon has over 25 years of experience developing and implementing new technology to solve long-standing commercial issues in the fields of telecommunications, biotechnology, and energy efficiency.

Busting Real Estate Data Myths with Mike Simonsen, President of Altos Research

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 07:21:40 -0700

Mike Simonsen, President of Altos Research, joins Tech Nest today to discuss real estate data and some of the myths around mortgage rate lock-ins.

Altos Research offers local and national real estate data to financial institutions, real estate pros, and investors. Simonsen reveals that the lock-in effect started in 2014, not 2022, due to falling mortgage rates making homeowners hesitant to sell. He highlights the importance of viewing data from various angles and explains how Altos Research tracks the active market, focusing on pricing, inventory, and trends.

Altos Research just recently announced a new product feature, adding pending data to show properties under contract, giving a quick, accurate market snapshot.

Mike also shares insights as to how the future of real estate data will see more sources and better analysis, though affordability issues will likely remain (sadly). Despite affordability challenges, purchasing a home is expected to get simpler as advances in tech could lead to faster underwriting and quicker closings, streamlining the home buying process.

More about Mike and Altos Research
Altos Research tracks the US real estate market in real-time. For over 15 years the company has provided national and local real estate data to financial institutions, investors, and tens of thousands of real estate professionals across the country.

Altos Research was acquired by HW Media in December 2022.

Mike Simonsen is the founder and president of real estate analytics firm Altos Research, which has provided national and local real estate data to financial institutions, real estate professionals, and investors across the country for more than 15 years. An expert trendspotter, Mike uses Altos data to identify market shifts months before they hit the headlines and his work has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Fortune, Bloomberg, and other publications.

Building an International Home Search Portal with Chet Kittleson, Co-founder and CEO of Far Homes

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 07:15:04 -0700

Chet Kittleson, Co-founder and CEO of Far Homes, shares how the company is simplifying international home buying. Born from the pandemic's remote work trend, Far Homes helps people buy and sell homes abroad, starting with Mexico. They offer a thorough real estate search platform, connect buyers with local agents, and focus on high-demand markets like Cancun and the Riviera Maya.

Far Homes aims to be the go-to for global cross-border purchase financing, with tools like the Financing Finder making the process easier. One thing Chet points out is that despite all the possibilities with technology, agents remain a vital part of the equation when it comes to buying real estate both abroad and domestically.

More about Chet and Far Homes
Far Homes is a real estate company that is making it easier to find and buy homes in international destinations in a world where more and more people can live and work anywhere. Founded by real estate industry veterans in 2022, the company is working to simplify the international home-buying and selling experience through a technology-powered marketplace. Far Homes has built a database of pre and new-construction, and existing homes for sale making it easy to find the home you want. The company has a bilingual customer service team who respond quickly, and a network of local, multi-lingual partner agents with experience helping buyers from outside the country navigate the home buying and selling process.

Far Homes has raised more than $2 million from PSL Ventures, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, and DoorDash co-founder Evan Moore, among others.

Chet is the CEO of Far Homes, a US-based real estate start-up focused on simplifying the international home-buying experience. Chet started Far Homes in 2022 when the rise of remote work gave more people than ever the opportunity to live and work anywhere in the world, dramatically increasing the need for support in finding and buying a home in another country.

Prior to starting Far Homes, Chet spent 6 years at Redfin where he first led New Ventures, building off his strong background in partnerships to create millions of dollars in high-margin revenue before becoming the GM of Marketplaces.

Brokerage-As-A-Service for Residential Real Estate Agents with Stephen Capezza, President at Side

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 07:29:55 -0700

This week's engaging interview is with Stephen "Capz" Capezza, President of Side. Stephen shares his journey in real estate and provides a deep dive into Side's unique brokerage-as-a-service model. Side is a true pioneer in the real estate brokerage space as the only brokerage-as-a-service platform. The success of this platform can be seen based on the industry recognition many of their agents have achieved, including lists from Real Trends.

Stephen shares his experience and what he's witnessed throughout his decade-plus tenure, leading real estate technology teams, the trends that have come and gone, and what's needed now for brokers to be successful. Tune in for an enlightening conversation about the future of real estate for agents and brokerages.

More about Stephen and Side
Side is the pioneer and the industry’s only real estate brokerage-as-a-service platform that empowers the very best agents, teams and indie brokers to create and grow their own companies — without the time, cost or risk of operating a brokerage. Unlike consumer-facing brokerage brands, Side works behind the scenes to provide our partners with time-saving technology and premier support services. This way, they’re free to focus on what matters most: serving their clients and communities.

Agents partner with Side to help them create a company and act as that company’s brokerage of record and back-office support. The companies that make up Side’s network are locally owned and operated boutiques that are empowered with the full resources of a national brokerage.

Stephen 'Capz' Capezza is President of Side. He has significant industry experience, and a deep understanding of the specific needs of the top-producing agents and teams Side partners with.

Capz has decades of experience managing high-impact sales and customer success teams. Before Side, Capz was at Zillow Group, where he served as senior vice president of business operations. In this role, he oversaw Zillow Premier Agent, which connects consumers searching for homes on Zillow with real estate professionals. Zillow Premier Agent serves over 150,000 agents nationally and generates over $1.2B in revenue. Capezza joined Zillow in 2015 following the company’s acquisition of Trulia, where he spent two years leading Trulia’s San Francisco sales and operations teams.

Next-Gen Property Management Solutions for Multifamily with Ned Murphy, General Manager at Level M

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 07:35:33 -0700

In this conversation, I talk with Ned Murphy, the General Manager at Level M, about the state of the multifamily industry and the role of smart buildings.

We discuss the impact of new construction on the market, the competitive dynamics and concessions in the industry, and the challenges of hardware and software integration. Ned shares more about Level M as a next-generation platform, aimed at helping existing properties adopt smart technology.

One blocker to adopting smart building technology has been around measuring the ROI of both software and hardware. Ned digs into some of the misconceptions here and highlights the importance of tailoring value propositions differently, to different stakeholders, in order to achieve adoption.

Smart building technology is evolving fast, and its becoming more clear the benefits extend beyond resident experience or management convenience. Listen in to hear more about the evolution of multifamily smart buildings.

More about Ned and Level M
Level M is the next-generation smart apartment and property automation platform for multifamily. With revolutionary hardware and premium user experiences, Level M uniquely delivers smart access control, property automation, and building intelligence solutions that are cost-effective, dependable, and future-proof.

Ned was the Co-founder of Dwelo helping guide the company for six yers before being acquired by Level Home Inc. He leads the companies multifamily business.

Flexible Rent and Renter-Centric Solutions in Multifamily with David Sullivan, Managing Director at Best Egg

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 30 May 2024 10:18:21 -0700

In this episode of Tech Nest, we have a returning guest, David Sullivan, on the show. David was previously CEO of a company called Till, which was acquired by Best Egg. David's been working to bring flexible rent solutions to the renters market, and through the acquisition by Best Egg, is now better positioned to do so.

We get into the challenges of disrupting the property management industry and the complexity of embedding point solutions, such as flex rent, in multifamily. The effects of the pandemic on the rental market and the shift towards renter-centric solutions has changed some things for all parties involved, some of those changes for the better.

This discussion isn't just about flex rent options, however. We get into a handful of topics such as the importance of building trust and durability in the industry as a point solution provider, the benefits of SOC 2 compliance, and some of the trends moving the proptech industry forward when we talk about property management and tenant-centric solutions. There's a little bit for everyone in this one. Listen in to what David's got to say.

More about David and Best Egg
Best Egg Flexible Rent gives renters control of when they pay their rent by splitting rent into 2, 3, or 4 payments during the month while ensuring rent is paid in full and on time to the property.

David is the Managing Director of Best Egg Flexible Rent. Prior, David was the COO of the American Home, a rental housing REIT, and has spent time investing in Fintech startups at Route 66 Ventures.

Building Real Estate Brands with Brian Boero, Co-founder at 1000WATT

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 28 May 2024 08:36:33 -0700

This is the type of conversation I should have had on the show a long time ago. Industry veteran, brand-builder, and all-around great guy, Brian Boero joins the show today. Brian is Co-founder at the branding and strategy agency, 1000WATT. They focus exclusively on working with brands in the real estate vertical including brokerages, lenders, and technology companies.

One of the first topics I was eager to get Brian to dig into was on the importance of brand and storytelling within the real estate industry. You'll hear insights shared aimed at the broker / agent, but also applicable advice for proptech companies. One theme Brian points out is the tendency of companies to talk about features instead of benefits and why that's detrimental to do so.

Of course, we couldn't avoid the evolving topic of real estate commissions. The topic affects more than just agents, but any business that is built around transaction volume and that could be impacted by new rules coming to the industry. Don't delay, download and listen.

More about Brian and 1000WATT
1000WATT is real estate's branding and strategy agency. Founded in , our clients range from brokerage, proptech, mortgage, title, home builders and everything in between.

Brian has been in real estate media, marketing and technology since 1997. Before Co-Founding 1000WATT, Brian served as President of Inman, real estate’s leading trade media company, and as CEO of VREO, where he created e-signature and document management software for tablet PCs. Brian has led dozens of companies through complex brand and marketing challenges and leads the 1000WATT team daily.

It's not too late to snag your ticket to 1000WATT's Brand and Marketing Summit. More info here: https://1000watt.net/events/summit/

Utilizing Local Data Intelligence with Vincent-Charles Hodder, Co-founder and CEO at Local Logic

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 21 May 2024 09:20:48 -0700

This week's interview features Vincent Hodder, Co-founder and CEO of Local Logic. Local Logic is a location intelligence platform that focuses on digitizing the built world and providing predictive analytics for addresses in the US and Canada. They have a massive data set of 100 billion unique data points, which allows them to understand and quantify cities at a hyperlocal level.

You'll hear us discuss the need for data-driven insights to help consumers, agents, and investors (all in their own, unique ways) make better decisions in real estate. Local Logic provides innovative data solutions for the real estate industry, helping consumers and agents make informed decisions based on location-specific insights.

Real estate is a hyper-local game. Dig in on how better access to data and enhanced tools can make a difference for consumers, agents, and investors.

More about Vincent-Charles and Local Logic
Local Logic is a location intelligence platform that digitizes the built world for consumers, investors, developers, and governments – delivering unrivaled clarity and actionable insights capable of creating more sustainable, equitable cities. With more than 100 billion unique data points – the largest unique location data set in the U.S. and Canada – the platform creates a digital twin of cities, quantifying the built world and offering predictive, precise analytics to inform the present and future of over 250 million individual addresses.

Vincent-Charles started his journey as a young boy, aspiring to be a real estate developer. While in school, he recognized a significant issue in the industry, particularly in urban planning. The lack of actionable data on how the built environment impacts the supply and demand of real estate led to investments being based solely on a “gut check.” Seeing the ramifications this had on community developments, he seized this opportunity and co-founded Local Logic with his fellow classmate, Gabriel Damant Sirois. Local Logic is now empowering customers to achieve their real estate goals by providing them with high-quality, unique, and actionable insights to understand how the built world impacts the risk and return of their real estate decisions of all scales and at all levels of sophistication.

Amplifying Amenities for Multifamily Operators with Everett Lynn, Founder and CEO of Amenify

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 14 May 2024 09:09:59 -0700

This week's guest is Everett Lynn, Founder and CEO of Amenify, a plug and play platform for amenity services in the multifamily space. We discuss Amenify's recent growth trajectory (hint: they've been on fire!).

Everett shares his insights on different types of fundraising and the challenges of disruption in the real estate industry—a topic that is frequently discussed, but Everett offers some unique takes for founders. You'll hear Everett emphasize the importance of finding a balance between value and efficiency in proptech solutions and the need for understanding the ecosystem in which these solutions operate. We also get into various aspects of proptech and the challenges faced by companies in the industry such as the difficulties of scaling in-person services, and the efficiencies (and difficulties) of a three-sided marketplace.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode. Download and listen in!

More about Everett and Amenify
Amenify powers lifestyle services for 1.3+ million homes across 500+ cities, with tracked, trained, and compliant Service Pros. Amenify drives retention and ancillary income for multifamily operators while helping the local community with trust and efficiency gains. Their integrated Service Pros include teams for cleaning, handyman, restaurant delivery, grocery delivery, and more, each with real-time support. The company has raised $20 million to date to invest in technology for the three stakeholders of their technology platform, including: Multifamily Operators, Service Providers, and Residents.

Unlocking Storage Potential in All Properties with Joseph Woodbury, CEO and Founder of Neighbor.com

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 07 May 2024 06:05:00 -0700

It's my second time interviewing Joseph Woodbury, co-founder and CEO of Neighbor.com. In case you missed, Joseph previously joined Tyler Cauble and I for a live stream on Tyler's CRE YouTube channel. This time for Tech Nest, we switched up the topics.

We get into how his company is disrupting the self-storage industry by leveraging the peer-to-peer model. Neighbor allows individuals and businesses to monetize unused space by renting it out for storage. They have operations in all 50 states, providing storage solutions at a micro level that traditional storage facilities cannot justify.

The company has experienced challenges in acquiring residential customers but has evolved its user acquisition strategies over time. We also get into the demand and supply dynamics of the storage industry and the opportunity for property owners to achieve full property monetization through storage solutions.

One topic I personally get excited to discuss that Joseph touches on is the network effects and the challenges of expanding to new markets. There’s all that and more in this one. Tune in!

More about Joseph and Neighbor.com
Neighbor is revolutionizing proptech by unlocking the hidden value in existing properties. Our platform empowers individuals and businesses to convert underutilized spaces like garages, parking lots, and even vacant land into lucrative storage and parking solutions.

This not only increases income for property owners but also creates a more efficient and sustainable use of space in our communities. Neighbor is a prime example of how proptech is innovating the real estate landscape by optimizing existing infrastructure and resources.

Joseph Woodbury is the Co-Founder and CEO of Neighbor.com. He has successfully disrupted the $500 Billion self-storage industry by raising more than $65 million from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Airbnb, Uber, StockX, and DoorDash. Under his leadership, Neighbor has expanded to all 50 states, providing more storage options than any other company in the industry. Joseph brings his expertise in real estate to help property owners optimize their assets.

Streamlining Security Deposits for Property Managers and Owners with Conor Brennan, Co-founder at Rentable

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 05:45:00 -0700

I promise you, discussing security deposits isn't as boring as it may seem. This week, I'm joined by Conor Brennan, Co-founder of Rentable, a security deposit management platform for residential real estate. He shares about the pain points of security deposits, including the legal challenges and outdated processes. We dig into the importance of integrations and Rentable's focus on cash deposits.

Conor shares how Rentable offers flexible payment options for deposits and highlights the ideal customers for their platform. You'll hear Conor explain further more about the inefficiencies of traditional security deposit processes and the time and cost savings that can be achieved through improved technology. He highlights the importance of educating property managers on these benefits and addressing pain points such as returned checks and new legislation. We also get into Rentable's go-to-market strategy of targeting the mid-market for adoption and the key value props of using Rentable.

More about Conor and Rentable
Rentable is the leading security deposit management company in America. Rentable is utilized by hundreds of property managers across the country to streamline and modernize the process of handling security deposits. In addition, Rentable provides renters with flexible payment options that allow them to spread their deposit out over time.

Conor Co-founded Rentable alongside Alex Kamisher. The two worked together at Boston based fintech company, Toast. After experiencing the difficult and archaic process of paying and receiving their security deposits in their Boston apartments, the two realized that a solution was needed to address this issue.

Advanced Maintenance Data in Property Management with Ray Hespen, Co-founder and CEO of Property Meld

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 05:00:00 -0700

This week, I'm fortunate to be joined by fellow South Dakotan, Ray Hespen. Ray is CEO and co-founder of Property Meld, a maintenance automation software company. based in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Let's start with some performance metrics from Property Meld's 2023:

$723,997,461 in repairs completed
8,467,099 maintenance phone calls eliminated
378,082 maintenance issues prevented
4.40 average resident satisfaction across all customers
4,786,554 maintenance tasks automated

During our conversation, we discuss some of these metrics and how great communication can play such a critical role in maintenance automation. Ray breaks down the challenges of maintenance coordination and why property management needs to improve despite these challenges. Ray and the team at Property Meld take a holistic approach to tackling challenges in property maintenance, gathering data, and providing automations. You'll hear about that and more.

Lastly, you'll hear me plugging Property Meld's conference, Maintenance Summit in here as well. If you're in property management, either in the field or tech side, then a trip to South Dakota this year in September has got to get on your schedule.

More about Ray and Property Meld
Property Meld is a web-based property maintenance software dedicated to simplifying maintenance coordination. We provide unmatched visibility into crucial maintenance metrics, empowering property management companies to make data-driven decisions. Our robust solution connects property managers, residents, vendors, and property owners in one location. Automated workflows, AI-fueled thoughtful responses, centralized scheduling, and best-in-class communication drive positive, predictable, and profitable maintenance.

Ray Hespen is the CEO and co-founder of Property Meld, a maintenance automation software company. Ray and his co-founder, David Kingman, started Property Meld in 2014 to bring intelligent maintenance to the property management world.

Come to South Dakota for the annual Maintenance Summit, hosted by Property Meld - https://pmusersummit.com

AI-Powered Real Estate Data with Zach Gorman, Co-founder and COO at RealReports

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 07:35:49 -0700

In this episode, I interview Zach Gorman, co-founder and COO of RealReports, an AI-powered real estate data platform that consolidates multiple data sources and provides agents with comprehensive reports. The platform offers agents the ability to generate new business, win deals, and conduct research and diligence more efficiently.

We discuss the challenges of fragmented and inaccessible data in the residential real estate industry. He shares his non-traditional path to real estate and the inspiration behind RealReports. We explore the value of technology in solving problems and creating efficiencies. We also get into more about the branding and marketing of RealReports, including RealReports' rebrand.

Of course we couldn't finish the discussion without getting into broader trends of AI in real estate.

More about RealReports
Real estate data is fragmented, expensive, and time-consuming to access. This costs companies billions of dollars and makes rapid innovation in the industry nearly impossible. We are building an infinitely flexible data marketplace to serve as the infrastructural backbone for the entire real estate ecosystem.

Our flagship product is called a RealReport — an AI-powered "Carfax for homes," powered by data from 30+ best-in-class providers and Aiden, an AI copilot, which can answer any property question instantly. RealReports provide comprehensive property information for every home in the United States and empower real estate professionals to win more deals, generate leads, and build trust with their clients.

Episode 200 Reflection, Reflection, and Updates with Host Nate Smoyer

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 08:17:29 -0700

For episode 200 of Tech Nest, I wanted to share some thoughts on the journey of the podcast, as well as some general life and work updates. Of course I owe so much to so many in the industry—so I spend some time discussing past guests and what this show means to me.

You'll hear a brief bit of the success stories of startups featured on the show and highlights the challenges faced by proptech companies.

Lastly, I leave you with some helpful info on upcoming events across the country you'll want to get on your radar. Below are links to many of those events for you to consider attending.

I mentioned in this show Geek Estate. For those not yet a member, please reconsider. Learn more at: https://www.geekestate.com

Event Links:

My Links:

Bringing Trust to Real Estate Transactions with Pat Kinsel, Founder and CEO of Proof

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 06:28:00 -0700

Pat Kinsel is back for his second appearance on Tech Nest. Pat is the Founder and CEO of Proof, an intelligent platform that combines auditable verification with cryptographic evidence to securely execute legally binding agreements. We waste no time getting into why Proof rebranded from being known as Notarize and how the new brand more accurately reflects the full vision of the company.

Some of the big problems we discuss include the types of fraud in real estate transactions, including wire fraud, synthetic identity fraud, and deed fraud. Pat also explores the risks associated with AI in increasing fraud and the need for robust security measures. He explains how Proof verifies identity and documents and emphasizes the importance of bringing security frameworks into the consumer world. The conversation sheds light on the challenges and solutions in ensuring trust and security in digital transactions. In this conversation, Pat Kinsel discusses the government's fear of systemic algorithmic bias and the challenges of task automation.

The future of real estate transaction depends on trust of identity. Listen in to learn more about Proof and the problems their solving for.

More about Pat and Proof
Achieve trust in every transaction. With Proof, lock in certainty that your customer actually signed on the dotted line. Proof is an intelligent platform that combines auditable verification with cryptographic evidence to securely execute legally binding agreements.

Pat is Founder and CEO of Proof. After creating Notarize, the world’s leading notarization platform, Pat raised the standard of trust again with the launch of Proof. Before Proof, Pat was a Venture Partner at Polaris Partners, the first investor into Drizly, and sold his prior startup, Spindle, to Twitter.

Next-Gen AI in Apartment Leasing with Matt Service, COO of Apartment List

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 07:25:45 -0700

Today's guest is Matt Service, COO of Apartment List. In this episode, Matt discusses the unique user experience and value proposition of Apartment List's matchmaking rental marketplace and announces the company's latest innovation: Lea Pro. As they describe it, Lea Pro is "a groundbreaking AI-powered leasing assistant designed to work hand-in-hand with property management companies and leasing agents." This is an iteration of their already available automated leasing assistant, Lea. Lea has already proven valuable to agents and has been recognized for being a leading technology solution in leasing.

We also get into the apartment leasing business. Matt highlights the importance of surfacing trade-offs in apartment hunting and leveraging technology to enhance the rental process. He shares insights into the current trends in the rental industry and the challenges faced by brokers and agents. Of course, we also briefly cover the anticipated wave of new apartment inventory on the horizon and how that may impact leasing trends in the near future.

More about Apartment List
Apartment List, the leading rental matchmaking marketplace, today announced the launch of Lea Pro, a groundbreaking AI-powered leasing assistant designed to work hand-in-hand with property management companies and leasing agents. Building on the success of its predecessor, Lea, which earned the 2024 AI Excellence Award from the Business Intelligence Group, Lea Pro is a game-changer in the world of AI leasing assistants. Powered by cutting-edge generative AI, Lea Pro is designed to work alongside leasing teams, proactively engaging with renters across multiple channels in a way that feels intuitive, natural, and remarkably human.

Read the full announcement about the launch of Lea Pro - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/introducing-lea-pro-by-apartment-list-ai-powered-leasing-assistance-enhances-renter-experience-302099676.html

VC Investment into Defensible Proptech Companies with Gavin Myers, Partner at Prudence VC

Nate Smoyer — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 07:13:49 -0800

This week's featured guest is Gavin Myers, Managing Partner at Prudence, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in technology companies in the real estate sector. We dig into Gavin's background and transition to proptech, as well as Prudence's investment strategy of backing differentiated and defensible companies. Gavin shares the importance of understanding the sector and the people involved, as well as the challenges of finding talent in proptech—a topic I'm passionate about (collectively, we as an industry need to do more to attract high-caliber talent).

Gavin also provides insights into Prudence's new fund and their focus on AI and construction tech. This is Prudence's third fund at $80 million, bringing their total AUM to $230 million. News of the fund is linked down below.

More about Gavin and Prudence
Prudence is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in technology companies leading the global transformation of the real estate sector. Prudence is an early investor in companies such as Casafari, Compass (COMP), CREXi, Evernest, Hemlane, Maxwell, Propify, Salus, Sundae, and VendorPM. Gavin and his team are investing across Proptech 2.0 – software innovation driving data capabilities to power autonomous business processes in real estate.

