It’s been a long, long time since the days when CRE technology dragged behind most other industries. The sector has exceeded those early expectations and now excels in just about every CRE-related category. Driving these developments are men and women whose innovation and expertise have helped propel proptech to its current heights. On the following pages are our selections for tech influencers of the year. As you read their stories you will learn not only about their own achievements but also just how far the sector has come.
INDIVIDUAL
MATT CAYWOOD Actionfigure’s software is changing the way people commute by providing real-time transportation data to employers, corporate offices, comercial buildings and multifamily apartment complexes. Matt Caywood co-founded Actionfigure (previously TransitScreen) in 2014 following a volunteer program that he was involved in with Arlington County, VA, aimed at enhancing open data and sustainable transportation in Washington D.C. Prior to launching Actionfigure, Caywood led teams developing AI systems and brain-computer interfaces for transportation and geospatial applications at the MITRE Corp. He holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco. As CEO and CTO of Actionfigure, Caywood has led the charge in continuing to innovate and revolutionize how the real estate community and employers view transportation. Through its software solutions such as CityMotion, Actionfigure coordinates and customizes more than 3,000 data feeds from public transportation, such as subways, buses, ferries, trolleys; shared transportation such as scooters, bike shares and mopeds; ride-hailing services, such as Uber, Lyft and Via; and private transportation like shuttle buses, parking and vanpool programs. More than 1,000 customers across more than 50 cities in the U.S., Canada and Europe rely on Actionfigure, including Google, Reebok, the Washington Nationals, Avalon Bay and many others. Of particular note, Actionfigure’s business continued to grow despite the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, supporting the demand for more engaging and innovative transportation solutions. Caywood serves on the board of the Open Transit Software Foundation, is a core member of MobilityData.org, and is a member of both the Federal City council and the Association for Commuter Transportation.
TYLER CHRISTIANSEN In less than three years, Tyler Christiansen took a company named Nestio from a regional marketing tool to one of the most widely used CRMs by national multifamily REITs. During that time, Christiansen introduced the Funnel brand, which has reimagined traditional leasing models from property-based to centralized. Christiansen is CEO of Funnel Leasing, where he is responsible for all day-to-day operations of the company along with fundraising and setting the strategic vision and course for the business. Christiansen holds 15 years of industry experience. Under his leadership, Funnel has grown its revenues by more than 300% and it raised $14 million in a round of funding in November 2020. As his first act as CEO for Funnel Leasing, Christiansen made Funnel’s mission to make the world a better place by creating the future renter experience. As part of that vision, he led the initiative to found H.O.M.E., a 501c3 not-for-profit dedicated to building responsible technology and supporting causes that provide disadvantaged renters with access to safe and healthy housing. Every online application completed through Funnel’s platform will now generate a $1 donation on behalf of H.O.M.E. that will be used toward creating more equitable housing access and opportunity. Funnel has implemented several new initiatives to remain dynamic and nimble, including work from anywhere, unlimited paid time off and a series of full company off-site meetings.
DANIEL CUNNINGHAM Daniel Cunningham has used his passion for process and innovation to bring new ideas to real estate development and management. With a degree in civil engineering from the University of Arizona, he co-founded LivingHomes (now Plant Prefab), an environmentally focused modular home builder that built the first LEED Platinum home in the world in 2006. Cunningham built on his experience as director of asset management for AIMCO, a REIT focused on the ownership and management of apartment communities throughout the U.S. Later, as the founder of Landmark Property Management Group in 2008, Cunningham introduced the Nested Action Cycle approach to property operations through his book “365 Days of Property Management.” The property operations principles in this book became the basis of Leonardo247, a software company that launched its first beta product in 2014. The firm’s SaaS solution automates maintenance schedules, inspections, work orders, communication, policies, procedures and best practices in apartment operations from any digital device. Operators use Leonardo247 to remotely manage the day-to-day activities onsite and get real-time visibility into what work is occurring and when it’s completed. As founder and CEO of Leonardo247, Cunningham oversees the company’s strategic vision and frequently speaks on the subject of risk mitigation and best practices in property operations. Cunningham also invented a machine-learning algorithm that can read municipal codes and pass critical compliance sections to the operators who are affected by them, a process for which he recently received a patent. In 2021, Cunningham launched the Apartment Academy podcast, the industry’s first operations-focused podcast featuring an all-star lineup of multifamily real estate industry experts. Cunningham’s interviews gather insights from executives at established property management companies, key vendors or other commercial real estate thought leaders.
MICHAEL DEGIORGIO After graduating from Northern Illinois University in 2010, Michael DeGiorgio joined Auction.com, where he played a major role as VP until 2014. During his tenure, he saw an opportunity to speed up and democratize transactions to solve countless practitioner pain points with technology. In 2015, DeGiorgio ventured out on his own and founded Crexi, a platform that simplifies, expedites and democratizes the transaction process for brokers, buyers and investors. Crexi is among the most active commercial real estate marketplaces in the industry; listing properties with a total value of nearly $174 billion, representing 3.6 billion square feet nationwide. Crexi has served nearly 127,000 brokers and has garnered a market community of more than a million principals, investors, tenants, and buyer and seller reps. DeGiorgio built on his experiences at Crexi by becoming an angel investor and mentor for a diverse variety of startup companies. As CEO of Crexi, DeGiorgio spends significant time articulating his vision to the outside investment community, an effort that has resulted in raising more than $55 million through two seed rounds as of January 2020. While navigating trying pandemic times, DeGiorgio has grown his team by almost 30% overall, and in 2021, DeGiorgio and Crexi officially launched a mobile app that allows users to search by location to see listings and properties, share listings with others via text, email, Slack, social media, or other apps, and access more information about a property by offering memorandums, listing flyers and brochures. In addition, DeGiorgio also launched Crexi’s fifth line of revenue, an intelligence subscription offering that brings a comprehensive database with more than 13 million sales comparables in the U.S., and 48 million recently added property records to commercial real estate professionals, investors, principals and tenants.
WINSTON FANT Winston Fant, managing director and head of commercial real estate treasury services at JPMorgan Chase, identified a significant technology gap in the commercial real estate industry – rent collection. The multifamily sector remains largely reliant on paper transactions despite the growth in popularity of digital payments for transactions in other areas of life. To capture the momentum of these changing habits and preferences among tenants, Fant brought together multiple internal stakeholders to create and launch a technology solution that breaks the industry of its reliance on traditional rent collection channels. Fant worked with internal teams at JPMorgan Chase to develop Rent Collection Solution, which offers new rent collection channels along with configurability options and robust reporting. The digital solution helps multifamily owners and property managers streamline their collection process by helping them save time on the manual procedures required for handling checking and cash deposits. The Rent Collection Solution platform also provides tools for tenant empowerment, such as split payments and quick settlement. JPMorgan Chase’s Commercial Real Estate Treasury Services business has grown each year since Fant assumed his current role, even during the pandemic. Fant and his teams have helped the firm’s clients understand the value and impact that investing in their treasury services can have for their businesses. This growth in client education and adoption has expanded JPMorgan Chase Commercial Real Estate Treasury Services’ geographical footprint nationally.
