Influencers in CRE Technology
It’s 2024 and CRE experts are looking to tech to further their business decisions and solve as many problems as possible. If that sounds fancible, especially for a tradition-bound industry like commercial real estate, you haven’t been keeping up with the advancements made possible with generative AI, some of which we are chronicling in the coming pages. To be sure, many of these AI-based achievements are more theory than reality but that is where our influencers come in. CRE relies on smart, practical-minded experts to parse what works and what doesn’t for our industry. And indeed, that general concept is one of our guiding principles as we go about choosing our influencers each year. That, and which individual, team or company has had the greatest impact on CRE within the last 12 months. We trust you will agree with our selections as you read these influencers’ stories and look forward to the proptech they will help deliver to our piece of the economy.
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INDIVIDUALS
Zach Aarons
For more than a decade, MetaProp co-founder and managing partner Zach Aarons has been a pioneer in real estate…
Ethan Chernofsky
Placer.ai SVP of marketing Ethan Chernofsky is emerging as an expert on location analytics for the retail…
For more than a decade, MetaProp co-founder and managing partner Zach Aarons has been a pioneer in real estate technology. Driven by the belief that PropTech is a medium to make real estate more affordable, accessible and sustainable, he has invested in more than 175 PropTech portfolio companies. He started on this journey in 2010, when he invested in more than 50 portfolio companies, making him one of the most active angel investors in the field. In his role as a general partner at MetaProp, he is responsible for overseeing the investment process, including sourcing potential deals, fundraising new capital for funds and ensuring due diligence standards are met. With a long-term perspective on investments, Aarons believes strong relationships with clients are key to both success and managing risk. Aarons has become a thought-leader and mentor in the PropTech space and has been leading efforts to showcase the impacts of generative AI in real estate, including publishing opinions and speaking at PropTech events. In addition, he serves as a technology committee member for the New York Real Estate Board and published a bestselling book called “PropTech 101.” Aarons is a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he educates and fosters the growth of newer generations in PropTech. He also served as treasurer of the board of directors of The Lowline and on the board of trustees of The Tenement Museum.
Zach Aarons
Teams
AURORA CAPITAL ASSOCIATES
CBL PROPERTIES
DEODATE
NEXT REALTY LLC
NORTHMARQ
PEBB ENTERPRISES
PENNSYLVANIA REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST
RCS REAL ESTATE ADVISORS RCS
SCENERA INC.
SERVICE PROPERTIES TRUST
SIMONCRE
VESTAR
2023 Retail influencers
Individuals
Organizations
FRED BATTISTI
BRYAN BELK
BRIAN BERN
JAKE BISENIUS
CARRIE BOBB
DIANA BOUTROSS
MAX CHANON
DAVE CHEATHAM
DOMINIC COLUCCIO
JAMES H. DECREMER II
WESLEY DODD
DAN DOYLE
CASSIE DURAND
KYLE FISHBURN
AUSTIN GOTTSACKER
LOUIE GRANTEED
ANDREW B. HELLINGER
SPENCER A. HENDERSON
SIMON JONNA
MATTHEW E. KASINDORF
CHAD KURZ
CARY LEFTON
PHILIP J. LEVY
JUSTIN LONG
JASON MAIER
MARK MASINTER
TOM MCGEE
THERESA M. MCLAUGHLIN
KAZUKO MORGAN
COLEMAN MORRIS
KEVIN MURPHY
ETHAN DAVID OFFENBECHER
RYAN ORN
JOE RICCIUTI
SCOTT RIDDLES
GREGORY A. RIEGLE
WHITNEY ROBINETTE
PAUL RUSSO
ARIEL SCHUSTER
MASOUD SHOJAEE
STEPHEN SJURSET
KARLA SMITH
TOMAS SULICHIN
JULIE TAYLOR
ZACH TAYLOR
STUART THAIN
CHRISTOPHER J. THANNER
TONY VAUGHN
JOHN R. VISCONSI
DANNY VOLK
RYAN WELLER
DEAN ZANG
AMI ZIFF
DOTAN ZUCKERMAN
CAROLINA RETAIL EXPERTS LEADERS
CBRE SAN FRANCISCO URBAN RETAIL TEAM
CENTERSQUARE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT’S ESSENTIAL SERVICE RETAIL TEAM
COLLIERS’ MALAN + MARCELLO INVESTMENT TEAM
COLLIERS’ BRAD PETERSON AND TEAM
FEDERAL REALTY REGIONAL WYNNEWOOD OFFICE
HANLEY INVESTMENT GROUP REAL ESTATE ADVISORS’ JEFF LEFKO & BILL ASHER
HOLLAND & KNIGHT LLP’S RETAIL DEVELOPMENT AND LEASING TEAM
Teams
Organizations
Individuals
Noam Weisman
Noam Weisman is a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple startups, bringing a diverse background…
Christopher Yip
Christopher Yip has been involved in PropTech investing for four years, during which time he has emerged as an expert…
Ari Weil
Peak Realty Chicago director of technology operations Ari Weil’s background at technology giant Apple propelled…
Susan Wasmund
With more than 25 years of experience in the commercial real estate industry, Susan Wasmund has a…
Mike Sroka
Mike Sroka, along with Andy Lee and Kenter Wu, co-founded Dealpath in 2014 to build a software and…
Raj Singh
A venture capitalist, strategist and adviser, Raj Singh brings more than a decade of experience in…
Hayden Salvas
B+E director Hayden Salvas has remained an active participant in the NNN lease market, representing both…
Marat Safir
During his 26-year career in corporate real estate advisory, Marat Safir had the idea to automate the legacy…
Zachariah Rosenberg
Once expelled from Jewish day school for hacking, Zachariah Rosenberg turned his talents into a positive by becoming an engineer…
Cliff Plank
Due to the efforts of senior director of national GIS & mapping Cliff Plank, hundreds of Colliers professionals…
Anna Pavlova
CarbonQuest VP of strategy and market development Anna Pavlova has more than two decades of experience leading …
James Huang
During his 27 year commercial real estate career, James Huang has demonstrated a capacity to effect change, …
Johnny Hanna
Funnel chief revenue officer Johnny Hanna has a knack for seeing opportunities in the market. During his 20…
Rob Finlay
Thirty Capital founder and CEO Rob Finlay has more than 30 years of experience in every facet of commercial real…
Sandeep Davé
CBRE chief digital and technology officer Sandeep Davé is known for leading digital transformation across…
Sean Clancy
With more than two decades of experience, Matthews Real Estate Investment Services CTO Sean Clancy leads…
Christopher Yip has been involved in PropTech investing for four years, during which time he has emerged as an expert in the industry. With nearly two decades of experience in venture capital and private equity, Yip, who is a partner at venture capital firm RET Ventures, is leveraging technology to transform businesses and industries. In his current role, Yip drives innovation and adoption of PropTech with a focus on the multifamily and single-family rental markets. Boasting collective control of more than 2.5 million rental units across the US and Canada, Yip and his team understand the inefficiencies that exist in commercial real estate. To date, RET has tracked more than 2,500 real estate technology companies and has introduced more than 200 of the most promising solutions to strategic investors for due diligence and piloting purposes. In total, RET has raised $500 million in committed capital across several funds and invested in more than 35 PropTech solutions. As one of two partners at RET, Yip is responsible for overseeing all of the firm’s activity, from day-to-day operations to long-term strategy. With a background in leading M&A deals, mentoring entrepreneurs and CEOs, and serving as a hands-on board member, Yip also regularly helps guide RET’s portfolio companies at every stage of their growth and sits on the boards of five of RET’s PropTech investments. In an initiative spearheaded by Yip, the company launched the RET Ventures ESG Fund in April 2022. The fund allows the firm to increase its focus on ESG-specific solutions, including platforms focused on housing affordability, disaster resilience, residents’ physical and financial wellness, smart construction and material use, and water conservation.