Gavin Myers is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Prudence. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at AI Clearing, Casafari, Morty, VendorPM and CREXi (observer). Before co-founding Prudence in 2009, Gavin worked at Sun Capital Partners, focused on middle market private equity, as well as Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. He received a BA in Political Science from Yale University and an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School.

News: Prudence Closes Its $80mm Fund III To Invest In Technology Companies Transforming The Built World

Mid-Term Workforce Housing with Yeves Perez, Co-founder and CEO of Workbnb

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 07:25:22 -0800

Yves Perez, CEO of WorkBnB, discusses the significance of workforce housing and the challenges faced by workers in the construction industry. He highlights the importance of mental health and the need for comfortable accommodations for workers who have to travel for their jobs. Perez explains the practical differences of workforce housing compared to traditional options like Airbnb and hotels and shares how companies can work with WorkBnB and the about the potential impact of tech advances on the real estate industry, with a shift in the approach to corporate housing.

Perez even gets into the power of branding and word of mouth in building a successful marketplace, noting Workbnb's exciting partnership with the NFL. Finally, Perez gives his predictions for the future of WorkBnB and the workforce housing category.

Of course, what's a real estate discussion without touching on the need for more affordable housing solutions—so we got into that as well.

More about Yeves and Workbnb
Workbnb is a Techstars Venture backed, B2B SAAS travel platform on a mission to accelerate the proliferation of workforce rental homes and improve the lives of millions traveling for work.

Yeves Perez is a highly innovative and visionary CEO who has taken the lead in revolutionizing the future of workforce travel and prop tech. With a strong background in marketing, advertising, and brand architecture, he co-founded Workbnb with a mission to transform the rental homes industry for the better and enable millions of people traveling for work to enjoy a better quality of life. Under his dynamic leadership, Workbnb has been featured in top publications including SKIFT, Black Enterprise, and the Harvard Business Review, and is now providing temporary housing for Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, Nevada as a proud supplier to the NFL. Perez also has the distinction of being a graduate of the inaugural cohort for Build in Tulsa Techstars Accelerator, the Tulsa 12.

Modern Mobile Access for Multifamily with Brandon Peterson, CEO at Geokey

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 07:30:00 -0800

Brandon Peterson, the founder and CEO of GeoKey, discusses the benefits of mobile access control and property management solutions. He shares his background as a serial entrepreneur and the inspiration behind starting GeoKey. Brandon explains the importance of partnerships and integrations in the proptech industry and how GeoKey is leveraging AI to streamline operations and enhance the customer experience. He also discusses market trends, and the future of building access and security.

About Brandon and Geokey
Geokey is a mobile access solution for property owners and tenants to control the security of their assets without requiring Wi-Fi or readers. In a single app, Geokey controls interior and exterior doors, elevators, gates, amenity access, thermostats, water detection, and guest passes. With detailed data and analytics, it’s easy to see live tracking and it’s simple to add new users or change their level of access.

Brandon is a third generation entrepreneur with a passion for innovation and solving problems. After gaining experience in starting a coworking space, real estate project, nonprofit, ecommerce, and managing gyms - the idea for Geokey was born. He bootstrapped their beginning, got a patent for using location services to authenticate access and now they’ve found their niche in multi-family and college campuses.

Real Estate Data as a Media Company with Clayton Collins, Founder and CEO of HW Media

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 05:12:23 -0800

In this episode we have Clayton Collins, the Founder and CEO of HW Media. Clayton discusses the growth and vision of HW Media, the challenges of building a media powerhouse, predictions for the real estate market in 2024, and their upcoming annual event, The Gathering. Clayton shares insights on interest rates, inventory, and consumer psychology in the housing industry. He also highlights the importance of research and data in providing a full picture for housing professionals. The conversation concludes with a discussion on HW Media's plans for the future.

More about Clayton and HW Media
HW Media provides mortgage, real estate and fintech professionals the news, knowledge and community they need to support decision making and business growth. Aligned with our mission to Move Markets Forward, we publish daily news and content through each of our core publishing brands including HousingWire, RealTrends, and Reverse Mortgage Daily. HW Media is based in Dallas, TX with team members across the country.
Clayton Collins is the founder and CEO of HW Media. He leads HW Media’s corporate strategy and content roadmap, while building a world-class team of business media professionals. He is also managing partner of Riomar Capital, an entrepreneurial investment firm that acquired HousingWire in 2016. Prior to founding Riomar Capital, Collins worked at RBC Capital Markets in the mergers and acquisitions group and served as vice president of national sales and marketing at Citibank.

And for those considering attending The Gathering, HousingWire is giving Tech Nest listeners 50% off the cost of VIP tickets. Just use this link when you register to get your VIP ticket at a lower cost than the standard admission.

Advances in Tenant Screening Processes with Tim Ray, Founder and CEO at VeriFast

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 06:20:00 -0800

Tim Ray, CEO of VeriFast, discusses the importance of identity verification in the real estate industry and the challenges of tenant fraud. He explains how VeriFast's single-source verification platform helps verify individuals' identities and financial details, providing a more secure and flexible screening process for renters—especially for those with a non-traditional income. Tim also highlights the company's integrations with property management systems and the need for trust and transparency in data sharing. He predicts that credit checks will become less relevant in rental applications and that document processing using PDFs will fade away as technology advances.

More about Tim and VeriFast
VeriFast is the only single-source verification platform for identity and financial data that enables applicants to verify their data via a digital connection or document upload with OCR and fraud detection. VeriFast provides a simple, configurable API and turnkey UI that delivers that best ROI for companies that need to validate identity, banking, payroll and/or tax data.

VeriFast claims to be a super aggregator of the best verification technology vendors into one universal platform that configures and enriches data to deliver superior decisioning with a best-in-class user experience and trusted by everyday consumers to share their data digitally.

There are a multitude of verticals from real estate to banking, insurance, government, and beyond that still rely on slow, analogue processes to share and verify identity and financial data.

VeriFast provides the most trusted verification platform in the world with the highest converting opt-in rate in the industry. Getting consumers to share their data is tough, it’s our superpower.

VeriFast has a four-star rating on TrustPilot, and we’re the only company brave enough to invite every applicant to rate their experience publicly.

Tim Ray is a 4X Founder and Angel investor with a passion for building and scaling innovative businesses from ideation, and a track record of successful exits.

Tim is passionate about the importance of creative "out-the-box" thinking, analytical decision-making and developing great relationships to solve complex problems and find winning outcomes.

Currently Tim is Co-Founder & CEO of VeriFast, the first single-source verification platform that helps companies verify an individual's identity and financial details using consumer-permissioned data; reducing billions of dollars lost to inefficient underwriting and fraud annually.

Tim plays dad to an amazing family with 3 kids and an incredible wife, and is passionate about travelling and being active with friends: skiing, golfing, cycling and more recently kite surfing.

The Future of Inner City Transportation with Catrine Machi, Co-founder of Swyft Cities

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 16:52:17 -0800

Catrine Machi, co-founder of Swyft Cities, discusses the company's vision to transform urban real estate by improving mobility. Swyft Cities is developing an aerial transportation system that uses pods traveling along a cableway. The system offers a network of stations that provide efficient and direct routes for users. Machi emphasizes the importance of solving specific problems for cities and the need for a layered approach to transportation options. She also discusses the challenges of policy-making, procurement, and the readiness level of emerging technologies. Machi believes that the future of real estate will involve more options for transportation and a reduction in parking infrastructure.

More about Catrine and Swyft Cities
Swyft CIties uses autonomous smart gondola systems to create modular, highly flexible sustainable transportation to transform urban real estate for cities and private real estate developments.

Catrine Machi is co-founder of Swyft Cities, which transforms urban real estate by transforming mobility. Catrine has dual Master’s Degrees in Urban Planning & Geography, and has been an urban planner, and mobility and transportation planner, consultant, and program manager working to develop more sustainable urban mobility.

‍

Decarbonization in Commercial Real Estate with Owen Glubiak, VP of Client Strategy at Cortex Sustainability Intelligence

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 07:30:00 -0800

Owen Glubiak, VP of Client Strategy for Cortex Sustainability Intelligence, discusses decarbonization in commercial real estate. They discuss the challenges and pressures faced by the industry, the role of AI in optimizing building performance, and the importance of tenant comfort. They also touch on the future of Cortex and the trends in decarbonization policies in cities like Boston, New York, California, Chicago, Denver, and Austin. The conversation explores two major trends in the sustainability and decarbonization space. The first trend is building electrification coupled with grid advances, which is seen as a key strategy to achieve decarbonization goals. The second trend is the impact of transportation emissions and the need for better infrastructure and public transportation systems to reduce emissions.

More about Owen and Cortex Sustainability Intelligence
Cortex was founded in 2014 by our CEO Bryan Bennett, after he realized the need for commercial buildings to run more sustainably. He grew up around the CRE industry, as his family has a history of developing commercial real estate. When working as a consultant in the energy technology space, Bryan began to understand the many data points that buildings could use to create more sustainable building operations. After realizing that he could put this data to use, Bryan dedicated his career to developing Cortex. He continues to grow with our team and develop new features within the app to better support our customers.

Owen has spent his career in energy, technology, and customer success, which makes him an ideal leader of the customer success team at Cortex. He is coming from Building Robotics, a SaaS and IoT business unit within Siemens Smart Infrastructure. He has had roles leading global Customer Success and Support teams.

Breaking Down Walls to Build More ADUs in Canada with Sarah Cipkar, Founder and CEO of Resimate

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 07:28:00 -0800

Sarah Cipkar, shares her experience building her own backyard ADU and how that started her journey to founding Resimate. Resimate is an online tool that allows homeowners to determine if their backyard is suitable for a detached ADU based on zoning bylaws. Sarah also discusses the different construction methods for ADUs, the challenges in the prefab and modular construction industry, and the importance of awareness and education in the ADU market. She shares her vision for the future of Resimate and the ADU market in Canadian cities.

More about Sarah and Resimate
Resimate is a tool that enables homeowners and investors to quickly analyze their residential lot in order to determine the feasibility for a backyard home (ADU), allows them to 'place' a home on their backyard lot and then connect directly with a builder for free.

Sarah Cipkar is Founder and CEO of Resimate Inc. and ADUSearch, an online tool that helps Canadians discover the potential for ADUs in their own backyards in over 20 cities across Canada, including Toronto and Vancouver. In 2020, Sarah built her own 430sqft backyard home in Windsor, ON, which has informed all of her work in helping homeowners and policymakers alike. She is also a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography & Planning at the University of Toronto. In her spare time, she likes to go on nature walks and spend time with her daughter.

Residential Sale Leasebacks for Homeowners with Jarred Kessler, CEO of EasyKnock

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 08:45:07 -0800

In this episode of Tech Nest, Jarred Kessler, CEO of EasyKnock, discusses innovative solutions in the residential real estate sector. He shares insights into Easy Knock's unique approach to helping homeowners access their equity without traditional loans. The conversation highlights the 'Sell and Stay' program, where homeowners can sell their property yet remain as renters, tackling the modern challenges of home equity and market dynamics. Discover how EasyKnock working to bring alternative financing to the consumers.

More about Jarred and EasyKnock
A pioneer in the real estate industry, EasyKnock is ushering in a new chapter into the real estate industry by revolutionizing the space with a new approach, addressing the trapped equity crisis head-on through innovative and accessible residential sale-leaseback programs that help customers reach their financial goals without having to increase their debt or leave the homes they know and love.

Jarred is an expert in the real estate and financial space who, before founding EasyKnock, spent more than fifteen years in leadership positions at industry titans like Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Cantor Fitzgerald, and more.

Modern Revenue Management and AI Tech for Multifamily with Donald Davidoff, CEO & Co-Founder at REBA

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 08:04:00 -0800

Donald Davidoff, the CEO and Co-founder of REBA, discusses the limitations of using spreadsheets in the multifamily industry and the need for new tools. He highlights the challenges of trusting data and the frustration around collating and analyzing data in Excel. Donald introduces REBA Rent, a new product that aims to simplify the rental process and improve transparency. He also addresses the hesitancy of multifamily owners and managers to adopt new solutions and the importance of empathy and observation in understanding user pain points. Donald shares his predictions for the future of REBA and the industry, emphasizing the changing staffing models and the potential impact of AI.

More about David and REBA
Real Estate Business Analytics is a data analytics company on a mission to change how the multifamily industry uses data.

REBA helps leaders ask insightful questions about their business by giving them access to all their data in one central location. We do this by offering a suite of business intelligence, budgeting and pricing & revenue management solutions that gather data & deliver insights so you can make better decisions, faster.

With REBA, you can eliminate Excel hell, bad data, excess cost, and analysis paralysis with tools built by multifamily for multifamily.

Donald Davidoff is the CEO and Co-founder of Real Estate Business Analytics, Inc. He is recognized throughout the rental housing industry as a thought leader in pricing, business intelligence, marketing, and leasing. Donald is best known for leading the development and implementation of the Lease Rent OptionsTM (LRO), the industry’s first automated demand forecasting and price optimization system. A former Senior Vice President at Archstone and Executive Vice President at Holiday Retirement, Donald works with C-Suite clients to assess their operational and technology platforms and implement impactful projects.

Boosting Short-Term Rental Revenue Through Upsells with Annie Sloan, CEO at TheHost Co

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 15:36:18 -0800

In this conversation, Annie Sloan, Co-founder and CEO of TheHost Co discusses the importance of creating unique experiences in the vacation rental industry and the opportunity to increase revenue through targeted upsells. Upsells can be as simple as late checkouts or early check ins, but Annie goes further providing proof guests want one-off experiences, too. For example, did you know you could hire donkeys with saddlebags full of beer to roam around the property, providing a fun and memorable experience for guests? Yeh, you can do that. Annie emphasizes the marketing and rebooking potential of such unique offerings.

More about Annie and TheHost Co
The Host Co connects local amenities and services to short-term rentals: from spa and chef to late checkout, local souvenirs, bike rentals, and beyond.

Guests are delighted with the added amenities, more tourism dollars are connected to the local economy and the best part: hosts add a new revenue stream to their rentals, receiving payouts on every transaction.

Annie is Co-founder & CEO of The Host Co. As she puts it, "we add the mini-bar, concierge and gift shop to your Airbnb". Prior to founding TheHost Co, she was Creative Director at Facebook and Twitter, embedded lead at Airbnb, Google, Samsung, R/GA.

Is AI Poised to Change Real Estate Investing, with Marc Rutzen, CEO of HelloData.ai

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 06:00:00 -0800

In this episode, Marc Rutzen, CEO of HelloData.ai, talks about revolutionizing real estate investing with AI. We discuss leveraging AI for real-time market analysis and optimizing pricing strategies in multifamily properties, particularly for units under 100. Marc highlights using AI for revenue management, asset optimization, and overcoming industry challenges. This episode offers insights into AI's potential and limitations in real estate, providing valuable information for investors, property managers, and tech enthusiasts.

More about Marc and HelloData.ai
Maximize Your NOI with HelloData.ai. We provide AI-driven real estate market analysis & pricing strategy. HelloData.ai uses computer vision and AI to identify the most relevant comps for any size (2+ units) multifamily property. Then we analyze them every day to recommend the right pricing, value-adds and operational improvements to maximize your NOI.

As CEO of HelloData.ai, Marc leverages his expertise in the real estate domain to spearhead the company's marketing, sales and product development initiatives. His professional journey began in real estate development, brokerage, and consulting, before he launched Enodo, a predictive analytics startup that automated the real estate investment underwriting process with machine learning. Following Walker & Dunlop's acquisition of Enodo, Marc helmed the company's data science, product, and customer success departments as SVP of Information Technology, before his promotion to Chief Product Officer. Marc possesses a Master's degree in Real Estate Development from Columbia University and is a licensed Managing Real Estate Broker in Illinois.

Investing in Real Estate Debt with Brian Dally, Co-founder and CEO of Groundfloor

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 06:28:35 -0800

Brian Dally is no stranger to the proptech ecosystem. Brian Co-founded Groundfloor just over 10 years ago, and is still driving the company at an aggressive growth rate. Groundfloor has achieved Inc 5000 recognition four times as being one of the fastest growing private companies in the US.

In this interview with Brian, we cover the specifics of the Groundfloor product—a fintech/proptech solution enabling investors (both accredited and non-accredited) to invest in real estate debt. Groundfloor promotes investors have seen a consistent 10% annualized returns on its short-terms offers. We also discuss the challenges of operating a business like this with the many changes the real estate industry has seen over the last 10 years.

One thing I find when talking to more seasoned veterans like Brian, is that sometimes the more things change the more they stay the same. Maybe you'll hear that theme in here too. Listen in!

More about Brian and Groundfloor
Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2023, Groundfloor is an award-winning fintech company that offers the ease of savings with the real returns of investing. Known for its regulatory prowess and developing completely new financial products for individual investors, the company was the very first to be qualified to offer direct real estate debt investments for both accredited and non-accredited audiences alike. The company has won numerous awards for its product innovation and growth, including four years in a row of being on the Inc. 5000 List. Since it launched in 2013, Groundfloor’s investors have consistently seen 10% annualized returns across its short-term investment offerings. For more information or to get started investing fractionally in real estate, visit Groundfloor.com.

Over a 25-year entrepreneurial career that spans IP communications, wireless telecom, and finance, Brian Dally has pushed the boundaries of how disruptive Internet technologies can be applied to solve large-scale consumer problems and distribute the value to all.

As the co-founder and CEO of Groundfloor, a wealthtech platform that allows everyone to build wealth through real estate, Brian has helped make private capital markets radically more accessible to new participants. Under his leadership, Groundfloor became the first company qualified by the SEC to offer direct real estate debt investments via Regulation A to non-accredited investors and accredited investors alike. In 2020, Groundfloor made its debut onto Inc. Magazine’s prestigious list of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in America, and was recognized in the top 10 percent of all honorees as well as being the fastest-growing financial services company in its home state of Georgia. It’s now been on the Inc 5000 list four years in a row. Brian has also been recognized for his entrepreneurial leadership by many organizations.

Before co-founding Groundfloor in 2013, Brian's career building disruptive technology startups included stints in Silicon Valley, Boston, London and the North Carolina Triangle region. Previously, he led the launch of Republic Wireless to take on the big four cellphone carriers to international acclaim. As a result, millions more Americans can now afford a smartphone.

Brian has a JD from Harvard Law School, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a BA with Highest Distinction from the University of Virginia. A native of Detroit who lived near Boston during childhood, Brian currently resides with his partner Ashley in Atlanta and Telluride, CO, where he still avidly roots for the Red Sox (but never the Patriots).

Proptech Reflections and Projections with Zach Aarons, Co-founder and Partner at MetaProp

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 08:32:04 -0800

Zach is a proptech veteran and OG. As one of the Co-founders of the most prolific early-stage proptech investment firm, MetaProp, and as an individual investor, he's seen some things go down. In this episode, we discuss what's changed over the course of Zach's career within proptech, and discuss where things are headed next. There's more to this than just before and after the pandemic, but that's obviously a big component to how things have evolved. Download to hear more about what Zach has to say.

More about Zach and MetaProp
MetaProp is the world’s leading venture capital firm focused on the PropTech industry. Founded in 2015, MetaProp’s investment team has invested in over 150 technology companies across the real estate value chain. The firm manages funds for both financial and strategic real estate investors that represent a pilot- and test-ready sandbox of 20+ billion square feet across every real estate asset type and global market.

Zach has been working at the intersection of real estate and venture capital for the past decade. He's funded over 60 startups in the space as an individual as well as 100 startups (and counting) through MetaProp’s venture capital funds. In addition to early-stage investing, he's worked on large scale mixed-use development projects in cities like Boston and Los Angeles with Millennium Partners. He's also co-author of PropTech 101 (https://proptech101.com) published by Advantage Media.

Leading Real Estate Data Innovation with John Rogers, Chief Innovation Officer at CoreLogic

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 06:55:30 -0800

There's no shortage of topics and angles to cover when talking with the Chief Innovation Officer of CoreLogic, John Rogers. John is a seasoned veteran, leading tech and innovation throughout his career. He's been with CoreLogic for just over ten years, building the teams and shaping the direction of how we'll look at real estate data for years to come. This interview has it all—discussion on climate data and modeling, AI, and even scotch. Of course, John gives some details about some of CoreLogic's latest tech called the Discovery Platform. John's a fascinating leader in our industry and I think you'll enjoy this discussion.

More about John and CoreLogic
John Rogers holds the role of Chief Innovation Officer at CoreLogic and is responsible for the R&D. From driving new solutions that understand the impacts to the real estate economy due to climate change, to ground-breaking models that identify suitable land for affordable housing development, the R&D group tackles major housing issues and works with many clients across the housing industry to drive growth and mitigate risk on their book of business.

CoreLogic is a leading provider of property insights and innovative solutions, working to transform the property industry by putting people first. Using its network, scale, connectivity and technology, CoreLogic delivers faster, smarter, more human-centered experiences, that build better relationships, strengthen businesses, and ultimately create a more resilient society.

Modernizing Planned Communities and Resident Experience with John Cecilian Jr, CEO of Cecilian Partners

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 06:02:30 -0800

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

--
This interview is a delight to listen to if you're passionate about the customer experience. John Cecilian Jr, Co-founder and CEO of Cecilian Partners joins the podcast to discuss some the of ways the customer experience in planned communities can be made better. We go beyond just how new homes are built. John discusses some of the shift in thinking around communities, what homebuyers want, and why resident experience is increasingly more important to consider.

More about John and Cecilian Partners
Cecilian Partners is changing how new homes are built and bought in America with innovative real estate development software and marketing tools. Our patented land management and property development platform, immersive 3D mapping technology, and robust data management solutions make it easier for community builders and developers to manage the complexities of placemaking while offering interactive experiences that delight homebuyers and drive sales.

In 2019, after 17 years as a leader in retail strategy and customer experience at iconic brands, John pivoted his career to launch Cecilian Partners. Drawing on first-hand insights into the broken customer journey for community developers and production home builders, John assembled a targeted team of outside-industry experts to bring digital transformation to planned communities. Today, Cecilian Partners’ unique technology forms the backbone of the new home value chain, from land to lots to homes to residents, by digitizing the end-to-end land and property development process — bringing data into one place, automating manual activities, and delivering a better, faster customer experience at every point in the customer journey.

Unlocking New Infill Opportunities, One Lot at a Time with Ben Bear, CEO and Co-founder of BuildCasa

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 06:22:00 -0700

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

Solving housing affordability challenges is going to take many approaches. Ben Bear joins us to discuss the strategy his company, BuildCasa, is executing in several California markets.

BuildCasa addresses housing affordability by unlocking unused land in neighborhoods. BuildCasa buys extra lot land from homeowners, sub-divides, and prepares the land for a new home to be built. This approach is helping existing homeowners realize significant financial gains from their unused land, and is added inventory to local markets where new homes are increasingly tough to find.

Ben answers a few of the obvious questions I had such as how does this affect future values for the homeowner selling the land, and what is the total market opportunity to sub-divide land from homeowners and to build on (hint: it's probably more than you think!).

More about Ben and BuildCasa
Ben is the CEO and co-founder of BuildCasa. He was previously the co-founder at Spin, a micro-mobility company acquired by Ford Motor Company.

BuildCasa pays homeowners cash for their unused lot space. The company handles the entire permitting process to split the lot and partners with a local developer to then build a home. This creates a financial windfall for homeowners while helping solve the affordability crisis in desirable neighborhoods.