KRIS FERRANTI Kris Ferranti took an early interest in blockchain and digital assets and their impact on the real estate industry, and for several years he has participated as an expert at industry events, webinars and publications providing compelling use cases for blockchain in real estate transactions. Ferranti, a partner with Shearman & Sterling LLP’s real estate group, was leading in the digital space before the firm joined the Legal and Regulatory Group of the Global Blockchain Business Council in early 2019. While the real estate industry has yet to widely adopt blockchain technology, Ferranti continues to play an important role in helping professionals within the sector develop a better understanding of the use case for commercial real estate and the legal and regulatory issues associated with this emerging technology. Among the topics, Ferranti has provided thought-leadership to include fractional ownership of NFTs and blockchain in real estate transactions, how blockchain relates to liquidity in real estate, and how blockchain and the tokenization of real estate assets can add value and efficiency to real estate transactions. In his role as partner at Shearman & Sterling, Ferranti represents clients in acquisitions, dispositions, joint-ventures, development projects, foreign investment, financings and leasing. His clients include sovereign wealth funds, investment funds and family offices, and individual and institutional investors, operators and developers. Despite the challenges of operating within the confines of mandates and lockdowns, Ferranti continued to maintain a presence with clients and important industry insiders to provide important legal updates regarding the pandemic and the ongoing state of the market. He has remained proactive in organizing and participating in various COVID-19-related webinars and virtual events to address many of the concerns and questions that real estate industry players have had as the pandemic unfolded.
AVIVA FINK Having joined the PropTech industry a decade ago as a young professional, Aviva Fink has made it her focus to address the underrepresentation of female talent in the space. Prior to recently assuming her new role of VP of marketing at commercial real estate financing advisory firm, Lev, Fink served as VP of growth and partnerships at Reonomy, where she actively supported the company’s efforts to bring more diverse talent into the organization and provide greater outlets for women at the company to advance their careers. At Reonomy, Fink was involved in developing an internal roadmap for more inclusive meetings and had a role in updating Reonomy’s hiring process with diversity as one of its top priorities. As a result of these efforts, the firm’s leadership team has become balanced with nearly 50% female presence. Beginning in 2019, Fink led a shift in targeting SMBs, spurring a strategy to expand to mid-market and enterprise clients. In order to execute this successfully, Fink coordinated a companywide effort with special focus on the operation, marketing and sales departments and a rebrand of Reonomy as an enterprise-facing company. Fink used her industry experience to help her teams navigate this shift and understand the new audience Reonomy was going after, while operating in a way that stayed true to the company’s broader mission and strategy. Over the past year, Fink spearheaded the introduction of Reonomy’s self-hosted quarterly panels along with a series of industry events to better cater to Reonomy’s mid-market and enterprise target clientele. While these events have largely been virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fink and her team garnered thousands of participants at these events. As a result of Fink’s efforts to successfully execute the internal shift in clientele, Reonomy experienced a quarter-over-quarter increase in engagement and has rapidly expanded its clientele.”
JAKE MARMULSTEIN Jake Marmulstein founded Groundbreaker at just 23 years old on a vision of every real estate investment shop having its own investor portal to leverage the underlying technology of crowd syndication. Marmulstein steered the focus of Groundbreaker toward empowering all real estate syndicators, not just the institutional shops; further democratizing access to real estate investment for everyone, from early-stage syndicators and fund managers to the small investors that want to allocate to deal sponsors they know and trust. As CEO, Marmulstein is responsible for setting the strategic vision for Groundbreaker, recruiting and retaining a team that executes and refines this vision, and keeping the company on solid financial footing by managing the company’s financial resources and its relationships with debt and equity providers to secure capital for growth. Groundbreaker has become recognized in the early stage real estate syndication community as an essential piece of the overall tech stack when it comes to launching real estate syndication business. Groundbreaker clients have done more than 1,000 deals with more than 8,000 active investors and $5 billion in completed transactions. As a result of the pandemic, Marmulstein made Groundbreaker a remote, international employer, which helped the firm overcome not only talent shortages in Chicago, but also helped to significantly reduce overhead. Outside of Groundbreaker, Marmulstein provides informal advisory and consulting to other real estate organizations, as well as early-stage founders. He advises a B2B2C education technology company, a sustainability-focused B2C retail brand, he is a judge for several startup competitions in Brazil and Puerto Rico through Seed Minas and Parallel18, respectively, and he is a member of the GLG expert network where he advises on real estate and technology projects.
CONNELL MCGILL Connell McGill is pioneering ways to use data to help the commercial real estate industry adapt to shifts that include tenant demand for information, ESG momentum in the investment community, stricter regulations on carbon emissions and a tight labor market as building operators are retiring and being replaced by less-experienced engineers. McGill, co-founder and CEO of Enertiv, set out to solve the problem of siloed data and encourage change in the approach and practices of countless commercial real estate portfolios. Along with Enertiv’s other co-founder, Pavel Khodorkovskiy, McGill has grown the company from the two of them in a garage to millions of dollars in revenue. He educates the industry through regular LinkedIn articles that often get thousands of readers, and he has appeared on numerous podcasts focused on the intersection of real estate and technology. In addition, he has collaborated on white papers with Enertiv’s investors. McGill’s leadership of Enertiv can be quantified in carbon emissions. To date, the company has saved 23,000 tons of CO2 and is expected to be able to double that in the next two years. After the onset of COVID-19, McGill drove an initiative to analyze data that only Enertiv had, discovering that HVAC costs had gone up 36% due to increased ventilation requirements. This analysis led to a better understanding across the industry of what effects reduced occupancy, increased outdoor air mix and better filters have on operating expenses and sustainability goals. Enertiv has doubled in size each of the last three years, even throughout the pandemic. This includes large rollouts of the technology across portfolios such as Starwood Capital, Brandywine Realty Trust, Granite Properties and many more.
DAVID MINK As operations manager at My State MLS, David Mink has been instrumental in the firm’s success within the commercial real estate technology space by continually thinking outside the box and offering unique ideas. Mink has been with My State MLS since its early days. He joined the team in 2012 and was key in expanding the company nationwide and developing and launching the My State MLS commercial listing interface and designing its new mortgage and investment calculator. Mink is responsible for the operation of My State MLS and is the pinnacle of research and development, working to continually evolve the My State MLS interface and help the industry evolve. He hosts My State MLS’s free weekly webinars, teaching real estate professionals about the latest tips and trends for marketing real estate, whether it’s commercial, residential or manufactured homes. He is the voice of My State MLS, providing real estate marketing training for large brokerages and speaking at real estate shows. In 2021, Mink negotiated a partnership between My State MLS and Brevitas, an industry-leading syndication platform for commercial listings, to better serve My State MLS’s commercial broker members and to continue offering them the best real estate marketplace tools available. Also in 2021, Mink worked with the team on adopting what3words, a free app that makes it easier to guide users to an exact location. Mink also connected My State MLS with the CE Shop, which allows real estate professionals to expand their business, get their commercial real estate license and take continuing education courses.
