Proptech Espresso

How are many investors today differentiating proptech and construction tech? Is entrepreneurship genetic or learned? Why are the siloed dynamics typically involved in construction processes? What are the realities and challenges that residential homebuilding laborers face on the job site today? Why do we need a supply side solution to the housing crisis? How is BotBuilt's robotic system optimizing for cost efficiency? Why is velocity important in building momentum for a new startup brand and how did participating in YC help this? What factored into BotBuilt's decision to  bridge the gap between what is happening today in home construction and then pursue what is possible in the future using robotic manufacturing? How does the type of lumber (driven by cost) factor into the panelized framing products being produced today? Why did BotBuilt choose to target custom home builders to begin with? How quickly can framers complete a home with BotBuilt's penalized system? Why is understanding construction culture so important for technology startups within this space? How has robotics become more normalized in construction over the last few years?Brent Wadas - co-founder and CEO of BotBuilt, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss why he joined the military later in life, the leadership skills he developed while serving in special operations, and how he has translated this experience into the lofting goals he is pursuing with his team at BotBuilt.

How are smart cities and proptech-related terms? Which other investing domains typically fall under smart cities? What are all the different real estate asset classes that airports manage as part of their operations? How do the sizes of typical multifamily properties differ in North America compared to Europe? Does vertical transportation differ in European vs North American multifamily properties? How has the rise in interest rates provided a shock to startup tech entrepreneurs and reminded them of the need to be profitable? Where has all the real estate data on properties historically been locked up? How can asset owners unpack the real estate information in PDF documents and digitize them at scale? What are the benefits for tech startups to have a service offering while perfecting their SaaS application? Does a service offering increase the stickiness of a SaaS solution? How can implementing a Chat-GPT solution remove the gatekeeper problem? Are the US real estate markets much more transparent then their European counterparts? Why have real estate investment managers only made the beta of the market and not created any alpha? How has office evolved into a lazy real estate asset class and will it need to change going forward given the impact of work from home on corporation's office footprints? Will new technologies like Apple Vision Pro and smart glasses disrupt different real estate asset classes? Robin Rivaton - CEO of Stonal joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how European Union and country policy mandates are impacting the real estate industry and driving change for the better.

What was it like to work at WeWork during its hypergrowth phase? Which businesses outside of the WeWork mothership were Aleks involved with? What did Aleks learn about the right cost of capital for different business models while at WeWork? Why are boutique hotels generally not profitable? What serendipitous introduction led to the Cuby Technologies co-founders meeting? How do the start-up costs for an industrialized construction company differ from that of most other proptech companies? Why has construction efficiency been decreasing over the last couple of decades? How are construction companies planning to overcome a continued reduction in skilled labor in order to meet the chronic housing shortage? What are some of the scaling challenges for volumetric construction and how does this differ from the scaling challenges of 3D printing? Why is the manufacturing world moving towards a distributed network of localized manufacturing vs giga-factories? What was Ryan Homes doing in the 1950's that is similar in nature to what Cuby Technologies has innovated on? How are Tesla and Cuby Technologies similar? What are some of the benefits of using steel in the residential homebuilding process? Why does Cuby Technologies fall under the deep tech umbrella?Aleks Gampel - co-founder & CEO of Cuby Technologies, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a childhood fascination with big city building architecture led to a career in real estate development and proptech.

How do investors in businesses fundamentally differ from operators of businesses? What is intellectually compelling about building and running a business that has not been done before? Are there unique challenges for high-growth proptech businesses? Why do proptechs need to fundamentally understand how humans value where they live? What are the ripple effects within society of having a massive lack of housing supply? Why are smaller entry homes not being built by production homebuilders? What are the reasons there are no scale builders for infill housing today? Why is prefab construction well suited for infill housing? What is driving the ADU revolution? Define missing middle housing and what policies are local jurisdictions passing to stimulate the creation of this needed housing stock? What are the different pathways to homeownership that adding ADUs creates? Does Villa create a competitive advantage by owning the permitting process? Why do investor/operator groups represent a big opportunity for Villa? What changes at the GSEs are stimulating demand for asset capital investment? Which principles of e-commerce has Villa applied to homebuilding?Sean Roberts - CEO of Villa, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how consumer psychology is underappreciated as a driver of consumer behavior and sentiment for how individual consumers look at real estate.

