Proptech Espresso

 Jenna Louie, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer of Ivory Innovations, joins Proptech Espresso to announce the winners of the seventh annual Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. This year's winners were selected from a record 280+ nominations within Construction & Design, Finance, and Policy & Regulatory Reform. These companies represent the most compelling and novel housing innovation solutions directly addressing the widening housing affordability crisis in the US.

What are the primary differences between Proptech 1.0, Proptech 2.0, and today's Proptech 3.0? In what way did Brian's consulting work quickly change as financial firms navigated the Great Financial Crisis? What was it like to be at the forefront of the technology revolution within investment management that led to quant investing? Why did Brian get the chance to build a reinsurance business from the ground up and how did this work establish his credentials for raising institutional capital? How did a weekend and weeknight personal research project on shared equity in real estate lead to a role at Unison? Why was it important that from the get go the Jubilee Homes solution work within the existing real estate ecosystem? What is a leasehold product and how does this differ from a traditional mortgage? Why is Jubilee Homes focused on markets where there is a high land share percentage for home purchases? What attributes of the residential ground lease asset class make it particularly interesting for institutional capital? Why was it important for Jubilee Homes to build trust with real estate agents? Does the leasehold product work for real estate asset classes outside of residential real estate?Brian Elbogen - CEO and co-founder of Jubilee Homes, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a conversation with a professor on a recruiting trip around the opportunity to study operations researched tipped the scale in favor of attending Princeton over the Univeristy of Penn.

How does proptech differ for asset classes depending on the customer needs and expectations? Has AI adoption and development todate been more front-of-house or back-of-house? Why are American management consulting firm jobs so sought after by recent university graduates in the UK? What was it like working on a consulting engagement for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London? How did experiencing corporate bloat while on engagements as a management consultant translate into a bias for operating very lean at Zumper? What led Anth to explore entrepreneurial ideas around real estate and technology? Why is hiring the first technical team member so difficult for a non-technical founder? What lessons did Anth learn about online marketplaces from studying the success of Craigslist? Why is it important to make sure you are building a business based on a full solution and not just a feature? What are some brutal learnings for the early GTM efforts of Zumper? Why is professionalization of multi-family still in its early days with lots of innovation still to happen? What consumer AI usage change is now emerging with ChatGPT's recent rollout of real-time web crawls?Anthemos Georgiades - CEO and co-founder of Zumper, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the difficult evolution he had to work through as a startup CEO once Zumper crossed the $10M ARR level and why this critical leadership change is something that isn't taught at business school. 

What was it about political theory that convinced Julie to study political science at university? What was occurring within the technology industry that created an opportunity for Facebook to do things in new ways for consumers which resonated with Julie and drew her to work there? Why was it so fascinating to be leading corporate development for a well-positioned adtech firm during the period of mass consolidation? What about management consulting strategy work led Julie to definitively know she wanted to be a business operator? Why did the autonomy of working at a startup foster a sense of exhilaration that Julie found herself addicted to? How did Tractable allow Julie to work on innovative solutions that brought powerful new technology to the physical world? What did the emergence of generative AI change that reduced the investment companies had to make in bringing solutions to market? Why isn't there a single source of truth for home renovation projects? What are the assorted challenges that contractors face as small business owners themselves while managing a renovation project? How has Block Renovation built technology to enable transparency and trust between homeowners and contractors? Where has Block Renovation integrated generative AI into its solutions? How is localization and deep real estate market knowledge incorporated into each Block Renovation city launch?Julie Kheyfets - CEO of Block Renovation, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how working with insurance companies revealed to Julie how bad humans are at understanding risk due to our inability to think probabilistically.