NIRAJ PATEL Throughout a career spanning more than three decades, Niraj Patel, chief information officer at Greystone, has built deep experience in optimizing technology and data inside organizations to gain a competitive advantage and improve business processes. His first taste of technology in real estate was early in his career when he was serving as EVP and CIO at GMAC Commercial (now Berkadia). There he managed global IT operations governance, infrastructure and service, enabling the rapid growth of the business and servicing portfolio from $2 billion to $385 billion. Prior to joining Greystone in 2021, Patel was the global head of platforms, AI and analytics for DMI, a Goldman Sachs portfolio company. Under his direction, the team grew to 250 and worked on AI-enabled hyper-automation platforms including technologies such as predictive analytics, video and natural language processing. Patel also previously served as CIO for IBM’s lending department, where he helped bring AI, blockchain, cloud and data to the lending market. Patel believes technology should enable a company to serve its clients better, whether through improved processes that expedite transaction times or refining how data is collected and shared. Within his role at Greystone, Patel oversees a team of 130 and is charged with using technology and data to make Greystone stand out in the market. He and his team spend their time developing and refining applications and tools that can enhance the company’s market position by either customizing existing off-the-shelf applications so that they are tailored to the way Greystone does business or developing technology tools to address specific needs because nothing suitable exists in the marketplace. Since taking the tech helm at Greystone, Patel is leveraging robotics automation to create more efficient processes and incorporating more video into the company’s technology toolkit.
CAMILLE RENSHAW In December 2017, Camille Renshaw launched B+E, a tech-driven brokerage and trading platform for net lease real estate. Since then, the firm has grown geographically with offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Denver and Tampa. Renshaw is CEO of the company, which provides a trading platform that consists of user-friendly dashboards, real-time predictive pricing and an AI-driven exchange to allow buyers and sellers to conduct entire transactions online, reviewing real-time credit, news and tenant data while they trade, much like online stock trading platforms. The firm’s accomplishments include forming an exclusive partnership with Inland Real Estate and RCX Capital Group and launching the first 1031 online trading platform that utilizes user-defined criteria to match properties, and name and purchase replacement properties. B+E also brokered the largest commercial real estate transaction by a digital platform with the $324 million Cabela’s sale-leaseback. The 11 Cabela’s properties represented more than 1.6 million square feet of space and an additional 277 acres of land. During the pandemic, Renshaw focused on retaining all employees and invested heavily in their training throughout the crisis, letting every individual know that B+E’s greatest asset is its people. Renshaw has established herself as an industry leader by making frequent speaking appearances, authoring articles and being quoted extensively by many industry publications. She is currently an executive in residence at NYU Stern School of Business and an advisory board member for Rutgers University’s Big Data Program. She also serves as an advisor to DreamIt’s UrbanTech Accelerator.
ALEX ROBINSON Alex Robinson is a serial entrepreneur with a track record of success as a founder at GreenDoor and New Energy Risk, and he now serves as co-founder and CEO of Juniper Square, one of the fastest-growing technology companies serving the commercial real estate industry. Prior to founding Juniper Square, Robinson, as a real estate investor himself, experienced the inherent limitations of investing in commercial real estate, such as onerous paperwork, recordkeeping and unnecessary fees that result from inefficiencies and limited visibility into investment performance. As a result of his experience, Robinson saw the opportunity to change the status quo. He co-founded Juniper Square in 2014. Juniper Square’s all-in-one investment management software streamlines fundraising, improves the timeliness and accuracy of investor reporting and enables real-time access to data in order to help investment managers scale their business. At Juniper Square, Robinson defines the vision and strategy for the company and oversees a leadership team made up of executives from Google, Salesforce, Pagerduty and more. He established Juniper Square’s model of co-developing software with its customers, which has been critical to product success and has fueled the company’s growth. In September 2021, Juniper Square entered into a strategic partnership with CrowdStreet to provide an industry-first integration that will streamline investment management by synchronizing and offering investor and distribution information between the CrowdStreet marketplace and Juniper Square. In addition, Juniper Square recently launched Institutional Reporting, a revolutionary investment data network that addresses the increasingly burdensome and inefficient process of institutional investor reporting.
L.D. SALMANSON L.D. Salmanson is widely regarded as a technology expert within the CRE community and frequently participates in speaking engagements at industry events and conferences. He has a background in private equity and technology, having previously founded GreenCrest Capital. He applied the knowledge that he gained at GreenCrest to address the messy data nature of the commercial real estate environment. Together, with co-founder Ben Hizak, Salmanson launched Cherre in 2018 with a mission to create a data connection platform powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence. Cherre enables companies to connect all of their disparate sources of data — including leasing information, public market data and portfolio information — to connect decision-makers with accurate property and market information and help them make faster, smarter decisions. As CEO, Salmanson sets Cherre’s strategic direction and growth plan, supports revenue-generating activities, meets with investors and key customers, and works with Cherre’s investors and board of directors. In recent months, Salmanson has led the company to forge new data partnerships, substantially grown its data vendor ecosystem and unlocked additional insight and value for users. The pandemic showcased the need for organizations to have access to connected data in order to streamline decisions and provide a holistic overview of both the market and their portfolio. Salmanson has also recently led Cherre to leverage the company’s proprietary knowledge graph to build advanced NLP-based models for standardizing names and addresses across multiple data sources at scale; reducing noise from original sources. Thus far, Cherre has deployed code to improve hundreds of millions of names and addresses which means that through this feature, users gain access to LLC unmasking capabilities and the ability to research and conduct off-market deals.
KEVIN G. SHTOFMAN Since joining NavigatorCRE in 2019, Kevin Shtofman has overseen the company’s 4,000% revenue growth rate and partnerships with the likes of Blackstone, Newmark, Starwood Capital and Brandywine. As COO, Shtofman oversees enterprise sales, deployment and investor relations, while leading a 42-person team. With 17 years of industry experience, Shtofman shares his commercial real estate knowledge regarding machine-learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain and digital twins through speaking events around the world. Prior to assuming his current role at NavigatorCRE, Shtofman served as an expert on blockchain for commercial real estate at Deloitte. He has published numerous articles, appeared on various podcasts and guest blogged for media and event companies. Shtofman is also a member of PropTech Angel Group, which makes small angel investments in early-stage PropTech companies. Outside of work, Shtofman serves as vice chairman of Wipeout Kids Cancer, a pediatric cancer nonprofit organization, and he additionally serves as a member of Alder, a national civics organization.
