Tech Influencers

Commercial real estate’s technology stack has spread to include areas that just a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable, at least in this space. New features and functions, not to mention advanced computing, can be found not only in the apartment space – where the consumer-facing applications are most in use – but also in the back end processes that run most CRE operations no matter the sector. Developing these products requires more than just knowledge of, say, machine learning or predictive analytics. At the same time, the men and women who build technology for commercial real estate need to have an in-depth under-standing of the problems the technology needs to solve. They need to be knowledgeable about both subject domains and that mix is not always easy to find. But find those people we did and they are highlighted in the following pages.

INDIVIDUALS

ARIE BARENDRECHT Ten years ago, Arie Barendrecht launched certification company WiredScore to improve connectivity in buildings and help owners and de-velopers ensure reliable internet, Wi-Fi and mobile signals. As CEO, Barendrecht focuses on making the world’s buildings smarter and better connected by identifying areas of growth, discussing opportunities for expansion on a geographical level and building awareness of WiredScore’s brand. Under his leadership, 800 million square feet of commercial and residential space has been committed to WiredScore, and the company boasts a client base of more than 900 firms across 27 countries — impacting eight million people. Following COVID-19, Barendrecht led the launches of several key offerings, including SmartScore, which identifies commercial assets that meet sustainability standards, and WiredScore Home, a certification for residential properties. He also led the company’s expansion into 12 new European markets and he continues to ensure that WiredScore exhibits a strong company culture that prioritizes inclusivity and diversity. He serves on WiredScore’s diversity, equity & inclusion committee, through which he has championed several company initiatives such as providing DE&I training for all WiredScore employees, as well as forming a community service relationship with Room To Grow, a New York City-based non-profit organization that supports families raising babies born into low-income circumstances.

MICHAEL CLAWAR As a consultant specializing in consumer demand forecasting early in his career, Michael Clawar learned how markets shift during five-year and 10-year spans. Although he was not operating in the real estate space at the time, he realized that CRE investors were looking for the type of market intelligence that he was providing via small, bespoke models. Forging out on his own, Clawar built StratoDem, which pro-vided a scalable solution for CRE investors that could ingest large amounts of data, normalize it and provide forecasts with regional, local and hyperlocal lenses. The company focused on demand-side drivers, such as population movement and job growth. The missing puzzle piece was the supply side factors such as investment performance data and outcomes and supply pipelines in specific markets. In 2021, Altus Group purchased StratoDem. Today, as VP of data & analytics at Altus Group, Clawar leads data and analytics development and the expansion of the StratoDem platform to bring future data analytics products, including real estate performance forecasting, to market. He runs the data science team with a focus on building models that explain performance, creating forecasts for asset-level and market-level income growth, and working around problems relating to environmental risk — which is becoming a crucial consideration for CRE investors. The pandemic presented an opportunity for Clawar and his team to provide analyses based on mobile phone data to track population losses and gains triggered by the pandemic. He found that mobile phone data can be a good predictor of near-term domestic net migration in gen-eral, and therefore a key alternative source relative to the official estimates that are provided by the US Census Bureau. Clawar is an active participant in Altus Group’s mentorship program and he also participates in the company’s Altus Cares program.

MICHAEL COLACINO Before PropTech became a well-known term, Michael Colacino was working on relational databases and CAD systems to improve commer-cial building maintenance and oversight. He began his career in programming and built a facilities management system that was adopted by NASA, Northrop Grumman and the White House. Since then, Colacino has been influential in driving tech adoption within the industry, including spearheading the development of lease administration technology at Savills Studley and leading the development of Knowledge Cubed, a system that improves property and portfolio management for occupiers. He also worked to introduce outside solutions to improve broker workflows and access to data. Today, Colacino is president and CEO of SquareFoot, where he leverages three decades of industry experience to drive the company’s product forward and helps create an end-to-end solution that promotes transparency and efficiency in office leasing. His responsibilities include hiring new brokers, expanding the business and driving product evolution. During the past three years under Colacino’s leadership, SquareFoot’s brokerage team has expanded into Houston, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Nashville. Recently, Colacino helped launch the company’s location services practice, which focuses on finding real estate for flex space and co-working compa-nies, and he assisted in the sale-leaseback and acquisition of a 60,000-square-foot property in Bakersfield, CA for California Resources Corp., in a transaction facilitated through SquareFoot’s proprietary technology.

CHRISTOPHE GARNIER Christophe Garnier, an immigrant from France, has spent his career working to bring innovative solutions to industries that are ripe for dis-ruption. He spent six years working for two startups in the mobile technology space before moving to New York City and founding his own mobile tech company, mSmart. In 2013, Garnier brought his technology experience to the CRE industry when he founded Spark Labs, which offered flexible terms on move-in-ready workspaces. In 2018, Garnier and longtime business partner Ginger Dhaliwal founded Upflex, an all-in-one platform bringing together workspace booking, management and insights to allow businesses and their employees to adapt work-spaces as their needs change. As CEO, Garnier leads day-to-day operations and works closely with the leadership team to develop business and marketing strategies that will accelerate the company’s footprint and brand awareness across the commercial real estate industry. Up-Flex’s technology has been particularly valuable in the wake of the pandemic as hybrid work, the Great Resignation and the digitization of the workplace have changed the needs of companies in the built environment. Under Garnier’s leadership, in February 2022, Upflex launched an exclusive, strategic partnership with WeWork, that brought UpFlex’s global network to more than 7,000 flex work locations in more than 80 countries; providing not only new workspace options for both UpFlex and WeWork clients but also new opportunities for the hundreds of other CRE operators in the UpFlex network who may benefit from WeWork’s audience of users.

ANNE HOLLANDER Lobby CRE CEO Anne Hollander has five years of real estate technology experience along with 15 years working in strategic management and marketing. She embraces the role of technology in simplifying operations and creating efficiencies. Lobby CRE is an open technology ecosystem, where all the systems that a CRE operator utilizes can talk with one another. Hollander leads strategic planning and partnership development and oversees Lobby CRE’s more than 1,300 live clients, representing 10,400 live properties. Hollander works with asset portfo-lio managers to elevate and position them to have a complete view of operational and financial performance. She organized partnerships with NAA and IREM to digitize and streamline property benchmarking, allowing operators to conveniently submit data and gain access to a large and reliable data set. In early 2022, she joined the North Carolina Technology Association board of advisors and she regularly speaks on panels about the role of technology in real estate. She is an advocate of ESG and women and people of color advancing in the work-place, and she actively mentors in this space. Hollander also identifies skill gaps and mentors others to fill these gaps using her network of real estate professionals. She is a regular contributor and Expert in Residence for the Academy of CRE Finance and Innovation. Hollander also serves as chief strategy officer of Thirty Capital, Lobby CRE’s parent company.

VIKRAM KOHLI As global group president of business intelligence at CBRE, Vikram Kohli oversees a globally-integrated team of data scientists, analysts and engineers that leverage machine learning, predictive analytics, cognitive modeling, descriptive statistics, data visualization and more. Kohli is responsible for CBRE’s business insights, digital & technology and financial planning and analysis research and strategy. In this capacity, he gathers and combines resources and capabilities that unlock data, analytics and insights to drive evidence-based business de-cision-making and competitive advantage. At CBRE, Kohli also oversees the business support organization and the finance innovation of-fice. He is the youngest-ever member of CBRE’s global executive committee and a member of the board of directors of VTS, a PropTech company and CBRE strategic partner. Kohli was instrumental in CBRE’s $100 million capital investment in VTS. In addition to its capital investment, CBRE is partnering with VTS to roll out the VTS platform with unique enhancements and integrations as the technology platform of choice for CBRE’s agency leasing and property management teams starting in the US. This partnership deepens the existing relationship between VTS and CBRE and underscores CBRE’s commitment to giving its brokers and property managers a competitive advantage through innovative technology.