What sort of building inspections are required in Europe before a building is taken down? As someone new to tech startups, what were the lessons learned from building the Airbnb for boat holidays from the ground up? What did participating in Antler's startup accelerator program lead to for Ieva? How does circularity in construction prolong the life of a material and prevent it from entering a dump? What are the factors driving the recent surge in interest in circular construction? How is Material Mapper leveraging big data to bring forecasting capabilities to circular construction? Why have traditional construction reuse marketplaces failed to scale in Europe? Why have construction material producers emerged as the first large scale adopters of Material Mapper? How are municipalities leveraging the Material Mapper platform? What new European regulations are being introduced which will drive future opportunities for Material Mapper? Why is Dubai running out of sand needed for new construction and where is it now importing it from?Ieva Sibilla Strupule - CEO and co-founder of Material Mapper, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how her mom's background in architectural investigation coupled with her childhood spent conducting treasure hunts while inspecting historical buildings led to a deep appreciation for the built environment and a desire to preserve the materials used to construct it.

Why is there no user manual to run your house? Are the critical thinking skills you learn as an English literature major valuable in your work and personal life? How did Katie never study in college and become an auditory learner? What about the auditory learning skill set that Katie picked up in college lead to a career in tech? How did a summer job in Manhattan between high school and college lead to an interest in business? Why was developing a streamlined implementation process for a hospital back office software company so critical for sales success? How did promotions from customer sales lead to company executive leadership with golden handcuffs? Why are key man life insurance policies so essential for businesses to have in place for CEOs? How did a home ownership maintenance nightmare on her first property lead Katie to found and build Yarlow? Why is digital storage for home-related items and expenses so important for homeowners? What classic first-time entrepreneur mistake did Katie make when building the initial MVP for Yarlow? How is the trend of PE firms buying up home service profession businesses impacting the service upsell of unneeded services? Where is Yarlow integrating AI into the platform? How is regional customization important for homeowner maintenance and recommendations? Why was it important for Katie that Yarlow be a free app for homeowners?Katie Shahan - CEO and founder of Yarlow, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a group of college classmates who she did not know convinced her she needed to become an English Lit major.

Has proptech over the last decade or so become largely an attempt by entrepreneurs to throw process optimization software at real estate operations? What are micro-apartments and why did this approach of better space utilization largely fail to take hold within the built world? Why haven't innovations such as moving walls and transforming furniture become mainstream components in multi-family living and residential housing? What is data driven architecture? Why are we designing and building homes that do not match how households are utilizing them in everyday living? How has poor home design led to the urban sprawl dilemma we are currently faced with? How did coliving emerge from the micro-apartment movement and what were the forces that drove this evolution? Why did the shared living properties that historically existed in San Francisco largely disappear? Why did the venture debt that was pumped into the coliving space ultimately doom this model from achieving long-term success? Why has PadSplit been the one bright spot to emerge in the tech driven coliving space? How are housing and mental health directly related? David Friedlander - co-founder and CEO of Urban Machine, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how the housing needs of current generations are not being reflected in the homes being built and are instead driven by the returns of the capital providers.

Did Bryan coin the term IoT? Does a built world vendor ecosystem framework of Design, Finance, Build, and Use cover all categories? Why do proptech startups take a while to validate and establish? How has Autodesk become so integrated in today's built environment projects? What led Autodesk to invest heavily in construction tech? Why is there almost no payroll in the residential homebuilding industry outside of public homebuilders? Why is timely payment so important for homebuilding GCs? Is there a difference between hard money lenders and private lenders? What is a draw in construction lending? Why is commercial software so much of a greenfield frontier in private lending? How come almost every technology startup pivots from its original idea? Why are robust mobile apps that take advantage of phone hardware so difficult to maintain? What are the benefits to construction finance startup employees personally experiencing a construction job site?Bryan Kester - co-founder and CEO of Sitewire, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a collection of family member real estate experiences growing up created a likely pathway to a career in the built world.