Are we in the early days of proptech or have we moved into a period of real estate technology maturity? Why has it taken so long for deeper technology solutions to be introduced into proptech? What are the parallels between automobile manufacturing advancements and building automation advancements? Why have mentorships become a cultural tenant at PassiveLogic? When designing solutions, why is it important to allow yourself to be a novice again and design the right solution for the problem at hand? How have buildings become the most complex robotics systems by orders of magnitude? What is a fully autonomous building platform? Why are real estate owners and operators now starting to invest in digital transformation strategies? How do building automation and autonomous buildings differ? How is the growing issue of lack of skilled labor impacting building operations & maintenance? Where and what type of AI is finding success in the built environment architectural world?Troy Harvey - Co-founder & CEO of PassiveLogic, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how an engineering job in high school at an electronics engineering consultancy led to an unorthodox college timeline but a clear focus on what problems he was passionate about working on.

Does it make sense to be thinking about proptech as the technology that real estate companies should be building but can't? How is the digital transformation of media companies relevant to real estate owners and operators? Have we already entered a transition point where we are moving from the flat two-dimensional web (screen) to the spatial web (location)? Is the real world becoming the canvas for the digital world, and if so, isn't real estate a huge player in this transformation and the lynchpin to ultimately make this scale? What is unique about outdoor advertising that makes it the one area of traditional advertising that is still growing? How are digital asset rights positively impacting property valuations? Are the tokenization and fractionalization of real-world assets impacting property valuations? Is there a marketplace today for the trading of fractional shares of digital asset rights?Dominic Collins - CEO & co-founder of Darabase, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how an early role at a prominent magazine company allowed him to identify opportunities to exploit the disruption of print media and set the stage for a career helping companies successfully navigate digital transformations within their industries.

Do investors or customers drive the naming of tech sectors? Will co-buying be rebranded as mommunes or boommates as shared housing continues to explode? Why leave the Bay Area to experience winters and explore self growth? Which traditional routes of homeownership are now showing up as alternative modern options? What does the phrase act with urgency and maintain patience mean and how does it apply to start-ups? How can homeownership be hacked? Why might people buy their second home first? What is Gen Z learning from watching Millenials struggle to achieve homeownership? How do you define the drunken walk of the entrepreneur? What are the different strategic ecosystem partnerships of the Nestment platform? What are the five points of friction in co-buying? Why have agents historically shied away from assisting or suggesting co-buying transactions? What makes agents important in the co-buying process? Why is participating in the home finding so important to first-time homebuyers?Niles Lichtenstein - co-founder and CEO of Nestment, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and shares how experiencing a parent passing at an early age influenced his perspective of homeownership and the financial options afforded to homeowners.

Is the correct definition of proptech the application of all things technology to real estate in order to achieve improved business results in the 21st century? What are the benefits of working on large built world infrastructure projects on multiple continents? Why did Arunabh switch from working for multinational firms to starting his own company? What are the supply chain challenges of hyper-local residential renovation? Why switch from real estate development into real estate investment? How is Western policy regarding real estate different from that of developing countries? Why do multifamily investors need a decision support system for their portfolios? Why is real estate analysis still so reliant on Excel? What are the challenges of data ingestion and integration in the real estate industry? How is AI being implemented within real estate data insights? Why is it important to move from pure data visualization to data insights for real estate data analysis? Arunabh Dastidar - Co-Founder and CEO at RealSage joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the decisions that led him to set aside a likely career in computer science to forge a new path to study civil engineering and physical real estate.

Why did the pace of social impact work cause a career pivot to technology and data analysis? What makes culture so important in company building? What were some of the technical hurdles that needed to be solved in order to stream audio from satellites? Did the lack of challenges while working at the DoD set the stage for a professional move into entrepreneurship? How did a lack of female technology mentors also contribute to Masha's desire to start her own company? What was the opportunity in commercial real estate finance that Masha observed that screamed out for a technology solution? What happened to the commercial lending startup that Masha co-founded during the COVID pandemic? How did participating in Toptal Network during a career break lead to the opportunity to work with AvenueOne? What is the attraction of optimizing the operations of a hard asset that drew Masha into working extensively with AvenueOne?Masha Sharma - Head of Product Engineering at AvenueOne, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how experiencing the immersive audio environment at XM Satellite Radio (SiriusXM) headquarters caused her to turn down a more lucrative job offer to work in an office and culture which she absolutely loved coming to every day.

