Ellis: There was real skepticism, and there has always been real skepticism when people talk about sustainability. It doesn't matter if it is the real estate industry or elsewhere. Investors and venture capitalist have always been concerned about a viable business model and how big that market can be. We embraced that, and we had to ace the test to raise a series A. I think the timing is also right. The question was really about how big can the sustainability market be, but when you look at the logos that we work with and the market adoption that we had, it wasn't debatable. We have nearly 5.5 billion square feet using the software. If you want to find comparable market adoption, you have to go find people that have raised $110 million. Clearly, there is something happening around sustainability, and there is a genuine opportunity for a company like ours to be the platform globally for how these buildings are benchmarked, how they report and how the access capital markets. The capital markets have strongly moved toward using sustainability as underwriting criteria, and that has attention of the ownership. They know that they have to check this box at this point.

GlobeSt.com: Tell me about your expansion strategy?

Ellis: We are going to do it in two specific ways. Of course we are going to sell and market more, however, the nature of our product is that the more real estate we get, the more desirable it is for other buildings to be on it, because you want to compare yourself to the largest pool of high quality data. That phenomenon is kicking in for us. It isn't exactly that Measurabl has to add 100 sales people and 100 marketing people, we need to make sure that there is awareness that there is a truly global, investment-grade platform for benchmarking and measuring sustainable performance. That naturally will bring the next ownership into the system. We want to nurture that, and the best way to do that is to provide more valuable features. We are thinking of things like being able to pull a sustainability report that can show the LEED certification, if fines have been paid for energy disclosure, project inventory and energy efficiency measures that have been taken and the operational profile in terms carbon intensity per gross asset value. Those are the types of things that we can do uniquely well. We can tell you if a building is performing well relative to its peers and where it is not doing that, and that is very different from the things that you have seen in the market. We truly have visibility due to our unique set of data.

GlobeSt.com: One of the challenges in integrating technology into real estate is that it requires deep expertise in two very different industries. How have you been able to bridge these two and build a company at scale?

Ellis: I don't approach the problem as an IT problem. Sustainability is a value driver of real estate, and the first and most basic thing that you have to do is measure those things. You don't manage what you don't measure. There is a new set of data and performance criteria on real estate. There is a new agreement in the capital markets that sustainability is a value driver in real estate, so the first thing that we did is have a program for capturing that data, comparing it and quality assuring it. Basic. We built that at a time in the market when it didn't exist.