Did Mark Andreessen's famous essay about software eating the world lead to the term Proptech being coined? How did having family members who were real estate investors, developers, and property tax collectors establish a deep foundation of real estate understanding for a young Joseph? What allowed Jospeh's grandfather, an immigrant hairdresser, to become a land baron in the northeast? Why are the off-the-shelf assessment models used by tax districts inherently flawed? What early entrepreneurial hustles did Joseph dabble in growing up and why was it important to ensure these ventures paid for themselves? Why did Joseph forgo a role at Nvidia to continue his PhD track at UCLA? Do overassessment protests result in cities and municipalities getting less tax revenue necessary to balance annual budgets? What does the property tax appeal process look like and why are there opportunities to digitize and scale this? What were Ownwell's initial quick wins from a technology perspective? How do differences around local tax districts impact the information mined and presented to Ownwell's in-house tax protestors? How are the needs of individual homeowners different from those of large commercial real estate portfolio owners around property tax savings?Joseph Noor - co-founder and CTO of Ownwell, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a chance encounter at a UCLA startup pitch competition brought about the convergence of his computer science studies and family heritage in real estate resulting in the launch of Ownwell.

When understanding the definition of proptech, why does it make sense to look at who the definition is serving? How did a mechanical engineering student make their way to the Boston tech startup scene? What was it like building a social networking company during the pre-Facebook days? Why was Boston the wrong place to try to raise capital for a consumer technology startup in the early 2000s? What was the difference between Amazon and most other e-commerce companies during the post dot-com days? Why were the capital markets so apprehensive about initially participating in a shared equity product? How long did it take Point to get an agreed upon rating methodology for the shared equity product? When did Point issue its first investment securitization? How does the efficiency of the mortgage market today make it difficult to disrupt debt coupon products? How much in origination should the HEI product be doing annually?Eoin Matthews - Chief Business Officer and co-founder of Point, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how helping a friend with the down payment on their first house and unexpectedly getting their money back led to the conviction that there was an incredible opportunity for a shared equity product to help homeowners.

Does exposure to family entrepreneurship at an early age impact the likelihood of pursuing a startup later in life How extensively is fractional ownership touching the different real estate asset classes? Why is it important to get experience receiving a lot of "NO's" when pursuing a startup idea? Why is it important to find a champion when introducing a new product to a corporation? How did helping stand up the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) during COVID at Capital One prove to be an invaluable work experience? What about the mortgage industry value chain makes it difficult to create products that c reates pathways to more affordable homeownership? What is novel about the equity vs traditional debt structure that Quarter is championing as an instrument for homeownership? Why did Quarter feel it was important to go with a pari passu fee model? How has a focus on compliance shaped the product development timeline for Quarter? Why is education so important for a new home ownership instrument like Quarter?Shannon Diesch - CEO and co-founder of Quarter, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how participating in a high school food science challenge led to an opportunity to collaborate with NASA and its astronauts.

How did an Environmental Sciences degree lead to a career in sustainability? How did attending DesignX at MIT sow the seeds for TULU? Why did Yael become a minimalist? Where did the name TULU originate? Why did TULU believe fast experimentation was extremely important when building an MVP? What did TULU learn early on about customer preferences and did the usage data bear this out? How is the TULU app helping it become a data driven company? Why are brands and retailers partnering with TULU and how was this strategy envisioned from the very beginning? How many different ways does TULU incorporate surveying into its platform? What surprising usage/consumption patterns have emerged with TULU? How is TULU supporting creators and work from home employees?Yael Shemer - Chief Customer Officer and co-founder of TULU, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how her education in environmental science and sustainability initially led to a feeling of slight depression about the state of the world, but that she was able to change this perspective and identifying ways in which she could make a positive change on the environment.