What is the definition of industrialized construction and how does this fit within proptech? Which benefits to construction should be realized with the adoption and ongoing innovation of industrialized processes? How does American foreign policy on energy relate to housing? How did a student group at MIT help shift leadership from traditional energy to sustainable energy? What is building science and how does it relate to energy? Who famously said "building energy efficiency isn't the low hanging fruit, but the fruit that has fallen on the ground and rotted"? Why has building energy efficiency historically been so catastrophically bad that it is nothing short of a tragedy? Where are energy efficient buildings best built? How does the reindustrialization of the US economy intersect with the future of housing? What are the 2 major things causing headwinds against the industrialization of construction in the US? Why does housing and real estate need to be a product vs being a project? What is causing trade unions to start to shift their resistance towards industrialized construction? Why are the margins of general contractors in real estate so small relative to other industries? Why have industrialized construction companies over the last 100 years typically failed to survive for more than a few years? How is ADL Ventures working to partner large industry leading companies with smaller companies to drive innovation in and around cleantech? What is an industrialized construction epicenter and why will this be a game changer in creating success in industrialized construction?Nolan Browne - founding partner of ADL Ventures, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share a fascinating story about the Hershey family and their largely unknown success in industrialized construction. 

What challenges does the range of real estate asset classes present to technology innovators? Does an interdisciplinary approach to the challenges faced by the built world provide a beneficial approach? How did the concepts of ecosystem revival intersect with real estate during graduate studies at Stanford? Why has curiosity to improve the impact humans have had on the planet been a driving force for pursuing a career in the built environment? How did a diversity of educational backgrounds and expertise form the foundation of problem resolution at Kit Switch? What are the challenges of keeping people in mind when solving for built world issues? What is the Ivory Innovation Hack-A-House Competition and what did participating in this lead to? How did having a sponge mindset at Stanford help create opportunities? What does "Lighting up your soul" mean and how did it help set the business course for Kit Switch? How has bespoke construction led to many of the challenges around real estate adaptive reuse? What is the premise behind productized interiors for real estate? Why is room flexibility important for newly constructed real estate? Having been recently selected to participate in the Terner Center's Housing Lab, what does Kit Switch hope to achieve during this program? What opportunities exist for cities to reimagine their urban planning efforts and take advantage of more intentional urban mixed-use real estate?Candice Delamarre and Armelle Coutant - co-founders of Kit Switch, join Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the challenges and the benefits of starting a physical construction product company during the onset of the COVID pandemic. 

Where do proptech and construction tech intersect and where do they diverge? What was life like growing up in a family homebuilder business in Finland? What entrepreneurial ventures did Harri get involved with as a kid to enable him to buy Christmas presents for his family? Did Harri's initial foray into software coding lead to a lucrative early professional career? What pulled an independent entrepreneur back into the family homebuilding business? How do you build credibility with the workforce of a family business when you haven't spent your entire career there? Why are the processes within homebuilding so siloed and manual? What did Harri see in BIM that led him to believe this would be transformational for the homebuilding sector? Why did Harri acquire the code of a CAD solution company? What were the early results of Harri's homebuilding company eating the dog food of the software code they had purchased? Why did GBuilder introduce environmental impact reporting in its solution? What are the benefits of a digital twin for homebuyers when purchasing from a builder that has digitized the end-to-end building process? Harri Majala - CEO & founder of GBuilder, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a special bond with his uncle led him to chase a dream of earning an economics degree from the Helsinki School of Economics. 