TAHIRAH MAHAN THOMAS Though Tahirah Mahan Thomas is an early adopter when it comes to technology, she was unfamiliar with GIS before starting her current role at CBRE. During the past five years, she has worked diligently to become an expert on location intelligence and the solutions that it can offer commercial real estate professionals and clients. As the managing director of location intelligence and retail analytics at CBRE, Mahan Thomas is responsible for setting the vision and strategy for GIS platforms, new product development and integrating location data and analytics into the company’s advisory services business. A 16-year veteran at CBRE, Mahan Thomas leads a team of GIS professionals, statisticians, project managers and developers, and leverages the team’s data and technology capabilities to help CBRE professionals and clients understand how the environment surrounding a location plays an essential role in uncovering its potential. Mahan Thomas’ GIS teams generate their analysis and forecasts by using various tech tools, including proprietary mapping software and algorithms, in addition to more traditional sources such as census and segmentation data. Using this data, her teams provide a clear picture of clients’ real estate options and solutions, including drive-time and commute analysis, employee and labor studies, consumer movement and behavior, and transportation studies. Mahan Thomas has worked diligently to build a GIS department that is an attractive employment destination for GIS and data science professionals. During the past three years, Mahan Thomas has received several awards, including CBRE’s Black excellence visionary award and its most valuable partner — retail award. Beyond these recognitions, she has led the GIS team in creating deliverables that have been used to win more than $482 million in new business for CBRE.

KATERINA MILOVANOSKA Katerina Milovanoska is dedicated to driving the awareness, adoption and development of digital twin technology, which provides a virtual representation of real-world entities, their processes and interactions. Milovanoska is director of virtual design and building information mod-eling at Gafcon Digital, a San Diego-based firm that specializes in digital twin technology, and she is also a founding member of the Digital Twin Consortium, a global nonprofit partnership that is dedicated to the widespread adoption of digital twin technology. An architect by trade, and an early adopter of technological advances in the design space, Milovanoska leverages her industry knowledge and perspective to help clients see the impacts of decisions before they are made. In the pre-construction phase of projects, she helps clients turn digital archi-tectural design models into three-dimensional reference models that contain the information and details that construction teams need to mitigate risk while building structures. Milovanoska also manages the creation process feeding digital twin applications to provide simula-tions, predictivity and sustainability for a building’s lifecycle. Milovanoska is an influential proponent of shifting the AEC industry’s mindset to use data-centric building information modeling and virtual design and construction. She is also dedicated to raising awareness of wom-en’s equality in the fields of architecture, construction and technology. A leader of CREW San Diego’s education and programs committee, Milovanoska plans and executes numerous educational events throughout the year that support, advance and connect professional women and students while promoting diversity in the ACE and CRE industries.

SONU PANDA Sonu Panda is a passionate advocate for the climate and he brings his message not only to internal audiences but to the wider industry via events, panels and podcasts. His 10 Steps to Carbon Zero Real Estate guide was published in collaboration with the U.S. Green Building council, and videos of his panels and presentations are often circulated on social media. Through his work, Panda wants to show that own-ers and operators have as much a role to play in the fight against the cascading effects of climate change as car manufacturers, fossil fuel companies and the agricultural industry. He has been working to develop and sell enterprise software technology for decades, earning him leadership positions and advisory responsibilities throughout several industries. In 2009, Panda co-founded H.Bloom, a luxury flower brand supported by a SaaS-enabled B2B marketplace that connected local florists with corporate clients. He then turned his attention to Prescrip-tive Data, where he now serves as CEO and focuses on bringing an owner-operator perspective to the climate conversation, demonstrating that technology can have an owner-first mindset with profitable operations while complying with building performance regulations. Panda has overseen two studies that validate the potential of Nantum OS, the firm’s sustainability artificial intelligence tool — one with the U.S. General Services Administration and the other with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy. He was instrumental in achieving a 41% reduction in electric consumption, a 44% reduction in carbon emissions, and a 48% reduc-tion in steam consumption across 17 of Rudin Management Cos.’ New York City buildings, including 15 commercial buildings and two resi-dential towers. Under Panda’s leadership, Prescriptive Data has doubled in size during the past 12 months.

STEVE RAD With a background in digital media marketing and computer science and a passion for all things technical, Steve Rad set out to start a busi-ness venture 12 years ago. The firm he built, Radweb, is an advanced web and mobile development company based in England that builds property inspection real estate applications and websites. Rad is managing director at Radweb and its brands, including Property Inspect and InventoryBase. InventoryBase is a cloud and mobile application that schedules, produces and manages professional property inventory and inspection reports. Property Inspect provides tools to manage properties, produce effective inspection reports in the field offline and improve operations. During the past few years, Rad has been instrumental in bringing the Radweb Property Inspect brand to North America. Under Rad’s direction, Radweb has grown globally and now employs 28 people worldwide, with an established presence in the UK, the US and South Africa. Rad’s platforms serve 220,000 registered users in more than 40 countries. The platforms have completed more than 3.4 million property reports, captured and processed 310 million images, recorded two million minutes of audio and reported and tracked more than 9.5 million issues. He is also an advocate for helping the next generation of the workforce learn practical skills. Rad partnered with the University of Portsmouth as an industry placement provider, hiring interns during their work placement years in computer science degrees. He also launched Radweb Coding Academy in partnership with Unloc to provide year-long coding projects to a group of Portsmouth College students seeking a career in software or website development.

WILLIAM SANKEY Formally educated in architecture at Yale University and urban planning and real estate development at Harvard University, William Sankey has always had an interest in the way cities are built, whether it is through design or transformational technologies. Early in his career, working as a real estate developer and project lead in New York City, Sankey noticed real estate was lacking in technology and decided to attend night school to learn how to code and develop an app that would leverage automation and data analytics. This led to an idea for the industry’s first proactive intelligence platform to assist real estate development teams and their collaborators to adopt technology. In 2017, Sankey co-founded Northspyre with tech veteran Mark McCorkle. While there were adjacent solutions on the market, none were specifically designed to manage the historically antiquated aspects of the development process such as budgets, forecasts, vendor invoices, contracts and change orders. With Northspyre, Sankey leveraged artificial intelligence, automation and data analytics to transform outdated processes, helping project teams reduce errors as well as escalated costs. By automating tedious administrative tasks, teams save up to 30% of their work week that can be spent focused on the strategic direction of their projects or portfolio. Sankey currently oversees more than 80 employ-ees. Northspyre’s platform has been used to facilitate more than $70 billion worth of capital projects with more than 100 clients. At the start of 2022, Northspyre rolled out its newest products — Northspyre Plan and Plan + — to help developers with the pre-development stage by aggregating crucial historical and vendor data, offering a vendor marketplace, providing accurate cash-flow projections and automating the comparative bidding process.