What was it like to be involved with the European proptech scene as it started to gain momentum and formalize into a tech space? How did a Latvian trait of resourcefulness continually re-enforced by his grandfather inspire Mikus to provide real estate agents with tools to help them create visualizations themselves? Why did the first wave of VR tools and solutions lead to bespoke and niche visualization projects for high-end real estate? When brainstorming ideas for his next company, what drove Mikus to want to build a subscription business that is applicable during the entire lifecycle of the customer? Why do SaaS businesses allow companies to justify spending resources/investment on customer satisfaction while project based businesses do not? What makes smartphones an inferior product to capture real estate scans? How will real estate digital content requirements continue to grow over the long term? Why are quality real estate images hard to capture? Why are real estate agents interested in creating and controlling the real estate visualization content they create?Mikus Opelts - CEO and co-founder of Giraffe360, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how attending art school inspired him to pursue visual information and storytelling that naturally led to the creation of his first startup and set off a career in real estate visualization.

How did an investigation into 3D printing houses spark an interest in real estate? On ICON's first marketing flyers, what price did they believe they would be able to sell their 3D printed homes for? Why does Germany build denser housing than the US? Why are there so few books on real estate development? What makes local city real estate decisions so difficult to identify and analyze? How does the age/maturity of a city influence the types of real estate decisions being made? What unintentional action created a lot of interest in ReZone's launch? How many real estate decisions are being made at the city level weekly? Why are researchers so interested in the data that ReZone is producing? How are advancements in AI making ReZone's analysis possible today?Daniel Heller - CEO and co-founder of ReZone, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how starting a business with friends during high school was such a positive entrepreneurial experience that it continues to be revisited amongst them to this day.

How did an early career in consulting shape an understanding of the need to deliver both on time and at the highest level of quality? Why is it important for entrepreneurs to be able to step into the shoes of their customers every single day? What are some of the challenges of long-term business planning that the quarterly reporting cycle for public companies creates? How does investing in real estate provide more predictability on outcomes vs other alternative investment markets? Why is communication challenging for condos and HOA boards? How has email contributed to the challenges of task management? Why is UI becoming less of a focus in the age of AI? How do you break down the walled gardens of property management to unlock data insights? What are the opportunities for sentiment analysis around communication for property management?Lindsay Liu - co-founder and CEO of Super joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how her college roommate friendship built the trust that was necessary for a successful startup co-founder partnership.

Does construction tech end once occupancy of a building happens? Why is it important to be able to professionally reinvent yourself? What was the draw to the clean tech space after spending time in the aerospace industry? Why has construction insurance costs ballooned? What can GCs do to mitigate risk and thereby help keep insurance costs in check? Why has water become such a larger driver of construction related insurance costs? What have been the drivers of IoT device adoption on the construction site? How is technology adoption on construction sites different from the rates that you see in other industries? Why is technology adoption becoming a competitive advantage for many early adopters of technology within construction? Why is the data from the interconnected job site so valuable for construction companies? Why is the outlook for construction so bright?Alex Fuentes - EVP Strategic Growth at Brickeye, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share the unique coop program of the University of Waterloo engineering department that exposed him to a wide variety of industries including power generation, consumer electronics, manufacturing and aerospace to name a few.

What was it like growing up as part of a multi-generational family construction business? How did being immersed in the family construction business provide unique benefits while working on Bryce's master degree in college? Why were the inefficiencies that Bryce observed in the asphalt industry such a professional draw for him? How do you change the image of the construction industry as being unsexy, consisting of long hours, and lots of callouses? Why has the adoption of technology accelerated in the last couple of years? How did Bryce become a simultaneous serial construction entrepreneur? Why did Bryce decide to exit his other businesses and focus on his software startup? What sort of compliance issues are part of infrastructure construction projects? How does weather impact infrastructure construction projects? What unique part of Pavewise's sales process has resulted in a 100% prospect conversion rate? Why have word-of-mouth referrals been such a strong source of sales leads for Pavewise? How has Pavewise integrated AI into its solution? Bryce Wuori - co-founder and CEO of Pavewise, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how participating in research projects across his 20-year career in asphalt has given him unique expertise, making him one of the few recognized asphalt scientists in the U.S.