Vacation Rental Operations and Management with Jeremey Gall, CEO of Breezeway

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 07:00:00 -0700

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

In this episode of Tech Nest, Jeremy Gall, Co-founder and CEO of Breezeway, joins us to discuss short-term rentals. Jeremy kicks us off with detailing what owners need to know in order to operate a successful vacation rental. I had to get Jeremy to comment on topics such as if there's going to be an Airbnb crash and flood of residential properties hitting the for sale market (hint: neither of us believe that's likely to happen). Of course, we get into the nitty-gritty as to how Breezeway is creating a web-based software for vacation rental managers to be more successful in their operations, need for integrations (such as Breezeway's latest with Airbnb), and future potentials of AI in the STR and hospitality industry. This one is a doozie—listen in!

More about Jeremy and Breezeway
Breezeway, a platform for managing all the work of maintaining and cleaning short-term rental homes, has helped thousands of hosts and property managers deliver the highest quality hospitality experiences for millions of guests across over 250,000 homes in 80 countries.

From cleaning and quality assurance to supply restocking, linens, routine maintenance, upkeep, property safety, and helping the guest enjoy all the amenities of the short-term rental, there is a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes to create a great guest experience. Breezeway automates these workflows and reduces errors, to help hosts and property managers meet guest expectations every single time.

Jeremy Gall is CEO & Co-Founder of property operations and experience platform Breezeway. Prior to founding Breezeway, Jeremy co-founded FlipKey and grew the platform into one of the world’s largest vacation rental businesses before TripAdvisor's acquisition in 2013. Jeremy founded Breezeway in 2017 with the aim of creating a comprehensive platform to help property and hospitality managers improve their operations and deliver exceptional guest experiences.

Simplifying Property Inspections Using Modern Technology with Josh Jensen, Co-founder and CEO of Inspectify

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:20:45 -0700

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

About Josh
Josh Jensen is the CEO and co-founder of Inspectify, a venture-backed technology platform in the property inspection space. Inspectify streamlines the property inspection experience across the entire property lifecycle through its network of 2,000+ inspectors and proprietary inspection and data technology. The company is backed by prominent investors including Nine Four VC, Foundation Capital, Munich Re, DivcoWest and top executives from startups such as Opendoor, Built Technologies, Side, Sundae, Flyhomes, and Steadily. Before Inspectify, Josh was the Vice President of Operations at Flyhomes, a nationwide real estate brokerage, where he was responsible for all real estate operations for the company and helped scale the business from seed to Series B. Josh is also an active real estate investor, holding rental properties on both the East and West coast. He has an MS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Josh resides in Seattle, WA, with his wife, Mary, two daughters, and a newborn son.

Connect with Josh on LinkedIn

About Inspectify
Inspectify is a venture-backed, vertically-integrated technology platform in the property inspection space.
‍
Inspectify streamlines the home inspection experience for real estate agents and their clients through its network of 2,000+ inspectors and proprietary inspection software, including a mobile inspection app.

Inspectify helps a broad range of partners in real estate, such as agents, buyers, investors, lenders or property managers, collect comprehensive data from a property in a standardized, clear format.

Partners use Inspectify to add efficiency and speed to their transactions, as well as to gain insight into the true condition of a property and its potential ROI.

Digital Floorplan Technolgy with Jeff Allen, President at CubiCasa

Nate Smoyer — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 07:19:00 -0700

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

About Jeff

As President of CubiCasa, Jeff leads the company’s overall strategy to digitize property data collection and unlock actionable data insights for homeowners and mortgage professionals alike. Prior to leading CubiCasa, Jeff served as Executive Vice President, Innovation Labs for Clear Capital—the company’s in-house innovation hub which focused on research, testing, and development of new products and solutions.

About CubiCasa

CubiCasa is a proptech company focused on providing value for real estate professionals through the digitization of properties. The company has already delivered over 1,000,000 floor plans and is widely used by photographers, studios and real estate agents around the world.

The CubiCasa App is currently available for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Core Tech Overview:
The scanning solution is the most scalable way to acquire property interior data. Enabling any space to be indexed, searched, sorted, and understood.

CubiCasa is focusing on >$10B property data business in the US. Their "Video to BIM" technology enables the fastest way to acquire a huge amount of property interior data. Their unique business model together with AI technology ensures that our Property data API will become the standard in the US and global market.

Proptech for Property Managers with Ben Steward, Co-founder of Revyse

Nate Smoyer — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 11:33:13 -0700

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

About Ben
With a career spanning nearly two decades as an entrepreneur and business leader, Ben Steward has a proven track-record for driving growth in companies. As the CRO at Funnel, Ben is responsible for building successful revenue-generation teams and strategies from the ground up. Whether infusing voice-of-customer into products and pricing, or developing partnerships and strategies to accelerate business growth, Ben brings an entrepreneurial view to the business at large. A former soccer pro, Ben approaches challenges with a team-first mentality and a competitive spark. Ben now spends his out-of-office hours in the sunshine with his wife and son at their home in Bend, OR.

About Revyse
Make discovering, buying, and managing multifamily software easier for everyone

Moving into a new home should feel more like winning the lottery and less like a trip to the DMV, but legacy systems and outdated software have weighed the real estate industry down. Constrained by manual processes and mediocre integrations, owners and operators have little time left to implement the right tech and tools needed to level-up the renter experience.

Revyse exists to change that.

We're here to help vendors drop new products like they're hot, to free up property managers to deliver earth-shatteringly great customer service, and to help renters find a place to call home, hassle-free.

Tech-Enabled ADU Production and Distribution with Sean Roberts, CEO of Villa

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 12:16:47 -0700

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

Sean Roberts, the CEO of Villa, joins Tech Nest today to discuss what he's leading at Villa. He joined the company earlier in the year, and is helping expand Villa's ADU empire across the state of California. As the largest provider of ADUs in California, Sean breaks down the key advantages Villa has over the competition when it comes to manufacturing, logistics, and working with local governments. They may be a construction company on the surface, but there's far more than what meets the eye. Listen in to what Sean has to say.

More about Sean and Villa
Villa’s mission is to be the easiest, fastest, and most cost-efficient way to build homes. As the largest provider of prefab ADUs in California, Villa simplifies the complex process of building a new housing unit in your own backyard, from design to installation. Villa has created a scalable, affordable alternative to traditional on-site construction, and is modernizing the way that new housing is built in the U.S.

Sean Roberts is Villa’s CEO. Prior to Villa, he served as both COO and CFO at Orchard, a proptech company with vertically-integrated real estate brokerage, title/escrow, and mortgage offerings and innovative capital-enabled consumer offerings. Before Orchard, Sean was an investor at TPG, a leading global private equity firm, where he focused primarily on investments in operationally-intensive real estate oriented businesses. He began his career as an investment banker in the Financial Institutions Group at Goldman Sachs. He has served on corporate boards in the past. Sean holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University in Canada.

Exciting Times for Vacation Rentals with Nate Smoyer, Host of Tech Nest Podcast

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:39:59 -0700

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

Links discussed in today's episode:

NYC's adds restrictions to short-term rentals: https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/09/01/nyc-airbnb-rules-local-law-18/)
- The law itself: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/specialenforcement/downloads/pdfs/FINAL-RULES-GOVERNING-REGISTRATION-AND-REQUIREMENTS-FOR-SHORT-TERM-RENTALS.pdf
Quote from Brian Chesky & article from Skift: https://skift.com/2023/10/02/airbnb-and-hotels-growth-ambitions-could-threaten-peaceful-coexistence/
Tweets discussing an "Airbnb crash": https://twitter.com/search?q=%22airbnb%20crash%22&src=typed_query
Tech Nest interview Vered Schwarz, COO of Guesty: https://technest.io/2021/09/s4e41-interview-with-vered-schwarz-coo-at-guesty/
Tech Nest inteview with James Strong, Co-founder of Rabbu: https://technest.io/2021/09/s4e49-interview-with-james-strong-cto-co-founder-of-rabbu/
Tech Nest interview with Wes Walker, CEO of Propersum: https://technest.io/2021/10/s8e85-interview-with-wes-walker-ceo-of-propersum/
Tech Nest interview with Vince Breslin, CEO of Uplisting, and Emmanuel Lavoie, CEO of Jetstream: https://technest.io/2022/05/vacation-rental-hospitality-market-tech-with-vince-breslin-ceo-of-uplisting-and-emmanuel-lavoie-ceo-of-jetstream/
Tech Nest interview with Marcus Rader, CEO of Hostaway: https://technest.io/2022/08/advanced-management-tech-for-vacation-rentals-with-marcus-rader-ceo-of-hostaway/
Tech Nest interview with Jonah Hanig, Founder of Rove: https://technest.io/2023/03/remote-work-ready-luxury-vacation-rentals-with-jonah-hanig-founder-of-rove/
Tech Nest interview with John Andrew Entwistle, CEO of Wander: https://technest.io/2023/03/verticalizing-luxury-vacation-smart-homes-with-john-andrew-entwistle-ceo-of-wander/
Tech Nest interview with Paul Kromidas, CEO of Summer: https://technest.io/2023/10/second-homes-vacation-rentals-converge-with-paul-kromidas-founder-and-ceo-of-summer/
Tech Nest Newsletter: https://technest.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Email me to get a copy of the Skift STR report and tech landscape breakdown.

About Nate and Tech Nest Podcast
Tech Nest: The Proptech Podcast is hosted by Nate Smoyer. The purpose of this show is to highlight the founders and leaders of companies who are working to transform the way we buy, sell, and invest in real estate.

Nate Smoyer is an accomplished marketing veteran within proptech and the current host of Tech Nest: the Proptech Podcast. With over 10 years of experience building and leading marketing teams, Nate’s helped startups such as Avail (acquired by Realtor.com) and Obie achieve industry recognition for growth, performance, and culture.

Follow Nate on Twitter - https://twitter.com/natesmoyer
Connect with Nate on LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/natesmoyer
Follow Tech Nest on Twitter - https://twitter.com/technestpodcast
Follow Tech Nest on LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/company/technestpodcast
Subscribe to the new Tech Nest Newsletter - https://technest.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Check out Tech Nest - https://technest.io

Real Estate Agents Taking on Rental Transactions with Noaam Blum, CEO at Rent Base

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 11:26:00 -0700

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

Prior to RentBase, Noaam was a real estate agent for over 10 years in the Boston area. Throughout his career as an agent, Noaam closed over 1000 rentals and converted $30M in sales from those rentals.

RentBase is the first all-in-one platform that helps Real Estate agents and brokers organize and track all their rental deals, save hours of time qualifying and matching their leads to listings, and identify future sales from their existing rental deals.

Noaam was previously featured on Tech Nest. You can listen to his complete interview about RentBase on Tech Nest: https://technest.io/2023/06/unlocking-revenue-in-leasing-with-noaam-blum-ceo-of-rentbase/

Construction Tech Transformation and Trends with Ardalan Khosrowpour, CEO at OnSiteIQ

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 08:35:28 -0700

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

Dr. Ardalan Khosrowpour is a Co-Founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer & Board Member at OnSiteIQ. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech and MS from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne. After completing his Ph.D., he was appointed as a Runway postdoctoral fellow at Cornell Tech where OnSiteIQ was born. His unique expertise in construction management and machine learning have been the principal driving forces behind OnSiteIQ's visual documentation and collaboration platform.

OnsiteIQ is the definitive verification layer for real estate construction. Since 2017, we’ve worked with real estate owners, developers, and investors to deliver the construction intelligence they need to make business-critical decisions about their portfolios.

OnsiteIQ delivers 360º imagery of active builds across your real estate portfolio, offering a perfect record of progress to date, along with real-time project analysis and actionable insight.

Second Homes & Vacation Rentals Converge with Paul Kromidas, Founder and CEO of Summer

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 12:30:13 -0700

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

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

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

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

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

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

Co-buying Residential Real Estate with Joe Hoppis, CEO at Pairadime

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 07:13:07 -0700

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

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

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

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

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn
Check out Pairadime

Tech Transformation in Appraisals and Other Proptech Trends with Kenon Chen, EVP at Clear Capital

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 14:53:04 -0700

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

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

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

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

Connect with Kenon
Check out the ClearCast Podcast
Checkout ClearCapital

Audience Town Overview with Founder and CEO, Ed Carey at Blueprint Conference 2023

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 14:34:30 -0700

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

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

Connect with Ed Carey
Check out Audience Town

Blueprint Special: New Wave of Enthusiasm in Proptech with Drew Meyers, Founder of Geek Estate

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:46:51 -0700

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

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

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

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

Partner Success by Talking to Customers with Cristine Brown, VP of Partner Success at Rhino

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 07:00:00 -0700

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

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

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

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

Leveraging Data to Build Large Self-Storage Portfolios with Cory Sylvester, Co-founder of Radius Plus and DXD Captial

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 07:14:09 -0700

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

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

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

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

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

Check out Radius Plus
Check out DXD Captial

Sharing Commercial Real Estate Data with David Kaiserman, CEO of Backpack

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 10:35:38 -0700

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

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

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

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

Increasing Revenue and Response Times for Property Managers with Ethan Lieber, CEO of Latchel

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 06:54:50 -0700

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

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

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

Listen in to hear what Ethan has to say.

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

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

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

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

Proptech Startups on the 2023 INC 5000 List

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 15:56:00 -0700

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

Inc Magazine just published their annual list of the fastest growing, private companies in the US. Proptech had a great showing out on the list this year. The list below (which I discuss in this episode) isn't likely the exhaustive, entirety of all proptech companies on the list. However, this should satisfy giving you an idea of the types of companies working at the intersection of real estate and technology, that made the 2023 list of fastest growing private companies.

The Inc 5000 ranks private companies, based on the self-reported percentage of growth over the last three years. Each company in this cohort had to have generated a minimum of $100,000 in gross revenue for 2019 and a minimum of $2,000,000 for 2022.

See the full Inc 5000 list for 2023 here.

Lula #125

Rental property maintenance solutions powered by a network of vetted contractors.

https://lula.life
$4.2M raised according to Crunchbase
3,871% growth

Transactly #126

Transactly provides technology and tech-enabled services to coordinate real estate transactions across US and Canada.

https://transactly.com
$11.5M raised according to Crunchbase
3,852% growth

Chunker #319

ON-DEMAND SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTIONS Short-term Warehouses, Pop-up 3PL Services, and Transportation

https://chunker.com
$$ raised unknown
1,481% growth
Chunker on Tech Nest: https://technest.io/2022/01/how-industrial-warehousing-is-innovating

LiveEasy #487

(Previously known as MoveEasy) A surprisingly simple moving and living experience.

https://www.liveeasy.com
$13M raised according to Crunchbase
1,204% growth

BOSSCAT #497

(Previously known as PunchListUSA) Complete any home improvement effortlessly with Bosscat’s streamlined repair, renovation, and maintenance solutions.

https://bosscathome.com
$48.7M raised according to Crunchbase
1,175% growth

PadSplit #510

The nation’s largest co-living marketplace. Innovative. Affordable. ➡️ Unlock revenue. Positively impact your community.

https://www.padsplit.com
$35.2M raised according to Crunchbase
1,152% growth

Rebuilt #533

Buy. Sell. Invest. Grow your investment portfolio with off-market properties.

https://www.rebuilt.com
$17.2M raised according to Tracxn
1,096% growth

StackSource #777

Simplifying commercial real estate financing.

https://www.stacksource.com
$3.3M raised according to Crunchbase (this does not include debt facilities raised for issuing loans)
758% growth

Poplar Homes #865

A tech-enabled property management company providing streamlined renting process for owners and renters to live easy.

https://www.poplarhomes.com
$131.9M raised according to Crunchbase
683% growth
Poplar Homes on Tech Nest: https://technest.io/2022/08/venture-backed-property-management-with-chuck-hattemer-co-founder-and-cmo-of-poplar-homs

Snaplistings #902

Full-funnel real estate marketing agency utilizing data science and cutting edge strategies from impression to close.

https://hello.snaplistings.com
$$ raised unknown
650% growth

Orchard #984

Our mission is to make home buying stress-free, fair, and simple. With Orchard, your home sale never holds you back.

https://orchard.com
$472M raised according to Crunchbase
602% growth

RentSpree #992

Our vision is to create a world where people, rentals, and homes are easily connected.

https://www.rentspree.com
$27.7M raised according to Crunchbase
598% growth
RentSpree on Tech Nest: https://technest.io/2022/07/modern-rental-management-tools-for-real-estate-agents-and-investors-with-michael-lucarelli-ceo-of-rentspree

Roofstock #1375

Invest where you want, no matter where you call home.

https://www.roofstock.com
$365.3M raised according to Crunchbase
425% growth
Roofstock OnChain on Tech Nest: https://technest.io/2022/12/instant-real-estate-transactions-on-blockchain-with-sanjay-raghavan-and-geoff-thompson-of-roofstock-onchain

Curbio #1467

We provide real estate agents and their clients easy, hassle-free renovations that get listings sold faster—for more.

https://curbio.com
$126M raised according to Crunchbase
393% growth
Curbio on Tech Nest: https://technest.io/2021/10/s7e75-interview-with-rikki-rogers-vp-of-marketing-at-curbio

Evernest #1646

Your full-service real estate partner.

https://www.evernest.co
$$ raised unknown
341% growth

Valcre® #2009

More appraisals, in less time, with less work.

https://www.valcre.com
$12.7M raised according to Crunchbase
279% growth

RentDynamics #2024

(Acquired by Entrata)Multif...

Driving Transformation in Lending with Product-Led Growth with Josh Ernst, CEO of Backflip

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 06:08:00 -0700

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

Josh Ernst, Founder and CEO of Backflip, a fintech focused on helping real estate investors through enhanced investing tools and by providing loans, brought the heat! Very few interviews with founders get into the specifics of product-led growth like we did in this one. Josh emphasizes the importance of starting with the customers' problems first, and then working backwards to find the right solutions and models. This is probably one of the most product and growth focused episodes we've published recently. This is not one to skip!

More about Josh and Backflip
Backflip is a real estate financial technology company that supports individual entrepreneurs reinvigorating the housing supply by acquiring and renovating single family homes. The company offers purpose-built technology and capital products used by its members to source, analyze and finance residential real estate investments. Backflip’s platform democratizes technology, data, and financing strategies that were previously only available to institutional investors and large corporations.

Josh founded Backflip with Jake in October 2020. Josh holds a passion for driving innovation and value creation, which has been evident throughout his diverse and accomplished career, and brings a wealth of expertise from his previous professional experiences:
Josh served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at DeShong Companies (dba "Trelly") and Myers the HomeBuyers, where he oversaw all internal operations and executed the company's vision, with responsibilities spanning product development, sales, marketing, operations, human resources, and finance/accounting. During his tenure, the company successfully completed over 1,500 investment and sales transactions annually, expanded the team to approximately 80 people and established offices in four locations. Additionally, Josh held a position on the company's Board of Directors.

Visualizing Real Estate Investment Insights with Donato Callahan, CEO of BrightInvestor

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 07:02:32 -0700

Government employee by day, proptech founder at night. Donato Callahan is the CEO of BrightInvestor, a tech service that enables for real estate investors to better gather data and insights on markets, using visualizations. Donato isn't just a hopeful tech founder looking to capitalize on an opening in the market. He's an active real estate investor, building the tools to accelerate much of the manual work he used to do in order to make sound investments.

More about Donato and BightInvestor
By day, Donato is a geospatial analyst for the Department of Defense. By night, he is a commercial multifamily syndicator with $15M in assets and another $15M under contract & is the CEO of BrightInvestor!

He met his co-founder, Drew McCluskey, two years ago and have worked together to bring this amazing resource to new real estate investors everywhere.

BrightInvestor helps real estate investors get the answers they need by turning hours of market research into minutes. Crime stats, appreciation rates, population & job growth...even development activity tracking so you're always one step ahead of the competition. No more wasted hours bouncing from site to site. No more throwing money away on a dozen different subscriptions. You get everything you need in one place with BrightInvestor. BrightInvestor—market research made simple.

Delivering Delight for Real Estate Investors with Vikas Gupta, CEO of Azibo

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 06:55:08 -0700

In this episode, we're joined by the CEO of Azibo, Vikas Gupta. Azibo is an all-one-solution for mom-pop landlords—specifically for those with 50 units or less. In the last few years, there's been significant changes to the rental landscape including how owners collect rent, reporting on-time rent payments to credit bureaus, and how many are becoming investors (think: accidental landlords) due to the interest rates environment we're in. One of the most important topics we discuss goes beyond proptech. Vikas shares about the importance of delivering delight when building tech products. Jump in to hear what Azibo has to say.

More about Vikas and Azibo
Azibo is a unified financial and property management platform for independent real estate investors.

Vikas Gupta is the CEO of Azibo, a unified financial and property management platform for independent real investors. Prior to Azibo, he's held a variety of roles at different pre-seed to Series B startups, including as a founder, as a product leader, and a marketing leader. Over his 15+ years in technology, Vikas has helped companies grow from pre–revenue to 8+ figures in revenue. Today, Azibo helps property owners manage tens of thousands of rental units across the U.S. which includes hundreds of millions of rent payments, annually.

Leasing Agents on Demand with Jason Shenitzer, CEO, and Max Griffin, Head of Sales, at Skylight

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 13:00:00 -0700

More about Skylight
Skylight connects multifamily units to your city's top leasing talents.

Our technology platform allows for your internal leasing team to be more competitive and efficient while providing you unlimited access to additional leasing talent in the area.

Lease faster. Achieve higher rents with fewer concessions. Less headaches around finding and retaining leasing talent.

Marketplace for Institutional Real Estate Investing with Bill Martiner, Co-founder and CTO of Avenue One

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 06:00:00 -0700

Welcome to another episode of Tech Nest. In today's episode, we have a special guest joining us, Bill Martiner, the CTO and Co-founder of Avenue One, a Proptech company that has quietly risen to unicorn status in about three years time. Avenue One recently made headlines by successfully raising an impressive $100 million round of funding. While they may be a quiet company, their impact in the residential real estate space cannot be ignored.

Avenue One's mission is to revolutionize the industry by creating a comprehensive service platform and marketplace catering to institutional owners, buyers, and sellers. During our conversation, we'll delve into the fascinating journey of Avenue One.

Press play to learn about this emerging proptech company.

More about Bill and Avenue One
William Martiner is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Avenue One. As a Senior Technology Executive with over 20 years’ experience in driving growth and innovation for the Financial Service Industry, William has focused on applying technology to empower and transform business processes.

Avenue One is a property technology service platform and marketplace for institutional owners, buyers and sellers of residential homes.

Avenue One makes investing in the residential rental market more transparent and efficient for institutions, while also supporting local businesses. The company does this through a service platform that combines proprietary data and a network of local partners to identify, acquire, renovate, lease and manage residential investment properties. This ecosystem of independent businesses - including brokers, contractors, title professionals, and property managers - provide local expertise to create and maintain portfolios of quality rental properties across the country.

Avenue One’s technology is hyper-scalable and nimble, enabling its rapid growth. Avenue One also offers a marketplace of services to buyers, owners, and sellers of residential real estate. By offering a robust marketplace and not buying for its own balance sheet, Avenue One has been able to quickly attract a wide variety of market participants.