MARCELA SAPONE For the past eight years, Marcela Sapone and the firm she co-founded, Alfred, have been working on a single-stop residential living experi-ence that combines cutting-edge technology with the human touch. The idea began with home services, then expanded into building tech-nology and in 2022 reached into management with the acquisition of RKW Residential. In addition to the RKW acquisition, Sapone com-pleted the acquisition of HOM, an international technology-enabled amenity and community engagement provider. Alfred members, on av-erage, extend their leases by an extra three months, and communities that utilize the Alfred operating system can increase net operating income by up to 10% per year. As CEO of Alfred, Sapone oversees the daily operations and growth of the company and serves as the public face of the company, often representing it in the media and as a speaker at industry conferences. Sapone has led the expansion of Alfred’s footprint to more than 150,000 residential units in more than 44 markets and successfully acquired four companies since its inception in 2014. Alfred has partnered with the top international real estate owners and operators such as Hines, Related Companies, RXR, Greystar, Invesco, Brookfield and J.P. Morgan. Sapone writes and speaks frequently on human-centered hospitality, sustainability behind renting and her commitment to being a steward of good jobs and meaningful change. Sapone has raised more than $100 million in venture capital funding since launching Alfred. Prior to Alfred, she began her career as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. and created WHITESPACE Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund. Sapone’s experiences living abroad and studying urban development in Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Beijing and Bangalore as a young adult has greatly influenced her work. Sapone serves on the Norwalk Zoning Commission, where she supports initia-tives and creates opportunities for urban development and growth.

JIM SCHOONMAKER During his 33-year career, Jim Schoonmaker has been at the forefront of several technology advances that have benefited the real estate industry, including leading a company that pioneered street-view experiences and co-founding one of the world’s first virtual reality compa-nies. While apartment hunting remotely with his daughters three years ago, Schoonmaker realized the need for cohesive virtual content and he co-founded Infinityy, a collaboration platform built for real estate decisions. Infinityy rooms were developed to provide an online space that enables leasing teams and prospects, brokers and buyers, owners and investors, and even fathers and daughters, to experience real estate online together and collaborate on which option is best for that person or company. Schoonmaker’s insight was that other collabora-tion platforms enabled a presentation mode but not an exploration process. Infinityy’s shared, virtual experience uses existing content, such as 3D tours and multimedia, to facilitate instant connections with target audiences earlier and faster than traditional marketing, expediting sales, leases and booking. Since then, he has scaled the project to include a full team of advisors and a portfolio of clients ranging from multifamily, single-family and commercial real estate firms. Prior to founding Infinityy, Schoonmaker served as the founder and CEO of EveryScape, the president and CEO of Liquid Machines Inc., and the president and founder of NerveWire Ventures. He began his entrepre-neurial journey at the MIT Sloan School of Management where he helped launch the entrepreneurship lab that embeds students in a startup so that they can experience the unique setting firsthand.

ZAK SCHWARZMAN Zak Schwarzman has spent most of his 10-year industry career investing in high-growth real estate and PropTech startups. Since 2016, he has been a general partner at MetaProp, a venture capital firm focused on the PropTech industry. During the past six years, he has helped the company grow its VC platform, which has invested in more than 125 startups across the real estate value chain. Schwarzman manages MetaProp’s investment activities and works closely with portfolio companies to move their businesses forward. On average, he leads the evaluation of more than 200 potential portfolio companies per month and works closely with portfolio companies post-investment to help them build commercial relationships with real estate firms, including within MetaProp’s investor base, representing 20 billion square feet of diversified real estate across the globe. He also plays an integral role in MetaProp’s global PropTech research, which provides critical in-sights into MetaProp’s investment partners and the PropTech community. Schwarzman has been a key contributor to several of MetaProp’s company milestones in the past three years, including helping to close its third real estate technology fund, which was oversubscribed at $100 million and was more than two and a half times the size of MetaProp’s Fund II, which closed at $40 million in 2018. Schwarzman also led MetaProp’s investment into 19 new PropTech startups in 2021. Despite the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, his com-mitment to MetaProp’s portfolio companies led the firm to a year of unprecedented commercial growth and value appreciation in 2021, rais-ing $1.3 billion in aggregate capital by the end of the year.

MARK SIGAL One of Mark Sigal’s favorite sayings is that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and so when the pandemic hit, he responded by working to provide better information and actionable intelligence in the form of normalized, standardized data that is tracked, trended and benchmarked over time to those making career-defining decisions in real-time. Sigal serves as CEO of Datex Property Solutions, which has built a number of ground-breaking tools to help landlords navigate the earliest days of the pandemic, including a rent relief agreement tracking system, which was critical since, at one point, as many as 60% of the tenants at shopping centers were not paying rent timely. Similarly, the compa-ny built rent relief agreement payback tracking tools and simple controls to monitor store status as it became clear that the pandemic would impact certain geographies and certain merchant categories differently. Under Sigal’s leadership, Datex Property Solutions offers a portfolio management platform that integrates with portfolio owners’ MRI or Yardi property management and accounting data to improve operations for their whole team. Datex Property Solutions’ clients include REITs, owner-investors and third-party fee managers. Sigal is responsible for overseeing the growth of the company, managing client relationships, product delivery and expanding the capabilities of the platform. Da-tex’s Tenant Track has been licensed by ICSC, major banks and embraced by hundreds of portfolio owners, brokerage firms and four branches of the Federal Reserve. The data and related benchmarks in Tenant Track were cited hundreds of times during the course of COVID-19’s multiple waves, with numerous stories in major media outlets. Sigal has been an active member of ICSC for more than 30 years and works closely with ICSC’s research team on the retail metrics that Datex Property Solutions provides under license to ICSC.

MOHAMMAD SOLEIMANI Since joining Kastle Systems 15 years ago as CTO, Mohammad Soleimani has gone to great lengths to establish seamless interoperability between diverse access systems through industry-wide standardization. As a board member of the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance in 2013, Soleimani led the development of the Physical-Logical Access Interoperability specification. This standards-based specification leverages the LDAP v3 interface to support logical identity directories, including active directory. Building on the success of this widely adopted PLAI standard, Soleimani began working on the concept of a standard for secure mobile credentials. In 2020, he became chairman of PSIA’s Secure Credential Interoperability work group and strongly influenced the engagement of a broad group of industry leaders in its development. In November 2021, PSIA approved SCI 1.0, which is expected to significantly influence the future of secure mobile creden-tials. SCI 1.0 addresses the need for a universally compatible secure credential for the physical access control industry in the form of cards, fobs, mobile devices and wearables. In addition to these achievements, early in the pandemic, Soleimani led Kastle Systems’ development of touch-free elevator service and self-attestation from within the KastlePresence app. When implemented, every person who entered a Kastle-protected building would need to attest to being free of symptoms of COVID-19 to gain entry. Prior to joining Kastle Systems, So-leimani served as VP of engineering for radio-frequency identification at Motorola Inc., where his responsibilities included the advanced development and architectural design of radio-frequency identification equipment. While in this position, he led a team of 40 software and hardware engineers. He also held leadership positions at Matrics Inc./Symbol Technologies, Thuraya and Hughes Network Systems and he founded Sole Net Inc.