WESLEY D. SNOW Thanks to his 25 years of business experience, Wesley Snow was able to lead his company through the serious challenges of the pandemic, including creating a strategy for optimizing internal business processes and enabling his team to work remotely and manage business processes accordingly. As co-founder, CEO and managing partner of Ascendix Technologies, Snow manages the internal and external business processes of the company and leads sales, including controlling the quality of customer relationships, conducting product demonstrations, consulting with clients and providing consulting expertise. He co-founded Ascendix Technologies in 1996 to offer CRM consulting services. The company later created its own CRM products targeted at commercial real estate brokers, Salesforce and Dynamics 365 users. Early in 2021, Snow launched the ascendixtech.com brand to support the growth of the company’s custom software development division. Snow has delivered multiple, successful PropTech projects for the CRE industry. One of Snow and his team’s most significant achievements of 2021 was coordinating the opening of the new firm’s office in Portugal, in addition to its existing offices in Dallas, TX and Kharkiv, Ukraine. Snow has additionally served on many advisory boards for CRM applications over the years. He frequently conducts webinars regarding Salesforce best practices for commercial real estate and he is a frequent podcast guest, speaker and author.
MIKE SROKA As CEO and co-founder of Dealpath, Mike Sroka oversees all of Dealpath’s major operations and initiatives. Dealpath is a purpose-built real estate platform that serves as a single source command center, which provides vetted, real-time deal information together with associated files and tasks. Founded in 2014, Dealpath has supported more than $10 trillion in transactions with leading institutions around the world. Sroka believes in an all-hands-on-deck approach and is not above doing all kinds of tasks within the company, while also serving as the firm’s primary figurehead and taking on speaking opportunities to help promote the firm. Sroka has been an instrumental part of Dealpath’s growth over the past three years. During the pandemic, Dealpath has more than doubled in size to nearly 80 employees throughout the U.S., added key executives and secured major investments. During this time, Sroka also decided to redesign Dealpath’s working environment. While COVID-19 made work life and personal life stressful, Dealpath instituted social initiatives such as lunch roulettes, in which team members got lunch delivered to their homes and connected over Zoom to share a meal and catch up informally.
RYAN P. TURNER Having been passionate about commercial real estate since he was young, Ryan Turner obtained his real estate license at the age of 18 and closed his first commercial transactions at 19-years-old. With a background in brokerage, Turner developed a sixth sense of what corporate real estate teams need. After leaving the world of brokerage, Turner turned his deep understanding of corporate occupiers into a first-of-its-kind solution for them when he founded RefineRE, a single-source SaaS solution for corporate real estate teams and workplace strategists. Within the RefineRE platform, end-users have access to various solutions such as portfolio manager, market intelligence, occupancy and vacancy reports, and real-time benchmarking. As CEO of RefineRE, Turner runs macro-level operations for the company, including corporate and sales strategy, hiring, fundraising, product development and enhancements, and partnerships. RefineRE has grown to a client base of more than 50 Fortune 250 clients and a platform that houses $10 billion in annual rent spend, 350 million square feet and more than 120 countries. In addition to these accomplishments, Turner has led the successful acquisition and integration of BenchCore and facilitated other partnerships from co-working data to lease admin integrations and WiFi-based occupancy. As a result of the spread of COVID-19, Turner and his team developed a wide array of new functionalities for the RefineRE platform, such as a flexible space scenario planning tool, a real-time workplace analytics solution, and an ESG module. RefineRE was accepted into the inaugural cohort of the Colliers PropTech Accelerator powered by Techstars.
BENNETT WASHABAUGH As a tenant representation broker in downtown Chicago early in his career, Bennett Washabaugh realized that many brokers chase large tenants through cold calling and networking; methods that ignored two major trends. Focusing on the idea that a large percentage of companies search for space online and most employers have fewer than 20 employees, Washabaugh co-developed a plan to use technology to digitize the commercial real estate leasing process for an underserved segment of the market. In 2013, Washabaugh co-founded TenantBase, which launched in 2014, and within a year it had been accepted into EvoNexus, a technology incubator in Southern California. As CEO of TenantBase, Washabaugh also serves as the visionary behind the TenantBase model, while ensuring the firm is well funded for growth. The TenantBase platform is purpose-built to provide tenants with an improved leasing experience while helping property owners and commercial brokers connect in order to close more transactions. Today, TenantBase operates in more than 40 markets across the U.S., having launched 30 in 2021 alone, and it has completed more than $500 million in lease transactions. In addition to his role at TenantBase, Washabaugh serves as the youngest board member of AIR CRE, a member-owned organization that provides commercial real estate professionals in Southern California with the critical tools they need to be successful. He serves on the technology and contracts committees where he reviews and recommends PropTech products that could benefit the organization’s 1,600 members and works to expand standardized lease and sale contracts available to CRE brokers and owners in all 50 states.
JONATHAN WASSERSTRUM Jonathan Wasserstrum, co-founder and CEO of SquareFoot, has worked to make his company a disrupter in the office leasing and PropTech space. Wasserstrum, a 14-year industry veteran, has adopted a client-first approach to developing tech solutions to address the industry’s needs for modern channels and flexible solutions. To start, Wasserstrum has empowered clients to search for office space online; breaking them free of resources tied to a single broker. He also has improved the office touring process via the SquareFoot app, which streamlines each step and solves inefficiencies that traditional brokers and their clients face. Wasserstrum is leading SquareFoot into the realm of artificial intelligence with its most recent innovation, Stella, an algorithm that finds and suggests highly relevant listings for brokers based on client criteria, while learning over time based on broker feedback. He aims to bring the modern discipline of machine learning to a tradition-driven industry in order to speed up the broker workflow and help clients find ideal spaces faster. Wasserstrum has positioned SquareFoot to be a unique provider of various flexible solutions, including PivotDesk, a shared space marketplace; FLEX by SquareFoot, a service that offers clients turnkey, traditional office space with a flexible term; and UpSuite, a co-working marketplace. At the firm, Wassertrum is responsible for financing and fundraising, recruiting, and setting SquareFoot’s vision and strategy. He has built a successful leadership team, raised more than $29 million in venture capital, overseen the acquisition of companies to broaden the firm’s offerings, and lead market expansion into Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta and Nashville during the pandemic.