Unlocking Revenue in Leasing with Noaam Blum, CEO of RentBase

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 07:00:00 -0700

Join us on this episode as we delve into the world of rental with the founder of Rentbase, a new solution for agents and brokers in the real estate industry. Noam Blum, the founder, shares his personal experiences as an agent and the challenges he faced. With Rentbase, he aimed to automate leasing workflows and uncover sales opportunities. Rentbase is working to simplify the leasing process, from pre-qualifying leads to nurturing them into sales. Learn how Noam's unique approach and collaboration with a seasoned CTO aimed at revolutionizing the rental market, and empowering agents to maximize their commissions.

More about Noaam and RentBase
RentBase is an innovative proptech company that helps agents and brokers automate their leasing workflow and discover sales opportunities within their rentals.

With their unique ability to create a sales lead funnel from an agents rental data, RentBase has now begun partnerships with major MLSs and are in the process of closing company-wide deals with some of the largest brokerages in the country.

Proptech Procure for Operators and Owners with Rasheq Zarif, Co-founder of ReWyre

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 06:00:00 -0700

"More than a marketplace" is how ReWyre desrcibes their procurement platform for proptech solutions. Rasheq Zarif is the Co-founder and COO of ReWyre, and he wants to help property professionals find the right proptech solutions that meet their business needs in a more efficient and seamless way. Rasheq is leveraging his experience as an accomplished consultant, CEO, and tech advisor to guide real estate companies in identifying and adopting the right proptech solutions.

More about Rasheq and ReWyre
Covering the entire proptech ecosystem, ReWyre is an online platform that makes it easy for property professionals and companies to discover, procure and optimize the right technology for every project and requirement. By providing tailored, best-fit, recommendations, ReWyre saves property players time, confusion and stress when it comes to choosing and deploying new technologies across their real estate portfolio.

Rasheq Zarif is Co-Founder and COO of ReWyre. Prior to his current role, Rasheq was MD of Deloitte's Future of Mobility & Smart Logistics function. He is a Member of the Advisory Board for Parkmyfleet.com, as well as Lead Strategic Advisor to Crown PropTech Acquisitions.

Resident Lifecycle Management and Modern Multifamily with Mike Wolber, CRO of Rent Dynamics

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 07:28:05 -0700

If you've been following Mike Wolber, then you know he's a rare one in our industry. Mike is a fellow podcast host of Modern Multifamily, but also the Chief Revenue Officer at Rent Dynamics—a proptech company focused on improving the overall lifecycle of residents through better technology tools for owners and managers. Mike is frequently bringing a ton of value to the industry sharing his insights, creating industry reports, and of course, contributing through his podcast. You can get most of his musings on LinkedIn (link below to follow him),

Few putting in as much into the proptech and multifamily industry as Mike is. That's why I'm so stoked to have him on Tech Nest. I'll keep the description short so you'll have to hit play and hear what he's building.

More about Mike and Rent Dynamics
Rent Dynamics is a proptech company exclusively focused on Multifamily. We turned 10 in 2022 and deliver 3 core products to the industry: a CRM, Contact Center, and a financial amenity for residents where we repot on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus. We call that RentPlus.

Mike is the podcast host of Modern Multifamily and is deeply passionate about go-to-market and all things technology.

Leveraging AI in Proptech with Drew Fabrikant, CEO at Scout

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 23 May 2023 13:00:00 -0700

It's an exciting day when we get to have a returning guest on Tech Nest. Drew Fabrikant, CEO of Scout will be sharing today about AI, its uses in real estate, and what you might need to know to leverage this tech in your business—whether you're running a proptech or traditional real estate business.

More about Drew and Scout
Scout helps you build stronger connections with your ideal customer.

Drew Fabrikant is the founder and CEO of Scout. Prior to that, Drew built a marketplace where homeowners could connect with home service professionals and also practiced as an attorney at Skadden Arps (advising on over $30B in transaction volume). In addition to his role at Scout, Drew invests in real estate and venture capital, advises early-stage tech companies, and is an attorney and licensed real estate broker. Drew earned his J.D. from Georgetown University and his B.A. from the University of Maryland.

Full-Service, Passive Real Estate Investing Platform with Andrew Luong, CEO of Doorvest

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 16 May 2023 06:00:00 -0700

More about Andrew and Doorvest
Doorvest is an end-to-end solution for real estate investing, done entirely online.

Doorvest helps individuals build wealth remotely by facilitating the purchase of a single-family rental and managing the property—making owning rentals as easy as owning a stock.

Only in this case, they’ll own the whole home!

Andrew Luong is the co-founder of Doorvest, a venture-backed startup advancing financial security for all. Andrew is also a real estate investor, Realtor, and mortgage loan officer. With a passion for all things technology and personal finance, Andrew created Doorvest to enable everyone to access to financial security through investing in the $3 trillion single-family rental market.

Real-Time Operations for Owners and Property Managers with Sal Patalano, EVP at Plentific

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 09 May 2023 06:24:29 -0700

Seasoned tech veteran and entrepreneur, Sal Patalano, shares with us today how he's leveraging his 30+ years experience to lead the expansion of Plentific into the US rentals market. Plentific has amassed a network of more than one million properties and 20,000 service providers. This network, coupled with their software interface, is what makes real-time operations possible for owners and property managers. Sal breaks it all down for us. Listen in!

More About Sal and Plentific
At Plentific, we’re making real-time property operations a reality. Our industry-leading platform integrates data, insights, and digital solutions to streamline property operations and enable action. Through Plentific’s platform, real estate owners and operators can see the status of their properties, manage work orders, track repairs, and hire contractors in real time. We’re pioneering property operations and creating real world impact – developing communities, growing businesses, and creating places where people can thrive.

Salvatore (Sal) Patalano is the Executive Vice President, North America at Plentific with 30+ years of experience in the technology sector as an entrepreneur and in senior leadership roles at IBM and Lenovo.

Smarter Leasing for Property Managers with Austin Lo, CEO at Peek

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 10:47:00 -0700

Let's imagine e-commerce, but for rental listings. It's kind of what we're talking about today. I've got Austin Lo, he is the founder and CEO of Peek. He got his start in real estate working at an investment fund. They were creating data-driven models, investing in e-commerce internet platforms. And, you know, he had this interest in real estate and so he went so far as to become a licensed agent in New York City. He learned the rentals game in New York City. And as I've been told, because I've not done it myself in the city, that can be a grueling way to cut your teeth.

Austin decided to take things further and started Peek in 2019. Peek is delivering a self-serve leasing experience, enabling renters to shop and tour properties, online. Imagine you can check out an apartment just like e-commerce. And that's the vision that Austin has here. We talk about that. We talk about a new product launch coming up from Peek. And then we even got into a little bit on artificial intelligence. Austin had a really interesting take on AI, the data that they're collecting at Pee, and how that could be a very unique input for AI models moving forward, whether they're using it or other use cases that are represented in the market. So you're going to want to hear his take on that. Go ahead, hit play.

More about Austin and Peek
Peek was founded in 2019 with the mission to create a better way to find a home. Peek is a complete solution for property owners and managers to deliver an immersive self-serve leasing experience that’s available to renters 24/7–online or on-site. Peek’s flagship Total Leasing allows prospective residents to see a property with both unit-level 3D tours and self-guided tours while providing the property with precise data and analytics on prospects to lease more efficiently. For property owners and managers, Peek has been able to reduce the need for onsite staffing levels, increase tour conversion rates by 3.5x and save clients an average of $750 per unit leased. Peek is a National Preferred Provider for Greystar and partners with other leading property owners and managers like Brookfield, Toll Brothers, Cushman & Wakefield, Nuveen and Hines. For more information visit peek.us.

Austin Lo is founder and CEO of Peek, whose mission is to create a better way to find a home. Prior to launching Peek in 2019, Austin worked at an investment fund, creating data-driven models to invest in e-commerce and internet platforms. He is also a licensed New York Real Estate Salesperson and a lifelong photography enthusiast–both of which sparked his interest in leveraging 3D virtualization technology to bring the e-commerce experience to finding a home. Austin is a graduate of Columbia University’s engineering school.

The Convergence of Ecommerce and Real Estate with Jason Hardy, CEO of Ownly

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 07:12:42 -0700

In this episode we're talking about the Shopify of real estate. I'm thrilled to have Jason Hardy, the CEO of Ownly, a Canadian-based company that is also working in the United States, as our guest today. Ownly is bringing e-commerce to the residential real estate industry, creating a frictionless home buying experience. Their patent-pending technology, called Verified, connects qualified buyers and sellers, solving the problem of verifying identities and funds of potential buyers.

The world of residential real estate has been in a dizzy state in the last few years, and it's unclear when it will get back to "normal," or if there will be a new normal. But Jason and his team have been working to solve what they see as one of the real estate industry's biggest problems.

If you're someone who likes having fun while digging into proptech, then you're in the right place. Join us today as we dive deep into Ownly.

More about Jason and Ownly
Ownly brings e-commerce to the residential real estate industry, creating a frictionless home-buying experience. The platform makes real estate transactions easier through its proprietary and patent-pending technology, connecting qualified buyers and sellers.

Jason has built his reputation as a thought leader in real estate and a driver of innovative marketing and sales initiatives. An influential industry leader, he is also a business school instructor and sought-after speaker. Jason is the executive director of the Real Estate Development Institute (REDI), chairman of real estate marketing agency Chatterson, sits on the Management Advisory Council for the Haskayne School of Business, and is an advisory board member and committee chair for the Westman Centre for Real Estate Studies.

Data-Driven Approach to Property Management with Nick Farquhar, CEO of Appreciate

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 07:31:00 -0700

This is a different approach. We've got Nick Farquhar. He is the CEO of a company called Appreciate. You can find them online, appreciate.io. They describe themselves as a tech-enabled property management. And one of the first questions I asked Nick was, "what does it mean to be tech-enabled property management?" You got to listen to this one. Appreciate gets into the data, their approach is a little different than others with educating their clients—helping them make sure that they get all the tax advantages they deserve. And they have a unique revenue model in that they don't charge turnover fees and they don't upcharge on maintenance. It's very interesting. Let's jump in and hear what Nick has to say.

More about Nick and Appreciate

Verticalizing Luxury Vacation Smart Homes with John Andrew Entwistle, CEO of Wander

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 07:05:28 -0700

You'll hear me say it in the intro, but wow. This was a heck of a discussion. John Andrew Entwistle is the Founder and CEO of a company called Wander. In a very short amount of time, Wander has exploded on the scene for vacation rentals. They're approach: verticalize the entire business. When I say the entire business—I mean everything! The tech, the management, property selection, the marketing, and oh the brand. Wander has masterfully build an incredible community around their brand of high-end, luxury smart homes that serve as vacation rentals. There's more to the business than I can write for this intro so hit play to hear what John Andrew has to say about Wander.

More about John Andrew and Wander
Wander is vertically integrating the vacation rental space, creating a radically better experience for travelers.

Wander is the only network of smart homes built for the future of work—there are currently 15 properties (more to launch in 2023) in stunning locations across the US. Everything from unlocking the door, turning on the lights, lighting the fireplace, and opening the Tesla in the garage (which each home is equipped with) can be controlled from the Wander mobile app.

The company launched with a seed round led by Redpoint Ventures in 2021, and months later raised a Series A led by QED with participation from a16z, Fifthwall, Susa Ventures, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman's Thirty Five Ventures, Packy McCormick, Sahil Bloom, and others.

The co also recently launched their B2B product, Wander Teams, which allows employers to offer Wander credits/stays as a benefit. With Wander, working remotely becomes much easier: the workstations are comfortable, with adjustable desks and extra monitors; the WiFi is strong and reliable; and the kitchen and gyms are equipped so guests don’t have to sacrifice their daily routines. Wander Teams is still in beta but will become a core part of the business as they ramp up.

Wander recently secured a $100M credit line from Credit Suisse in November to turbocharge growth.

John Andrew Entwistle is Founder and CEO of Wander. Previously John Andrew was Co-founder of Coder (exited) and a Thiel Fellow.

Remote Work Ready Luxury Vacation Rentals with Jonah Hanig, Founder of Rove

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 07:05:10 -0700

It's not enough to just list a pretty home or apartment on Airbnb in order to stand out. Maybe it is for some, but not for Jonah Hanig. Jonah is the Founder of a company called Rove. They've set out to build an exclusive network of luxury short-term and mid-term rentals, ideals for those traveling and working. It's more than just the bones of the building, though. The team at Rove is especially skilled in upscaled design, ensuring each property is tastefully complete. Of course every Rove property is well-equipped with high-speed internet, and on-call concierge. And if that wasn't enough, Rove has recently launched its own marketplace to help investors buy and sell "ready to rent" properties. Hit play to to hear what Rove is all about.

More about Jonah and Rove
Rove is a rental booking platform for homes designed for remote work.

Rove homes are professionally designed with upscale kitchens, comfortable work spaces with lightning fast wifi, and on-call customer concierge. (No more IKEA chairs or waiting for an unresponsive host to send you the updated wifi password.)

Rove also just launched a marketplace for investors to purchase "ready-to-rent" rentals (and turns their existing properties into one). Rove even handles management for the owner, so it's completely turn-key. Their managed properties generate 30-70%+ higher booking revenue annually for property owners than comparable residential rental property benchmarks.

Here's an example: https://www.rovetravel.com/marketplace/property/133west-14th-street

Jonah is a Columbia and Y Combinator alum who got the idea from personal experience-–struggling to find Airbnbs where he could take Zoom calls all day during his travels. So, he built a team from Snap, SpaceX, June Homes, and CORE to launch the central place for luxury rentals for consumers and investors alike.

AI-Powered Lease Abstraction & CRE Data Management with Cameron Steele, CEO of Prophia

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 08:27:00 -0700

More about Cameron and Prophia
Prophia is a rising proptech smart tool for commercial real estate & lease abstraction used across 1,800 buildings, with 100% customer retention, and has exceeded one million pages scanned with its AI-powered technology. With Prophia’s AI abstraction tool, commercial real estate owners, investors, and operators can eliminate manually intensive lease abstractions and data accessibility processes. This allows users to enhance their investment strategy in real time with complete, verifiable, and structured commercial portfolio data.

Mobile First CRE Data Solutions with Bonnie Murray, CEO of Raccord

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 06:00:00 -0700

What an honor it was to have Bonnie Murray, founder and CEO of Raccord on the show. Raccord is building a mobile-first data platform specifically for commercial real estate owners and operators. We had a fun discussion highlighting why the decision to build mobile first as compared to everyone else in the industry, as well as how this can save organizations significant time from handling administrative work and reducing delays with data requests. We also had a chance to discuss the importance of building a diverse team, coincidentally, on International Women's Day. Lots of insights jammed into this interview. Listen in!

More about Bonnie and Raccord
Raccord is a data platform that distills complex, disparate data into clear, powerful and essential metrics, to equip decision-makers with the intelligence needed to analyze portfolios and investment opportunities, the smart way.

Raccord's CEO, NY-based Bonnie Murray, has over twenty years experience in finance, working across various investment verticals, and recognizes the importance of data-driven decision-making. Leading a female-led business that is laying the foundations for a futuristic real-estate investment model, Bonnie is perfectly placed to talk about navigating the industry, share her unique insight, and discuss potential challenges.

Better CRE Data Dashboards with Anne Hollander, CEO of Lobby CRE

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 18:04:00 -0800

More about Anne and Lobby CRE
Lobby CRE helps commercial real estate firms transform their portfolios with intelligent analysis, industry benchmarking, and asset management, enabling access to all data sources and automating performance reporting across all properties from a single platform. Lobby CRE is the first data analytics and management platform designed specifically for commercial real estate. Lobby helps companies discover opportunities in their business and provides configurable insights to make data-driven decisions faster.

Anne Hollander, CEO of Lobby CRE, a Thirty Capital company, is making an impression in CRE and tech as one of few CEOs with a background in both real estate operations and rapidly scaling technology companies. Hollander is an expert in strategic planning, partnership development, go-to-market execution, and venture investment across portfolios focused on real estate, technology, and financial services. Hollander formerly held executive leadership roles in product development at Trimble and Real Page. Hollander offers uniquely informed perspectives on real estate management, investment, and the potential of tech in CRE and integrates these insights to serve and educate property owners, managers, and investors.

Not Your Average Proptech VC with Jeffrey Berman, Partner at Camber Creek

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 20:26:53 -0800

Stop the tape! This is one of the most energetic episodes on Tech Nest—ever! Jeffrey Berman, partner at Camber Creek, brings the heat. We covered a wide variety of topics. We talked strategy, proptech trends, what's to come, and more. But ultimately, I think you'll walk away with at least one thing—Jeffrey is not your average VC! Don't delay—hit the play button.

More about Jeffrey and Camber Creek
Camber Creek is the oldest venture capital firm in the US, driving innovation in the real estate industry. Camber Creek maintains an LP network of institutional investors and over 300 strategic real estate groups, including some of the largest real estate owners, operators, and service providers. By introducing them to the strongest startups across dozens of categories, Camber Creek serves an R&D function for the real estate industry, connecting the best technology to industry leaders who spur adoption, all while generating top quartile returns. We are currently investing out of our fourth fund and have 13 exits portfolio-wide - to date.

Jeffrey Berman has more than two decades of executive management experience and deeply rooted relationships in the start-up, real estate and venture capital ecosystems. Jeffrey has sourced deal flow, led due diligence, made investment decisions and served on the boards of numerous portfolio companies. Prior to Camber Creek, he was a Principal at one of the Washington DC area’s largest privately held real estate development and management companies.

**Special note and shout out for the podcast Jeffrey co-hosts with fellow proptech veteran and enthusiast, Edward Cohen. It's called Tangent - Proptech & The Future of Cities. Check it out: https://tangent.transistor.fm

All-in-One Rental Management Platform for Resi & CRE with Adam Mait, Co-founder and COO of DoorLoop

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 06:53:10 -0800

In this episode, host Nate Smoyer chats it up with Adam Mait, the co-founder and COO of DoorLoop. DoorLoop is a feature-rich property management platform that Nate describes as the "Zapier of proptech" platforms due to its ability to seamlessly integrate with a plethora of tools and services. Adam shares details about DoorLoop's platform, including how it streamlines property management tasks, as well as discussing newly released features such as websites for property managers. DoorLoop is still pretty young to have so many developed features, so Nate asks Adam to share more about their aggressive product roadmap and shipping mentality. However, Adam makes it clear—it's not just features that matters, customer must want to use the platform—this is what he believes is DoorLoops advantage over many industry incumbents. This interview is a must-listen for anyone in the property management space looking to optimize their workflows or if you're wanting to keep tabs on which direction property management platforms are moving in.

More about Adam and DoorLoop
DoorLoop is the highest-rated property management software online. Landlords, property managers, and management companies in over 100 countries use DoorLoop to manage tens of thousands of units. The software automates everything from listing units, background checks, rent collection, maintenance requests, moving out tenants, and everything in between. DoorLoop is fully customizable for any mixed-use portfolio, including residential, commercial, associations, and many more.

Not only ivy league educated but also a licensed attorney, real estate developer, and realtor, Adam brings to DoorLoop his best practices from years of commercial real estate development and management. He is passionate about the company’s overall mission: delivering landlords and property managers an easy-to-use platform with powerful features, to take the hassle out of managing units.

Customer-Centric Rental Management Tools with Ryan Barone, CEO of RentRedi

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 14:00:00 -0800

In this episode of Tech Nest Podcast, host Nate Smoyer sits down with Ryan Barone, CEO of RentRedi, to discuss their customer-centric approach to building rental management tools. Ryan also shares more about the effects of the pandemic on the rental market and details how his team weigh the pros and cons of incorporating features from partners versus building them in-house. This is a must-listen for anyone in the property management space or interested in the latest tech solutions for the rental market. Tune in to learn more about RentRedi's exciting efforts to build the all-in-one solution for independent landlords and their renters.

More about Ryan and RentRedi
RentRedi is a modern, end-to-end solution with web and mobile app that help landlords collect rent, screen tenants, list units, sign leases, and manage maintenance & accounting. For tenants, RentRedi provides companion apps to pay rent, set up auto-pay, sign up for credit boost, and renters insurance, apply to units, and submit maintenance requests. Each plan comes with unlimited units, tenants, and amazing customer support.

The brain behind RentRedi’s software and mobile apps, Ryan Barone is the company’s CEO & co-founder. Before launching RentRedi, he worked at Goldman Sachs and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Ryan is an avid basket fan and enjoys playing music (drums, piano, and guitar), cooking, and traveling.

Enabling Digital Transformation in Real Estate Development with Adam Stark, Co-founder of Jet.Build

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 15:31:00 -0800

Adam Stark is Co-founder of a company called Jet.Build. Jet.Build is a platform that enables real estate developers to streamline communication between vendors, partners, lenders, and other important stakeholders on projects. This is accomplished by digitizing and automating a lot of the manual processes you might encounter when completing a ground up or retro-fitting an older apartment building. Tools such as Jet.Build help companies initiate and progress significantly in digitally transforming; ultimately leading to saved time, money, and effort. Adam shares more about the opportunity of ahead of Jet.Build and the industry as a whole. Listen in to hear what he has to say.

More about Adam and Jet.Build
Think about organizations that leverage a Salesforce for their sales department, a Hubspot for their marketing department, an ADP for their HR department, a Netsuite for their accounting department—and so forth.

Jet.Build is the equivalent organizations necessity for real estate operators; a cloud-based command center. Jet-clients? Developers, contractors, owners reps, construction managers—and a few more unique cliental.

My co-founder and I know each other first as enemies; competing in high school sports agains one another. Fast forward, we end up in the same military enlistment as airborne troops (paratroopers). Fast forward again, we end up in NYC working for real estate developers. Here, we recognized the need for a better 'salesforce' equivalent solution for the industry; the legacy products that exist are simply outdated, clunky, and wildly priced. Jet.Build will standardize the industry as the essential organization management software.

Fractionalizing Vacation Rentals Like Stocks with Jorge Aldecoa, President of reAlpha

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 08:08:00 -0800

Join host Nate Smoyer on Tech Nest podcast as he sits down with reAlpha President, Jorge Aldecoa, to discuss their concept of investing in vacation rentals like stocks. Jorge will share his insights on the current state of the vacation rental market and explain how owning a share of the budding vacation rental industry is more attainable than ever before. Jorge shares how reAlpha is approaching vacation rentals investing differently than others using their proprietary AI-powered reAlphaBrain, Elon Musk deep-fake viral marketing, and offering a Reg A product. Whether you’re an experienced investor or just starting out, this episode is a good listen for anyone looking to learn more about something new in the vacation rentals space.

More about Jorge and reAlpha
reAlpha is building a digital real estate investing platform that enables its members to simplify wealth creation opportunities through investments in vacation homes while striving to deliver exceptional guest experiences. reAlpha sources and scores properties from the wholesale market using a proprietary AI-driven algorithm called reAlphaBRAIN. It then predicts the viability of each property for the short-term rental market, as well as the projected long-term value. reAlpha’s business plan contemplates eventually allowing investors to buy equity in specific properties, providing opportunities for short-term passive income generation via Airbnb, as well as equity-driven capital appreciation. reAlpha is based in Dublin, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.realpha.com.