Christopher Yip
Noam Weisman is a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple startups, bringing a diverse background in research and development, product management and business development. His multifaceted expertise gives him a unique ability to identify market gaps and address them with innovative solutions. Understanding that landlords of all sizes face similar challenges, Weisman introduced a scalable solution called The Hub that democratizes access to advanced property management tools. He successfully deployed The Hub across Silverstein Properties’ entire portfolio, where he serves as VP of customer products. Weisman has integrated artificial intelligence algorithms into the platform that analyze tenant behavior and preferences allowing personalized services and experiences. His focus on analytics helps landlords make informed decisions on everything from predictive maintenance to dynamic pricing. As the founder and CEO of Inspire Labs, Weisman oversees a team of 20 employees in New York City, Montreal, Tel Aviv and Lviv. He is responsible for the strategic direction of the company and is deeply involved in product development. Weisman also led an innovative project that enabled near-field communications building access via Apple Wallet in a collaborative effort involving Apple, HID, Swift Connect, Silverstein Properties and Inspire Labs. This innovation has had a ripple effect in the industry, with numerous other landlords expressing interest and taking steps to incorporate similar capabilities into their portfolios. Beyond his transformative work in the commercial real estate technology sector, Weisman is an active member of Tikoon.org, a nonprofit organization focused on alleviating hunger by redistributing leftover food from restaurants to families in need. He and his team at Inspire Labs are responsible for developing the mobile app that serves as the backbone of Tikoon.org’s operations.
Noam Weisman
Peak Realty Chicago director of technology operations Ari Weil’s background at technology giant Apple propelled him to become a transformative force in the commercial real estate technology sector; bringing innovative thinking to an industry rooted in tradition. Weil started with Peak Realty as a broker, where he gained insights into industry pain points. He then became a creative marketing manager before pivoting to the role of director of strategic growth, where he oversaw onboarding, training and recruiting. This unique combination of experience set him up to identify technology solutions that would help team members and clients. One such solution is a proprietary customer relationship management system that seamlessly captures data from diverse marketing streams and provides leads for the team. He has remained committed to continually evolving the product, specifically implementing designs to cater to the needs of the firm’s mobile sales team. The CRM system includes custom dashboards that make data more accessible and visually intuitive, enabling real-time communication with clients, automated messaging, data manipulation and the creation of client-friendly presentations. Weil introduced a bespoke application portal managing every facet of application screenings and leasing-related communication. This strategic segmentation of data entry at crucial junctures smoothed the firm’s operations and has significantly enhanced its reporting capabilities. Known as a problem solver, Weil excels as a collaborative leader, tapping into the strengths of both team members and strategic partners. As a firm believer in giving back to the community, Weil launched a charitable program in 2020 through which he and the Peak team contributed to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless for each completed transaction.
Ari Weil
With more than 25 years of experience in the commercial real estate industry, Susan Wasmund has a passion for technology that allows her to innovate, solve complex problems and build tech-enabled solutions. She uses a strategic and forward- thinking approach in her role as senior managing director and global occupancy management lead at CBRE, where she is known for questioning the status quote to understand if technology, automation or artificial intelligence can make CBRE programs more effective. Wasmund started her career as an architect, construction project manager and occupancy planner and since then has led two of the world’s largest global workplace and occupancy management platforms. She built CBRE’s platform for more than 900 workplace and occupancy strategists, occupancy planners, CAD and CAFM technology professionals and analysts who support 85 clients and more than 869 million square feet of space worldwide. Wasmund is a leader in CBRE’s Americas Consulting practice and leads the technology advisory team, which advises on technologies that work best for each specific client’s needs. She shares her knowledge in her annual Workplace & Occupancy Insights Report, which generated more than two million social impressions and 16,000 views in 2022. Under Wasmund’s leadership in the past three years, more than 1.5 million people have been positively impacted by the team’s efforts. This has also resulted in $300 million in portfolio optimization savings identified during the past two years. In late 2021, she co-led the acquisition of Buildingi, which added space and utilization management and computer-aided design services to CBRE’s Workplace & Occupancy management offering. When asked about her accomplishments, Wasmund focuses on her passion for providing her team members with a great career path.
Susan Wasmund
Mike Sroka, along with Andy Lee and Kenter Wu, co-founded Dealpath in 2014 to build a software and data platform designed to change how real estate transacts digitally. In the nine years since then, Dealpath has become a leading deal and portfolio management solution backed by seven of the top 10 institutional investors and has supported more than $10 trillion in transactions worldwide. The platform acts as a single source of truth that provides vetted, real-time deal information, along with associated files and tasks, fueling data-driven analysis and decisions to achieve optimal, risk-adjusted returns. Dealpath enables investment managers to work at scale with accuracy and efficiency through easy access to data and effective internal and external collaboration across teams, partners and vendors. Sroka’s career started in real estate finance, where he observed how large-scale private equity firms manage their data. He then joined a hedge fund where he was pulled into software development. These experiences inspired him to help grow venture-backed software companies including OneSeason, Zynga and Fanhood before launching Dealpath. Sroka prioritizes flexibility and agility within the platform, setting it up to respond to the changing landscape of commercial real estate with innovations such as artificial intelligence. As CEO, Sroka oversees Dealpath’s day-to-day operations, cultivates long-term partnerships with key stakeholders and spearheads product and go-to-market strategies. Under his leadership, Dealpath has compounded triple-digit and high double-digit annual growth and has surpassed 100 employees as the company expanded its global coverage and support.
Mike Sroka
A venture capitalist, strategist and adviser, Raj Singh brings more than a decade of experience in investments, business development, executive leadership and technical sales for startups, venture capital and corporations to his role as managing partner at JLL Spark, JLL’s global venture fund investing in early to mid-stage startups to fuel and accelerate innovation in PropTech. JLL Spark has invested more than $390 million in more than 50 early-stage PropTech startups. Previously, Singh served as interim co-head and managing director of investments at JetBlue Technology Ventures, the corporate VC of JetBlue Airways. He also served as CEO of London-based Sooqini, an on-demand economy task delegator for small businesses that he co-founded. As a general partner and co-founder of Pervasive Technology Ventures and a principal for the New York-based VC arm of Investcorp, Singh was responsible for sourcing, negotiating and closing new investments in technology startups. At Booz Allen Hamilton, Singh led strategy and technology projects in e-commerce, technology, media and telecommunications, and financial services. He also held multiple positions at IBM at the start of his career. Singh has twice been recognized as one of the top 100 CVC investors by the Global Corporate Venturing Institute, most recently in 2023. He has mentored various startups through the Founders Institute of Palo Alto, focused on promoting entrepreneurship. He is a judge for Stanford University’s venture capital courses and its Start X accelerator, and he is an advisory council member for Counterpart Ventures, focused on elevating the CVC skill base and talent pool, as well as a mentor and angel investor in travel and transportation-focused startups.