TODD TETA Todd Teta brings more than two decades of experience in technology and product innovation to his role as chief product and technology officer at ATTOM. His contributions to the firm’s strategic vision and rapid growth have helped ATTOM achieve its mission to serve as a transformative information and property data services organization. Through recent developments like the ever-expanding ATTOM Table of Data Elements, various analytics-driven tools and new data delivery solutions offering immediate access to property data, the company has maintained its focus on investing in data innovation. Teta leads the company’s technology and product teams to deliver data-driven critical insights and analytics-ready property data solutions, addressing a wide range of business needs. Under his leadership, ATTOM — now the parent company of Estated, Home Junction and GeoData Plus — continues to build upon its data footprint through technology developments and strategic acquisitions. Among Teta’s most recent achievements during the past few years is ATTOM’s new cloud-based solution, which offers secure and direct access to ATTOM’s data warehouse, alleviating the burdens associated with loading, managing and integrating large datasets. With this advancement, Teta has ensured that ATTOM is poised to provide transparency and insights into property data by unleashing artificial intelligence tools to identify profitable projects, better understand risks and deliver better experiences to customers. Teta began his career with Andersen Consulting, where he helped clients leverage data and technology to drive business results. Subsequently, he co-founded several startups, including VisionCore, a product and service company serving the mortgage and real estate data and analyt-ics markets. He eventually sold VisionCore to CoreLogic, where he led research and development teams that developed the company’s first mobile and mapping visualization products.

BRENDAN WALLACE Brendan Wallace co-founded Fifth Wall, a PropTech-focused VC that recently launched a climate technology fund aimed at decarbonizing the real estate industry. As managing partner of the firm, Wallace guides Fifth Wall to invest in software, hardware, renewable energy, energy storage, smart buildings and carbon sequestration technologies to help accelerate the growth of these companies. Examples of its portfolio companies are Aurora Solar, which develops cloud-based software that enables sophisticated solar PV engineering design, provides work-flow management functionality, and facilitates sales and customer acquisition for solar installers and financiers, and Turntide Technologies, which is making a reliable, efficient and intelligent motor system that provides optimal efficiency when combined with IoT building automa-tion technology. With 18 years of industry experience, Wallace leads Fifth Wall’s strategic vision, explores the trends and types of companies that are innovating the real estate sector and brings together owners/operators and tech companies. He also understands that real estate is the biggest industry lever the world can turn to fight climate change. As part of Fifth Wall’s consortium model, Wallace has brought the larg-est real estate organizations together to create a competitive advantage with respect to information, access and distribution. By intermediat-ing between PropTech startups and established real estate organizations, Fifth Wall is able to unlock value for both.

LINDA WHITE As head of lease administration and technology services and SVP of occupier services at Colliers, Linda White is responsible for two of the company’s growing platforms. Providing executive oversight of technology services, White handles the development, management and im-plementation of technology solutions, which includes Colliers360, a multi-tech stack platform that offers a fully-integrated business intelli-gence system. Her leadership of lease administration services includes far more than executive oversight. She is also responsible for the quality of services provided to clients, globally. White’s duties include shaping continued business strategy as well as platform expansion and growth. She is the authority over revenue and service performance, managing the multimillion-dollar budgets across both service lines. Additionally, she provides a steady schedule of career and skill development for her team. White is often sought by clients to assist in mak-ing critical technology decisions to support their corporate real estate activities, which often includes evaluating available technologies’ implementation to build optimal effectiveness or choosing a solution from within the market. White successfully globalized the Colliers360 platform, which included upgrading, improving and eventually migrating initial, existing solutions used in Australia and New Zealand into what became the Colliers360 solution. She also led the team that created an integrated mobile app for Colliers360; using it as the founda-tion for internal Colliers broker solutions. White participates in the Colliers women’s mentorship program by working with young women who are entering the corporate world. Her success in technology has also inspired her daughter to follow a career in technology.

YAAKOV ZAR In 2018, Yaakov Zar set out to launch an online residential mortgage company after he and his wife began searching for an apartment in New York City, however, he quickly shifted his vision once it became clear that multiple digitized residential mortgage companies were al-ready established, but no digitized experience for commercial real estate existed. Zar now serves as co-founder and CEO of Lev, a digital commercial real estate financing platform that offers fast, transparent access to capital from the world’s leading financial institutions through its proprietary AI technology, a large industry network and deep-rooted expertise. Through building technology that automates transactions, matches lenders with loans and closes deals as quickly as possible, Lev has already had a dramatic effect on CRE financing by completely digitizing a space that has otherwise been stagnant, in just two years. In his role as CEO, Zar’s main responsibilities include setting and communicating the vision of the business to internal and external stakeholders, while finding and recruiting talent. He has expanded his team by 110% during the past year and raised more than $200 million in two funding rounds. Zar constantly takes on new partnerships with notable names and he expands Lev’s capabilities, including the company’s recent launch of the first open-source database for CRE lending. Since the firm’s launch in 2019, Zar has guided Lev to become one of the industry’s top 100 loan originators, having facilitated more than $1.6 billion to-date. Prior to Lev, Zar co-founded Dispatch, an enterprise SaaS platform for home service businesses. The product quickly grew into a market leader and was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2018.

TEAMS

JLL VALOREM, VALUATION ADVISORY JLL’s Valorem is the firm’s newest client-facing capital markets analytics platform. Founded in 2020, the team digitally manages valuations and harnesses the power of real-time data to enable fast and agile portfolio decisions. Led by global chief product officer of valuation advi-sory Tyrone Hodge, the team has two goals: to digitize commercial valuations in order to support its valuation and advisory experts, and to sell nontraditional risk and valuation products. The team aims to disrupt and expand the valuation space by developing risk, automated val-uation models (AVMs) and ESG tools to allow clients to make environmental and sustainable decisions when managing their portfolios. The firm’s Valorem platform offers the ability to collaborate and share information among team members, while exploring valuation results, along with portfolio tracking and an interactive risk assessment feature. Valorem also offers a new AVM that provides real-time multi-housing rental market values to clients. The AVM is an algorithm-based computer program built by valuation advisory professionals that uses statistical models, valuations and JLL’s proprietary database to provide estimates of multi-housing property market values. Developed in-house, the tool allows investors to monitor and report on market movements in their portfolios for accounting purposes and for lenders to quickly assess an underwriting position. It quickly calculates an apartment’s rental value at a specific point in time by analyzing comparable transactions, current asking prices, historical price movements and property attributes. The team has launched several AVMs and risk tools in the US and it is working to expand globally to all asset types.

MOODY’S ANALYTICS CRE Within the commercial real estate industry, Moody’s Analytics CRE serves three main personas: investors, lenders and brokers. The team provides CRE investors with vetted intelligence at every stage of the investment cycle, backed by integrated data, analytics and insights. Taking on the challenge of disparate systems, narrow datasets and manual processes that leave room for error, CRE Analytics connects his-torically disparate data and produces insights into future outcomes. Investors using the portfolio management technology can monitor activi-ty, normalize data and perform risk analysis — all of which can help maximize investment potential. The team’s broker solutions bring to-gether comprehensive data, reporting, analytics and day-to-day broker tools in a single platform to power better leasing and sales transac-tions. The broker solution includes integrated email tools, presentation-ready listing brochures and one-click social media sharing. Personal-ized client service support lets brokers focus on advising their tenant, landlord, owner, developer and investor clients. For lenders, Moody’s Analytics CRE streamlines the lending workflow, which breaks down barriers between property data, credit risk metrics, and large-scale eco-nomic analytics, and in turn allows users to gather data and perform analyses early in the loan origination process and improve speed-to-decision. In addition, its team of economists and thought-leaders creates content for clients ranging from long-form academic re-search papers to trend analysis and commentary on market news and conditions. In 2021, Moody’s Analytics launched CreditLens CRE, an integrated lending solution designed specifically to support the unique workflow of commercial real estate. This solution integrates property, market, submarket and economic data into the Moody’s Analytics credit lifecycle management platform, allowing more effective collabora-tion among the CRE lending team.