PETER WEISS Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience in the industry, Peter Weiss is uniquely positioned to help bridge the gap between real estate and technology. With a molecular biology major, Weiss transitioned into the world of real estate early in his career, serving as both a principal and advisor in complex commercial real estate transactions totaling more than $3 billion. Today, Weiss is chief real estate officer at Latch, where he helps owners and operators leverage technology to drive innovation and better serve residents and communities, primarily in the multifamily space. Latch’s full-building operating system, LatchOS, combines products, software and services into a holistic, all-in-one solution to deliver a powerful experience for residents and guests, cost-effective and streamlined systems for management, and efficient solutions for service providers. Weiss and Latch have responded to pandemic-driven market shifts by helping customers with contactless unattended leasing and streamlining move-in for new residents. Weiss has identified and executed opportunities to implement Latch’s software throughout the industry by educating the real estate community about the importance of smart access and smart building technology, as a regular speaker at panels and seminars. As a leader at Latch, Weiss advises his team on the latest developments in the real estate industry in order to drive further innovation and identify areas for potential investment and expansion. Since joining in 2018, Weiss has developed relationships with senior stakeholders at Latch’s largest customers, resulting in more than $200 million in the pipeline. His expertise has also helped win several of the largest deals in Latch history totaling more than $75 million of booked revenue.
CHRISTOPHER YIP After 15 years in the private equity/venture capital arena, Christopher Yip transitioned full-time into the PropTech field, where he has quickly become a thought-leader whose business activity and market insight carry significant weight in the broader commercial real estate and PropTech areas. Yip is one of two partners at RET Ventures, where he co-leads one of the largest venture capital firms devoted to real estate technology. Drawing on insights gathered from its base of strategic investors, RET Ventures develops an understanding of industrywide problems and the types of technologies that could solve them. Yip and his colleagues integrate this knowledge to identify which PropTech companies are best positioned to solve emerging pain points and to pilot products and influence their ongoing development. With the self-touring and self-leasing movements accelerating amid COVID-19, several of the firm’s portfolio companies were instrumental in streamlining the leasing process for renters to view apartments while maintaining safe distancing from leasing agents. Since joining the firm, Yip has spearheaded RET Ventures’ investments in seven PropTech companies, providing these technologies with the capital to scale and refine their solutions for the real estate community. Many of the investments that Yip leads have a positive impact on the broader community, including several that enable property owners to reduce their carbon footprint.
TEAMS
CA VENTURES’ INNOVATION TEAM In just a few short years, CA Ventures has built a team of experts that are dedicated to the strategic integration of technology solutions to benefit each stakeholder in its portfolio. The firm’s innovation team believes the goal of innovation should not be to drive humans further away from each other, but rather to open the channels of communication and engagement to drive a more positive and healthier living environment. Focused on the student housing sector, the team was founded in 2019 and includes SVP of technology and innovation Mark Zikra, senior director of innovation Brad Kirshenbaum, consultant Eduardo Montemayor, director of systems and reporting Kyle Aberle, and VP of business systems Erica White. The team manages internal reporting, IT, software and property technologies with a goal of streamlining operations, driving net operating income and enhancing the resident experience. The team works with staff members, from executive leadership to on-site property professionals, to understand their needs and identify potential operation improvements, prior to vetting hundreds of solutions to find the best fit. The team focuses heavily on groundbreaking technologies from new companies that may not have previously viewed their product for real estate purposes, in order to benefit residents, improve operational efficiency and impact asset value. The team continually works to make lives better by using reporting tools to enable accurate and insightful business decisions and empowering corporate and onsite teams to reduce inefficiencies and increase productivity. Within the past year, the team has reviewed more than 300 companies and solutions; 30 of which were piloted and continue to be monitored for optimal success. Each team member regularly appears on panels, podcasts and in publications to provide thought-leadership.
VTS EXECUTIVE TEAM While working as tenant rep brokers, Nick Romito and Ryan Masiello identified a gap in the industry caused by disorganized spreadsheets and back-of-napkin deals that made it difficult to make recommendations to landlords, owners and tenants. The duo invested their life savings and founded VTS in 2012 to create a platform that centralized both leasing and marketing activity. Under the guidance of Romito as CEO and Masiello as chief strategy officer, VTS has become a leading commercial real estate leasing, marketing, asset management and tenant experience platform. During the pandemic, the firm’s focus on digital initiatives proved invaluable and it hired more than 150 new employees to meet the demand for its products. In 2020, VTS also launched VTS Market, an integrated, online marketing platform that enables landlords and agency teams to market and lease available spaces remotely. In 2021, VTS continued to evolve and find innovative solutions that anticipate industry needs. As the return-to-office conversation has continued to play out, VTS has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in tenant experiences through its acquisitions of Rise Buildings and Lane. VTS manages more than 11 billion square feet of assets on its virtual platform, including 60% of national class A office space and 65% of the Manhattan office market. The platform’s user-base exceeds 45,000 across more than 38 countries. The company’s clients include Blackstone, Brookfield, LaSalle Investment Management, Hines, Boston Properties, Oxford Properties, JLL and CBRE. Romito and Masiello have implemented various charitable initiatives at the company, such as VTS Gives Back, which provides an opportunity for employees to participate in company-led programming within the local community.
COMPANIES
ALFRED Alfred is a resident experience and building management platform that aims to transform renters to residents, apartments to homes and buildings to communities through tech-enabled services and experiences. The company was founded in 2015 with a focus on the multifamily sector and is led by Marcela Sapone, CEO and co-founder; Jessica Beck, COO and co-founder; Arik Benzino, president; Matthew Kane, general counsel; William Zhang, CTO; Todd Ertel, CFO; and Nicole Sinclair, SVP of real estate growth. Alfred operates in 44 cities across the U.S. and Canada; supporting more than 130,000 residents. The company’s technology aims to improve and automate building operations and function as a tailored virtual concierge utility for residents based on their demographics and preferences. The AlfredOS native app provides a snapshot of building health and resident experience on one platform. The Hello Alfred app encompasses a resident portal and a property portal that feature member profiles, customer service and live chat concierge, customizable utility tiles, one-click amenities for building managers, and seamless integration for payments and maintenance. The firm’s RED report provides data insights and analytics that help illustrate the impact of the services, technology and community experience for property managers. Human-powered services complement the technology and include a myriad of domestic and everyday tasks such as regular home cleanings, grocery shopping, refrigerator stocking, pet and car care, and dry cleaning delivered by a dedicated home manager with whom residents can communicate 24/7 through the Hello Alfred app. During the pandemic, Alfred identified an increased need for connection for residents and created a solution to keep residents engaged through virtual cooking classes, cocktail making classes, coffee tastings and educational experiences.