Are WeWork and Airbnb proptech companies? How did attending SXSW influence and create a desire to participate in the startup technology sector? What large data problem was Wines.com facing and how was this similar to data problems the MLS is resolving? How do you get a product management job without even knowing what product management is? Why do great technology companies fail if they cannot create a monetization strategy? How do unsuccessful startup experiences create a fire to do the startup cycle again but the next time around to do it right? Why is it that so many startup technology companies repeat the common mistake of not doing enough market research? What skill sets do you develop when going deep on market research to understand and become an expert on global industries? How did market research on smart homes lead to a job opportunity at Keller Williams? Why was Keller Williams so interested in bringing in experts from outside of real estate? What are some of the common misconceptions about real estate agents and their use of technology? Why are there so many agent personas in residential real estate? What about today's environment makes it ideal for innovation within real estate? Why has there been a shift in younger generations going to talk to lenders before they talk to real estate agents? What opportunities exist to expand partnerships with credit unions that at their core focus on member benefits?  Adi Pavlović - CEO of Newzip, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share a story about his early days at Keller Williams investigating the technology investments happening within real estate and how his conversation with the leading market research firm at the time helped to shape what was and what was not included in the early definitions of proptech. 

Does proptech have a fixed definition or is it in a constant state of evolution? What makes Los Angeles a particularly challenging real estate market to have success in? How did a customer focused approach of relentlessly seeking opportunities for clients create success despite a limited track record in the luxury home market? Why is building relationships the cornerstone of success, whether as a real estate agent or as a tech entrepreneur? How do the sales cycles of luxury real estate differ from the typical house transaction and how does this mirror an enterprise sales process? What is the tech stack for a highly successful luxury real estate agent? Why don't brokerages focus more tech development and spending on lead generation? Has the proliferation of technology become overwhelming for the average real estate agent? What was missing in the CRM world for real estate agents that Rila helps solve? Which business scaling issue does Rila help solve for real estate agents?Ben Bacal - CEO & founder of Rila and Revel Real Estate, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how respectfully ignoring the advice of his successful real estate agent mother led him to conquer the LA luxury real estate market and sell some of the most expensive homes ever sold in the US. 

What is the real estate lifecycle and why is this different from other sectors? Why did Derek experience a rebellious phase during college that entailed exploring career options outside of the engineering track he was ushered down? How does one become a strategy consultant by accident? Why did getting to know a tennis shop customer lead to a career change into real estate development? What else did Derek do to go all in on real estate as a profession? Are the advantages to working in a small family office focused on real estate development? Where did Derek cut his teeth on proptech? What gives one the confidence they have enough knowledge to be a real estate development entrepreneur? How did Derek choose to differentiate himself from his real estate development peers? What are the realities of the underlying economics of the coliving companies that have sprung up in the US? Why do proptech companies have a history of never reaching profitability? Why are there so few technical engineers in real estate development? What are the implications of poor proptech investment decisions for real estate developers? What is the importance of real estate developers asking what could possibly go wrong when considering proptech investments? Why is the so much hubris in proptech? What makes it so difficult to solve the people problems of real estate with software?Derek Hsiang - founder of The Proptech Scout, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how the fight against a desk job led to a journey of monetizing his passions starting with a brick-and-mortar tennis store and its nascent e-commerce presence, which helped develop his chops as an entrepreneur and strengthen his grit.

Is the headline "Proptech Needs to Die" hyperbole or does it point to a distorted truth? What are the lifecycle stages of ownership and how does this differ by real estate asset class? How did an accounting close process lead to a career interest in data intelligence and analytics? What is the Netflix culture deck and why is Netflix's culture so revered in tech companies? Why was participating in On Deck so beneficial as an aspring entrepreneur? What are some of the challenges faced when transitioning from the corporate employee world into being an entrepreneur? As an entrepreneur how do you decide which opportunities to focus on and which opportunities to walk away from? How did the personal experience of building an ADU during Covid spark the idea for Builty? What were some of the technical challenges encountered when creating a unified set of building permit data across many real estate asset classes? How many municipal building departments are there in the US that permits must be collected from to create a nationwide platform? Why is building permit data not yet commoditized? How many synonyms has Builty identified for ADU in the data it has processed so far? What are the four different data objects that permit data deals with and how is this unique compared to other real estate data?Kat Gordiienko - co-founder & CEO of Builty joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and gives my favorite answer ever to the definition of proptech (spoiler alert: Kat's answer was "a set of technologies to modernize the real estate industry"). 