Check out reAlpha

Want to see that viral video reAlpha created using a deep fake of Elon Musk? Watch it on TechNest.io

Unconventional Proptech Venture Capital with Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 20:23:10 -0800

Max Brickman, founder of Heartland Ventures, discusses his unconventional approach to venture capital investing on Tech Nest. Brickman has an incredible background as an operator, and that experience has helped him rethink the approach to venture capital. All the way from the investors he partners with all the way to how his firm determines what companies to invest in.

More about Max and Heartland Ventures
Heartland Ventures is an unconventional venture capital firm focused on connecting startups from traditional tech hubs to industrial corporations in America's heartland. Founded in 2016, Heartland has over $100 million under management and has invested in 14 high-performing portfolio companies.

Max is the Managing Director of Heartland Ventures, which he founded in 2016. He manages the fund’s relationships with other venture capital partners and oversees key investment decisions with the Heartland team. He was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2022.

The App That Rewards Renters with Lily Liu, CEO of Piñata

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 06:10:00 -0800

Tech Nest Podcast brings you an interview with Lily Liu, CEO of Piñata, an innovative new app that rewards renters for their monthly payments. In this episode, Lily discusses the inspiration behind Piñata, how it works, and the benefits it offers to both renters and landlords. She also shares her insights on the future of the rental market and how renter amenities will take shape in the years to come. Tune in to hear more about this exciting new app that is changing the game for renters everywhere.

More about Lily and Piñata
Piñata is the nation’s largest rental membership program on a mission to make renting smarter and more rewarding for tenants and landlords alike. The company, founded in 2020 and led by women of color, offers renters a unique set of financial benefits including free rewards and credit-score-boosting opportunities, while also providing a unique amenity for landlords. Piñata has raised $20 million from leading investors including Wilshire Lane Capital.

Lily Liu's career started out by straddling the lines of technology and government founding PublicStuff, which she sold to Accela that was then acquired by Berkshire Partners. As the CEO of Piñata, Lily has brought to life her vision of creating financial equality for renters. In 2017, she was recognized as Forbes’ 30 under 30 Top Entrepreneurs and Business Insiders’ People to Watch. Her entrepreneurial leadership allows Lily to address glaring systemic issues in the financial and real estate industries. Learn more at www.lily-liu.com.

Lily is a first-generation Taiwanese American, raised in a blue-collar family. Her interest in building companies started at a young age stemming from her childhood experiences working at her father’s business. At 18, Lily started her first organization, providing free tutoring services to inner-city urban Pittsburgh students. From there, she became the youngest analyst under Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education for special analytics and projects. In 2009, she founded her first tech start-up, PublicStuff.

Better Decisions from Better Data with Kevin Shtofman, Global Head of Innovation at Cherre

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 09:31:00 -0800

More about Cherre and Kevin
Cherre is the leader in real estate data and insight. We connect decision makers to accurate property and market information, and help them make faster, smarter decisions. By providing a unique “single source of truth,” Cherre empowers customers to evaluate opportunities and trends faster and more accurately, while saving millions of dollars in manual data collection and analytics costs.

Kevin is recognized as one of the leading commercial real estate executives and currently the Global Head of Innovation at Cherre.

Instant Real Estate Transactions on Blockchain, with Sanjay Raghavan and Geoff Thompson of Roofstock onChain

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 08:34:20 -0800

More about Roofstock onChain and Sanjay Raghavan and Geoff Thompson
Roofstock onChain is the web3 subsidiary of Roofstock, the leading digital real estate investing platform for the $4 trillion single-family rental home sector. Using blockchain technology, Roofstock onChain provides investors the ability to purchase tokenized single family rental properties with one click, and to transact with crypto, cutting the time and cost incurred by legacy systems.

Roofstock provides extensive resources for investors to actively participate in the SFR space, including data analytics, connections to property management companies and contractors, and other management tools. Founded in 2015, Roofstock has facilitated more than $5 billion in investment transactions to date.

Sanjay is the Head of Web3 Initiatives of Roofstock onChain where he leads the real estate investing platform’s blockchain initiative. After being accepted into Cypher Accelerator, the first-of-its-kind Wharton-backed program for blockchain startups, Sanjay continues to build connections between real estate investing and blockchain. Sanjay is also an Advisor at Pudgy Penguins NFTs. With over 20 years of finance and product experience, Sanjay has an extensive background consulting, developing, and founding several financial companies. Prior to Sanjay’s current role at Roofstock, he was the Co-creator and GM of Roofstock One, an innovative, transparent rental investment platform that allows accredited investors to get targeted exposure to the economics of curated SFR properties. Before joining Roofstock, Sanjay served as a Product Manager at Renew Financial and Director of Carolina Financial Group LLC. He also co-founded LCAP Advisors which provides Wall Street caliber portfolio analysis and risk assessment solutions to small banks and credit unions for their on-balance sheet loans. Sanjay has a Masters in Business Administration from The Wharton School.

Geoff is the Chief Blockchain Officer of Roofstock onChain where he leads the real estate investing platform’s foray into web3. After being accepted into Cypher Accelerator, the first-of-its-kind Wharton-backed program for blockchain startups, Geoff continues to push the blockchain ecosystem forward through real estate investing. Geoff built his career at top tier law firms practicing in the areas of capital markets, banking and credit, structured finance, private equity and cross-border transactions. Geoff’s prior role at Roofstock was as General Counsel where he advised on partnerships, product innovation, fundraising, deal structuring, real estate matters, securities law, international expansion, and all other legal and compliance matters. Before joining Roofstock, Geoff served as General Counsel at ApplePie Capital, where he was instrumental in helping the company originate over $500 million in small business loans in 3 years. He previously practiced law at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, White & Case and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Prior to attending law school, Geoff was an associate at McKinsey & Company. Geoff has an undergraduate degree from The American University of Paris and a Masters in International Economics from SDA Bocconi in Milan. He earned a JD and LLM from the Duke University School of Law.

Modernizing Home Maintenance with Brent Hasse, CEO of Flat

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 07:30:00 -0800

What a time to be alive. It truly is and this episode is proof of that. I'm talking with Brent Hasse, CEO of Flat. Flat is a subscription service for homeowners. They're leveraging smart technology, combined with a network of vetted trade partners, to provide superior home maintenance and wellness checks to homeowners. Brent gives us all the dirt on the business, including how strategic channel partnerships have proven to be significant driver of growth versus other more costly channels like digital advertising.

When building a startup in a category consumers don't know to search for, it can be a tough go. Listen in to hear how Brent is bringing Flat into homes today and what their expansion plans for the future looks like.

More about Brent and Flat
Flat is working to vastly improve the home ownership experience through data and technology. The company provides a subscription service that includes Wellness Checks (think Oil Change, but for your home), performs comprehensive maintenance and assessment of a home’s condition, and has the option to book repairs immediately with our network of vetted partners all through our platform. Flat offers homeowners peace of mind, reduced risk for major repairs through regularly inspecting a home, and frictionlessly performing timely minor maintenance. Everything will be trackable and could be used as a Carfax report for your home.

Brent is the founder and CEO of Flat, a tech-enabled proactive home maintenance and management platform to help flatten the cost of homeownership. He noticed we take better care of our cars and pets than our largest asset - our homes - and decided to create a platform to capture potential home issues as they arise and make projects more efficient for local vendors. He has over 10 years of real estate services experience and a passion for all things Chicago, Purdue basketball, and real estate.

Modernizing Design and Building ADUs with Alex Czarnecki, CEO of Cottage

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 16:00:00 -0800

Alex Czarnecki is leading the charge at Cottage, focused on modernizing the way in which homeowners can build ADUs. The popularity of ADUs only seems to grow as housing becomes tougher to afford while legacy zoning laws have made it very difficult to build new, infill housing units. With legislation changes to zoning laws and increased focused on units such as ADUs, it's no wonder the opportunity to revolutionize this segment of real estate is only accelerating.

Even though Cottage has only been in business for a little more than two years, the've completed projects in over 100 California cities, with a focus on the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. Alex breaks the opportunity down, mentioning this is not a winner take all game, but rather, there will be many winners (ideally that also means homeowners and renters win in all of this, as well).

Listen in as Alex breaks down the hubbub around ADUs.

More about Alex and Cottage
Cottage is an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) design-build firm committed to providing homeowners with the easiest process to build additional housing. As its primary focus, Cottage delivers ADUs, enabling homeowners to earn rental income or provide greatly needed housing to their family or local community by adding an extra unit to their home. Made up of architects, builders, and technologists, Cottage leverages their expertise in every step of the design and build process to build ADUs faster, with transparent pricing from the start, while simultaneously maintaining the highest standards for customization and quality. Meanwhile, contractors on the platform get a pipeline of projects and time-saving tools, so they can focus on providing quality work and client service.

Alex Czarnecki, CEO of Cottage, wants to help homeowners and contractors build more and build better. After forging a career launching new business units for Uber around the world, Alex took on the challenge of building his own ADU, but after confronting delays through an overly complex process, he knew there had to be a better way. Since its founding in 2020, Cottage has expanded to more than 100 California cities – and growing – to help homeowners get more out of their home with an ADU.

People Radar for the Office, Optimizing Space Usage with Andrew Farah, CEO of Density

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 06:05:00 -0800

Easily one of my favorite startup founding stories. Andrew Farah, CEO and Co-founder of Density, wanted to create an API he could call to find out how many people were in line at his favorite coffee shop. Once Andrew figured this out, he quickly discovered this sort of technology was something many real estate operations teams and workplace teams across the country would want. Shortly after announcing what he'd created and that he intended to build it out more, thousands signed up for a waitlist to learn more.

Density is both a software and hardware company, but as you'll hear Andrew describe, they're a reluctant hardware company that's really great at creating software solutions. By bringing in some of the best talent in creating physical products and leaning on his experience leading a dev shop, Andrew has created the perfect balance that is driving the success of Density today.

Whether or not you care about office space utilization, you'll be hard pressed to listen to Andrew and not be inspired by what he's building and dream up other use cases throughout this episode. Jump on in!

More about Density and Andrew
Density builds technology that helps companies understand how people use their workspaces. Its software unlocks comprehensive insights into how workspace is used through its privacy-first sensors. These insights inform workplace decisions at companies ranging from Fortune 1000 to high growth tech, including Uber, Pinterest, Shopify, Okta and other household names in financial services, e-commerce and social networking. Today, Density partners with companies that occupy more than 1.25 billion square feet across 32 countries.

Andrew is the co-founder and CEO of Density, driving the team toward its mission to help companies measure and improve their footprint on the world. Today, Density partners with companies that occupy more than 1.25 billion square feet across 32 countries. Prior to Density, Andrew spent five years as a Partner and Strategic Lead at Rounded, a product-focused software development agency. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Writing and a Master’s in Information Management, both from Syracuse University.

Renters Earn Rewards to Buy Real Estate with Will Dunn, CGO at Gravy

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 05:08:45 -0700

Over the last few years there's been a few startups that have tried to focus on the first-time home buyer as their market segment by courting renters through rewards programs. You can even see the evidence of this in how the listings marketplace websites like Zillow and Realtor.com want to build relationships with renters today—who in their minds are the homebuyers tomorrow.

Will Dunn, Co-founder and CGO of Gravy (Chief Growth Officer, though I recommended the G should be Gravy), breaks down why creating a unique rewards program for renters is a powerful tool to helping unlock homeownership. What's unique about Gravy is there is no fee up front for renters and landlords don't have to sign-up for anything nor change anything about how they collect rent.

Listen in as Will gives us all the details and more.

More about Gravy and Will
Gravy is a mobile app that helps renters become homebuyers.

Buying a home is a confusing and complicated process––especially if you don't have a network of friends/family who have done it––including knowing where to start.

Gravy is designed to be both the first-step toward homeownership for renters and each step following to getting the keys to a new home.

Will Dunn is the co-founder and CGO of Gravy, where he oversees the company’s marketing, customer acquisition, and B2B partner operations.

Prior to Gravy, Will was Business Manager of Resident Services at leading property management software company, Buildium. Teaming up with Buildium alumni Jimmy Lien and Jeff Dinter, the three launched Gravy in April 2022 to become the destination where all 100M+ renters in the U.S. save money to buy their first home and learn how to successfully navigate the homebuying process.

No-Code Platform for CRE Operators with Marcus Moufarrige, CEO of ility

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 05:59:52 -0700

Marcus Moufarrige, CEO of ility, joins Tech Nest to discuss all things no-code, frameworks, and building tools for those who run complex real estate businesses. Marcus' experience in the office flex-space gives him a unique advantage in understanding the needs for a flexible platform that is able to be molded to meet the unique needs of each operator's needs. ility is that platform. Being that ility is a no-code platform, built in a way to meet a large array of use cases, it may be one of the most versatile middle-wares on the market.

More about ility and Marcus
ility is a no-code platform for operators to streamline their now complex business.

Connecting new and legacy digital systems, ility’s middleware gives companies like RXR, Legal & General and EQ complete control over their technology, operations and offer. ility also has a strategic partnership with Microsoft.

By using physical rights management, operators have a simple framework for digitising their property, to increase NOI, improve efficiency and decrease operating expenses.

Marcus is effectively leading property into the world of 'composability'. He's also the ex-COO of Australian property giant, ServCorp, alongside fighting with Justin Bieber (Google it!).

Modernized Accounting Platform for Residential Landlords with Logan Ransley, Co-founder of Landlord Studio

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:02:54 -0700

As the story goes with many products, someone got tired of dealing with the same problems, they searched the market for what they believed should be a product to solve the problem, only to discover there was not an adequate solution. So instead of allowing the problem to persist, they built the product themself. That's sort of the story here with Landlord Studio.

Today I'm joined by Co-founder, Logan Ransley. He's breaking down some of the common problems residential landlords face every day when it comes to managing their finances.

It can be simple keeping track of one rental, but when you start building your portfolio, problems multiple and this can cost an investor lots of time and money. Landlord Studio is unique in that they're not just focused on the US market. With a presence in Europe and Australia, as well as the US, Landlord Studio has focused on building a platform that can meet the investor where they're at. Equally as unique, the company has had a mobile-first mentality from the start—making Landlord Studio one of the few options available that give residential investors the accounting tools they need on the go.

More about Landlord Studio and Logan
Landlord studio is designed specifically for residential landlords with between 1 and 25 rental properties. It simplifies and automates the process of collecting and reconciling rental income and expense transactions. With automated bank feeds, an intelligent receipt scanner, and expense categories that align perfectly with the IRS tax forms, Landlord Studio radically improves the quality and the timeliness of the bookkeeping process, making it infinitely easier at tax time.

In addition to providing accountancy support, Landlord Studio helps landlords maximize the ROI on their property investments with a suite of management features such as online rent collection, tenant screening, listings, document storage, reporting, and maintenance tracking. All features are available on both desktop and mobile and are easy to use, making adoption simple for anyone with a smartphone.

Logan Ransley is the Co-Founder of Landlord Studio. He is also an official member of the Forbes Real Estate Council.

Digs Journey from Start to Exit to Rebrand with Pat McLoughlin, Product Lead at OJO

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 07:31:10 -0700

Pat McLoughlin was the first person to agree to grab coffee with me when I moved to Chicago that was not a coworker of mine. We met up in a Foxtrot Cafe in mid 2019. It was there he shared with me what Digs was working on and what they hoped to achieve—ultimately helping more people realize their dreams of homeownership. Fast-forward to late 2020 and Digs was acquired by OJO, a well-funded and well-respected real estate tech company that hosts a vast network of agent partners and operates its own listings marketplace.

Pat walks us through the journey of his original idea, getting started, going through the acquisition process, and finally rebranding Digs into what is now known as OJO Homeowner. This episode is absolutely jam-packed with insights. Check it out.

More about Pat McLoughlin and OJO
Pat McLoughlin is the Product Lead for OJO Homeowner. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of Digs, a fintech company that was acquired by OJO Labs in 2020. In addition to his role at OJO, Pat is a multifamily real estate investor and licensed real estate agent. He has a degree in Architecture from Miami University.

OJO acquired Digs in late 2020 to expand fintech offerings to their consumers. Digs provides homeowners with tools to help manage their biggest asset including home valuations, mortgage tracking, and an FDIC insured savings account.

Leasing Compliance Monitoring for Affordable Housing with Christine Wendell, CEO of Pronto Housing

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 15:38:43 -0700

If you've never heard of lease compliance monitoring, then you and I can join the same club. When Christine and I met at Blueprint, she shared with me what Pronto Housing was doing in the affordable housing space and I knew we had to have her on the show. Did you know there's 80 pages of paperwork when proceeding through lease compliance verification? What a nightmare! There's a good need to make affordable housing more accessible and to improve the experience—that's what Pronto Housing is working towards.

More about Pronto Housing and Christine Wendell
Pronto makes affordable housing leasing and compliance efficient and easy - helping property owners reduce costs, and improving the renter experience.

Christine Wendell is the founder and CEO of Pronto Housing. Prior to Pronto, she worked in real estate investing and development with RXR Realty and Megalith Capital. She has a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BA from Kenyon College.

HW Media CEO Clayton Collins, ATTOM EVP Rick Sharga, & Tech Nest Host Nate Smoyer Discuss the Blueprint Conference and What It Means for Proptech

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 05:52:58 -0700

This is a crosspost episode from the Housing News Podcast, hosted by Clayton Collins.

This week, Clayton is coming to your feed live from the Blueprint proptech and real estate conference in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. He had the opportunity to sit down in person and talk to Rick Sharga, the Executive Vice President at ATTOM, and Nate Smoyer, the Head of Marketing at Obie as well as the host of the Tech Nest Podcast.

The three of them talk about what they learned and took away from the Blueprint conference, and how the market is impacting the decisions being made by prop-tech, mortgage tech, and real estate companies.

The Housing News podcast explores the most important topics happening in mortgage, real estate, and fintech. Each week a new mortgage or real estate executive joins the show to add perspective to the top stories crossing HousingWire’s news desk. Hosted by Clayton Collins and produced by the HW Media team.

Check out the Housing News podcast at https://www.housingwire.com/podcast

Follow and connect with this week's guests:

Proptech Tailwinds, Shakeups, and a Hot-Take on Venture-Backed Property Management with Nate Smoyer, Host of Tech Nest

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 06:34:10 -0700

Links and details mentioned in this episode

Proptech is finally turning a corner where the best of ideas are catching—the next few years we'll see many more ideas, but consolidation of companies impacting real estate will continue
Check out housingwireannual.com to register for the Oct 3-5 event
New interviews coming up with Reasonai, Morgan Properties, and Landlord Studio
Search Tech Nest episodes to find and listen to interviews with Lydia Winkler, Fatima Dicko, and Michael Lucarelli
Look up Poplar Homes, PURE Property Management, and Great Jones to dig in more about how venture-backed property management is a trend to watch

Nate Smoyer is the host of Tech Nest. When not podcasting, he's head of marketing at Obie, an insurtech that partners with proptech and fintech companies to provide real estate investors insurance. Obie differentiates by way of its propriety instantly-bindable quote engine—the only insurtech capable of doing so as embedded insurance for real estate investors. Nate was previously head of marketing at Avail, where he helped see the company through its Series A, and then exit to Realtor.com in just 18 months.

Connect with Nate Smoyer

Advanced Management Tech for Vacation Rentals with Marcus Räder, CEO of Hostaway

Nate Smoyer — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 17:12:01 -0700

More about Marcus and Hostaway
Marcus Rader is co-founder and CEO of Hostaway, the leading all-in-one vacation rental management software. Originally from Finland, Marcus has lived in many countries around the world including Sweden, Poland, and The Netherlands before settling in Canada. It was this passion for travel and dedication to learning about the vacation rental ecosystem, together with the deep expertise in technology and start-ups of Marcus and his co-founders, that enabled the creation of Hostaway. In his spare time, Marcus enjoys following the latest in the venture capital markets alongside playing guitar and listening to death metal with his daughter.

Hostaway is the world's leading vacation rental software which makes it easier for property managers and hosts - whether they have 5 or 1,000 vacation rentals - to get more out of their business while spending less time on tedious manual tasks.

Hostaway's property management system and channel manager offer scalable solutions for marketing, sales, reporting, communication, and more, with an extensive Marketplace of over 100 integrated software and service partners, backed by award-winning customer support.

The company was founded in 2015 by a team of ardent technology enthusiasts. Unlike competitors, Hostaway’s platform was built in-house, making it one of the most reliable solutions on the market. This reliability has been recognized by leading online travel agencies Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com who have also chosen Hostaway as one of their elite software partners.

Venture Backed Property Management with Chuck Hattemer, Co-founder and CMO of Poplar Homes

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 19:14:17 -0700

More about Chuck and Poplar Homes
Chuck Hattemer has over 10 years of experience in professional marketing, sales, and executive roles. Since co-founding Poplar in 2014, Chuck has gone on to grow his company to over 300+ employees, with over $75M venture backing and 13,000+ doors under management across the country. In his spare time, he contributes to Forbes and other industry puzblications such as the SFAA Magazine.

Poplar Homes is a tech-enabled real estate service helping investors manage and monetize residential rental property across disparate locations. With remote staffing and an AI-powered platform, Poplar leases, manages, and maintains over 13,000+ doors across 19 markets in 11 states. With Poplar, property owners can confidently unlock geographical expansion to grow their portfolios like never before.

Putting Resident Experience First in Multi-Family with Fatima Dicko, CEO of Sugar

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 07:22:43 -0700

More about Fatima and Sugar
Fatima Dicko is the founder & CEO of Sugar, a platform that helps apartment residents feel more at home. Before Sugar, Fatima spent 5 years at P&G as a senior engineer on a product team developing products 3-10 years away from market.

Fatima came to the U.S. from Mali at a young age and grew up in New York City, receiving her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University and MBA from Stanford Business School.

Fatima is a frequent mentor and volunteer for organizations such as Built By Girls, Black Girls Code and MLT. She was named as '18 Inspiring Women to Watch' by Inc and listed on the 2021 Forbes 'Next 1000' list. She has also been featured in TechCrunch, Business Insider, Crunchbase, Black Enterprise and CNBC.

Sugar allows residents to pay rent, unlock doors, socialize with neighbors and easily communicate with management - all inside a single app. By elevating the residential experience at their properties, Sugar helps managers attract new residents, increase lease renewal rates and introduce additional revenue streams.

Design Driven Prefab Homes with Steve Glenn, CEO of Plant Prefab

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 06:39:56 -0700

More about Steve and Plant Prefab
Steve Glenn, CEO, founded Plant Prefab in 2016 as an offshoot of the award-winning residential design studio, LivingHomes, which he founded in 2006. Previously, Glenn worked with the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) and managed the development of a $220 million program in Mozambique. He was also the founder and CEO of PeopleLink, a leading provider of enterprise community solutions; founding partner of idealab, a business incubation firm that raised and invested $1 billion in a number of successful companies; co-director of the Virtual Reality Studio at Walt Disney Imagineering; and co-founder of Clearview Software, which was sold to Apple Computer in 1988. He holds a BA with honors from Brown University, studied Urban Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and was a Coro Fellow.