Raj Singh
B+E director Hayden Salvas has remained an active participant in the NNN lease market, representing both buyers and sellers, which has allowed him to develop tech-driven solutions that make clients’ lives easier and give them greater confidence in transactions. With six years of industry experience, he advises clients on the acquisition and disposition of net lease real estate investments while also serving as the director of product at the firm. Recent 1031 closings include a $22.5 million Tesla facility, a $5 million Shake Shack, a $4.35 million 7-Eleven and a $3.3 million Chipotle. The pandemic solidified Salvas’ belief that having best-in-class technology and access to real-time data is crucial to providing clients with the highest quality of advisory. Similar to the volatile interest rate environment today, the pandemic quickly shifted valuations across property types generating plenty of uncertainty. Leveraging the B+E database and other technology products, Salvas and the firm were able to instantly help clients make data-driven decisions about their real estate portfolios. One of B+E’s core goals is to expand the NNN marketplace. Through technology and education, the company is working to spread single-tenant net lease investing opportunities to people of color, women and millennials.
Hayden Salvas
During his 26-year career in corporate real estate advisory, Marat Safir had the idea to automate the legacy process of negotiating lease transactions. He co-founded Statera, where he serves as CEO, to develop a digital lease negotiation platform for the industrial real estate sector that augments and automates how deals are negotiated between landlord and tenant teams. Safir also is a principal and founder of Chicago-based tenant representative firm TMG Real Estate Advisors, where he leads a team in advising corporate occupiers of space to determine labor, incentives, construction costs and facilities to identify optimal real estate solutions. Safir also has a commercial construction firm, s3 Construction, and is on the board for ITRA Global, one of the largest commercial real estate organizations that exclusively services tenants and occupiers. Through his real estate firm, he and his partners give back to the community through various foundations such as Ada S. Mckinley and the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Safir also is working to provide young technology talent from his native country Ukraine with the resources they need. With a portion of the Statera team located in Ukraine and all three co-founders being Ukrainian-born, this is an especially important endeavor for Safir and his team.
Marat Safir
Once expelled from Jewish day school for hacking, Zachariah Rosenberg turned his talents into a positive by becoming an engineer skilled in coding. He began his career in lending as an underwriting analyst and then worked as a deal manager before becoming a loan originator. During this time, Rosenberg wrote a script over a weekend that identified more than $150 million in new loan originations during the following three months. He left Greystone in 2019 to launch TapCap, a fully digital commercial real estate debt advisory shop that used a proprietary cloud-based underwriting engine to proactively identify refinance and acquisition opportunities and notify owners of potential savings or value-add opportunities. When he sold the firm to Walker & Dunlop in 2021, Rosenberg joined the company as a technology leader to help transform its lending business and oversaw the team responsible for building the platform that achieved the first fully online, quote-to-close multifamily loan. He returned to Greystone in 2022, where he currently serves as the director of Greystone Labs, a team tasked with transforming the company into a tech-forward commercial real estate lender. He is described as an innovator who is focused on propelling the lending industry into a new era that relies on quantitative analysis and engineering. In this role, Rosenberg leads the technology research and development arm of Greystone. He oversees a growing team of 15 technologists and engineers based in the US and Europe focused on developing a unified, end-to-end digital experience for the entire lending process, which is set to be implemented internally at Greystone in 2024. This solution will guide users through each stage of the loan process, including quoting, underwriting, closing, servicing and asset management. Rosenberg is exploring a collaboration between Greystone and engineering empowerment groups like Girls Who Code and Black Girls Who Code to provide potential career guidance and internship opportunities.
Zachariah Rosenberg
Due to the efforts of senior director of national GIS & mapping Cliff Plank, hundreds of Colliers professionals serve the nation more efficiently and effectively. Plank convinced Colliers’ leadership that the advantages of developing its own Geographic Information System technology would outweigh the expense. In 2020, he launched Colliers Atlas, the company’s enterprise-wide, web-based GIS platform that houses data and content as well as interactive map apps. The solution can share content, data and GIS processes to other systems, software and databases across Colliers’ digital landscape, and it can also consume data and content. This interconnectivity is building a comprehensive, leading-edge technology ecosystem. Plank has focused much of his 27-year career promoting GIS education and leveraging the technology to improve client solutions. He leads a team of 13 GIS experts at Colliers in several offices across the country to support the company’s US business lines and professionals. Under his leadership, the team develops self-service GIS applications available to all Colliers professionals. This includes Build Our Own Maps, a self-service app that has vastly increased mapping capacity and provides about 60,000 branded maps per year while saving the company time and money. Similarly, the Help Yourself Demographic Reports app (HYDRA) enables Colliers professionals to generate their own demographic reports. HYDRA provides the same time- and cost-saving advantages as BOOM, with users generating about 100,000 reports annually.
Cliff Plank
CarbonQuest VP of strategy and market development Anna Pavlova has more than two decades of experience leading initiatives to improve building energy management, decarbonization and automation. Pavlova and CarbonQuest are working to reduce building emission profiles using technology by capturing carbon onsite and converting it to liquid carbon that can be used in a variety of industrial processes. Pavlova established a partnership with concrete block manufacturer Glenwood Mason, which uses recycled carbon dioxide from CarbonQuest to lower the embodied carbon of its products and provide a more sustainable offering. Pavlova took on the challenge of introducing this technology in New York City and has been working to help owners and operators avoid millions in penalty costs and fees related to Local Law 97 through emission reductions. She has been instrumental in educating the industry and the public about the value and opportunities of the technology, and her vision has expanded CarbonQuest’s reach beyond its initial focus on buildings with boilers to accommodate clients that use combined heat and power systems, supporting the decarbonization of larger commercial towers, hospitals, universities and campus-oriented real estate. Recently, Pavlova has been exploring the possibilities of incorporating augmented reality to improve the customer experience. Understanding the importance of public-private engagement, Pavlova has been leading an effort to engage with NYSERDA, the Department of Energy, National Labs and other private sector entities to cost-share in innovation in distributed carbon capture. The success of 179d reform passed by Congress as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 was a major success for Pavlova. The legislation incorporates several policies she helped develop through her work with the Real Estate Roundtable.