Is robotics the ultimate tool for giving humans superpower capabilities? Why are snake robots Kevin's nemesis? What prompted Kevin to learn to code? Why is it transformational to bring robots out of the lab/factory and into everyday human environments? How did a summer job in construction provide the basis for focusing on bringing robotics into the built world? What robotic research project with the US military inspired the movie Big Hero 6? Why did the idea of soft robots ultimately not prove to be a good basis for robots in the real world? What is it about surface paint prepping that makes this task so difficult and at the same time such a big opportunity? How did speaking with hotel owners about renovations lead to the concept for Canvas? What are the staggering rates of long-term medical issues construction workers experience due to either accidents or repetitive motion jobs? Why have robots in construction historically not been developed for use in the interiors of buildings? What is the meaning behind the company name Canvas? How are Canvas robots helping to bring drywall workers into the construction industry? What are the constraints that construction robots have to deal with that manufacturing robots do not? Why do construction tech startups need to fully understand the economics of the skilled trades they are impacting when exploring a new technology to bring to market? What causes construction to be such a distributed system? Why is achieving commercial reliability so important for construction robotic companies? What do robotic construction tech companies need to understand about hardware production cycles?Kevin Albert - Founder & CEO of Canvas joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discusses how a frustrating second place finish in a high school bridge building competition left him with a chip on his shoulder and fueled a career in wanting to design and build things.

Why is there so much bespoke design happening with real estate development projects? What is meant by design productization? Why have some companies championed vertically integrated construction? What was Katerra's business model and secret sauce? Why is innovating in construction tech so difficult? What are the challenges for VCs when considering non-software investments in construction tech? Why is the construction industry facing major challenges when manufacturers are investing in industrialized construction and developers/contractors want to do more prefab work? How is the labor crisis impacting the construction industry? Why is the transition to offsite construction critical in a shrinking labor pool environment? When evaluating the space, how are construction robots commonly segmented? Why is changing the established behavior of architects as it relates to building design and construction tech so challenging? What is a coordinated construction model? Why is the logistics related to offsite construction so tricky?Justin Schwaiger - General Manager US at Kope, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how observing the effects of earthquakes locally and internationally in his youth was a major factor in steering him into a career where he could impact and improve the built environment.

Why can long tenures in industries stifle innovation? How did John and his wife end up in Mountain View, California? What were some of the memorable dates that John took his wife on? Why was it beneficial to write business plans on any idea that John researched? What prompted the research and launching of Sara Schools Music Program? Why was the concept of leasehold improvements so frustrating to John? What lessons and struggles came with running a service business? What divine inspiration did John receive while processing his frustrations with the commercial leasing process? What types of research was John doing to form the education foundation necessary to build the wall system he was told to create? How did the initial funds become available to start prototyping the wall system? Why is it important to bring low or no-skill workers into construction? What is meant by the category 'Productization of Construction'? How can construction benefit by focusing on circularity and sustainability? How is Låda Cube integrating with design solutions like Revit to introduce wall standardization into digital wall plans? What are the three (3) R's that Låda Cube allows for? How did a dream about Tesla become so significant for John's Låds Cube journey?John Fay - Founder & CEO of Låda Cube joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discusses how his curiosity about his entrepreneurial bug led him to explore alongside his wife many potential business ideas before being told to pursue the opportunity that would become Låda Cube.

Which emerging trend caused Skye not to pursue a degree in architecture? What was it like building a startup within Oracle? How did personal experience draw Skye into the proptech space? What realization around purchasing a home was the inspiration for starting Crib Equity? Why are third-party investors interested in helping unknown individuals purchase a home? What are the systemic structural issues that first-time homebuyers are faced with today? Why are homebuyers no longer putting 20% down and what was this average down payment % changed to? Who is a nepo-buyer? Nationally, how long is it taking a prospective homebuyer to save for a 10% down payment? How are real estate agents providing a greater degree of financial advice to home buyers today? What does the landscape of alternative home purchase options look like?Skye Laudari - Co-founder & CEO of Crib Equity joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how traveling internationally for two years immediately after graduating from college was transformational and helped develop personal and professional life skills that can take most people decades to learn.