Plant Prefab is the first Certified B Corporation™ building technology company dedicated to sustainable design, materials, and operations. The company’s patented Plant Building System™ utilizes advanced digital modeling and fully customizable Plant Panels™ and Plant Modules™ to help architects, developers, general contractors, and individuals design and build multifamily and custom single-family homes 20 to 50 percent faster than site-based methods. The system provides better quality control, design flexibility, and time, cost, and material efficiency than traditional methods of offsite or on-site construction. Plant Prefab has two factories in California (Rialto, Ontario) and a design studio and show home in Santa Monica. With a mission to build a better world by design, Plant Prefab was the first housing prefabricator to announce a net zero goal and has achieved carbon neutrality in their operations since 2020. Plant Prefab is backed by leading investors including Amazon, Asahi Kasei, Gerdau Paris Ventures, Obvious Ventures, and others.

Rental Inspection Transparency with Lydia Winkler, Co-founder and COO of RentCheck

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 06:49:28 -0700

More about Lydia and RentCheck
My name is Lydia Winkler and I co-founded RentCheck in 2019. RentCheck is a direct result of a personal problem I faced: when I was a law student, I had to sue my former landlord over a security deposit that was wrongly withheld. I was successful, but realized my problem could be eliminated through the use of technology, and RentCheck was born.

We’re RentCheck, a venture-backed, New Orleans, LA startup on a mission to make renting fair and transparent.

We’ve built software that serves Renters, Landlords, and Property Managers by providing an easy to use experience for documenting rental properties and by becoming the trusted third-party for security deposit administration. We are an early stage company looking to transform the $100 billion residential real estate industry.

Modern Rental Management Tools for Real Estate Agents and Investors with Michael Lucarelli, CEO of RentSpree

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 06:39:20 -0700

More about Michael and RentSpree
Michael Lucarelli is the CEO and Co-Founder of RentSpree, an award-winning rental software company. Lucarelli founded RentSpree in 2016 to reimagine how people rent homes. His mission is to pioneer a new rental process that allows all renters, landlords, and agents to interact seamlessly. Lucarelli is the recipient of Forbes 30 under 30, Los Angeles Business Journal 20 in their 20s, ASPIRE Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year, and Resident Malibu Award. Additionally, Lucarelli is an M.B.A. graduate of Pepperdine University.

Founded in 2016, RentSpree is an award-winning rental software known in all 50 states for its easy-to-use tenant screening process, renter management, partnership program and rental screening API. In just six years, RentSpree has grown its database by partnering with over 250 of the most trusted names in real estate and over one million agents, owners and renters across the country.

RentSpree helps real estate agents handle the influx in applications by providing them with professional tools to help save time, reduce liability, and grow their business with quality tenants.

Real-Time iBuyer Data with Tyler Okland, Co-founder of Datadoor

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 06:28:31 -0700

More about Datadoor and Tyler Okland
Datadoor is a data analytics startup that collects robust iBuyer data in real time.

Tyler Okland is a Stanford trained physician who currently works as a Fellow in Facial Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery at Vanderbilt Hospital. He writes a newsletter called The Operator, covering technology and business strategy. Tyler co-founded Datadoor, a proptech analytics startup with Sebastian Szturo in May, 2022.

Modern Commercial Lease Management with Matt Giffune, CEO of Occupier

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 06:27:19 -0700

More about Occupier and Matt Giffune
The way organizations interact, leverage, and use real estate has changed, especially throughout COVID-19, but the way in which teams manage their real estate tasks has not.

With an increasing demand for real time data, quick insights, and collaboration tools, the use of email and spreadsheets to get things done just doesn’t cut it. Teams need a smarter way to rapidly gather, organize, and share critical information within their real estate portfolio.

Tenants are faced with unique real estate challenges and we set out to build digital solutions that automate and streamline the management of your lease portfolio and transaction.

Occupier's lease management software connects brokers, real estate teams, and lease accounting professionals so that they can make rapid, strategic real estate decisions, and proactively adapt to the changing needs of their business.

Occupier recently completed a $10.5 million series A fundraise, co-led by Stage 2 Capital and OMERS Ventures with participation from seed stage investors, Alate Partners, MetaProp, and Second Century Ventures.

Matt Giffune has been in the commercial real estate industry for over 15 years and his experience spans many facets. Prior to co-founding Occupier, Matt was the Vice President at JLL representing tenants and landlords of office, industrial and laboratory space and then moved onto becoming the National Director of Strategic Sales at VTS.

Resident-First Property Management with Marcela Sapone, CEO of Alfred

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 07:04:29 -0700

More about Marcela and Alfred
Marcela Sapone is the co-founder and CEO of Alfred, the most advanced residential technology and management platform in the U.S., specializing in a single-stop solution to maximize asset value. Alfred’s footprint expands to over 300,000 residents in single-family and multi-family rentals, in 52 markets in the U.S. and Canada. Sapone has been named to Crain’s 40 under 40, Top 30 under 30 by Forbes and among Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, and winner of Connect CRE's Women in Real Estate Award in 2021. Her experiences living abroad and studying Urban Development in Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Beijing, and Bangalore as a young adult greatly influenced her work. Named one of Goldman Sachs’s “most intriguing entrepreneurs,” Sapone earned her B.A. & B.S. from Boston University as a full tuition Trustee Scholar and holds an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School, where she created the Alfred business model from her Boston apartment. Prior to founding Alfred, Sapone began her career at McKinsey & Company, worked at a mid market Private Equity firm, American Securities, and at Bridgewater.

Alfred is the largest and most advanced residential management platform. Since its inception, Alfred has focused on providing a resident-first experience. With an unparalleled knowledge of what residents want and technology that boosts income and efficiency for owners and operators, Alfred provides a single stop that elevates the rental ecosystem for all involved. Named by Fast Company as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies, Alfred's AOS technology drives lower operating costs and higher returns for property owners and operators. Alfred's portfolio now extends to more than 300,000 residents in 52 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

Unlocking Renewable Energy in CRE with James Geshwiler with Chief Strategy and Investment Officer of Catalyze

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 16:51:51 -0700

More about James and Catalyze
James brings twenty-five years of entrepreneurial, technology and finance expertise to energy analytics with degrees from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, UCLA, University of Texas at Austin’s Plan II Liberal Arts Honors Program. Previously, James spent 17 years exclusively building software companies as Managing Director of Converge Venture Partners, a Boston-based seed investment fund, and its predecessor, CommonAngels, an angel group comprised of leaders in the technology community. He previously worked at Cambridge Energy Research Associates and for the US Department of Energy, at the latter managing a team of 30 senior scientists and engineers at the US National Laboratories.

Catalyze is a leading clean energy transition company specializing in commercial and industrial partnerships. By taking on the cost and risk of building, financing, owning and operating clean energy assets and infrastructure — including solar, battery energy storage, and electric vehicle charging — Catalyze makes it easy and profitable for its commercial real estate partners to reach their ESG goals and deploy clean energy solutions across national portfolios.

It's All About the People in Property Management with Joe Polverari, Co-founder of PURE Property Management

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 06:54:59 -0700

More about PURE Property Management and Joe Polverari
PURE Property Management is the fastest growing profitable residential property management and technology companies in the U.S. Led by a team of experienced industry professionals and seasoned technology innovators, PURE acquires residential property management companies and invests in their people and processes. By deploying technology and providing operational efficiencies, PURE creates simple and satisfying experiences for residents and investors, including institutional portfolio managers.

Joseph Polverari is co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley-based PURE Property Management, the fastest growing profitable residential property management and technology company in the U.S. He is a seasoned entrepreneur and fintech pioneer, who led corporate development and strategy at Yodlee, a financial data aggregation and analytics platform, through its IPO in 2014 and subsequent acquisition by Envestnet. Polverari is leveraging his expertise to lead an experienced team of industry insiders looking to transform the traditionally cumbersome and complex process of managing properties.

Creating the Check Engine Light for Homes with Dan Simpkins, CEO of Dwellwell

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 07:36:07 -0700

Learn more about Dwellwell and Dan
Dwellwell is the first and only comprehensive “check engine light” for homes. This patent-pending technology senses and alerts residential property owner-operators to irregularities in core building systems’ performance, providing early detection of issues before they lead to system failure or devolve to catastrophic faults.

Dwellwell monitors and proactively identifies issues across core property systems — including HVAC, electrical and plumbing, as well as indoor air quality — helping large-scale single-family rental (SFR) and multifamily owners streamline maintenance, generate cost savings and improve resident comfort.

A serial entrepreneur who holds more than 20 U.S. patents, Dan Simpkins brings more than two decades of startup success. He founded Hillcrest Labs, now a division of CEVA (NASDAQ: CEVA), which introduced the first SmartTV operating system to the market and developed the first motion-controller for television. He also founded SALIX Technologies, a telecom company that was acquired by Tellabs (NASDAQ: TLAB) for $300 million.

Rethinking Rental Property Finance Management with Mathias Korder, CEO of Baselane

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 07:04:39 -0700

More about Mathias and Baselane
Mathias co-founded Baselane together with Thorben Scheidger and Jad Yaghi with the goal of building modern financial technology to help the 11 million individual landlords and real estate investors in the US grow their rental investment portfolios, and to make real estate investing more accessible to new investors.

While working together at Boston Consulting Group from 2012 to 2018, Mathias and Thorben saw the opportunity to build a vertical-focused financial platform for individual landlords and real estate investors - a massive segment of the US economy - who are lacking modern financial technology, forced to rely on fragmented solutions, manual processes, and limited data to manage their rental properties.

Baselane is an end-to-end banking and financial management platform for landlords and individual real estate investors. Baselane’s all-in-one financial platform integrates banking, bookkeeping, rent collection, analytics, and more, to help landlords seamlessly manage their finances and maximize returns on their property investments.

Finding Small Multifamily Rentals to Invest In with Jeff Gopshtein of Yieldeasy

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 06:39:39 -0700

More about Yieldeasy and Jeff Gopshtein
Yieldeasy is a marketplace to buy & sell small apartment buildings.

Having spent 7+ years in institutional real estate investing and private equity, Jeff ventured off into the entrepreneurial world and is building Yieldeasy to help mom and pop investors acquire small balance CRE. Jeff's previous work experience also includes capital markets, development, and property management. He's bought and sold single family rentals during the pandemic which gave him the idea for this business.

Security Deposits as a Service with Chanin Ballance, CEO of Roost

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 31 May 2022 11:20:50 -0700

More about Roost and Chanin
Roost’s free platform helps large multifamily automate the deposit intake and refund process, reduce compliance risk, and minimize disputes. It also helps renters avoid late fees and build credit history thanks to renting and financial tips, savings deals, and a simple way to turn their refundable deposits into an instant emergency fund.

Roost is a mission-driven tech company focused on improving property NOI and renter financial health. Co-founder & CEO Chanin Ballance is an experienced Founder (and multifamily real estate & PropTech investor) with three exits already behind her.

Mapping Real Estate Data with Josh Fraser, CEO of Estated

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 24 May 2022 05:16:34 -0700

Learn more about Estated and Josh
We offer quick and easy access to data on 150 million residential and commercial properties nationwide across the US. We've built a database which allows users to search properties across over 3,200 counties in real time. Hundreds of customers have integrated our property data into their businesses to gain deeper insights into their clients.

Estated graduated from Techstars Boulder in 2017, which led to capital partnerships with Foundry Group and Techstars Ventures.

Vacation Rental & Hospitality Market Tech with Vince Breslin, CEO of Uplisting, and Emmanuel Lavoie, CEO of Jetstream

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 17 May 2022 20:25:49 -0700

More about Vince and Uplisting
Uplisting, an Airbnb Preferred Partner, is a property and channel management software built specifically for growing short-term rental businesses. Property managers can manage short-term rentals and bookings, automate tasks, message guests, take payment, and so much more, in one easy-to-use platform (that never double-books).

Vince Breslin is a co-founder of Uplisting, a property and channel management software built specifically for growing short-term rental businesses. Launched in 2017, after the co-founders met working at HouseTrip (sold to TripAdvisor) Uplisting now works with managers across the globe, helping them to increase revenue, decrease inefficiencies, create 5-star guest experiences and reliably grow.

More about Emmanuel and Jetstream
Jetstream Hospitality Solutions is an all-in-one technology platform and services solution that provides a powerful way for owners, managers and developers of short-term rental properties to maximize revenues and realize opportunities in the short-term and flexible rental market. Jetstream combines best-in-class marketing expertise and distribution technology with high-quality customer support to deliver guest delight, streamline operations and reduce financial risk.

Emmanuel is a passionate French-Canadian engineer and entrepreneur who values integrity and competent execution above all. Graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2002, Emmanuel landed in the HVAC Consulting world where he specialized in sustainable and energy efficient solutions for his clients. Following a successful exit of his small HVAC consulting engineering firm, Emmanuel took a major fork in the road and joined Jetstream in 2015 in the role of COO.

Initially a small niche OTA, Jetstream quickly found itself providing connectivity and channel marketing services for an ever-expanding list of vacation rental resort management companies throughout North America and Europe. Emmanuel co-led the rapid growth of the company including a successful Series A and eventual exit to The RedAwning Group in 2018. Seizing on the financial difficulties suffered by the travel industry at the onset of COVID, Emmanuel and his business partner seized the opportunity to re-acquire Jetstream from under the parent company, and are now delivering on their bold vision for the future of hospitality.

Emmanuel is a disciple of data-driven decision making and leading by values. When not trying to build an exemplary business, Emmanuel can be found skiing, sailing or paragliding.

Fully Digital Fund Transfers in Real Estate with Earnnest CRO, Russell Smith

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 10 May 2022 13:31:48 -0700

More about Earnnest and Russell
Earnnest is how money moves in real estate! We are a digital payments company based in Greenville, South Carolina. We are the industry leader in digital earnest money payments - free for agents, free for escrow holders - and also offer a full payment suite for all payment occasions - agent fee billing, commission disbursements, lease payments, etc.

Russell Smith serves as Earnnest's Chief Revenue Officer, leading all marketing, sales, and customer success efforts for the digital payments leader. Prior to joining Earnnest, Russell held multiple go-to-market roles at HouseCanary, RealScout, and Trulia. He was named as a 2020 HousingWire Rising Star and is a NAR REACH Mentor. Russell lives in Napa, California with his wife and son.

Using AI to Detect Tenant Fraud with Daniel Berlind, CEO of Snappt

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 03 May 2022 06:58:46 -0700

More about Snappt and Daniel
Snappt, a PropTech company offering fraud detection for property managers, today announced it has secured $100 million in Series A funding, led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners. The company's Series A funding continues the momentum of rapid growth Snappt saw in 2021, including apartment unit and revenue growth of +700%. The new investment will be used to accelerate product development, increase sales and marketing efforts and expand market reach.

Daniel Berlind is a real estate executive and the CEO of Snappt. Dan co-founded Snappt after running his own property management company and noticing a significant, industry-wide financial issue in the multi-family rental industry. Previously, Daniel was a professional baseball player for the Chicago Cubs and Minnesota Twins.

(Links above not working? Visit TechNest.io)

Finding Upside in Commercial Elevator Tech with Ashleigh Wilson, CEO of Auditmate

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 19:59:04 -0700

More about Auditmate and Ashleigh
With a combined total of 117 years of experience in the property management industry, Ashleigh's team realized that property managers were always getting the short end of the stick when it came to elevator/escalator contracts. Ashleigh founded Auditmate as a way to ensure that property managers are actually receiving the services that they are paying for and are able to save tens of thousands of dollars in the process.

Ashleigh Wilson is a San Francisco-based Entrepreneur, raised by a used car salesman and an elevator guy.

Tapping into her roots, Ashleigh opened and sold multiple small businesses by the age of twenty until ultimately landing in the elevator business. She excelled in the industry and was leading global research projects and being mentored by the CEO of one of the leading elevator companies.

Connect with Ashleigh on LinkedIn
Check out Auditmate

Second Home Co-Ownership Market Goes Mainstream with Pacaso CEO, Austin Allison

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:42:08 -0700

More about Pacaso and Austin Allison
Pacaso is a technology-enabled marketplace that modernizes real estate co-ownership to make owning a second home possible and enjoyable for more people. Pacaso curates luxury listings with premium amenities and high-end contemporary interior design, offers ⅛ to ½ ownership with integrated financing, and, after purchase, professionally manages the home and supports seamless resale. Co-founded by Austin Allison and Spencer Rascoff in 2020, Pacaso is the fastest company to reach Unicorn status and now operates in more than 30 top second home destinations around the world. Pacaso has been certified as a Great Place to Work and is recognized as one of Glassdoor's 2022 Best Places to Work.

Austin co-founded Pacaso to make the dream of second home ownership a reality for more people after experiencing the profound effect it had on his own life. In 2009, he founded dotloop in his hometown of Cincinnati, a company that created software to seamlessly manage real estate transactions. Zillow acquired dotloop in 2015, and Austin continued to run dotloop as a Zillow executive until 2018.

Bootstrapped Land Marketplace is Taking Ground, with Founder Michael Leigeber of Landsearch.com

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 05:40:41 -0700

More about Landsearch.com and Michael:
Land represents a massive opportunity with over 1.3 billion private acres in the U.S. across distinct uses. However, an ecosystem around it hasn't been fostered–from education and discovery to finance and improvement.

Our initial focus is creating the best marketplace experience with a long-term goal of being the face of land and making land more accessible for all.

Michael has over 15 years of marketing and technical experience. He cofounded a digital marketing agency that grew to a 20 person team and has consulted with major brands on digital strategy.

Email Michael at michael@landsearch.com.

Can Auctions Bring Transparency to Buying Real Estate? With Jordan Allen, Doorsey CEO

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 06:29:09 -0700

More about Doorsey and Jordan
Doorsey is on a mission to innovate the home-buying offer process, offering buyers, sellers, and their agents an offer platform that drives efficiency, transparency as well as confidence. Through Doorsey, buyers, sellers, and agents are able to view all aspects of the offer process in real-time, under pre-accepted terms — enabling all prospective buyers to know exactly where they stand and what it will take to win. Sellers set a minimum price to protect their bottom line, and buyers are able to make offers with confidence, thanks to next-level listings inclusive of virtual tours, neutral third-party inspection reports, disclosures, & more than 100 up-to-date, accurate photos. Each listing also has a community forum, where agents, building professionals, and sellers can come together with prospective buyers to share expertise & answer questions on properties, repairs, upgrades, and the neighborhoods.

Jordan Allen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Doorsey, the online platform set to improve the home buying offer process. Prior to Doorsey, Allen was the CEO & Founder of the short-term rental company, Stay Alfred. A real estate and army veteran, Allen knows how to foster, lead, and grow PropTech's companies at scale.

See what it's like to watch a Doorsey transaction in action.

CRE Inefficiencies Create a Booming Data Business with Connell Mcgill, CEO of Enertiv

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 06:55:29 -0700

More about Enertiv and Connell McGill

Enertiv is an operational intelligence platform that delivers transparency from the boardroom to the boiler room, enabling commercial real estate portfolios to do more with less, decarbonize operations, and ultimately increase asset value.

Connell McGill co-founded Enertiv in 2011. Connell majored in Entrepreneurship and Business Strategy at Babson College. After Babson, he worked Momentum Bay Consulting as an energy analyst for green building projects, and then the New England Consulting Group as a Project Manager.

More Than an iBuyer with Ian Wong, Co-founder & CTO of Opendoor

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 06:55:51 -0700

More about Ian Wong and Opendoor

Ian Wong is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Opendoor, where he is responsible for the development of product and technology. Ian is building a team of engineers, data scientists, product managers and designers to modernize the real estate industry. He was previously pursuing his PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford when he left to join Square as their first data scientist.

Opendoor is a leading digital platform for residential real estate. With a mission to empower everyone with the freedom to move, Opendoor has reinvented one of life’s most important transactions with a new, radically simple way to buy and sell a home through an on-demand, digital experience.

Creating Faster, Better Appraisal Management Systems, Interview with Reggora CEO and Co-founder Brian Zitin

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:18:00 -0800

More about Reggora and Brian Zitin:
Reggora’s appraisal management platform for mortgage lenders and appraisal vendors delivers unprecedented efficiency and agility across the entire residential appraisal process. Through smart automations, configurable workflows, and LOS and POS integrations, Reggora unites systems and stakeholders to help lenders and appraisers increase capacity and deliver high quality appraisals. The platform combines advanced payment processing, algorithmic appraisal ordering, detailed and customized reporting, and finally, a modern user experience, helping to allocate orders efficiently, reduce human error, and prepare the industry for the future of valuation.

Brian Zitin is the co-founder and CEO of Reggora, a venture-backed startup that provides software to speed up the appraisal process for mortgage lenders and real estate appraisers. Prior to Reggora, Brian co-founded a real estate brokerage, which was based on a proprietary algorithm that helped efficiently target and sell investment properties in the Greater Boston area. This experience exposed Brian to the inefficiencies in the modern appraisal process, which led to the start of Reggora. Brian has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 as well as a HousingWire Tech Trendsetter.

Financing $1.5B as Unsecured Loans Through Service Contractors in 2 Years with David Haas, Co-founder and COO of PowerPay

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 04:23:56 -0800

More about David and PowerPay

PowerPay is a digital lending platform for the home improvement industry. Our fully automated technology offers near-instant approvals on loans up to $100,000, helping homeowners translate expensive home improvement projects into low monthly fees that can be paid over time.

Unlike other digital lending platforms, PowerPay is a fully independent company that is committed to delivering loans with no extra fees or added costs in order to offer the lowest monthly payment possible to our customers. After all, the more affordable the loan, the bigger the possibilities for your home.

David has over 25 years of successful business experience and ownership of multiple lines of service. David has extensive experience working in the home services space - consumer financing for home improvements, comprehensive digital marketing, and web design.

Radically Rethinking Real Estate Sales and Development Software with Simeon Garratt, CEO of Spark

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 05:33:59 -0800

More About Spark and Simeon Garratt

Spark is an esteemed real estate software company, leading the New Development industry in digital sales, marketing, and management solutions. Working with developers, project marketing firms and new development-oriented brokerages in over 80 cities globally, has positioned Spark as the fastest growing technology platform in the industry and a leader within their respective vertical.

As a company they combine several areas of expertise to radically rethink existing systems. Beyond having a regionally agnostic technology, the way Spark structures and offers visibility to data sets them apart in the industry. This is a fundamental aspect of the platform itself and the first time in this industry that developers can use one system to make key decisions

As co-founder of Spark, Simeon has been responsible for landing some of Spark’s top real estate clients in North America. Years of living abroad in Asia and building his experience in the real estate industry fueled his ultimate vision — to transform and streamline how new development is managed and sold. With an extensive background in selling and marketing property, Simeon has been involved in the sales of over 1,000 homes internationally which helped bring Spark into more than 80 cities worldwide. Recently, Garratt has been nominated to President of the BC Real Estate Tech Association, where he looks forward to sharing his expertise and institutional knowledge of the fast-changing industry.

AI and Automation Powering Real Estate Development, with William Sankey, CEO of Northspyre

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 06:13:01 -0800

More About Northspyre and William Sankey

Northspyre is the only intelligence software on the market purpose-built by a real estate developer for real estate developers managing ground-up developments, fitouts and major renovations across asset classes (multifamily, office, retail, hospitality, mixed use, etc.).

Northspyre leverages automation, data analytics and artificial intelligence to address age-old challenges faced by real estate project delivery teams like difficult and unpredictable project outcomes due to reactive, gut-driven decision-making and bottlenecks from administrative burden. Instead, Northspyre empowers project leads with proactive insights, dynamic forecasts, and early warnings so that they can focus on making data-driven, strategic decisions.