Anna Pavlova
During his 27 year commercial real estate career, James Huang has demonstrated a capacity to effect change, transform projects and revitalize structures for success. As president of eXp Commercial, Huang led the company’s national and international launch and guides the firm while managing day-to-day operations. Under his leadership, eXp Commercial has not only embraced technological advancement but has also nurtured a collaborative and incentivized ecosystem that empowers agents and propels the company’s growth. Huang pioneered a fully immersive, cloud office environment that grants real estate professionals access to collaborative tools, training resources and networking opportunities. This approach leverages technology to create a virtual workspace that fosters real-time interactions, knowledge sharing and skill development. He also established a revenue-sharing program that rewards agents with a percentage of gross commission income earned by the real estate professionals they attract into the company. This compensation model not only incentivizes growth but also cultivates a culture of collaboration where success is mutually beneficial. Huang introduced equity awards for real estate professionals within the organization based on their production and contributions to overall company growth, which fosters a sense of ownership among agents and solidifies their dedication to the brokerage’s success. He is a thought-leader with a knack for anticipating market dynamics and capitalizing on emerging opportunities. Huang’s commitment to charitable and civic engagement includes his work as the national president of the Asian Real Estate Association of America. In this role, Huang has devoted nearly four years to guiding AREAA’s mission of creating a national platform for housing professionals, advocating for policy changes that enhance homeownership accessibility for the AAPI community, and fostering business growth opportunities for mortgage and real estate practitioners dedicated to this expanding demographic.
James Huang
Funnel chief revenue officer Johnny Hanna has a knack for seeing opportunities in the market. During his 20 years in the industry, Hanna co-founded Entrata, where he spent 12 years building real estate software, and Homie, a tech-first brokerage building software to streamline home buying and selling with a mission to eliminate unnecessary fees and commissions. At Entrata, he helped grow the company’s annual recurring revenue from nothing to more than $100 million and added more than $1 billion in monthly rent payment processing. Under Hanna’s leadership, Homie had 8,646% revenue growth and saved clients more than $162 million in unwanted commissions and fees. Hanna’s move to Funnel brings his impact on the multifamily sector full circle and aligns his ability to disrupt industries, solve problems and accelerate growth. Funnel’s renter-centric data architecture further disrupts the antiquated business models of property management companies by centralizing tasks and creating role specialization for leasing professionals that improves their daily work/life balance and provides a modern eCommerce experience for renters. Hanna is responsible for Funnel’s growth and scaling the firm to meet industry demand for renter-facing technology. Funnel has been adopted by eight of the top 25 owners and operators in the multifamily space. Hanna has long been a champion of true open APIs that provide meaningful integrations that clients need. Funnel founded a 501(c)(3) called Housing Opportunities Made Equal and donates $1 for each new lease signed via its online leasing solution.
Johnny Hanna
Thirty Capital founder and CEO Rob Finlay has more than 30 years of experience in every facet of commercial real estate, from analytics to acquisitions, operations to finance, and more. He develops bespoke technologies and services that support and enable optimal efficiency and profitability for commercial real estate investors’ operations and ventures. Finlay has launched and sold many successful commercial real estate technology and finance startups during the past two decades, including Commercial Defeasance, Investor Management Services and Tax Credit Asset Management. In addition to his entrepreneurial pursuits, Finlay owns and operates a substantial portfolio of multifamily and commercial properties as well as securitized debt instruments. Thirty Capital provides mid-market CRE management, investment and private equity firms with technology, finance advisory and debt management services. The firm’s software technology and financial advisory services portfolio includes Lobby CRE, EntityKeeper, Thirty Capital Financial, Thirty Capital Performance Group, Thirty Capital Ventures, The Academy of CRE Finance and Innovation, and other ventures. These enterprises integrate modern technology with expert services to propel the commercial real estate industry’s advancement. Finlay launched the Thirty Capital Performance Group, a real estate advisory company that provides expertise at the intersection of capital markets, technology, data analytics and data science to deliver results to clients. Its multidisciplinary team solves the challenges faced by owners, operators, property managers, asset managers and institutional investors in validating cash flow and economic assumptions, providing independent, unbiased insights and recommendations. Finlay recently published, “Beyond the Building,” a comprehensive guide to commercial real estate in which he teaches operators how to think like technology companies whose product is real estate. The book shares his journey in the industry, what he learned through experience, observation and mentorship, and his dedication to driving success through data-driven decisions, effective leadership and strategic planning.
Rob Finlay
CBRE chief digital and technology officer Sandeep Davé is known for leading digital transformation across different industries, including telecom, financial services and commercial real estate. In his role, Davé oversees all aspects of technology for the company, including digital strategy, technology enablement for each business segment, unlocking value from data, venture investments and strategic partnerships. He inherited an organization at CBRE with significant inefficiencies caused by manual processes and a lack of technology-enabled differentiation. Under Davé’s leadership, CBRE’s digital transformation has resulted in meaningful differentiation for the company. It has automated about 200 processes using robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, which has unlocked millions of dollars in efficiency benefits. Key milestones include moving from a vendor-dependent organization to having in-house design, product and engineering talent; reducing the company’s data center footprint from 17 to three and automating cloud management practices to manage costs; and moving to a single enterprise resource planning system. These changes have significantly reduced costs and accelerated time to market, demonstrated through a scorecard covering efficiency, time to market, CSAT and ROI against committed benefits. Following the digital organization’s transformation, Davé led the effort to build digital strategies for CBRE’s lines of business, outlining the potential for tech-enabled transformation and the risk of disruption. Within the past year, Davé and his team were deeply involved in CBRE’s strategic investments in leading PropTech companies VTS and Deepki. Davé frequently speaks at industry events on the topics of enterprise digital transformation, technology’s influence on employee experience and the transformative potential of AI across the commercial real estate life cycle.
Sandeep Davé
With more than two decades of experience, Matthews Real Estate Investment Services CTO Sean Clancy leads the acceleration of technology initiatives, strategies, tools and resources to make the commercial acquisition and disposition experience seamless for the company’s brokers and clients. He brings extensive experience in IT development operations, cloud platform infrastructure and software and data architecture to his role. Clancy oversees the execution of high-level technology initiatives from start to finish. He also manages the company’s in-house IT department, which provides office infrastructure and assistance for more than 600 employees and agents. He has been responsible for numerous innovations to Matthews’ business operations, simplifying business and making processes more efficient. In 2022, he recruited an entire development team to join Matthews and led the launch of the company’s proprietary technology division that is working to integrate innovative solutions into agent and client services. The division is set to launch a full suite of technology resources and tools for Matthews’ agents and employees, providing up-to-date research, data and CRM software. Clancy is a member of the Matthews Corporate Social Responsibility program, which allows agents and employees to give back on both a local and national level. Through CSR, Clancy has been involved in fundraising events for the Pat Tillman Foundation, Feed My Starving Children, Brokers for Kids, Together We Rise and numerous local food banks.
Sean Clancy
Placer.ai SVP of marketing Ethan Chernofsky is emerging as an expert on location analytics for the retail technology industry. He has 10 years of industry experience. As the firm’s lead analyst, Chernofsky gleans data and insights that help businesses make better-informed decisions and create more impactful strategies. His work is especially important as physical stores adjust to new traffic trends. An understanding of what customers want and which channels are most effective is critical to addressing customer needs. He works directly with clients to garner on-the-ground perspectives that have helped inform the deployment and development of many of Placer.ai’s tools and services. These include new audience insight tools that give customers a deep understanding of the specific attributes of a location’s audience or visitors, and retail sales reports that allow customers to see granular data related to specific sales performance at individual retail chain locations. Chernofsky had the unique privilege of joining Placer.ai very early in the company’s journey, helping drive adoptions from tens of customers to thousands. Since he arrived at Placer.ai, he has contributed to a 3,700% increase in its client base. He also works closely with the company’s content team on blog posts and white papers outlining foot traffic trends in the retail sector.