Why did Chase's parents convince him to attend UVA and how has it become one of the best decisions that he ever made? What program offered by the NFL allowed Chase to finish his master's degree? How did a degree in sports administration establish a foundation for Chase's future entrepreneurial endeavors? What is the difference between move-in day and turn at college campus housing? How was Chase able to create a nationwide company helping off campus student housing with turn from an opportunity where he was essentially doing it for free? Why is move-in day so chaotic and unorganized at colleges? How did this opportunity allow Chase to evolve his business into different service offerings that were less stressful and created recurring revenue streams? How has Chase been able to leverage his success and create additional companies under different brands as well as start doing investments in other companies to expand his portfolio beyond the student housing sector? What pain point/opportunity regarding move-in day for property managers did Chase identify and solve? How did Chase leverage his non-traditional tech background to build a successful proptech startup?Chase Minnifield - Founder & CEO of EZ OS joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a blue-collar upbringing in Lexington, KY where you had to earn everything and nothing was going to be given to you, fueled his success in athletics (leading to a stint in the NFL) and ultimately opened the door for his post athletic career as a multiple time entrepreneur.

What does it mean to streamline the real estate industry? How might AI further seep into the proptech sector beyond content creation and visual generation? Will AI be a part of every company going forward or is this a temporary tech fad? What was it like to work (at the time) in the largest square foot building in the US? Are there unique challenges when working for a company that has both employees and unions? How many roles did Ali apply to at Uber before finally getting her foot in the door? What part of tech startup culture was particularly attractive to someone early in their professional career? Why is speed of execution so important for successful startups? What does it mean to build an end-to-end real estate investment platform? Why is it important for Getaway to be a co-investor on properties with their customers? Do young first-time real investors prefer complete ownership of a property vs a fractional share? Why does vertical integration make sense for the end-to-end real estate investor? What are the advantages of a referral based GTM strategy where you have a complex partnership ecosystem?Ali Nichols - co-founder & CEO of Getaway joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how a childhood obsession of dragging her parents out to openhouse showings every Sunday planted the seed for a future career in helping others invest in real estate.

Can entrepreneurship be taught in school or does it need to be learned on the job? What sorts of opportunities can you create for yourself by taking a chance and directly immersing yourself in an emerging space? How critical to scaling a business is knowing how to sell? Why is listening an underappreciated aspect of being successful in sales? Can introverted people actually make good sales people? How are entrepreneurs and sales people alike? What is attractive about real estate investing which you don't get from having your head in a computer all day? Explain a "garden city" and why is this structure so unique? What does the tech stack look like for the average real estate agent? Why do real estate agents consider most CRMs to be clunky? What unique factors create an opportunity to provide financial health tools to real estate agents? Why are mobile first solutions for real estate agents seeing better adoption than legacy desktop solutions? What entrepreneurial attributes do successful real estate agents have?How do you productize relevant financial information vs regurgitting existing financial content?Evan Knowles - Co-founder & CEO of Symba joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his first entrepreneurial software endeavor despite positive outcomes at a small level had inherent structural issues which would prevent it from being able to be scaled to any material level ultimately taught him that sacrifice was necessary to have success. 

How did an internship for Senator Barbara Boxer lead to attending George Washington University? What transformative event happened while attending George Washington University resulting in a move back to the West Coast to attend the University of Southern California? How did a family event as a teenager in Ukraine spark an initial interest in real estate? Why leave a promising career in real estate investment banking to move to Hong Kong? How did an investment banking background prove to be a great building block for commodity supply chain underwriting? What factor about supply chain underwriting led to travel to more than 30 countries around the world? Why is Manganese an important commodity component of construction? How wasteful is the process of construction? What percent of carbon emissions globally is construction currently responsible for? What does it mean to be a net zero global community by 2050? How many years of landfill capacity does the US have remaining? What new technology is Palari developing to further accelerate offsite construction? How is Palari creating microgrids for one of its new home communities? Basil Starr - founder & CEO of Palari Group, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how an interest in skydiving led to a board position at the Jump For The Planet foundation which raises awareness and funds for climate refugees.