William Sankey, Jr. is the Co-founder/CEO of Northspyre, a real estate technology startup bringing automation, data analytics and proactive intelligence to CRE project delivery. Formally educated at Yale University (architecture) and Harvard University (urban planning and real estate development), William has always had an interest in the way we build our cities, whether it was through design or transformational technologies.

Tech to Tackle the $500B Indoor Air Quality Industry with Michael Driedger, Founder of Airsset

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 05:34:07 -0800

About Airsset and Michael

Airsset is a data and analytics platform built on top of IoT devices which collect indoor air quality data. We turn data into information and our industry partners turn that into building improvements.

Michael has been in the building industry his entire life, from consulting to software proptech start-ups. His passion for air quality began when his father (who spent much of his life as a drywaller), began to lose lung capacity due to drywall dust build up in his lungs. The big bodacious problem of bad indoor air all around us is what drives the Airsset team to build tools for the entire building industry.

Reducing Hidden Costs and Finding Lost Revenue in Apartments with Nick Latz, CRO at Zego

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 06:13:43 -0800

About Nick and Zego
Nick Latz, Chief Revenue Officer, leads Zego (Powered by PayLease) Go-to-Market organization and is focused on market strategy, marketing engagement, and sales execution. Prior to Zego, Nick worked as a Director of Value Creation at Vista Consulting Group, the consulting and operating arm of Vista Equity Partners.

Zego is a property technology company that frees management companies and community associations to go above and beyond for residents through resident experience management solutions (think rent and utility payments, resident communication, maintenance requests, and more).

Future Trends in Proptech Are Here Now with Zain Jaffer, Partner at Blue Field Capital

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 06:17:21 -0800

About Zain Jaffer and Blue Field Capital

Blue Field Capital has a $1B+ real estate portfolio with investments including land, apartments, warehouses, hotels, office and senior care facilities.

An entrepreneur and investor in promising PropTech start-ups, Zainali “Zain” Jaffer is a private investor looking for projects and approaches this budding industry with one foot planted in his tech-industry experience and the other firmly grounded in his commercial real estate acumen.

Zain is also the host of the podcast PropTechVC, where he interviews the innovators, disruptors, and mavericks of the real estate industry, bringing listeners the latest conversations, trends and opportunities in the market. During the show, Jaffer delights in discussions that explore the many applications for technological breakthroughs that are transforming the market in real time. New guests are featured on a regular basis, and new episodes are posted almost every day, along with available video that can be found on the podcast’s home website, PropTechVC.com.

Industrial Warehousing Innovations, with Brad Wright of Chunker and Peter Lewis of Wharton Equity Partners

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 07:23:47 -0800

About Peter Lewis and Wharton Equity Partners
Peter C. Lewis is the President and Founder of Wharton Equity Partners, a prominent real estate developer and investor with over thirty years of experience in multifamily, mixed-use and, most recently, industrial sectors.

Wharton Equity Partners is a NYC-based real estate owner, operator and developer with an increasingly active venture capital arm - Wharton Equity Ventures - which has been an important investor in several pioneering companies that have achieved valuations in excess of $1 billion.

About Brad Wright and Chunker
Brad is the CEO of Chunker, a marketplace for short-term, on-demand warehouse space. As CEO Brad is responsible for overseeing the vision and operations of Chunker along with driving sales and company growth.

Chunker is a marketplace for listing and procuring short-term warehouse space. Simply put: it’s the Airbnb for warehouse space. Spaces range anywhere from 500 to 200,000+ SF in 41 states and 155 cities across the U.S.

Tech Nest Podcast Returns with FinLedger

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 06:45:41 -0800

About Nate:
Nate Smoyer is Director of Marketing for Avail, a platform for DIY landlords and their renters. He helped take the company from seed stage through series A, and to exit in just under 18 months. Proptech is a passion and he’s mildly obsessed with the industry. Outside of work, he’s running through the Black Hills of South Dakota seeking adventure. When not running, you’ll find him on the highway riding his Indian Chief Vintage, at the skatepark riding BMX—all before resting by the fire with a glass of bourbon and good book.

Nate & Tech Nest Links:

About Clayton & HW Media:
Clayton Collins is the founder and CEO of HW Media. He leads HW Media’s corporate strategy and content roadmap, while building a world-class team of business media professionals. He is also managing partner of Riomar Capital, an entrepreneurial investment firm that acquired HousingWire in 2016. Prior to founding Riomar Capital, Collins worked at RBC Capital Markets in the mergers and acquisitions group and served as vice president of national sales and marketing at Citibank.

HW Media provides mortgage, real estate and fintech professionals the news, knowledge and community they need to support decision making and business growth. Aligned with our mission to Move Markets Forward, we publish daily news and content through each of our core publishing brands including HousingWire, RealTrends, Reverse Mortgage Daily and FinLedger. HW Media is based in Dallas, TX with team members across the country.

HW Media reaches over 1 million monthly users, and our daily newsletters and membership programs reach over 100,000 subscribers.

Clayton & HW Media Links:

S8E88 Interview with Dan Green, CEO of Homebuyer

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 21 May 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Personalized homebuyer education to reduce acquisition costs and boost loan profits.

Email Dan: dan@homebuyer.ai
Connect with Dan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangreenhomebuyer
Follow Homebuyer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/homebuyerai
Check out Homebuyer: https://homebuyer.ai

S8E87 Interview with Rich Sarkis, CEO of Reonomy

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 18 May 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Reonomy is the leading provider of Property Intelligence. We recently launch Reonomy Research to provide in-depth historical analysis and uncover trends during this period of uncertainty.

Email Rich: Reonomy@n6a.com
Connect with Rich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsarkis
Follow Rich on Twitter: https://twitter.com/richsarkis
Follow Reonomy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reonomy
Check out Reonomy: https://www.reonomy.com

S8E86 Interview with Annelise Osborne, Head of Strategy at Metechi

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 14 May 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Metechi is a bank centered syndicated marketplace providing lenders instant access to commercial real estate loans originated by banks. Annelise Osborne is Head of Strategy at Metechi, a fintech making capital markets more efficient. Previously, she was COO of Propellr, a broker dealer focused on upgrading finance through blockchain technology and digital asset, as well as SVP at Moody’s Investor Service, leading ratings teams within structured finance. Annelise is active in numerous industry organizations, company boards and as an educator and mentor. Annelise has an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from The College of William & Mary.

Email Annelise at: annelise@metechi.com
Connect with Annelise on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annelise-osborne-7611176
Follow Annelise on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnneliseOsborne
Check out Metechi: https://www.metechi.com

S8E85 Interview with Wes Walker, CEO of Propersum

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 11 May 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Propersum in an online marketplace for vacation rental home buyers to analyze properties with reliable financials from local property management companies. This collective participation from local experts in management drives purchase confidence for property buyers, accelerates sales for real estate agents, and generates new rental inventory for property managers.

Email Wes: wes@propersum.com
Connect with Wes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wes-walker
Follow Propersum on Twitter: https://twitter.com/propersum
Check out Propersum: https://www.propersum.com

S8E84 Interview with Jonathan Martis, CEO at Kleard

Nate Smoyer — Thu, 07 May 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Kleard provides smart technology to the real estate industry and our latest feature-set called Kleard Now allows properties for sale to be Self Toured.

Email Jonathan: jonathan@kleard.com
Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-martis-kleard-ceo-b6183810
Checkout Kleard: https://www.kleard.com

S8E83 Interview with Matt Cors, Director at CREXi

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 04 May 2020 05:00:00 -0700

CREXi is the commercial real estate industry's fastest-growing marketplace, data, and technology platform.

Connect with Matt on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-cors-423a15b
Follow CREXi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CREXinc
Visit CREXi online: https://www.crexi.com

S8E82 Interview with John Fagan, CEO at Doorkee

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Doorkee is a peer-to-peer apartment rental platform where Landlords, Departing Tenants, and Apartment Seekers work together.

Landlords pre-lease units, saving money on vacancy, broker fees, and marketing costs. Departing Tenants earn a rent refund of ~$1,000 by giving early notice and providing apartment tours.

Apartment Seekers find their perfect home months sooner than ever, searching, touring, applying and closing on an all-in-one platform - without every paying a broker fee.

Email John at: john@doorkee.com
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnjamesfagan
Visit Doorkee online: https://doorkee.com

S8E81 Interview with Rob Chesnut, Chief Ethics Officer at Airbnb

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Rob Chesnut is the Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb, Inc., a role he took on in late 2019 after almost four years as Airbnb’s General Counsel. Rob is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia. He worked for 14 years with the U.S. Justice Department, where he prosecuted bank robberies, kidnappings, murder, and espionage cases, including the prosecution of CIA employee Aldrich Ames. He joined eBay in 1999 as its third lawyer, where he led eBay’s North America legal team and later founded the Internet’s first ecommerce person to person Trust and Safety operation. Rob subsequently spent nearly 6 years as the General Counsel and first attorney at digital education leader Chegg, where he helped take the company public in 2013. He joined Airbnb in 2016, where he grew the legal team from 30 to over 150 legal professionals in 20 offices around the world. His team led initiatives to promote home sharing and address regulatory issues with local governments and landlords around the world. Rob developed a popular interactive employee program, Integrity Belongs Here, to help drive ethics throughout the culture at the company. His book “Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution” is set for publication by St Martin’s Press in the spring of 2020. Rob works with companies to help them develop strategies to drive integrity into their culture. He lives in San Francisco, CA, and can be reached at www.intentionalintegrity.com

Connect with Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robchesnut
Visit the Intentional Integrity website: https://www.intentionalintegrity.com

S8E80 Interview with Hannah Gorlick, Co-Founder of Doorside

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Hannah Gorlick is the CEO and Co-Founder of Doorside, a software company providing custom marketplace apps for the real estate vertical. Dooride's platform solutions empower real estate brokerages with recruiting and virtual team-building; property managers with on-demand tours; and service-based businesses with a marketplace engine.

Connect with Hannah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahgorlick
Follow Doorside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/getdoorside
Visit Doorside Online: https://www.getdoorside.com

S8E79 Interview with Georges Benoliel, Founder of NestApple

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 05:00:00 -0700

New York-based next generation real estate technology and brokerage firm NestApple (www.nestapple.com) is offering home buyers the opportunity to earn a 2% rebate check of the sale price.

NestApple founders, Georges and Nicole Fishman Benoliel are long-time real estate investors in New York City. After going through the lengthy and costly process several times, they grew increasingly uneasy about the outdated system. While most segments of the economy have evolved due to innovation, real estate still operates in an antiquated manner which dates back from the 1980s. While websites like Streeteasy or Trulia make it easier than ever to search for homes and find comps, nothing has changed in the way people buy and sell real estate.

In an increasingly transparent market, there is less value in what traditional brokers offer. “The market has never been so transparent”, says Georges Benoliel, “all the information is available online, two clicks are all it takes to know what your neighbor paid for his apartment or whether he took a mortgage”. “The role of realtors needs to evolve and adapt” adds Nicole. While searching for ways to bypass the system, Georges and Nicole stumbled upon the concept of commission rebates which are legal in 40 States according to the Department of Justice and have in fact been publicly encouraged by New York’s Attorney General.

Real estate fees are too high

Real estate fees in the U.S. and New York especially are considerably higher than in Europe and represent 5 to 6% of the sale price. This percentage is then split evenly between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent (2.5% to 3% for each), if not, seller’s agent receives the entire commission. NestApple is listening to the market. While some brokers sometimes give small discounts, a vast majority of them will not decrease their commission structure. NestApple pays back 2% to the buyer at closing which averages $22,000.

Email Georges at: info@nestapple.com
Connect with Georges on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georges-benoliel-01b324/
Follow NestApple on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nestappleRE
Check out NestApple online: http://www.nestapple.com

S7E78 Interview with Robert Salvador, CEO of DigiBuild

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 05:00:00 -0700

DigiBuild is a construction management and business intelligence software utilizing blockchain technology to provide solutions to the construction industry. Their CEO, Robert Salvador, is an accomplished entrepreneur in the real estate and construction industry with experience as a contractor, technologist, and consultant.

Email Robert at: rob@digibuild.com
Connect with Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-salvador-7a72aa91
Check out DigiBuild at: https://digibuild.com

S7E77 Interview with David Sullivan, CEO of Till

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 05:00:00 -0700

I like adventures. I'm currently building Till, whose mission is to develop personalized financial experiences for renters to transform the way they pay and stay in the home; GooD, a housing fund; and a family with my wife and three kids. Previously, I was the COO of The American Home, one of the first SFR funds which we sold to Silverbay.

Connect with David on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsullivantill
Follow David on Twitter - https://twitter.com/goodfundz
Check out Till - https://hellotill.com

S7E75 Interview with Rikki Rogers, VP of Marketing at Curbio

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Curbio allows homeowners to flip their own homes with our turnkey pre-sale renovations. Curbio's turnkey solution eliminates the stress, hassles, and upfront costs of renovations.

Connect with Rikki on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rikkithompsonrogers
Follow Rikki on Twitter - https://twitter.com/msrikkirogers
Follow Curbio on Twitter - https://twitter.com/CurbioHQ
Visit Curbio's Website - https://www.curbio.com

S7E74 Interview with Drew Sterrett, Co-Founder of LEX

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 05:00:00 -0800

Bio:
Drew began his career in real estate at Tungsten Partners, a real estate private equity firm, where he sourced, evaluated, structured, and facilitated real estate investments. Assessing risk and analyzing the financial and strategic viability of investment opportunities, Drew helped source, scrutinize, appraise, and model the risk, potential value, and strategic viability for real estate investments in markets including New York City, Miami, San Francisco, Marfa, Madrid, and Venice, amounting to over $1 billion in assets. He also assisted in the management and support of Tungsten’s high net worth clients. Prior to LEX, Drew co-owned, developed, and sold an apparel consumer brand after working on Capitol Hill.

Company Overview:
LEX is the first and only commercial real estate securities marketplace available to accredited and non-accredited investors.

On LEX’s platform, everyday Americans can buy and sell shares of individual commercial properties, giving users the flexibility to create customized and diversified real estate portfolios. In addition, the groundbreaking marketplace will allow property owners to easily unlock equity while retaining operational control of their properties. LEX is democratizing the commercial real estate asset class and redefining real estate investing.

Visit LEX - https://www.lex-markets.com
Follow LEX on Twitter - https://twitter.com/LEX_Markets
Follow Drew on Twitter - https://twitter.com/SterrettDrew
Connected with Drew on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-sterrett

S7E73 Interview with Janine Yorio, Co-Founder of Compound

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 05:00:00 -0800

Compound’s technology connects investors from diverse backgrounds and geographies — who have historically not had access to high-quality urban residential real estate — and allows them to pool their capital to buy apartments in high-growth cities. Compound is a venture-backed real estate marketplace and qualified opportunity zone business based in New York City. Compound is led by Janine Yorio (previously head of real estate at Standard Hotels) and Jesse Stein (previously COO of ETRE Financial). Visit www.getcompound.com.

Email Janine - janine@getcompound.com
Connect with Janine on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/janineyorio
Follow Janine on Twitter - https://twitter.com/JanineYorio
Follow Compound on Twitter - https://twitter.com/getcompound
Visit Compound - https://getcompound.com

S7E72 Interview with Kenon Chen, EVP of Clear Capital

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 05:00:00 -0800

Clear Capital, a real estate technology solutions platform, employs machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide detailed analytics-based, automated valuation models (both residential and commercial) and appraisal information to help lenders and mortgage originators make more informed decisions. Clear Capital was founded in 2001 and is the largest privately held valuation solutions company in the U.S.

Check out Clear Capital - https://www.clearcapital.com
Follow Clear Capital on Twitter - https://twitter.com/ClearCapital
Connect with Kenon Chen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenon-chen-72201b4

S7E71 Interview with Zachary Aarons, Co-Founder of MetaProp

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 05:00:00 -0800

Learn more about MetaProp: https://www.metaprop.org
Follow MetaProp on Twitter: https://twitter.com/metapropnyc
Connect with Zach on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachaarons/
Follow Zach on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZacharyAarons

S7E70 Interview with Chris Rising, CEO of Rising Realty Partners

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 04:00:00 -0800

Rising Realty Partners is a full-service real estate platform specializing in creating and adding value to world-class commercial and industrial properties.

Rising Realty Partners Website: https://risingrp.com
Follow Rising RP on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RisingRP
Follow Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisRising
Connect with Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherrising

S6E69 Interview with Brody Saunders, CEO of IdealEstate

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 04:00:00 -0800

IdealEstate is a nationwide network that helps real estate professionals build their online brand, promote their services and connect with new opportunities.

Brody's Email - brodysaunders@idealestate.co
IdealEstate.co
IdealEstate on LinkedIn
IdealEstate on Twitter

S6E68 Interview with Laurence Jankelow, Co-Founder of Avail

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 04:00:00 -0800

Avail is the only online rental platform built specifically for do-it-yourself landlords. Our full-cycle platform offers landlords an affordable way to list their rental properties, screen tenants, customize and sign digital leases, collect rent, manage maintenance, and more.

Connect with Laurence Jankelow, and learn more about Avail!

Avail's Website: https://www.avail.co
Avail on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/helloavail
Avail on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/helloavail
Laurence on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurence-jankelow-6a693343
Laurence on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jankelow

S6E67 Interview with Ajay Kumar, CEO of TheHouseMonk

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 04:00:00 -0800

Co-living is a rapidly expanding market that is catching the attention of service providers, global. In this interview, I talk with the founder and CEO of TheHouseMonk, Ajay Kumar, about a recent report his company compiled detailing the global co-living market.

We get into details such as which country has the most renters living in co-living, which is most profitable, and where some of the biggest opportunities are.

TheHouseMonk is a platform designed for tenants to improve their living experience, so of course we talk about what they offer and the uniqueness of their service in that they're present in nine different countries. Listen in.

Download the Global Co-living Report

Ajay's Email: Aj@thehousemonk.com
Ajay on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajay-kumar-09896867
Ajay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/babablahblah_
TheHouseMonk on LinkedIn: https://twitter.com/TheHouseMonk
TheHouseMonk's Website: https://www.thehousemonk.com

S6E66 Interview with Brenden Millstein, CEO of Carbon Lighthouse

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 06:00:00 -0800

Our mission is to stop climate change. Period.

It is now significantly profitable for businesses to prioritize reducing carbon emissions — and with Efficiency Production, we have both the means and the motivation to be a catalyst for change.

Brenden's Email - info@carbonlighthouse.com
Brenden's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendenmillstein
Company's Twitter - https://twitter.com/climate_solved
Company's LinkedIn - https://www.carbonlighthouse.com

S6E65 Interview with Karen Abram, Founder of dashCMA

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 05:00:00 -0800

What is dashCMA: dashCMA is a modern pricing tool for the modern real estate agent. dashCMA allows the agent to support and illustrate their pricing strategy in minutes, not hours. With 1 search, dashCMA shows the perspective of 25+ searches from leading competitors. Simply put, dashCMA equips the agent with a modern pricing perspective that their competition isn’t showing helping them win more listings, win more accepted offers but more importantly, win their client’s trust.

What was the “need” that inspired development: As an agent myself, I was frustrated with the current pricing tools and CMA tools available. I was frustrated with the timely process of creating and updating them and even more frustrated with the process of presenting what felt like a behemoth of unstructured details in a 60+ page presentation. Instead of flipping from page 4 to 9 to 23 to 44 and losing my client’s attention along the way, I wanted to be able to focus on 1 page that encompassed the multiple perspectives needed for effective pricing. Understanding these pain points firsthand combined with my 15+ year experience building pricing models for Fortune 500 clients was the right balance and motivation needed to get started.

Website: https://dashcma.com
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/18609623
Email Karen at: karen@dashcma.com

S6E64 Tech Nest Proptech Guests Raise $200M Cumulatively and Industry Updates

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 06:00:00 -0800

Nate is the director of marketing at Avail and host of the Tech Nest Podcast: The Real Estate and Tech Show. He's worked with other PropTech companies, helping them implement growth strategies through paid media. In a previous life, Nate was a real estate agent for Keller Williams Realty's number one team, the Ben Kinney Team. Prior to going all in on real estate, he cut his teeth in sales and marketing working in the software and digital publishing industry for 6 years.

Email Nate: nate@avail.co
Website: https://TechNest.io, https://realteampanda.com, https://avail.co
Twitter: https://twitter.com/natesmoyer
Facebook: https://facebook.com/natesmoyer
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/natesmoyer
Instagram: https://instagram.com/natesmoyer

S6E63 Interview with Dror Poleg, Author of Rethinking Real Estate

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 04:00:00 -0800

Rethinking Real Estate website - rethinking.re
Dror Poleg on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/drorpoleg
Dror Poleg on Twitter - twitter.com/drorpoleg

S6E62 Interview with Sean Hsieh, CEO of Concreit

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 05:00:00 -0800

Co-founder, Jordan Levy, previously built and sold Flowroute with Sean Hsieh.

Concreit is a micro-investing platform for commercial real estate that keeps your money flexible. We aim to create a stable and predictable return for investors by accessing private real estate investments & lending opportunities that are not publicly traded.

Check out Concreit's website - concreit.com
Concreit on Twitter - twitter.com/ConcreitApp
Sean Hsieh on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/seanhsieh
Sean Hsieh on Twitter - twitter.com/envisean
Email Sean Hsieh at - sean@concreit.com

S6E61 Interview with Thomas Kutzman, Co-CEO of Prevu

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 05:00:00 -0700

Thomas is Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Prevu, a customer-focused digital home buying platform delivering industry-leading efficiency and savings. Frustrated over the lack of control and transparency he experienced throughout the home buying process, he launched Prevu in 2017 with his good friend, Chase Marsh, to establish a smarter way to transact. Before Prevu, Thomas spent 12 years working at highly established asset management firms in both the US and Europe, where he gained valuable experience investing in technology companies. He has been an active real estate investor for over a decade. Thomas holds a BS in Finance & Accounting from the Stern School of Business at NYU.

Prevu's website - prevu.com
Prevu on Twitter - twitter.com/prevurealestate
Thomas Kutzman on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/thomaskutzman
Thomas Kutzman on Twitter - twitter.com/thomaskutzman
Email Thomas at thomas@prevu.com

S6E60 Interview with Franco Faraudo, Co-Founder of Propmodo

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 06:00:00 -0700

Examining the ways that technology and innovation are changing our built environment.

Franco's LinkedIn
Franco's Twitter
Propmodo's Twitter
https://www.propmodo.com
franco@propmodo.com

S6E59 Interview with Ryan Frazier, Co-Founder of Arrived Homes

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 06:00:00 -0700

Real estate is one of the oldest and highest performing asset classes - known for producing long-term wealth over generations. However, more people are choosing to rent now than at any point in the last 50 years, either for affordability or freedom to move. While individuals can achieve greater flexibility through renting, they also miss out on the benefits of wealth creation that can come from owning real estate, and, therefore end up under invested in real estate compared to peers who purchase homes. Every year spent without holding real estate investments, real estate can become more expensive and further out of reach as property values rise.

We believe people should have the freedom to move around to pursue new opportunities in their life while still having access to the wealth creation long-term home ownership can provide.

https://arrivedhomes.com
https://twitter.com/ArrivedHomes
https://twitter.com/RyFraz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryfraz/
Ryan@arrivedhomes.com

S5E58 Interview with Drew Fabrikant, CEO of Scout

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 05:00:00 -0700

After years working as an attorney and on Wall Street, Drew founded Scout based on the principle that finding the right advisors for the largest financial transaction of a lifetime shouldn't be difficult.