Ethan Chernofsky
VTS Executive Leadership
Under the direction of CEO Nick Romito and chief strategy officer Ryan Masiello, VTS has developed a centralized platform for data to replace spreadsheets and deals drawn up on the back of napkins in commercial real…
TSCG Analytics
Using advanced data technologies including data mining, the TSCG analytics team brings science to the art of site selection and finding the best site and deal for the firm’s retail clients. The team was founded in…
Holland & Knight’s Boston Real Estate Team
Holland & Knight’s Boston real estate team joined the company in June 2023 from Seyfarth Shaw, bringing experience in leasing technology to bolster Holland &…
TEAMS
Clockworks Analytics
Founded in 2008 within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Building Science Department, Clockworks Analytics is focused on providing cutting-edge technology to improve building performance by…
AXCS Capital
Founded in 2022, AXCS Capital uses a tech-driven approach to optimize the structured financing process from beginning to end, enhancing advisors’ knowledge of lender relationships, client service and AI-…
Organizations
Veritas Investments
With roots in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area, multifamily PropTech firm Veritas Investments has had a tech-forward mindset from the start. The firm’s DRIVE system weaves together dozens of proprietary…
Smart Capital
Smart Capital addresses a long-standing issue in the commercial real estate world – inefficiency. Using an artificial intelligence-powered platform, Smart Capital has streamlined processes that traditionally…
Renew
To address resident retention in the multifamily industry, Renew developed a software platform that allows operators to modernize and automate the resident renewal process to drive better retention…
RealINSIGHT
RealINSIGHT is a cloud-based software solution that delivers full lifecycle support, from loan origination, securitization and underwriting through surveillance, asset management and dispositions designed…
RCKRBX
RCKRBX is a real estate data intelligence platform that delivers real-time customer insights based on responses from thousands of current and prospective renters. The platform is designed for multifamily real…
PetScreening
Believing that multifamily and rental housing should be pet-inclusive, CEO John R. Bradford III founded PetScreening in 2017 to help apartment operators individually screen pets and owners to assess…
Olive Tree Ventures
Founded in 2020 and led by partner Jeremy Kaner, Olive Tree Ventures is focused on early-stage investments in PropTech, contech and adjacent spaces with significant overlap, such as climatetech, fintech and…
Keyway
Keyway stays ahead of the curve through a focus on the latest developments in AI, machine learning and data science, and then leverages that data to make better investment decisions. CEO Matias…
Janover
Janover Inc. has established a business-to-business fintech marketplace that facilitates connections between commercial property borrowers and lenders. The firm focuses on reducing friction using technology to…
GridPoint
GridPoint is addressing energy efficiency and decarbonization through a platform that operates on both sides of the energy meter – including hardware and controllers in buildings that integrate directly with…
Faropoint
Real estate investment manager Faropoint’s data-driven approach has allowed it to acquire on- and off-market urban infill industrial assets. Founded in 2016 by CEO Adir Levitas, Faropoint has built a…
Entrata
Founded in 2003, Entrata focuses on innovating property management software and has developed a niche offering a range of cutting-edge technology solutions for the rental housing market. The firm offers a…
DealCloud, by Intapp
DealCloud, a division of Intapp, is a vertically-integrated cloud solution for relationship, pipeline and fundraising management, as well as task-based workflow and process automation. The firm’s…
CrowdStreet Inc. (“CrowdStreet”)
Founded in 2014, CrowdStreet Inc. is creating a community in which investors and real estate firms can work together to expand participation in the commercial real estate market. The company is led by interim…
Under the direction of CEO Nick Romito and chief strategy officer Ryan Masiello, VTS has developed a centralized platform for data to replace spreadsheets and deals drawn up on the back of napkins in commercial real estate. Romito and Masiello both worked as tenant representative brokers prior to investing their life savings to build and grow VTS starting in 2012. The platform captures first-party data and delivers real-time insights that fuel faster and more informed decision-making throughout the deal and asset lifecycle, including leasing, marketing, asset management and tenant experience. The firm has brought multiple product offerings and additional platforms to market since its inception, persevering through multiple challenges related to the pandemic. These include VTS Retail, a leasing platform designed specifically for retail, VTS Market, an integrated, online marketing platform that enables landlords and agency teams to market and lease available spaces remotely, and VTS Data, a forward-looking data product. Recognized for streamlining processes, decision-making and management for owners, operators, brokers and tenants, VTS has been at the forefront of future of work discussions even before the pandemic altered traditional norms of work. The company’s most recent product – VTS Activate – is a tenant experience technology offering that defines how employees, employers and landlords interact and operate in the new workplace era and addresses challenges including low tenant demand, evolving tenant expectations and the persistence of hybrid work policies. The solution enables commercial real estate owners and operators to create a fully-integrated office experience through a one app/access anywhere methodology that opens a landlord’s entire portfolio to tenants, giving workers the flexibility they want while providing the collaboration and connection employers need. During the past three years, the company secured $125 million in Series E fundraising and acquired Rise Buildings and Lane Technologies.
VTS Executive Leadership
Using advanced data technologies including data mining, the TSCG analytics team brings science to the art of site selection and finding the best site and deal for the firm’s retail clients. The team was founded in 2019 and is led by managing director and SVP of technology and innovation Bryan Chandler, who spearheads the company’s efforts to highlight the growing importance of data during presentations to clients. The team also includes senior location data analyst Allie Blanco, who implemented a custom web application using more than 300 data points to determine the strongest sites for a client, and director of GIS Madeleine Daher. As part of the company’s advisory services, the team supports 21 offices and clients nationwide, as well as acting as the primary resource for an international client’s data analytics in its US rollout. The team keeps a finger on the pulse of the latest updates in commercial real estate technology, tests those technologies to determine their impact on the success of TSCG partners and implements technology with client success in mind. When the firm brings on new clients, the analytics team integrates their data findings into site selection services offered by the advisor team, providing site selection, trade area definitions and decision-making for clients. It also is tasked with customer profiling, creating void analyses, sales forecasting and custom mapping solutions. The team works closely with local advisors to combine science-backed information with on-the-ground truth to assess deal-making and site selection questions. Clients have described the team as prompt, essential and revolutionary.