APPRISE BY WALKER & DUNLOP Apprise by Walker & Dunlop combines the firm’s multifamily underwriting experience, GeoPhy’s data science and analytics technology, and the expertise of MAI-designated appraisers to deliver property- and market-level insights, comprehensive data and access to the latest technology to produce appraisal reports. The company focuses on the multifamily sector and was founded in 2020 when Walker & Dunlop partnered with GeoPhys to address outdated and inefficient appraisal processes. It is led by Nicole Urquhart-Bradley, managing director and COO; Jacinto Munoz, managing director and head of national strategy and compliance; and Meghan Czechowski, managing director and valuation lead. In the face of an unexpectedly challenging year due to the global pandemic, Apprise pushed forward with rapid growth and strategic expansion. Apprise holds multiple industry-standard data sources in a single database and web-based report writer to supply insights within hours or days rather than weeks typical of traditional processes that rely on spreadsheets. By pulling aggregated data from 2.5 million properties going back 20 years, Apprise provides real-time analysis on everything from rent-rolls to occupancy rates and uses artificial intelligence to assist the appraiser in identifying comparable apartment properties based on expenses, size, amenities, walk score or COVID-19 risk. After perfecting conventional multifamily real estate valuations, the team expanded its offerings by launching a dedicated financial reporting valuation group in October 2020 that enables Apprise to cover all asset classes. Apprise’s real estate valuations for financial reporting purposes include fair value measurement for debt and equity, net asset value, impairment analysis, and purchase price accounting. Since its launch, Apprise has grown its employee count from 10 to 77, created a national presence by growing from 30 states at launch to all 50 states today, and completed thousands of appraisal assignments, for more than $30 billion worth of multifamily assets.
CONTRACOIN Contracoin aims to make international property investment easily available by eliminating traditional barriers through the use of blockchain and cryptocurrency. After nearly three decades serving real estate brokers, owners and investors around the world, Contracoin made its U.S. debut in 2021. Founded in 1992, Contracoin is based in Australia and is led by CEO Barry Lipscombe. The platform provides buyers with access to properties internationally and allows investors to pay for properties using the Contracoin token – which delivers opportunities to secure real estate assets that provide income and capital gains. The firm’s target markets are quality commercial real estate properties in developing countries, with an emerging real estate industry displaying high returns and high potential capital growth. Contracoin solves numerous limitations that face the international real estate market, from transactional costs to integrity and security, transparency and restrictions on foreign investors. The platform is backed by a virtual barter network established by parent company Contracard that uses ERC-20-compatible Contracoin tokens to allow investors to purchase real estate internationally for 100% of the selling price and face less volatility. The platform eliminates complicated banking processes and excessive transactions to allow fast, secure and cost-effective transactions. Leveraging the Ethereum-based smart contract technology, the platform eliminates manual errors and assures security, transparency and immutability during documentation.
GREENSOIL PROPTECH VENTURES Greensoil PropTech Ventures of Toronto has a track record of backing, scaling and exiting high-impact PropTech companies, including those that make smart home battery systems, environmental building data and invoice automation platforms, construction management software, real estate deal management platforms, wireless lighting controls and carbon sequestering technology for concrete. Greensoil has helped pioneer PropTech-only and impacts investor-focused venture capital funds with the launch of its first fund in 2015 – the $59 million Greensoil PropTech Ventures I fund. The fund was launched with anchor funding from the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Group, one of the world’s largest and most diversified independent alternative asset management funds. In March 2021, the company launched Greensoil PropTech Ventures II, a $100 million follow-up fund, with anchor support from the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, one of Canada’s largest pension investment managers. Greensoil’s funds invest in early to mid-stage venture capital opportunities in North America, Europe and Israel. Founded in 2011, the firm is led by Alan Greenberg, co-founder and chairman; Gideon Soesman, co-founder and managing partner; Dave Harris Kolada, managing partner; and Jamie James, managing partner. The firm and its leaders have emerged as subject matter experts with mentions in an array of national and international real estate and finance news outlets. Their messages are consistent with the firm’s mission to digitize and decarbonize the built environment. The firm believes profits and public service aren’t mutually exclusive and that the road to innovation leads through the built environment, with PropTech offering a crucial solution to lowering costs, increasing profits and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions in real estate.
HOMEBASE Blake Miller first made headlines in 2012 as the driver behind the public/private partnership Smart City Initiative in Kansas City, creating one of the world’s largest smart cities and winning a 2017 Edison Award for Innovation. Focused on entrepreneurship, public safety, mobility, regionalism and education, the initiative’s goal has been to increase economic development across city lines and improve the quality of life for its citizens. Applying that smart city framework of connectivity to buildings was a logical next step. By bringing hundreds of IoT connections to individual buildings or clusters, Homebase is changing the way residents interact throughout their communities, offering greater control over guest access, simplifying internet access, and booking amenity spaces in the palm of their hand. The firm’s leadership includes Miller, founder and CEO; Jen Macias DeMeyer, director of marketing; Tyler Prochnow, president; RaeAnn Lovall, chief people officer; and Jared Krause, chief product officer. By using Homebase, property management can save time and monetize efficiency in utility usage, provide amenity access and eliminate the extraordinary cost of supplying internet to common spaces. Last year, Walmart launched an in-home service and selected Homebase as its sole partner to deliver items directly into customers’ homes rather than at their front doors. From this partnership, the Homebase Marketplace was launched. The service equips delivery providers with bodycam technology that allows the customer to watch live as groceries are delivered straight to their refrigerator and household items placed where requested.
HOTEL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SOLUTIONS As the amount of data generated at hotel properties continues to increase, Hotel Business Intelligence Solutions is working to change the way that information is processed and analyzed. The company offers a full end-to-end SaaS solution that helps investors better access and interpret an overwhelming amount of data and make it available in a standardized format with dynamic online reports and dashboards. Hotel Business Intelligence Solutions has an international focus on serving the hospitality sector. It was founded in 2020 and is led by Drew Wallace, founder and CEO. In just a year, Hotel Business Intelligence Solutions has forged a relationship with one of the leading private equity funds in hospitality and is working with several additional ownership groups that are interested in its product. During the pandemic, Hotel Business Intelligence Solutions’ ability to efficiently gather data and apply it to make decisions effectively helped clients that needed to quickly adapt to the changing environment.
JUNE HOMES June Homes developed an algorithm that detects mispriced rental apartments that are often in disrepair and created a process to inspect, upgrade, renovate and list units in under 72 hours. On average, units rent within 48 hours of being posted to the June Homes website. The firm takes on ownership risks, including responsibility for tenant defaults, non-payments and overall building performance. June Homes was founded in 2017 and is led by real estate entrepreneur Daniel Mishin, founder and CEO. The company’s on-demand model allows members to discover, apply for and move into their new home in as little as three hours. The homes, located in desirable neighborhoods, are fully-customizable and tenants can rent furnished or unfurnished, by room or an entire apartment, and have the option to stay for any length of time up to 18 months. June Homes has signed on thousands of tenants across New York City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. Unlike typical short-term corporate housing companies that target large corporations and luxury travelers, June Homes is focusing on the everyday consumer and rental rates are in line with traditional lease rates. Over the past few years, June Homes has raised a total of $50 million in equity funding led by SoftBank Ventures Asia that will be used to fuel the company’s expansion to other U.S. markets and further its mission to create a fair, transparent and efficient real estate system. In the past six months, the company has experienced an increase in tenant demand and unit growth, along with fewer tenant defaults than the industry average.