NEWMARK PEGASUS Founded in 2021, the Newmark Pegasus team has created a state-of-the-art mapping platform that utilizes technology and UIX to transform outdated stationary maps into an experience that can be presented in person or virtually. The team created Pegasus from a concept, devel-oped it and brought the brand new technology to market in one year. The 3D GIS product assists with location strategies based on de-mographics and proprietary data with fly-over technology, 360-degree angles, animated market views, submarket color overlays, heat maps, stacking plans and demographic layers. In 2022, the team soft-launched in Manhattan, Dallas, Chicago and Boston with animation and team-sharing capabilities, and it has four more markets in queue for development. The Pegasus team collaborated with Newmark research to gather census demographic data and stack plan updates via proprietary NDX and N360 data technologies. The team is led by managing director of applications development Deepak Lakhani, executive managing director Scott Hobbs and director Kim Lyon. Lakhani has been with Newmark for nearly two decades and leads all engineering efforts for its core products. Hobbs and Lyon are recognized throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area as two of the most active brokers in the representation of large office tenants in a range of transactions.

RPM LIVING’S ANALYTICS TEAM RPM Living’s analytics team was uniquely formed during the pandemic, which prompted its team members to imagine what multifamily might look like in the future and consider possibilities of other verticals to implement down the road. Many professionals joined the team from other industries, including healthcare, education and IT, which allowed the team to think outside the traditional data box. Founded in 2020, the team develops tools and processes that help scale the firm and capture data to make informed decisions and make day-to-day work easier for the firm’s associates. The team has developed and implemented a data infrastructure that allows it to seamlessly move data around the company; improving efficiency across all levels and departments of the organization. Notably, the team built out a customized marketing business intelligence dashboard that pulls analytics from various marketing sources to provide proprietary data insights that di-rectly impact property performance. Instead of insights living in multiple mediums, they now are part of a single, comprehensive picture re-flecting real-time data, which helps guide strategic business decisions across all levels. The team has also leveraged its technology to sup-port and enable the company’s transitions & due diligence team to transition a record number of properties. While most other companies average six property transitions per quarter, the team’s technology enables an average of 15 property transitions per month. Since its for-mation, the analytics team has implemented applications that directly supported the growth of the firm’s footprint from 34,000 units in 2020 to more than 120,000. As a result, RPM Living now ranks as No. 7 among NMHC’s Top 50 Largest Apartment Managers list.

ORGANIZATIONS

ALTUS GROUP Altus Group provides Intelligence as a Service through its ARGUS technology that empowers CRE professionals to make informed decisions quickly while reducing risk. The company, founded in 2005 and led by CEO Jim Hannon, powers new data capabilities and ways to connect data to provide a clear picture of commercial real estate and the property landscape. It helps investors, developers, lenders, brokers and valuers make smart investment decisions backed by data. Altus Group is a combination of many tools through a series of acquisitions. In the past year, the firm acquired solutions, including Reonomy, StratoDem Analytics and Finance Active, all of which work together to comple-ment Altus ARGUS software. The company’s innovations have had a positive impact on its financials. In Q2 2022, Altus Group consolidated revenues totaled $206.4 million; up 19% and its adjusted EBITDA was up 18%. Trusted by professionals for more than 30 years, ARGUS, the firm’s continually updated CRE software, is now used by more than 7,000 clients nationwide. At the end of Q2 2022, more than half of the company’s total ARGUS enterprise user-base had been contracted on ARGUS Cloud. With more than 50 offices and 2,600 employees glob-ally, Altus Group has a market capitalization of $2 billion.

AVISON YOUNG Avison Young has been at the forefront of developing cutting-edge technology tools aimed at streamlining processes for real estate profes-sionals and providing real-time data and analytics for its clients. Founded in 1978 and led by chair and CEO Mark E. Rose, the firm’s AVANT data-based analytics platform assists clients with decision-making through various tools. The AVANT Cities tool creates 3D visualizations and shareable maps, while AVANT Analytics provides bespoke market- and portfolio-based solutions underpinned by dozens of unique data sets, and AVANT Properties provides a billion real estate-specific data points instantaneously. AVANT powers the Avison Young Vitality Index, a dynamic dashboard of weekly foot-traffic from 52 markets that offers holistic, big-picture views of the vibrancy of cities and uncovers trends and insights across sectors. To increase efficiency and productivity, Avison Young has also equipped its professionals with robots through a partnership with UiPath, a robotic process automation software provider. The “bots” are used to support Avison Young’s entire technology stack by sourcing and gathering key commercial real estate data faster and with increased accuracy. Feeding the firm’s intelli-gence platforms, this delivers insights that empower staff to create bespoke solutions that meet client needs. The firm has expanded its ca-pabilities during the past two years with several acquisitions, including Studio Eagle, Dowling Houy and service lines from Madison Mar-quette.

BEYONDVIEW BeyondView is mixing digital technology with artistic ability to revolutionize the way commercial properties are marketed and managed. Led by CEO and founder Kul Wadhwa, the firm has established itself as an industry disrupter with visualizations that use AI and machine learn-ing to bring spaces to life. The data-driven technology works from already prepared materials including blueprints, CAD drawings and photo-graphs to prepare digitally white-boxed visualizations as well as completely redesigned and reimagined properties that demonstrate a commercial space’s potential. Presenting virtual walls and furniture, BeyondView’s digital twin technology provides a level of detail that is proven to accelerate a commercial space’s leasing cycle. In some cases, BeyondView’s software cuts the cost of planning and layout by up to 80%. Since its launch in 2018, the firm has expanded its team of professionals and incrementally enhanced the platform’s capabilities. BeyondView recently announced an enterprise agreement with WeWork Japan that will digitize its portfolio of properties and transform its ability to virtually market and manage its locations. Leveraging BeyondView’s digital twin technology, prospective tenants can virtually tour the reimagined flexible office space of WeWork Japan’s newest offering in Shinagawa before construction is complete. Before establishing BeyondView, Wadhwa co-founded three technology startups and gained experience at the Wikimedia Foundation as managing director, tasked with growing Wikipedia into a global top 10 website with more than 500 million users. He also spent several years as a volunteer technology advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on wide-scale technology deployments that addressed issues from global health to poverty.

BRIVO For more than 20 years, Brivo has used property technology to keep employees, customers, students and residents safe. Led by CEO Steve Van Till, the firm developed cloud-based access control solutions, including smart readers, touchless mobile credentials, visitor manage-ment, occupancy monitoring, health and safety features, and integrated video surveillance. In 2021, Brivo reached more than 72,000 busi-ness locations in 42 countries. Since then, the company has redefined access control by innovating solutions that protect the health and safety of people and the planet. In addition to helping commercial real estate tenants and owners meet ESG goals, the firm’s new mobile solutions help companies stay on track with new health and safety protocols through contact reporting, mobile management and credential-ing, personnel control, visitor management with touchless sign-in and mobile self-screening. To fit the new normal of hybrid work models and co-working, the company also addressed property security through solutions that manage organizations’ occupancy levels, and it intro-duced several major product innovations and partner integrations, including real-time anomaly detection using neural networks, an AI-driven visual intelligence analytic fusing video and access data, and occupancy tracking to gauge space utilization. Valued for its simple installa-tion, high-reliability backbone, and rich API partner network, Brivo has the industry’s longest track record of cybersecurity audits and privacy protections. The company has experienced significant achievements in recent years. In 2021, Brivo posted record revenue, secured a new range of partnerships, launched numerous product innovations and expanded into new markets. The company grew across all departments and in the past year, it added 49 new people in sales. The firm’s R&D increased by 61% and it surpassed cumulative sales of more than one million mobile access control credentials worldwide.