TSCG Analytics
Holland & Knight’s Boston real estate team joined the company in June 2023 from Seyfarth Shaw, bringing experience in leasing technology to bolster Holland & Knight’s real estate department. With a combination of legal services, project management and process mapping as well as innovative software platforms, the team helps clients expand their retail footprints nationwide. This combination of skills and technology helps the team’s clients optimize consistency and efficiency in risk allocations across their portfolios while providing near real-time information on rollout status and costs. The team’s use of technology in project management includes tracking and client notification of critical deal dates and deadlines, generating data points to increase efficiency and budget tracking tools. The team also specializes in the development, permitting and construction of real property that supports the clean energy sector. In Weirton, WV, the team assisted a client with the lease of a parcel that formerly housed a steel mill that is being redeveloped into an 820,000-square-foot battery manufacturing facility. The $500 million project is one of the state’s largest redevelopment projects. It also is working on the redevelopment of a site in Salem, MA, formerly used as a coal-fired power plant that will be re-used as a marshalling area for wind turbines. The team is led by partners Julie Connelly and Annie Malo. Connelly advises major retailers and office landlords on real estate issues and transactions, including portfolio management. Malo also advises major retailers and guides clients in the acquisition, financing and disposition of real estate assets.
Holland & Knight’s Boston Real Estate Team
With roots in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area, multifamily PropTech firm Veritas Investments has had a tech-forward mindset from the start. The firm’s DRIVE system weaves together dozens of proprietary and off-the-shelf solutions that optimize operations and provide benefits for residents, and it has been providing services for other owners in centralized leasing operations and centralized maintenance operations. For example, it uses artificial intelligence to efficiently route technicians in the field and its internal tools provide thoughtful automation to streamline complex internal workflows, enabling faster and easier scale. On the customer-facing side, access systems like Carson Living allow for remote access and visitor verification, and Veritas’ partnership with the Bilt Rewards credit card offers residents a fee-free payment option for rent and other charges. Taking care of people remains a core value of the company in combination with technology enhancement. Veritas properties often have higher occupancy than competitors, with an average resident tenure of five to seven years. With more than 200 properties in the San Francisco Bay Area and greater Los Angeles, Veritas is one of the most active apartment firms in the West. The company and its employees donate hundreds of hours to nonprofits and community improvement projects. It was among the most proactive companies nationally during the pandemic in giving its residents and small business tenants millions of dollars in direct relief, and it voluntarily instituted an eviction moratorium before government-imposed moratoria. Founded in 2007, Veritas Investments is led by founder and CEO Yat-Pang Au.
Veritas Investments
Founded in 2008 within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Building Science Department, Clockworks Analytics is focused on providing cutting-edge technology to improve building performance by shifting operations and maintenance to a proactive rather than reactive approach. The company’s Fault Detection and Diagnostic (FDD) software analyzes building data and produces diagnostics to help building owners achieve energy savings, operational efficiencies and better-performing equipment. Using artificial intelligence, the software accommodates the complexity of imperfect building data and relies on a four-pronged global data model that incorporates equipment variables, point types, inferred relationships and calculated data. Clockworks believes its FDD approach is unique because it goes beyond fault detection to identifying relationships between issues, diagnosing the root cause and providing recommended actions. Each new building the AI interacts with enhances the expertise of the Clockworks software. Clockworks Analytics is led by co-CEOs Nick Gayeski and Brian Day. The team has grown rapidly to support global clients and has experience in building systems engineering, fault detection and diagnostics, cloud technologies and software development. Clockworks Analytics’ FDD technology was installed at the University of Iowa and the savings realized demonstrates the impact of predictive maintenance and how it can generate significant savings. The user interface regularly monitors trended data and diagnostics across 50,000 automation system points, identifying opportunities or faults with suggested actions. In six months, across 7,000 pieces of monitored equipment, Clockworks identified issues that resulted in $600,000 in realized savings. Clockworks Analytics has one of the largest building analytics datasets available, with 38,000 completed building tasks by clients resulting in more than $37 million in energy cost savings, or nearly 300,000 tons of annual carbon savings.
Clockworks Analytics
Founded in 2022, AXCS Capital uses a tech-driven approach to optimize the structured financing process from beginning to end, enhancing advisors’ knowledge of lender relationships, client service and AI-driven process efficiency. By digitizing and automating tedious and time-consuming tasks, the company boosts efficiency, transparency and collaboration. The platform provides sponsors with insights on the capital market’s feedback regarding projects, better pricing and market intelligence, and improved capital selection and execution. The company launched its proprietary software and operating system for its internal advisory team, George Smith Partners, a national capital market services provider founded in 1992. GSP structures diverse financing solutions for properties valued between $3 million and $350 million and annually facilitates more than $3.5 billion in financings across more than 200 transactions. AXCS also recently launched a fund management business under the GSP brand and is developing a loan sales platform to take advantage of the changing market. Due to its technology expertise, the company is aiming to benefit from long-term investments made in technology and apply it to opportunities that arise as the markets ebb and flow. The firm, led by CEO Evan Kinne, is active both within and outside the commercial real estate industry and supports several charities focused on homelessness and other local issues, particularly in Los Angeles where GSP is based.
AXCS Capital
Smart Capital addresses a long-standing issue in the commercial real estate world – inefficiency. Using an artificial intelligence-powered platform, Smart Capital has streamlined processes that traditionally involve tedious manual work and a laborious extraction of insights from vast data pools, freeing professionals to focus on more strategic tasks. The solution also provides investors and lenders with deeper insights into market trends and risks and equips stakeholders with predictive power that allows them to stay ahead of market fluctuations and make better decisions. Specific tasks the solution targets include AI-powered underwriting, which uses advanced algorithms to provide accurate and efficient underwriting services. Smart Capital also offers a comprehensive view of an investor’s portfolio and insights into market trends, and its debt management platform provides tools that allow lenders and investors to monitor, manage and optimize their debt portfolios efficiently. In 2023, Smart Capital integrated the GPT-4 AI system, which transforms the management and analysis of loan documents, insurance forms, disclosures, lease agreements and other financial documents. The firm was founded in 2015 and is led by CEO Laura Krashakova. Throughout the past three years, the company garnered several awards in the commercial real estate technology space, recognizing its contributions to advancing industry standards and pioneering new methodologies. Its expertise and influence in the sector led to invitations to speak at conferences organized by notable organizations, including the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Smart Capital
DealCloud, a division of Intapp, is a vertically-integrated cloud solution for relationship, pipeline and fundraising management, as well as task-based workflow and process automation. The firm’s solution helps real estate investors, developers and asset managers streamline disconnected processes across the investment and asset lifecycle through an AI-powered industry cloud. The solution manages firms’ market relationships, prospective clients and investments, current engagements and deal processes, operations and compliance activities, allowing investors and advisors to react faster, make better decisions and execute complex transactions. Client Balfour Pacific Capital believes the solution gives it an extra edge, allowing it to move quickly and competitively when executing transactions by connecting its people and providing the same bucket of knowledge whether they are in the office or on the road. Founded in 2010 by Ben Harrison, president of financial services, the company focuses on bringing technology-enabled efficiency to the private equity, investment banking and alternative investment sectors. The DealCloud real estate team is an active member of the Global Real Estate Institute and the Pension Real Estate Association. Additional team leaders include president of financial services and general manager of DealCloud Lokesh Seth; head of global business development for DealCloud Amit Lalwani; and DealCloud real estate industry principal Frank Spadafora. The solution has been recognized with several awards. DealCloud’s parent company provides cloud software solutions that address operating and regulatory challenges for the global professional and financial services industry. It serves more than 1,200 private capital and investment firms worldwide and announced 22 new clients in the past year.
