LOS ANGELES—CRE is experiencing a much-needed technological revolution, and Skyline Exchange is the latest technology platform to make an innovative mark on the industry. The new platform was launched this year by William Robertson, founder and CEO of Skyline Exchange, and pairs together commercial real estate professionals and investors to openly share vital information about the market, including vacancies, comparables, sales and “As Built” plans. To learn more about the platform and the importance of technology in the CRE space, we sat down with Robertson for an exclusive interview. Here is what he told us:

GlobeSt.com: Tell me about Skyline Exchange.

William Robertson: Skyline Exchange is revolutionizing the commercial real estate market by creating a free online destination and mobile app where users can find and share actual, critical commercial real estate information. With Skyline, users can find vacancies, lease comparables, buildings for sale, and As Built plans based upon a combination of crowdsourced information coupled with our own proprietary information.  Launched in strategic partnership with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, we make it easier for real estate executives, their brokers and other stakeholders to find the comparable information needed to make the best deal.   

GlobeSt.com: Why did you see a need for a program like this in the market?

Robertson: Of all the things that can easily be found on the Internet, commercial real estate information is not one of those things.  The challenge was finding some of the actual market information needed to support our early analysis.  I've spent my entire career in commercial real estate helping companies to understand how they should occupy real estate, and the lack of information often led to avoidable mistakes. By taking cues from companies like Palantir, we learned that combining big data collection with human analysis up front was much better. That led to the creation of Skyline Exchange.    

For decades now, the only resources available were expensive and didn't provide actual comp information transparently.  We decided that this is where we would start.  Make it easy to see what other companies were paying in rent, and just like a weather app, we make it easy to see what the average rent is in your location from your phone or any mobile device.

GlobeSt.com: How do you think that technology is changing the CRE industry?

Robertson: Many good companies are clamoring to improve commercial real estate through technology, and with good reason, there are so many aspects of the CRE process that need improvement.  I recently wrote an article in Forbes that went into this in detail, but in particular, companies like Compstak, Honest Buildings, Hightower and Plan Grid are doing a great job of bringing technology innovation into commercial real estate. Some of the most notable ways that technology is being leveraged by our team at Skyline and this new crop of innovators include crowdsourcing: data is critical to everything and real estate is no different. Sharing data openly is quickly revealing mistakes and eliminating data gaps and overlap; online teaming and networking: it will soon be as easy to find the right brokerage or design team as it is to find the right restaurant, and it will be as easy to work with that team as it is to post pictures to Facebook or manage your bank accounts online; and design through cloud collaboration: the drawings used for construction are complicated and multiple teams are often working on different parts of the same structure simultaneously from dozens of different offices and from different files at different times.  The size and type of these files made it impossible for Dropbox or Google drive to solve the problem, but PlanGrid and a few others might have the solution.

GlobeSt.com: What can we expect from this newly launched platform in 2015?

Robertson: For most of our users, the platform will be a free and transparent tool to find better information about commercial real estate markets.  We provide an answer to the question, “How do I know I'm getting the best deal?” For our power users, they'll make money-sharing information with us.  Users earn points for contributions, which earn a share of our monthly revenue distribution.  Much like the Quora model that enables questions and pays for answers.  

The Skyline revenue model is based on advertising; what we call Billboards. Billboards are the only things that cost money on our site.  Companies that advertise with us get to hand pick where they place Billboards in our virtual world. Over time, our advertising revenue increases as the crowdsourced data we collect improves.  This information growth trend accelerates because we share our Billboard revenue with the users that share information with us.  We're turning crowdsourcing in to work that you can actually get paid for, and advertising into a bridge to precisely where decisions are made. It should be a lot easier to find critical information and build critical teams; Skyline Exchange is making this a reality.