BUILT TECHNOLOGIES Chase Gilbert co-founded Built Technologies in 2014 to help the construction and financial services sectors modernize and digitize many of their most critical functions. He focused on construction as it is one of the least digitized industries and is notorious for reliance on manual accounts-payable processes and paper checks. Gilbert aimed to fix the problems with real estate construction lending and spending by con-necting commercial and consumer construction lenders, developers, general contractors, residential home builders, specialty contractors, title companies and other critical industry vendors to improve the flow of capital through the construction ecosystem. Built Technologies’ con-struction loan management suite provides a centralized platform for lenders, borrowers and contractors to efficiently manage construction loans, facilitating faster and more efficient project builds. The firm combines workflow automation and collaboration with compliance checks and the support of common payment methods. Serving real estate owners, developers, contractors and builders, Built Technologies has grown to support more than 220 North American lenders, spanning more than 200,000 commercial, homebuilder, land development and consumer residential projects. To support its growth, Built Technologies doubled its talent pool and brought on senior executives across every piece of its business. Recently, the firm announced Project Pro, a solution for proactive risk mitigation that provides lender partners with a solution to monitor and manage key risks associated with construction lending. It also acquired Nativ, a deal management platform for CRE lenders, which enhances Built Technologies’ current offerings portfolio and enables improved underwriting and asset management capabilities across construction, transitional and stabilized assets.

CARBONQUEST Utilizing a different approach to current solutions that typically offer 15-30% reductions in energy usage, CarbonQuest works to improve the climate-friendliness of buildings by capturing carbon before it is emitted into the atmosphere. Using a proprietary process, CarbonQuest’s technology extracts the carbon dioxide from the building exhaust before it exits the chimney and then converts it into liquid carbon, ensuring it will never be emitted into the atmosphere. As a pioneer in the space, CarbonQuest estimates that it can reduce a building’s net emissions by 70%. Founded in 2019, the company sells its building carbon capture systems to property owners who are looking to reduce emissions to avoid fines or to be more climate-friendly. CarbonQuest also has clients on the other side of the business, who purchase the liquid carbon created from the building’s carbon dioxide gas. CarbonQuest currently sells this liquid carbon to the largest concrete block manufacturer in New York City, where it is mineralized into concrete and used in the construction of other NYC buildings. As the number of CarbonQuest systems grows, the company anticipates selling its liquid carbon to other carbon users who may use it for the sustainable manufacture of aviation fuel, plastics and more. CarbonQuest is a member of the Clean Energy Business Network of small businesses, promoting clean energy for all. It also is a member of Urban Labs Carbon 2 Value initiative, which brings jobs to the local economy by creating jobs in a new, green CO2 economy.

DEALPATH Dealpath’s cloud-based deal management platform, built specifically for real estate, has supported more than $10 trillion in transactions globally, since its founding in 2014. The platform has transformed the previously fragmented, offline industry by connecting the people, tools and data that fuel investment management transactions. The platform allows investment management teams to view their real-time deal management activity, resulting in more informed decision-making and deals executed with greater speed and intelligence. Under the lead-ership of co-founder and CEO Mike Sroka, Dealpath’s clients have seen a noticeable improvement in statistics including deal volume and velocity, deals evaluated, deals closed, growth in AUM, acquisitions and capital deployed. Some customers have seen AUM increases by as much as 400% in three years using Dealpath’s platform. The company’s partnership with MRI is a key example of the platform’s applications. Through this partnership, Dealpath programmatically brings active deal pipeline data together with owned portfolio data from the respective systems to enable a holistic view of the portfolio and better inform investment decisions. Dealpath’s partnership with Cherre is another key example of Dealpath’s utility. Through this collaboration, top CRE investment management firms that leverage Dealpath are able to pull their pipeline and deals data into Cherre’s platform; enabling deeper visibility and insights that drive core investment strategies, underwrit-ing and performance. In 2022, Dealpath established its first international office in Toronto and the company’s exponential growth spurred a $43 million Series C raise, led by Morgan Stanley, in September.

ESSENSYS Global software and technology provider essensys designed a platform to solve the complex operational challenges that landlords and flexi-ble workspace operators face as they grow and scale their operations. The firm was founded in 2006 by CEO Mark Furness. Its technology simplifies the provisioning and delivery of digital services such as enter-prise-grade WiFi, access control, room booking and seamless connectivity across locations. The secure network solution presents a unique automated in-building network management approach that reduces costs and simplifies the day-to-day management and operation of flexi-ble and digitally enabled spaces. For flex operators, essensys removes the technical complexity of managing multiple spaces by automating the manual and error-prone processes needed to efficiently run a flex workspace operation, allowing for increased scalability and growth. For landlords, the platform provides resources to maintain a digital-first approach within their portfolio, enabling their assets to meet and adapt to increasing occupier demands for a secure and resilient digital infrastructure in their spaces. Since going public on the London Stock Ex-change’s AIM market in 2019, essensys has experienced tremendous growth. The firm has made conscious efforts to appoint senior leader-ship to accelerate the firm’s rapid expansion into its various global channels. In July 2021, essensys raised $38 million to continue its ex-pansion in North America, the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific with the long-term plan of significantly increasing market share across these regions. To date, essensys is in more than 270 cities across the globe.

FORTRESS PROPTECH Five years ago, while running Elmington Property Management, Kerri Davis was spending millions of dollars each year on property man-agement software looking for the right fit. The company was having difficulty onboarding and it experienced limited API integrations, out-dated technology and a lack of access to real-time data. Finding no solution, Davis decided to create one. She founded Fortress PropTech in 2017 to improve the technology marketplace for property management. The property management software startup went from an idea to development in just six months, and a year later, the company was beta testing and became the internal core platform for Elmington’s more than 30,000 apartment units. Fortress PropTech onboarded its first partner outside of Elmington in 2021. For onboarding, training and sup-port, the company dedicated itself to building out a robust, real-time training platform for all workflows. This training program teaches users how to complete a task or a workflow as they are doing it; reducing the number of training tickets corporate offices receive by up to 50%. The company embraced a client-centered focus by offering free on-site support to users and relieving the burden from corporate; allowing compa-nies with 10,000 units to reduce their corporate overhead by 1-2 people on average. Fortress PropTech honed in on improving efficiency and streamlining success by creating a product that offers real-time transparency and key performance indicators. The platform automates manual reports and owners have real-time access to key metrics to help accelerate the success of their assets. The company has more than 50,000 units currently on the platform and a team that includes more than 40 professionals.

FUNNEL LEASING Established in 2012, Funnel Leasing has built a renter-centric management platform that delivers a consistent and connected experience from first inquiry through years of renewals. Onsite teams rely on Funnel Leasing to interact with prospective renters, build relationships with current residents, take care of daily tasks and offload monotonous administrative tasks. The firm, led by CEO Tyler Christiansen, has deliv-ered its platform to 10 of the nation’s top 25 US owners and operators. Camden Property Trust says that the platform allows it to give onsite teams Sundays off, knowing the AI solution will handle renter-facing needs while its teams recharge. Essex Property Trust shared on a recent public earnings call that it is able to increase the agent-to-unit ratio from one agent per every 40 units to one agent for every 43 units in their portfolio without sacrificing a quality renter experience thanks to the platform. Funnel Leasing has made a specific point of identifying and eliminating biases in its suite of leasing products, including in its new virtual leasing agent. The company built the platform’s virtual agent to respond to messages about affordable housing and help find the least expensive apartments. Steps were also taken to accommodate mes-sages in foreign languages, unsupported inquiries and messages that indicate adverse prospective renter situations, including potential exposure to trauma such as domestic abuse. The company projects that one in 20 renters will find their next home through Funnel Leasing by 2025.