DealCloud, by Intapp
Founded in 2014, CrowdStreet Inc. is creating a community in which investors and real estate firms can work together to expand participation in the commercial real estate market. The company is led by interim CEO Jack Chandler, CIO Ian Formigle and CFO Genni Combes. The online private equity real estate investing platform gives investors direct access to a range of investment opportunities while allowing real estate firms to efficiently raise capital. CrowdStreet offers the online tools needed to manage those investments, including browsing investment opportunities, learning about sponsors, viewing deal details and signing documents online. The marketplace also offers a variety of deals across the commercial real estate asset class spectrum, from multifamily to self-storage to data centers. The firm transitioned from an online marketplace to a financial institution with the launch of CrowdStreet Capital LLC, a registered broker-dealer. The launch of the affiliate broker-dealer allows CrowdStreet to expand services provided directly to investors, including escrow account funding, individual accreditation verification and operational improvements that increase investor protection through review, vetting and approval processes. In 2022, CrowdStreet exceeded $3 billion in total investments since its inception and its nationwide investor community now reaches more than 300,000 individuals.
CrowdStreet Inc. (“CrowdStreet”)
To address resident retention in the multifamily industry, Renew developed a software platform that allows operators to modernize and automate the resident renewal process to drive better retention rates, faster decisions and better net operating income. The existing process often involves sending out renewal notices 90 days before a lease ends and then sporadically following up. This can lead to turnover of up to 50% of residents each year. Renew’s software integrates with leading property management systems, providing operators with a centralized renewal tool and retention strategy that helps them navigate the renewal process. It automates outreach to residents, delivers renewal offers with dynamic pricing and leverages insights to create a curated resident experience, all of which drive increased renewals and faster renewal decisions. Additional benefits of the software include reduced vacancy loss, improved occupancy forecasting and better real-time pricing decisions. Renew is 86% accurate in predicting a resident’s renewal income, and it reports that the average property saves 73 hours per month on renewal-based tasks. Renew helps operators think more broadly about retention beyond keeping tenants in their existing apartments by allowing them to more easily move a resident into another unit within a community or to another community within its portfolio. Renew was founded in 2021 and is led by co-founders Rob Hayden, CEO, and Kevin Murphy, COO. Team members spent the company’s first two years working on Renew’s software solution and the company’s strategy. In the spring of 2023, the company announced its official public launch and revealed it had secured more than $8 million in seed funding.
Renew
RealINSIGHT is a cloud-based software solution that delivers full lifecycle support, from loan origination, securitization and underwriting through surveillance, asset management and dispositions designed for real estate lenders as well as debt investors and servicers. RealINSIGHT simplifies everything from highly structured products like CMBS and agency loans to more bespoke opportunities like bridge, construction and CLOs. The solution allows clients to integrate loan data with existing workflows, technology and models and access their systems anytime, anywhere, which typically involves a lengthy process through a third party. Its ability to provide cross-origination, underwriting, asset management and portfolio management capabilities allows users to navigate debt investment in one place, without any restrictions to debt structure, loan type or asset class. Despite recent challenging economic conditions, RealINSIGHT has grown its client base, employee count and overall business figures. Founded in 2016, RealINSIGHT is led by managing directors Dan Linder and Chris Shelton and is an affiliate company of CWCapital Asset Management, a commercial real estate finance and investment management company that supports both non-performing loans and real estate-owned solutions. In addition to company growth, RealINSIGHT expanded product capabilities including a client-enabled tool called the Screen Designer, which allows clients to customize their own experience on the platform by adding or removing data fields. This provides them with the flexibility to make decisions and progress investment decisions on their own terms and timing. In the past few years, RealINSIGHT has also introduced monthly power user meetings where the company’s most active users and leaders across clients collaborate about the product. These meetings allow for an open dialogue with the company’s key stakeholders and create a community of clients who are normally in competition with one another.
RealINSIGHT
Janover Inc. has established a business-to-business fintech marketplace that facilitates connections between commercial property borrowers and lenders. The firm focuses on reducing friction using technology to enhance industry operations, leading through education by providing tools for better outcomes, and fostering trustworthy partnerships between lenders and borrowers on their platform, emphasizing the importance of relationships in this sector. Recently, the firm unveiled new artificial intelligence capabilities aimed at further transforming commercial real estate lending and making the process of obtaining financing more straightforward and efficient for both borrowers and lenders. The autonomous AI email system builds on previously implemented AI communication features within its platform to enhance interactions among users through chat, text and now email. The firm was founded in 2018 and is led by CEO Blake Janover. In the past year, a significant accomplishment for Janover was its successful initial public offering on the Nasdaq Stock Market, raising more than $5 million.
Janover
GridPoint is addressing energy efficiency and decarbonization through a platform that operates on both sides of the energy meter – including hardware and controllers in buildings that integrate directly with utilities. GridPoint Intelligence drives continuous efficiency by capturing energy and facility data from buildings to better understand patterns, identify inefficiencies and assess building health across enterprises and then makes the data actionable by leveraging controls and automation tools to optimize energy and facility operations, save money and reduce carbon emissions. GridPoint supports the unique needs of many different building profiles, including multisite enterprises, small businesses, campuses, industrial complexes and government buildings. GridPoint’s technology features advanced controls and optimization tools for managing energy supply and communicates with onsite hardware to continuously adjust building efficiency, including automatically curtailing loads, transitioning equipment between unoccupied and occupied settings, and fine-tuning site operations to optimize energy use without sacrificing comfort. By connecting the built environment with energy grids, the platform allows customers to participate in utility-based programs like demand response and integrate with other distributed energy resources like batteries and EV chargers. An example of the benefits of GridPoint’s platform happened in 2022, when California experienced record-breaking temperatures and electricity demand. The company responded to the threat of blackouts by calling on its network of grid-interactive buildings to reduce demand, ultimately delivering multiple megawatts of relief. The solution is targeted at enterprises with small to medium-sized footprints. Founded in 2003, GridPoint is led by CEO Mark Danzenbaker. It has generated cumulative energy savings of more than $964 million for customers and avoided more than 13 billion pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions throughout its 20-year history.
GridPoint
Real estate investment manager Faropoint’s data-driven approach has allowed it to acquire on- and off-market urban infill industrial assets. Founded in 2016 by CEO Adir Levitas, Faropoint has built a proprietary, in-house artificial intelligence platform that generates consistent, precise and actionable insights into local markets and ultimately facilitates better decision-making processes. It employs a multifaceted approach, assessing and forecasting both current and future property values and it leverages comparables, market data and predictive insights to reduce risks and maximize returns when constructing property portfolios. Faropoint’s proprietary technology also streamlines the deal-making process, empowering broker partners to submit and close transactions more rapidly and efficiently. The firm’s business model centers on aggregating smaller infill industrial buildings and assembling them into comprehensive portfolios that are attractive to institutional investors. Faropoint’s research and development team, consisting of data scientists and engineers led by CTO Doris Pitilon, fosters strong connections with its local networks of leasing and sales brokers and uses data gathered through more than 100 deals closed each year to elevate and refine the insights derived from the platform. This AI analysis acts as another trusted voice on the team, offering an additional point of view and helping eliminate personal biases in decision-making. Bolstered by its network of local broker-partners and the use of its proprietary technology, Faropoint has acquired more than $1.4 billion worth of last-mile industrial assets.