KASTLE SYSTEMS Kastle Systems strives to create exceptional spaces for its clients, while ensuring that workers and residents can live and work together safely, sustainably and conveniently. Founded in 1972, the firm is led by CEO Haniel Lynn. Since its founding, the firm has continually innovated its quest to provide security as a service. It builds its systems on an open interface application so it can configure its operations to integrate with new technologies. In 2020, Kastle Systems launched the Back to Work Barometer to gauge occupancy in U.S. office buildings as a benchmark for the impact of work-from-home mandates due to the pandemic. The tool has become the universal reference for real estate to track office space usage and the pace at which they are or are not returning to commercial real estate. The firm also launched KastleSafeSpaces in 2020 to employ access control technology in implementing and enforcing health screenings with app-based attention to mobile access credentials to identify people with symptoms, contact trace all occupants, and monitor space occupancy. In 2021, Kastle Systems added a vaccination authentication function as another integrated screening option for access control in the KastleSafeSpaces platform. Other recent innovations include KastlePark, an access service that integrates parking management and building access control in one platform and a remote video surveillance service using AI-enabled smart cameras to monitor properties in real-time without the need for dedicated onsite guard staff. To support its core principle of innovation, Kastle Systems creates continuous learning opportunities through Kastle University, an in-house field training program that is open for all employees to participate as both students and teachers.
METAPROP MetaProp is a New York-based PropTech venture capital firm with one of the world’s largest early-stage PropTech portfolios, including more than 150 technology companies working with the firm to increase their growth, visibility and impact within the real estate industry. Founded in 2015, the firm is led by CEO Aaron Block. MetaProp’s team of experts uses the firm’s entrepreneurial approach coupled with corporate experience to ensure the success of its portfolio companies from seed to unicorn status. The firm also is a leader in PropTech analysis and data collection. Its research provides key insights to both partners and the PropTech community at large, through reports covering the real estate value chain in various regions, globally. MetaProp’s Global PropTech Confidence Index is published twice a year and provides up-to-date insights from startup CEOs and capital investors regarding the PropTech innovation ecosystem. The firm manages multiple funds for both financial and strategic real estate investors that represent a pilot- and test-ready sandbox of more than 20 billion square feet across every real estate asset type and global market. In addition to its investment activities, MetaProp has also established itself as a community leader through its Accelerator Program at Columbia University. Each year, a small group of selected technology startups participates in an intensive 22-week program that provides curated access to industry decision-makers, technology pilots and premier sources in investment capital and media. Participating companies are also paired with a C-level mentor from MetaProp’s RE200 industry mentor network and use MetaProp VC platform services, including strategy, fundraising, media relations, in-house recruiting, business development and digital marketing.
MRI SOFTWARE Serving an industry known for its reliance on tradition, MRI Software showed landlords, occupiers and investors that technology could improve productivity and efficiency and increase profits. Founded in 1971, before PropTech became a buzzword, MRI Software primed the industry for the adoption of digital tools that emerged in tandem with PCs, the internet and mobile devices. The firm serves the multifamily, office, retail and industrial sectors and is led by Patrick Ghilani, CEO, and John Ensign, president. MRI has two key business lines – MRI Living and MRI@Work – both of which are intended to help clients innovate in rapidly changing markets. MRI Living encompasses software for multifamily owners and operators, including lead-to-lease marketing, day-to-day property management, resident engagement, fraud prevention and online payments, along with specialty software for the affordable and public housing sectors. MRI@Work software is used by commercial owners, operators, investors and occupiers. Owners, operators and investors use the software for tasks such as property accounting, portfolio management, investment planning, tenant communications and lease abstraction, while occupiers use it for lease management and accounting, facilities management, space management and space scheduling. In 2020 alone, MRI made its largest investments to date in the affordable housing sector; increased its staff by more than 30% worldwide; introduced its artificial intelligence-powered contract intelligence that enables landlords and tenants to extract important lease data; broadened the MRI Living suite by adding new capabilities in payments, ID verification and risk management; and acquired eight companies.
RENTREDI RentRedi is a property management software that transforms the way landlords and tenants manage their renting experience. RentRedi was founded in 2016 and is led by Ryan Barone, CEO and co-founder, and Ed Barone, CMO and co-founder. The company has partnered with landlords and tenants in every state to bring accessible tech to the renting industry, while strategically partnering with other real estate-adjacent companies to provide customers with additional benefits that simplify the day-to-day operations of managing real estate. For landlords, RentRedi provides an all-in-one dashboard that enables them to collect rent, list properties, find and screen tenants, sign leases, and manage maintenance and accounting. For tenants, RentRedi’s easy-to-use mobile app allows them to apply, pay rent, report rent payments to credit bureaus, auto-pay, sign leases, and submit maintenance requests. The company has more than $4.5 billion in assets under management and landlords and tenants in all 50 states. The pandemic provided a convenient spotlight for RentRedi’s property management tech. As RentRedi’s software is a flat-rate subscription, rental owners were able to access a low-cost, high-quality property management platform during a perilous time in the housing market. This enabled tenants to pay rent remotely while giving landlords the tools and tech they needed to manage their business remotely. RentRedi continues to develop features that enhance the renting experience for their customers that accommodate for worst-case scenarios, such as adding accounting software to manage books and maintenance management to reduce in-person visits, while also being flexible enough to factor in long-term scenarios as well.
RYAN COMPANIES US, INC. Although the company has been in business for more than 80 years, Ryan Companies US, Inc. expects itself to be as agile as a startup and adept at finding ways to continuously evolve. It was founded in 1938 and is led by CEO Brian Murray. Ryan Cos. has built a department dedicated solely to insights and innovation. The company’s virtual design and construction team created a solution to help senior living partners show various finishes and floor plans available to prospective buyers to drive sales. Using a real-time gaming engine called Unreal, the solution generates a fully-immersive virtual reality experience that allows prospective community residents to view and choose their finishes from a traditional web browser. Another innovative solution the team developed was the combination of environmental scanning and VR to create tenant tours for its in-house real estate management group. Using Matterport 3D camera technology, the firm scanned 4,000 360-degree photos of existing empty tenant spaces and its VDC team then created a 3D-modeled, hyper-realistic, fully finished and furnished virtual reality tour that represented what the space could look like after tenant improvements. The VDC team also built a workflow to allow a 3D model to be superimposed on recorded aerial drone footage, providing a realistic visualization of future projects. Visualization, gamification, and 3D modeling are not the only realms the firm is delving into. The firm recently launched Napkin Sketch, a web-based application that empowers real estate professionals to make quicker, more accurate site selections. This tool quickly test-fits sites and uses high-level building parameters to derive a total construction cost, scope and duration, condensing a process that typically takes three weeks into as little as 45 minutes.