HARNESS DATA INTELLIGENCE Harness Data Intelligence has deep experience in both property and financial data science and data architecture, including geospatial IP development. The firm has added data that widens searches to include properties owned by companies registered offshore. For example, the platform found 17,055 records for Russian-owned assets in the UK, with the most assets coming up in London. Harness Data Intelligence also launched a master address data set and address-matching product driven by proprietary data fusion algorithms that provide deep gran-ularity and coverage of UK CRE stock, with algorithmic address-matching of disparate data sets. The firm was founded in 2016 and is led by CEO Edwin Groenendaal and director of applied intelligence Josué Calvo Jimenez, who is a creative data architect that is known as one of the best SQL consultants in the world with an ability to design failure-proof systems. At Harness Data Intelligence, Jimenez leads the de-velopment of connected data for analysis, modeling and decision-making purposes. With more than 25 years experience in architecture, design and delivery of innovative solutions, he has a wealth of knowledge in the domain of databases and metadata. Previously, as an en-terprise architect at Grove Capital Investment, Jimenez was responsible for defining the required changes to business, data and technology to improve business performance for clients.

INTAPP Intapp’s award-winning DealCloud technology offers a complete deal, relationship and pipeline management solution for financial services firms and real estate investors. DealCloud helps CRE firms consistently connect their people, processes and data and collapse the overall number of solutions in their technology stack. 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 deci-sions and execute complex transactions. Intapp’s DealCloud is targeted at real estate investors and managers who require purpose-built technology that streamlines their workflow and allows them to identify and execute transactions efficiently. Intapp’s president of financial services and DealCloud founder Ben Harrison previously worked as an investment banker and then as a private equity investor — roles that helped him identify the need for specific technologies to support these sectors. He and his team designed DealCloud with that in mind. Intapp went public in June 2021 and now employs more than 940 professionals. The DealCloud platform is a key contributor to Intapp’s revenue increase of 35% year-over-year, and it has been key to generating 49% growth of cloud annual recurring revenue year-over-year. DealCloud has launched many enhancements to the platform in 2021 and 2022, such as relationship intelligence for auto-ingesting data using AI and predictive insights, real estate investment management enhancements with ESRI and Cherre integrations, a mobile app, an improved user experience and a new third-party integration solution and email marketing solution.

LANDGATE LandGate offers a series of products and services that enable real estate agents, landowners, energy developers and capital market investors to understand the value of a parcel of land based on its potential uses. Founded in 2015, the integrated platform serves as an online mar-ketplace and data provider for US commercial land and its resources, including solar, wind, carbon, minerals and water. LandGate’s online marketplace offers a centralized location for each party in a deal to source and complete real estate transactions, such as sales, leases and royalty agreements. Under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Yoann Hispa, president Craig Kaiser and CIO Fernando Gonzales, the company recently raised $10 million in a Series B funding round led by NextEra Energy Resources, a clean energy company and the world’s largest producer of renewable wind and sun energy. Following the completion of the funding round, LandGate introduced the PowerTools Suite, which provides energy operators, investors and land real estate agents with new products, including PowerCRM, a tool that improves the process of identifying and tracking leads for developable land and enables users to filter properties across the country based on a range of characteristics, including parcel size, proximity to a substation, state incentives, the presence of a motivated seller and more. Once parcels are identified, the SaaS product allows team members to easily track the progress of these potential investments. LandGate also launched PowerParcels, which enables users to take the next step toward completing land or resource royalty acquisitions for development. Most re-cently, LandGate launched PowerCapital Solutions, which provides capital markets professionals with a unique value-add as well as a suite of data and SaaS for capital markets, including PowerM&A, which consolidates an extensive list of active and closed renewable energy M&A deals.

PROCORE TECHNOLOGIES Construction rework is one of the biggest causes of wasted spend — accounting for 14% of total construction expenses or $500 billion annu-ally — and it is often the result of poor communication and inadequate data. Procore Technologies increases profit margins for owners by significantly reducing waste and rework by providing hyper-communication across all phases of the CRE build cycle from the owner level to subcontractors. The company’s technology provides heightened visibility throughout every phase of the project life cycle to key project stakeholders from the owner to the contractor to the investor that provides fundamental insights via tracking and reporting on safety, finan-cials and productivity. Founded in 2002 and led by founder, president and CEO Tooey Courtemanche, Procore Technologies has more than one million projects and $1 trillion in construction volume. The firm recently partnered with Build Transparency’s Embodied Carbon in Con-struction Calculator to help CRE combat its carbon footprint and environmental impact. In addition, Procore Technologies’ recent partnership with Amazon Web Services to include digital twins (AWS IoT TwinMaker) will make it faster and easier to create digital twins of real-world systems, allowing the firm to integrate data from design and construction into operations. The partnership allows project owners to incorpo-rate as-built information from Procore Technologies’ platform with real-time data sources using the twinmaker. Consolidating this information streamlines operations and maintenance, enables life cycle analysis of portfolio assets and identifies risks on job sites before they become a problem. In 2021, Procore Technologies acquired two major companies: LaborChart and Levelset. Through its work with LaborChart, the firm is addressing CRE’s labor struggles by ensuring contractors have the control they need to manage, schedule and budget labor. The Levelset acquisition adds lien rights management to its platform, allowing Procore Technologies to manage compliance workflow and ultimately help the industry get paid faster.

RET VENTURES RET Ventures is a CRE industry-backed, early-stage venture fund that is strategically focused on cutting-edge PropTech that addresses common pain points for the commercial real estate space. Since its founding in 2017, RET Ventures has invested in more than 30 PropTech platforms and arranged 250 active partnerships between these portfolio companies and the 40 owners and operators that make up the firm’s base of strategic investors. Of the firms in this investor pool, 80% are users of at least six portfolio companies through RET Ventures. Strate-gic investment partners remain in regular contact with the RET Ventures team to discuss industry-wide problems, technologies that can solve them, and the real-world impact different tech solutions may have on the market. Access to this knowledge puts RET Ventures in the unique position to identify which PropTech companies are best positioned to improve processes across the rental market. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend toward self-leasing practices, and several of RET Ventures’ portfolio companies were instrumen-tal in streamlining the rental process and implementing safer best practices for consumers and leasing agents. Some of these investments included SmartRent, a smart lock and smart home automation platform; CheckpointID, which provides identity verification prior to a tour; Engrain, a property mapping technology that helps guide users around a property; and Funnel Leasing, a CRM tool that facilitates online leasing. Under the leadership of partners Christopher Yip and John Helm, the company recently launched an ESG-focused fund that supports the growth and deployment of ESG tech solutions for the housing industry — an important focus of many CRE owners and operators who are under growing regulatory and investor pressure.