Faropoint
Founded in 2003, Entrata focuses on innovating property management software and has developed a niche offering a range of cutting-edge technology solutions for the rental housing market. The firm offers a single-login, open-access property management platform for all stages of the leasing life cycle that creates efficiencies that help owners, property managers and renters create strong communities. Beyond developing technology, Entrata prides itself on partnering with clients to develop their technology strategy and is known for prioritizing client feedback and using it to implement changes that help rental housing owners and operators meet business and performance goals. In 2023, Entrata launched several new products including Entrata Affordable aimed at streamlining workflows and automating tasks throughout the certification and reporting process for affordable housing. It also launched Entrata Student Revenue Management, which uses machine learning to provide optimal rent suggestions on a bed-by-bed basis and provides real-time data with information tailored to the nuances of student housing. Its Advanced Budgeting solution automates many aspects of the budget-building process. In July, Entrata acquired Rent Dynamics, which provides resident rent reporting and financial resources that promote economic inclusion and financial health for residents. The company serves almost eight million apartment residents across more than 2.8 million apartment communities and processes almost $33 billion in rent payments each year. Within the past three years, Entrata reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue. In 2022, Entrata announced its expansion into the Canadian property management market, where it partnered with Ontario-based student-housing operator Varsity Communities. The firm is led by CEO Adam Edmunds, president Chase Harrington, CTO Jason Taylor, COO and chief product officer Catherine Wong, chief revenue officer Amanda Fumo and CMO Nico Dato.
Entrata
RCKRBX is a real estate data intelligence platform that delivers real-time customer insights based on responses from thousands of current and prospective renters. The platform is designed for multifamily real estate and combines demand-side polling, machine learning and big data to answer complex investment, development and marketing questions in real time. This improves on a traditional reliance on anecdotal evidence and supply-side, retrospective market data that has been used to inform forward-looking acquisition and development decisions. Multifamily developers, investors and marketers can input potential project scenarios into the platform, gaining insights on current and prospective audiences, unit demand/mix levels as well as desired configurations, finishes and features, preferred amenity programming and placements, and ideal location attributes and neighborhood characteristics, from zip code to state levels. The SaaS platform’s actionable intelligence offers clarity in times of uncertainty, especially given the current economic climate and level of instability in today’s market, and provides subscribers and stakeholders with an unprecedented level of confidence when investing, acquiring and developing multifamily products in specific markets. The platform requires no training or installation. RCKRBX is exploring how AI and machine learning can be leveraged and integrated into the platform to enhance developer, investor, marketer and stakeholder decision-making processes, further drive return on investment and mitigate risks. The firm was founded in 2020 by president and CEO Michael Broder, COO James Moore, and chief research officer Kevin Hudak. It is active in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia markets and is poised to expand into 14 additional states.
RCKRBX
Believing that multifamily and rental housing should be pet-inclusive, CEO John R. Bradford III founded PetScreening in 2017 to help apartment operators individually screen pets and owners to assess potential risk. Bradford believed that onsite restrictions banning specific breeds were not only based on faulty assumptions but also were driving potential renters away. The company built a pet policy management software available free to property owners and managers that allows them to eliminate breed and weight restrictions and build variable policies and rent structures. It also allows property owners to track their onsite pet populations and limit unauthorized pets. The solution can help property management teams review reasonable accommodation requests for service and support animals. These time-consuming requests can present a wide array of complex legal and Fair Housing considerations. PetScreening now serves more than 4.5 million apartments and rental homes across about 23,000 rental communities and properties. The company estimates it has helped owners and operators capture more than $72 million in pet-related revenue, generated more than 3.5 million user profiles and completed more than 500,000 assistance animal reviews. PetScreening recently launched two Amber Alert-like services, FidoAlert for dogs and TabbyAlert for cats, and purchased a veterinarian-driven content asset, BetterPet.com. The new products have allowed PetScreening to add more than one million new customers to its database while also attracting more than 600,000 unique visitors to its website. FidoAlert and TabbyAlert have reunited more than 26,000 lost pets with their owners.
PetScreening
Founded in 2020 and led by partner Jeremy Kaner, Olive Tree Ventures is focused on early-stage investments in PropTech, contech and adjacent spaces with significant overlap, such as climatetech, fintech and insurtech. OTV’s Strategic Partner Network connects technology-adopting industry stakeholders with category-leading founders to facilitate pilots, portfolio-wide rollouts and strategic partnerships between technology startups and industry stakeholders. The collaboration enables founders to test and refine products and generate revenue proof points. Current noteworthy portfolio companies include Forsight, Kaya, Verify, StageGlass, Moved and Stake, each of which is developing cutting-edge solutions poised to revolutionize the built environment. OTV has brought together more than $700 billion from its partners in cumulative assets under innovation. Through its support for startups such as Stake, Olive Tree Ventures demonstrates a strong dedication to fostering financial wellbeing. Stake is a cash-back rewards platform that empowers property owners and operators to boost tenant retention rates and reduce vacancy rates while providing renters with a cash-back offer. Furthermore, Olive Tree Ventures’ collaborative efforts with companies like Moved, aimed at streamlining the moving process and enhancing resident experiences, underscores its commitment to leveraging transformative technology to better tenants’ lives. The Olive Tree Ventures team actively participates in philanthropic endeavors through its involvement with the Olive Tree Holdings philanthropy committee, which contributes to fundraising events throughout New York City. The team’s most recent volunteer effort benefited God’s Love We Deliver, a charitable organization dedicated to providing nutritious, medically tailored meals to individuals who are too ill to prepare or shop for food.
Olive Tree Ventures
Keyway stays ahead of the curve through a focus on the latest developments in AI, machine learning and data science, and then leverages that data to make better investment decisions. CEO Matias Recchia and COO Sebastian Wilner co-founded Keyway in 2021. The company’s 35-person data, product and technology teams are building an AI real estate investing co-pilot that could reduce fees by 50% and transaction times by 90% through more efficient sourcing, underwriting, transacting, managing and selling. The technology aggregates highly fragmented data into a centralized platform, which provides increased transparency. Predictive analytics tools enabled by the technology include Rent Thermometer, which identifies potential targets for value-add and other specific strategies among properties on the market; Rent Growth Score, which identifies markets with potential for outsized future rent growth; Downturn Resiliency, which identifies markets and properties likely to see stable revenue and occupancy during an economic downturn; and Transactiblity, which identifies properties where owners may be more likely to transact based on owner characteristics, debt, sales history and other metrics. The firm can now analyze 300 different data sources and more than 12,000 data points for each property, which helps provide greater insights into fragmented markets and mispriced assets. In the multifamily space, Keyway is focused primarily on small-scale class B properties in the Sun Belt due to its population and job growth. Keyway was named one of Business Insider’s 21 most promising PropTech startups in 2022.
Keyway
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