Taking a performance-driven approach, Scout makes it easy to find the right agent for any purchase or sale, saving time and money, and bringing transparency to the real estate services sector.

Mention TechNest for up to $2,500 cash-back at close, when using Scout to find the right agent for your purchase or sale.

trustscout.com
Scout Twitter
Drew's LinkedIn
Email Drew at d@trustscout.com

S5E57 Interview with Nate Joens, CEO of Structurely

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 05:00:00 -0700

Structurely nurtures, engages and qualifies your leads so you can spend more time closing and less time chasing.

Using indistinguishable from human artificial intelligence, Structurely has two-way texting conversations with leads about their purchase timeline, preferences, agent and financing status, and more.

And now, with Script Customization you can build your own Inside Sales Agent to say what you want, when you want and how you want, to every single lead.

Find Structrely at https://structurely.com/
Structurely on Twitter
Nate's LinkedIn
Nate's Twitter
Email Nate at nate@structurely.com

S5E56 Interview with Alex Doubet, CEO of Door.com

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 05:00:00 -0700

Alex founded Door when his mom sold her house with a traditional real estate agent, paid 6% commission, and did not even get a thank you note. Door.com is has the technology and expert agents you need to sell your home in the new digital world of real estate. Best of all? You only pay a flat fee, anywhere in the country, when your home sells.

Door Twitter
Alex on LinkedIn
Email Alex at adoubet@door.com

S5E55 Interview with Natalia Karayaneva, CEO of Propy

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 08:50:00 -0700

Natalia Karayaneva is the CEO of Propy, a Silicon Valley proptech company revolutionizing home purchasing via blockchain. She is an award-winning real estate developer, software engineer, and a serial entrepreneur with extensive knowledge in international real estate and crypto-economics. Natalia is a frequent panelist and speaker at blockchain and proptech events globally. She is an advisor to Arrington XRP Capital and a contributor to Forbes. Natalia has a degree in Computer Engineering from Russia and a degree in Sustainable Urban Development from the University of Oxford.

Propy is revolutionizing home purchasing globally by deploying smart contracts on the blockchain. Our disruptive solution helps buyers find a dream home, sellers find the best buyer, the agents and the title company to do the paperwork online. All of them participate in a seamless online process.

Learn more about Propy, and connect with Natalia!

Product Explainer Video
Company Website
Company Twitter
Natalia's Twitter
Natalia's LinkedIn

S5E54 Follow-Up Interview with Noel Christopher, SVP of Renters Warehouse

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 07:30:00 -0700

Learn more about Renters Warehouse, and connect with Noel!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Noel's Twitter
Noel's LinkedIn
Noel's Email

S5E53 Interview with Jindou Lee, Founder of HappyCo

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 07:30:00 -0700

Learn more about HappyCo, and connect with Jindou!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Jindou's Twitter
Jindou's LinkedIn
Jindou's Email

S5E52 Interview with Blake Miller, Founder & CEO at Homebase.ai

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 08:00:00 -0700

Blake Miller is the Founder of Homebase.ai a resident experience and connected building solution for the multi-family housing industry. Blake is also the host of The Future of Living Podcast. Prior to Homebase Blake was a Partner at Think Big, a startup incubator in Kansas City, MO. At Think Big, Blake led the incubator program investing in and advising early stage startups. In 2012, Blake led the Kansas City Smart City Initiative, a public private partnership led by Cisco, deploying smart city technologies in Downtown Kansas City, MO, creating one of the worlds largest smart cities and winning a 2017 Edison Award for innovation.

Blake has been recognized as a Next Gen Leader by the Kansas City Business Journal, top 20 in their 20's by Ingram Magazine, and a top young entrepreneur to watch by under30ceo.

Blake speaks nationally and serves as a board member, advisor and mentor to a number of startups.

Learn more about Homebase.ai and connect with Blake!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Blake's Twitter
Blake's LinkedIn
Blake's Email

S5E51 Interview with Packy McCormick, VP of Experience with Breather

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 07:00:00 -0700

Learn more about Breather, and connect with Packy!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Packy's LinkedIn

S4E50 Interview with James Barrett, Co-Founder at Tenant Turner

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 07:05:00 -0700

James Barrett is cofounder and CEO of Tenant Turner - a software company that finds, pre-qualifies, and schedules quality tenants so landlords and property managers can focus on more important things! James became an accidental landlord in 2009 and later acquired a second rental property in 2013. Though he’s always enjoyed interacting with tenants, he despised the inefficiencies of turning the properties. So he joined forces with his two best friends and fellow landlords to solve the problems they encountered managing their own residential rental properties. Now Tenant Turner is used by landlords and property managers nationwide and was recently named “Best Leasing Solution” by DoorGrowClub.

Learn more about Tenant Turner, and connect with James!

Company Website
Company Twitter
James' LinkedIn
James' Email

S4E49 Interview with James Strong, CTO & Co-Founder of Rabbu

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 07:00:00 -0700

Connect with James, and learn more about Rabbu!

Rabbu.com
James' LinkedIn
James' Email

S4E48 Interview with Jeanna Carr, CEO & Co-Founder of Rent Assured

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 07:15:00 -0700

Connect with Jeanna, and learn more about Rent Assured!

BeRentAssured.com
Rent Assured's Twitter
Jeanna's Linkedin
Jeanna's Email

S4E47 Future of Tech Nest and Real Team Panda

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 02 Jun 2019 14:00:00 -0700

Let's connect!

LinkedIn
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook
nate@realteampanda.com
nate@avail.co

S4E46 Interview with Craig Cecilio, CEO & Founder of DiversyFund

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 27 May 2019 08:00:00 -0700

"We help everyday investors build wealth like the 1%."

Connect with Craig, and learn more about DiversyFund!

DiversyFund.com
DiversyFund's Twitter
DiversfyFund's Linkedin
Craig's Twitter
Craig's Instagram
Craig's LinkedIn

S4E45 Interview with Michael Driedger, CEO of Operto

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 20 May 2019 10:00:00 -0700

Our founders both sought to improve wellbeing for people and the world we live in, but from diverse perspectives: green architecture and brain fitness. These unique paths converged thanks to a shared love of technology, sustainability, and travel. Operto was born from a desire to make life better for property managers, who are the busiest people we’ve ever met.

Originally called Slickspaces, our first goal was to reduce the environmental impact and energy consumption of short-term vacation rentals. Like many problems, it was simple in theory but challenging to solve. Convincing guests to turn off lights and thermostats was impossible, so we turned to technology - using smart locks to automate the process.

These early days of managing guest access revealed a much greater need. Property managers were spending countless hours getting guests in and out of their properties. They had almost no visibility into the status of their units and no centralized system from which to operate. While smart home technology was becoming increasingly common, nothing brought solutions together to create a truly cooperative ecosystem.

That seed brought us to where we are today: the world’s leading operating system for property managers across the full spectrum of guest accommodations.

Michael's LinkedIn
Operto Website

S4E44 Interview with Erina Malarkey & Anna-Lea Dieringer, Co-Founders of Remarkably

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 13 May 2019 08:00:00 -0700

Connect with Erina & Anna-Lea, and learn more about Remarkably!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Erina's LinkedIn
Anna-Lea's LinkedIn

S4E43 Interview with Stefan Schimenes, Founder & CEO of InvestReal

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 06 May 2019 07:10:00 -0700

InvestReal is a data-driven real estate marketplace connecting investors with developers in Qualified Opportunity Zone projects, supported by artificial intelligence. Our platform allows accredited investors to evaluate listed QOZ projects with standardized and transparent metrics, and invest at the project level with the developer partner to mitigate the inefficiency of blind pool funds and crowdfunding models. Additionally, our proprietary machine learning algorithms consolidate and process expansive data sets into digestible market health indices in a comprehensive dashboard display. The user-friendly interface includes: our exclusive InvestReal OZ Score, predictive analytics, an interactive map, and the capability to custom-rank OZs based on selected factors.

Connect with Stefan, and learn more about InvestReal!

Company Website
Company Twitter
LinkedIn

S4E42 Interview with Janine Yorio, CEO of Compound Asset Management

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 07:30:00 -0700

Connect with Janine, and learn more about Compound!

Company Website
Company Facebook
Company Twitter
Personal Twitter
LinkedIn

S4E41 Interview with Vered Schwarz, COO at Guesty

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 09:00:00 -0700

I am COO of property management platform Guesty, with nearly 20 years of experience in global operations, overseeing teams including Customer Experience, Finance, Legal, HR, Customer Success and Data & Analytics.
Guesty’s property management platform provides property managers and management companies with an end-to-end solution to simplify the complex operational needs of short-term rentals. With Guesty, users can manage listings from multiple online travel agencies including Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and TripAdvisor, and utilize the company’s guest-centric tools including: Unified Inbox, Automation Tools, 24/7 Guest Communication Services, Payment Processing and more. Prior to Guesty, I was COO of Fiverr where I grew the company from 40 employees to over 400 in my six year tenure.

Connect with Vered, and learn more about Guesty!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Personal Twitter
LinkedIn

S4E40 Interview with David Anderson, President at LionDesk

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 07:30:00 -0700

We are a CRM platform for realtors. Our goal is to help Agents and Brokers keep in better contact with their leads by Transaction Management, Tasks & Calendaring, Drip Campaigns, Auto-Responders, Email Tracking & Marketing, Lead Importing & Document Management and Much More. We are constantly working to improve our system and implement our customer's feedback on how we can do better. We do offer a 30 day free trial as well!

Connect with David, and learn more about LionDesk!

Company Website
Company Twitter
LinkedIn

S4E39 Interview with Maraz Rahman, VP of Growth & Business Development at Naborly

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 07:50:00 -0700

We do AI-powered tenant screening and offer financial products for tenants and landlords alike to secure rentals. This quarter, we'd be announcing our Rent Guarantee for the US.

Connect with Maraz, and learn more about Naborly!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Company Facebook
LinkedIn
Email

S3E38 Interview with Barret Newberry, CEO & Founder of Leasera

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 08:05:00 -0700

World's only unified rental marketplace allowing consumers to live anywhere, in any type of property, for any length of time, all through Leasera. Tenants and property owners alike now enjoy incredible loyalty and benefits like never before.

Connect with Barret, and learn more about Leasera!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Personal Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

S3E37 Interview with Lisa Fettner, VP of Marketing for ReferralExchange

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 08:35:00 -0700

ReferralExchange, the nation’s top real estate referral and lead-gen management company, is dedicated to creating great real estate experiences between real estate professionals and customers. Founded in 2005, ReferralExchange has built an invite-only network of over 25,000 top-performing Realtors. In 2018, the network created over 250,000 agent-to-consumer matches.

Connect with Lisa, and learn more about ReferralExchange!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Personal Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

S3E36 Interview with Omri Dor, CEO & Co-Founder of Obligo

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 07:40:00 -0700

Obligo is a fintech company that rids both renters and landlords from the burden of security deposits.

Connect with Omri, and learn more about Obligo!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Personal Twitter
LinkedIn

S3E35 Interview with Ryan Coon, Co-Founder at Avail

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 09:00:00 -0800

Connect with Ryan, and learn more about Avail!

Company Website
Company Twitter
Personal Twitter
LinkedIn

S3E34 Interview with Tore Steen, CEO & Co-Founder of CrowdStreet

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 09:00:00 -0800

Connect with Tore, and learn more about CrowdStreet!

Company Website
Company Twitter
LinkedIn

S3E33 Interview with Nima Wedlake, Principal at Thomvest Ventures

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 07:30:00 -0800

Nima is a Principal at Thomvest Ventures, leading the firm's investment activity in the real estate technology vertical.

Connect with Nima and learn more about Thomvest Ventures!
Company website
LinkedIn
Company twitter
Personal twitter

S3E32 Interview with William Devar, CEO & Co-Founder at Tridster

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 09:00:00 -0800

William is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tridster, and a partner at 1/0 Capital. Prior to starting Tridster, William was part of the founding team that launched Better Mortgage, one of the fastest growing mortgage companies in the US.

Connect with William, and learn more about Tridster!

Personal Email
Personal LinkedIn
Personal Twitter
Company Website
Company Twitter

S3E31 Interview with Alissa Harper, VP of Growth with Buyside

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 09:45:00 -0800

Alissa is a real estate tech industry vet with over 15 years’ experience, including 3 acquisitions, at some of the fastest growing tech companies in the space. With roots in residential real estate and a passion for driving growth through strategic partnerships, Alissa has helped create and execute enterprise deals with the nation's largest brokers and franchise brands at companies like: RealtyGenerator, Market Leader, Trulia and Zillow Group.

Alissa currently serves as VP, Growth at Buyside leading sales and marketing initiatives for the rapidly expanding startup. Buyside now powers the top ranked brokerage firms in the country helping them leverage their data to capture seller leads, win listings and close more transactions in house.

Alissa was also recognized as one of Inman News' 2017 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders.

Connect with Alissa and learn more about Buyside!

Personal Email
Personal LinkedIn
Company Website
Company Twitter

S3E30 Interview with Andrew Flachner, Co-Founder & President of RealScout

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 09:00:00 -0800

Andrew is Co-Founder and President of RealScout, a startup tackling residential real estate’s core problem: matching homebuyers and homes. LinkedIn revolutionized hiring by bringing job-seekers (demand), employers (supply) and recruiters (brokers) to one place - and providing transparency. RealScout strives to unlock the same revolutionary dynamic to a market that’s twice the size of recruiting.

Connect with Andrew, and learn more about RealScout!

Personal LinkedIn
Company Twitter
Company Website

Check out the teaser video for RealScout's latest video project at secretresourcewar.com.

S3E29 Interview with Pat Kinsel, Founder & CEO of Notarize

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 06:00:00 -0800

Notarize is the first platform to empower thousands of people each day to sign and notarize documents online. From adopting a child to buying a home, Notarize builds trusted products and services that support life's most important moments. Pat built the first platform in the country that allowed people to legally sign and notarize documents online, which helped a homeowner in Illinois make history in 2017. As covered by the Wall Street Journal, Notarize completed the first remote mortgage closing in the country with an Illinois resident, a Texas title company, a Michigan lender and a Virginia notary. This monumental event laid the groundwork for mortgages to be delivered into the secondary market instantaneously—a process that had previously taken a median of 29 days. Pat's vision? Now, Notarize customers touch more than 31% of real estate transactions. Pat’s vision? To empower anyone to walk into a home they love and buy it online the same day.

Connect with Pat and learn more about Notarize!
Notarize Website
Notarize Twitter
Personal Twitter

S3E28 Interview with Sam Viskovich, VP of Marketing at Reonomy

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 06:00:00 -0800

Connect with Sam and learn more about Reonomy!

https://www.reonomy.com
https://twitter.com/reonomy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samviskovich

S3E27 Interview with Juan Gabriel Molina, Founder of Real Closers

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 07:00:00 -0800

Connect with Juan and learn more about Real Closers!

jg@realclosers.com
http://realclosers.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-gabriel-molina-4b029356

S3E26: Tech Nest Season 3 Kickoff Show

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 08:00:00 -0800

Get on the VIP Insider's list of future updates https://tinyletter.com/technest
Learn more about TET '19 http://bit.ly/TET19EVENT
Learn more about Industry Syndicate http://industrysyndicate.com
Lear more about Real Team Panda https://realteampanda.com/

You can always reach Nate Smoyer at nate@realteampanda.com. Learn more about his agency at realteampanda.com.

S2E13 Interview with Heath Silverman, CEO for Stessa

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Heath and learn more about Stessa:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathsilverman
https://twitter.com/heaths
https://twitter.com/stessahq
http://www.stessa.com

S2E19 Interview with Alan Donefeld, Founder at CityVest

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Alan and learn more about CityVest

alan@Cityvest.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-donenfeld
https://twitter.com/RECrowdInvest
https://twitter.com/RECrowdInvest
https://www.cityvest.com

Alan is the founder of www.CityVest.com CityVest is an online investment marketplace of institutional real estate private equity funds. Our investors receive access to these institutional funds with minimum investments of $25,000 to $100,000, while the underlying fund may have a minimum subscription of $1 million. Simply put, we provide the simplest and best real estate investment process for individual investors to gain access to the best real estate investment funds. The CityVest.com website provides investors the ability to browse real estate investments, conduct due diligence on the properties, and review investment documentation. The on-line closing process is simple and safe. By pooling investments of as little as $25,000 with other investors, individuals can now gain access to high return institutional private equity funds. CityVest targets providing investors with relatively safe real estate investments with targeted IRRs of 12% to 18% IRR.

S2E12 Interview with Noel Christopher, SVP for Renters Warehouse

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Noel and Learn more about Renters Warehouse

noelc@renterswarehouse.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noelchristopher
https://twitter.com/chicagonoel
https://twitter.com/prolandlord
https://renterswarehouse.com

S2E14 Interview with Yale Fox, Founder at Rentlogic

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Yale and learn more about Rentlogic

yale.fox@rentlogic.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yalefox
https://www.twitter.com/yalefox
https://www.twitter.com/rentlogic
https://www.rentlogic.com

Rentlogic is a tech-powered standards organization that grades apartment buildings from A to F based on health and safety standards, similar to how Cities grade restaurants.

S2E16 Interview with Zach Sloan, Co-Founder of Rentgrata

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Zach and learn more about Rentgrata

zach@rentgrata.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachsloan
https://www.rentgrata.com/

Selected as a Wharton MBA Program Top Disruptor in 2018.

S2E17 Interview with Daniel Schroeder and Matthew Young, Co-Founders of Listing Village

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Daniel and Matthew and learn more about Listing Village

Daniel@ListingVillage.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-schroeder-8878229b

matt@listingvillage.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-young-562b3846

https://twitter.com/listingvillage
https://ListingVillage.com

Listing Village exists to serve Realtors and help them serve their homebuyers.

S2E18 Interview with James Green, Founder of Offer To Close

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with James and learn more about Offer To Close

jgreen@offertoclose.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgreen
https://www.twitter.com/jamestylergreen
https://www.twitter.com/offertoclose
https://www.offertoclose.com

Check out Offer To Close's YouTube channel for special tips and suggestions!

S2E21 Heather Bauman, General Manager at MortgageLead.com Discusses Marketing Automation and Lead Gen for LOs

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Heather and learn more about MortgageLead.com

heather@mortgagelead.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/baumanheather
https://mortgagelead.com

S2E22 "Let's Talk Title"--Everything Title Insurance and More with Ticor Title VP, Ryan Orr

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Ryan and learn more about his team, Team Title Guy

RyanJOrr@me.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanjorr
www.twitter.com/yourtitleguy
www.twitter.com/yourtitleguy
http://www.teamtitleguy.com

S2E23 "The Art of Commercial Leasing", East Nashville's Top Commercial Broker, Tyler Cauble, Discusses Commercial Leasing

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Tyler and learn more about his company The Cauble Group

tyler@thecaublegroup.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylercauble
https://twitter.com/thecaublegroup
https://twitter.com/thecaublegroup
https://www.tylercauble.com

Follow their journey on Instagram: @Commercial_in_Nashville & @ArchitectureNashville

S2E24 Interview with Roberto Moreno, Founder of Gabbi.ai

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Roberto and learn more about Gabbi.ai

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertoamoreno
https://twitter.com/robertoamoreno
https://twitter.com/gabbi_ai
https://www.gabbi.ai

Gabbi.Ai is an AI-based communication platform (AI Assistant) that helps real estate agents build better relationships with their customers, thereby increasing their opportunities to double or triple their revenue potential each year. Founded by Roberto & Elisse Moreno, Gabbi was created out of a passion for the real estate industry, including years of hands on training and advice they provided to thousands of real estate agents to succeed and do better.

S2E25 Interview with Dan Summers, CEO at eVest Technology

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Dan and learn more about eVest Technology

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-summers-0a96b332
https://twitter.com/eVestTech
https://www.evesttech.com

eVest Technology is currently raising $2 million in Series A funding. Learn more about their Series A stock offering here: https://blog.evesttech.com/evest-technology-is-knee-deep-in-its-first-series-a-offering/

S2E20 The Agent Marketer, Jason Frazier Discuss Lead Generation for Real Estate Agents

Nate Smoyer — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 18:00:00 -0700

Connect with Jason and learn more about The Agent Marketer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/realestatecio
http://www.theagentmarketer.com

S2:E11 Which Real Estate Leaders Will We Talk With This Season? Season Two Preview:

Nate Smoyer — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 11:00:00 -0700

Don't ever miss an episode, subscribe using your preferred podcast app.

And make sure you get on the Insiders Email List for special announcements coming up!

Cheers!

Nate Smoyer

S1:E10 1031 Exchanges for Real Estate: Everything You Need To Know, An Interview With Tom Gustafson from 1031 Atlas

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 06:00:00 -0700

Connect with Tom: tomgustafson@atlas1031.com
Learn more about Atlas 1031 at: http://atlas1031.com

S1:E9 How Opendoor is Doing Content Marketing and Advertising

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 06:00:00 -0700

Learn more about Overthink Group at http://OverthinkGroup.com
- Get the full teardown of what Opendoor is doing at http://OverthinkGroup.com/opendoor
Check out Opendoor at http://Opendoor.com

S1:E7 Interview with Christopher Garrett, COO for Zeehaus

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0700

ZeeHaus with Christopher Garrett

https://zeehaus.com

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

https://www.linkedin.com/company/zeehaus-inc

S1:E3 Interview with Paul Burke, Co-founder at RentHoop

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0700

RentHoop with Paul Burke

http://renthoop.org

https://twitter.com/Renthoop

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pburke24

https://www.linkedin.com/company/renthoop

S1:E4 Interview with Chuck Hattemer, Co-founder and CMO for Onerent

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0700

Onerent with Chuck Hattemer

http://onerent.co

https://twitter.com/OneRentCo

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

https://www.linkedin.com/company/onerent

S1:E6 Interview with Mark Davis, CEO for realquantum

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0700

realquantum with Mark Davis

https://www.realquantum.com

https://twitter.com/realquantumapp

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

https://www.linkedin.com/company/realquantum

S1:E8 Interview with Zach Evanish, Director of Sales for Roofstock

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0700

Rooftstock with Zach Evanish

https://www.roofstock.com

https://twitter.com/roofstock

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

https://www.linkedin.com/company/roofstock

S1:E5 Interview with Tyler Forte, CEO and Founder of Felix Homes

Nate Smoyer — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 10:00:00 -0700

FelixHomes with Tyler Forte

https://howdyfelix.com

https://twitter.com/realfelixhomes

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

https://www.linkedin.com/company/felixhomes

Back Story of Tech Nest

Nate Smoyer — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 19:00:00 -0700

It's a long story and I tend to be long winded, but I try to boil everything down. The road to creating the Tech Nest podcast was probably not the most direct, but it was it is. In this bonus episode, I share what I created the Tech Nest podcast and what I hope to accomplish with the show. Hope you enjoy!

Tech Nest: Teaser Intro

Nate Smoyer — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 19:00:00 -0700

Tech Nest is the podcast where we discover all the latest in real estate and tech by interviewing the innovators and leaders from companies who are challenging the way we buy, sell, and invest in real estate.