SHARRY Unlike its competitors that are focused on rapid scaling through universal solutions, Czech company Sharry focuses on integrations through its workplace experience platform for offices and office buildings. Sharry brings multiple touch points to redefine the workplace experience, including mobile access with Apple Wallet support, smart parking, hybrid work, visitor management and employee engagement. Established in 2016, Sharry is led by CEO and co-founder Josef Šachta, COO and co-founder Michal Cˇerovský, chief solutions architect and co-founder Jakub Rˇeznícˇek, and CTO and co-founder Vladimír Cibulka. The firm’s touch-free solution, flexible operation tools and building data in-sights gained a new significance in the post-COVID-19 property design and hybrid work environment. Dozens of skyscrapers in New York, including the futuristic 427-meter-tall One Vanderbilt, use the Sharry platform as do the projects of Prague’s Masarycka and Bratislava’s Sky Park Offices by Zaha Hadid Architects, and state-of-the-art office buildings from Bucharest to Johannesburg. In 2019, the CzechInvest pro-gram brought part of the team to New York, where Sharry managed to win a significant client in the first year — SL Green, the largest owner of office space in Manhattan. In the same year, Sharry received a seed investment from Presto Ventures fund, and in early 2022, J&T Ven-tures acquired a 10% equity stake in the company. A leading Czech business outlet, CzechCrunch selected Sharry as one of 25 startups to watch, and more recently, Sharry has been selected as one of the top 30 most popular Czech startups.

SUFFOLK TECHNOLOGIES Suffolk Technologies is making waves in the built world as the first accelerator of its kind; backing early and growth-stage technology startup companies and entrepreneurial ventures across the building lifecycle, including construction, architecture, engineering and real estate. With a broad network of more than 500 startups, investors and strategic partners, Suffolk Technologies is accelerating new solutions to ecosystem-wide adoption to drive the pace of change in the industry. In 2020, Suffolk Technologies launched its BOOST program for startups, a six-week business accelerator program that brings together promising technology startup founders that are committed to addressing construction industry challenges, expanding their networks and raising funding for future growth. The BOOST program consists of lectures and panel discussions driven by Suffolk leaders, MIT professors and Suffolk Technologies’ portfolio company founders, as well as dedicated time with Suffolk CoLab Construction Solution directors who partner with the finalists and test their solutions on Suffolk project sites. The capstone to the BOOST program is Demo Day, an opportunity that allows finalists to share their solutions with industry influencers and investors. Suffolk Technologies is currently hosting its third annual BOOST program, having selected seven startup finalists from more than 185 applicants. Since its inaugural program kicked off three years ago, past cohorts of the BOOST program have collectively raised more than $325 million of venture funding after participating in the program. The 2021 cohort alone has raised more than $100 million in capital to accelerate their growth plans.

SWTCH ENERGY With electric vehicle adoption on the rise, the real estate market is under pressure to deploy charging at multi-tenant buildings where drivers live and work. However, 60% of multifamily buildings in the US that are more than 30 years old have limited grid capacity. SWTCH Energy is pioneering EV charging solutions for commercial properties that allow multi-unit building owners and operators to deliver charging solutions, while using their existing grid infrastructure to avoid costly upgrades. SWTCH Energy also helps them participate in energy efficiency pro-grams and offers apps and resources tailored for tenants to easily understand charging where they live and work as well as rebate programs in their area. The firm, founded in 2016 and led by CEO and co-founder Carter Li, leverages an extensive network of partners across North America including charge point operators, electrical contractors, fleet and energy management service providers and government organiza-tions. It works with utilities and distributed energy resource management system providers on innovative vehicle-to-grid programs that store energy using EVs during off-peak hours and redistribute that energy to buildings and other EV chargers during on-peak hours. It also inte-grates EV chargers with distributed energy resources such as solar and Tesla energy storage systems and it enables charging in dense urban settings with highly constrained sites. SWTCH Energy charging systems are currently installed in more than 300 multifamily buildings — half of which are classified as low-to-moderate income. SWTCH Energy is working toward climate justice and it provides access to communities historically left out of the electrification revolution, while being disproportionately impacted by climate change.

VALCRE Founded in 2016 and led by CEO Lucas Rotter, Valcre has enabled valuation professionals and commercial real estate appraisers to expe-dite and streamline the time-consuming, manual tasks associated with the traditional appraisal process. Through several strategic integra-tions with external data sources and reporting templates, Valcre dramatically reduces the hours appraisers spend executing manual tasks and scouring data sources for comps. Valcre arms valuation professionals with a secure cloud-based database that is available from any device and makes storing client information, invoicing and researching comps quick and painless. Users can easily keep track of jobs, cli-ents, properties, sales, leases and expenses, and the dashboards make it simple for users to keep track of active jobs, maps, payments and monthly billing. The platform provides comprehensive templates that are USPAP- and CUSPAP-compliant and include support for more than 16 property types. Users are also provided with a complete database of every appraisal they have completed. In the past 12 months, Valcre’s system has been used to facilitate more than 20,000 commercial real estate appraisals. The firm has also effectively educated this segment of the market on the significance of modern technology adoption to improve the appraisal process, take on more business and appeal to young talent. Valcre is focused on getting the younger generation involved with appraisal — an industry that is currently dominated by older practitioners — by sponsoring scholarships for trainee courses. The firm also leverages several different social media platforms to connect with its target audience and build a community online.

VTS Before VTS, the commercial real estate industry was without a centralized platform for data and was fueled by disorganized spreadsheets and back-of-the-napkin deals. VTS is a technology platform that transforms how strategic decisions are made and executed across the asset lifecycle. In 2013, VTS revolutionized the industry’s leasing operations with what is now VTS Lease. Today, it’s the largest first-party data source in the industry; delivering data insights and solutions to fuel investment and asset strategy, leasing and marketing automation, prop-erty operations and tenant experience. VTS manages more than 12 billion square feet of assets on its virtual platform, including 60% of na-tional class A office space and 65% of the Manhattan office market, and it has a user base that exceeds 45,000 across more than 38 coun-tries. Established in 2012 and led by co-founder and CEO Nick Romito and co-founder and chief strategy officer Ryan Masiello, the firm’s clients include some of the world’s largest property owners and industry leaders, including Blackstone, Brookfield, LaSalle Investment Man-agement, Hines, Boston Properties, Oxford Properties, JLL and CBRE. To date, more than 300,000 tenant companies are managed through the VTS platform, which consists of VTS Lease, VTS Rise, VTS Data and VTS Market. In 2021, VTS acquired property operations and tenant experience technology company Rise Buildings, as well as workplace experience platform Lane. With both tenant experience offerings working together, VTS boasts one of the largest tenant experience teams in the industry composed of software engineers, deployment pro-fessionals and marketing experts dedicated to tenant engagement and adoption across its customers’ properties.

WILLOW INC. Willow Inc. has made a name for itself in PropTech, having built large digital twins for the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the Dallas Fort Worth Airport and the Manhattan West precinct. Founded in 2017 and led by CEO and co-founder Joshua Ridley, vice chair Kevin Danehy and president and COO Bert Van Hoof, Willow offers solutions for real estate, airports, rail, mining and new construction. The company’s flagship product, WillowTwin, drives value for real estate and infrastructure assets by centralizing and structuring typically siloed data from across entire portfolios or infrastructure networks to create a digital twin of the built form. The WillowTwin global footprint includes more than 46 million square feet of real estate. The firm has invested in core product capabilities that enable it to go to market faster, scale with cus-tomers and expand into new sectors. This has resulted in a next-generation rules engine with no known equivalent in the industry, faster and more sophisticated reporting capabilities, and the required cyber security certifications. Willow processes more than 30 million IoT telemetry events per day. In 2021, Willow successfully raised more than $43 million in a Pre-Series B round, and it also welcomed a new strategic investor In-Q-Tel Inc., a nonprofit organization that invests in cutting-edge tech startup companies that contribute to the national security of the US and its allies. This investment signaled Willow’s growing capabilities in cybersecurity as part of its digital twin solution.