SAFETRACES INC. Amid the new reality the pandemic has brought to the built environment, especially in offices, schools and campuses, a key element to moving forward is the prominence of health, safety and wellness as a value driver in real estate. Responding to the need of building owners and managers to determine the safety of their buildings, SafeTraces Inc. developed a commercial diagnostic solution for testing and verifying real-world ventilation and filtration performance for aerosol contaminants like SARS-CoV-2 by leveraging DNA-tagged aerosol tracers that safely simulate airborne pathogen mobility and exposure. During the pandemic, the product has been supporting large multinationals, commercial real estate owners and public entities to assess and mitigate health and safety risks in their facilities and then help communicate its independent science-based data to employees and tenants. The company was founded in 2015 and is led by CEO Erik Malmstrom, who is responsible for launching and marketing the veriDART technology, a liquid aerosol-based solution for verifying air ventilation and filtration in order to protect occupational health during the pandemic and beyond. The pandemic opened up a new market for SafeTraces’ patented technology. Originally developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a biosafety tool to prepare against bioterrorist attacks, the company advanced the core technology further to provide a solution to a problem that is here to stay – indoor air safety. UL and SafeTraces joined forces in March 2021 to begin evaluating the effectiveness of indoor air quality and HVAC systems, as well as infection control strategies in K–12 schools.
SWIVEL Swivel provides a solution for landlords and leasing teams that wish to virtually showcase space with prospective designs, without spending the capital required for a new buildout. The company, founded in 2017, created a turnkey workspace model that helped fast-growing companies find flexible office space. The firm secured its first major customer deal with Brandywine Realty Trust and by 2020 had closed a series A funding and was well on its way to startup success. Swivel is led by Scott Harmon, co-founder and CEO; Wade Cohn, co-founder and CPO; David Proft, co-founder and CTO; Bobby Goodman, chief revenue officer; and Jason Royer, CFO. The pandemic impacted many of the company’s competitors while Swivel pivoted its business to focus on helping property owners and their leasing agents maintain leasing momentum. Harmon decided to branch out to become a SaaS design experience platform with the launch of Swivel Interactive Showcase in March 2020. With this product, landlords and their leasing teams can enhance their property marketing with interactive 3D virtual tours in multiple layout options. By bringing a space to life digitally, Swivel Interactive Showcase increases engagement with prospective tenants, gets leases signed faster and reduces vacancy costs. To build on the momentum and bring even more value to its customers, Swivel launched Digital Space Planning in May 2021. This first-of-its-kind interactive virtual solution enables architects, leasing professionals and tenants to collaborate and generate rapid, cost-effective custom digital designs and test fits for each tenant. With a 3D immersive test fit experience of how a space will look and feel once completed, stakeholders can easily visualize and finalize the test-fitting process in days rather than weeks.
TREPP Last year, Trepp highlighted the evolution of technology in the CRE space and noted a significant shift toward the greater use of data and data-driven decision-making with tools, such as artificial intelligence, big data and machine-learning, particularly since the onset of the pandemic. The data modeling and analytics firm was founded in 1979 and is led by CEO Annemarie DiCola. Trepp focuses on data in the commercial real estate, banking and structured finance industries. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help make larger volumes of data more actionable quickly by ingesting large datasets to allow for faster decisions, predictive forecasts and other insights. Trepp uses technology to enhance the flexibility of both the way customers receive data from the Trepp database and how they input data back into the system. The company’s APIs allow customers to run cash flows, manage override data, create more customized integrations and workflows, better integrate with their processes, and create a new flexible way to work with Trepp. The firm’s latest initiative has been a focus on the enhancement of the DataLake to flexibly manage the collection and cataloging of various Trepp datasets to deliver them through APIs, data feeds, web products and additional processing methods. The DataLake allows clients to then very easily combine datasets and build new ways of using the data to benefit their needs. Trepp has also created a new data science team to focus on the evolution of technology in its products to assist the market.
VIEW LABS View Labs has revolutionized the use of digital solutions in the commercial real estate business by shaping the real, mixed reality and digital worlds through its interactive 360-degree video content capabilities, as well as its virtual reality and augmented virtual reality software. The firm designed and built a fleet of autonomous robots capable of filming up to 25,000 square feet of space per hour. The robots can capture high-quality footage that is used for virtual touring, and its VR and AVR technologies allow for real-time design and construction planning. View Labs, formerly known as VirtualAPT, was founded in 2016 and is led by Bryan Colin, CEO and co-founder, and Kailey Magder, CMO. Driven by a team of inventors, engineers and designers, View Labs continues to find new ways to evolve technology to better serve the needs of modern real estate businesses, and the inspiration for its work stems from the importance and value the company places on in-person experiences. View Labs offers a stack of highly adaptable, user-friendly technologies to replicate that feeling in the most realistic way possible. With View Studios, clients receive an interactive web player that can be embedded into any site with clickable hotspots that can be embedded in any video. The technology can also create interactive floor plans and place any object or animation within a photo-realistic 360-degree environment. Content such as life-like furniture for staging and design-planning, animated text to describe features during a virtual tour, and cartoon characters can be rendered within recreations of built and yet-to-be-built spaces. The company’s Video Eye analytics platform is built for interactive video and measures and tracks user engagement and interactions.
ZEGO (POWERED BY PAYLEASE) Resident experience (ResEx) has become a major factor influencing resident retention in recent years, and Zego’s mobile-first engagement platform gives property managers, owners, developers and homeowner associations the tools they need to modernize the resident experience management process to improve resident retention and net operating income. The platform unifies critical resident touchpoints from payments and utilities to communications and smart devices. Zego was founded in 2003 and is led by Pete Boyes, general manager. Despite ResEx becoming more important, many multifamily properties are stuck on how to deliver the living experiences that retain residents due to their differing ideas on what ResEx actually means. As a result, Zego has made it a priority to clearly define this category by creating technology solutions that provide personalized and frictionless touchpoints throughout a renter’s tenancy. Zego defines ResEx management as the manner in which all resident touchpoints can be improved to deliver remarkable community living experiences. The firm compiled the multifamily industry’s first report on the topic this year; a 78-page guide featuring fresh industry insights from multifamily operators and recommendations on improving the resident experience. It also hosts the Resident Experience podcast that explores ways to create extraordinary experiences for residents of multifamily communities. Zego has grown tremendously since its inception as PayLease before rebranding as Zego, and it has made an immense impact on the multifamily industry with its offerings spanning payments, utilities, expenses, communications and smart solutions. The company currently services more than 6,000 residential real estate companies that represent about 12 million units nationwide.