Despite many advances in proptech, has it also regressed in certain senses? Why has the technology adoption chasm been so big to cross in proptech? Can proptech solutions hope to introduce change management to companies that still solely rely on Excel to run their business? Why did Kyle see technology as an advantage over his potential commercial real estate broker colleagues? What has it been like launching a technology startup with no prior background in technology? What is an asset operating platform? For asset managers how does saving time result in improved NOI? Why is early customer feedback so critical for designing a successful and scalable solution? Are we seeing the era of brokerage consolidation in the commercial broker space? Is there an issue with having real estate LPs in proptech VCs sway portfolio company roadmaps to benefit themselves instead of designing solutions for the broader market? How does the HBO show Silicon Valley accurately portray start-up life?  Why is figuring out a business more than simply bringing a product to market? How is AI going to positively impact the commercial real estate space over the next couple of years?Kyle Waldrep - Founder & CEO of Dottid joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a major illness in college changed his priorities and closed the door on the professional tennis career path that he had always envisioned.

Is the right way to think about proptech to frame it in terms of how humans live, work, and function in our communities? What is the proptech scene like in Romania? Why were real estate developers experiencing so many issues in their sales process and turning to tech solutions to solve these? What has led to Romania having such a high property ownership rate? Why are Romanian property valuations continuing to grow year over year? What impact is AI having on the real estate industry? Why was it important for the solution Vaunt was building to maintain the feeling of being proud that goes along with buying a property and in no way take away from it? Why have real estate agents historically not been a profession in Romania? What has the introduction of private creditors done to open up access to foreign buyers across Europe? How has word of mouth been instrumental in Vaunt's growth? What has allowed Vaunt to build a valuation index so buyers can appraise their properties on an ongoing basis? Why are foreign buyers purchasing investment homes across Europe? How is Vaunt planning to tap the US market?Irina Constantin - Co-founder & CEO of Vaunt joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how internships were instrumental in exploring potential career paths and ultimately giving her the conviction to seek out an entrepreneurial opportunity where she knew she would not be bored.

Why has proptech evolved from initially innovating and disrupting the four walls of a physical asset to now primarily encompassing secondary industries such as financing and servicing which are asset light? Does ESG fall under the big umbrella of proptech? What are the benefits of having job experience in an industry and getting the exposure necessary to be able to speak the language of an industry? How was the New York startup scene changed since the early 2010s? What are some of the most important skills learned working in management consulting? Why is culture and cultural fit so important in successful M&A transactions? Is Airbnb a proptech company? What are the challenges of choosing a vacational rental property that will be profitable? Why are most vacational rental properties not a passive investment? How has Summer expanded its product offering to vacational home buyers since its initial launch? Why do vacational rental property owners need better data?Paul Kromidas - Founder & CEO of Summer joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss why its important for proptech companies to develop relationships with the city officials that the company will be operating in. 

Why are many of the most successful real estate agents true entrepreneurs at heart? How is Redfin able to focus on solving the core issues of the real estate agent and in turn solve problems for the homebuying consumer? What has been the driver of more and more homebuyers looking to purchase real estate properties outside the US? Why is purchasing real estate internationally such a black box? What are the primary differences between purchasing a home in the US and purchasing a home in Mexico? Why is working with a real estate agent in Mexico as important for home purchases as it is in the US? Why aren't cross border mortgage products more readily available to international homebuyers? How do marketplace business models make or break growth dynamics for early stage tech businesses? Why are the best real estate agents so relationship focused? What telephony challenges for international real estate transactions has Far Homes needed to build technology to help solve? Why has technology for the real estate agents in Mexico not achieved the adoption levels of their US counterparts? How do you solve for listing aggregation when there is no MS equivalent in international markets? What are the profile types of US buyers purchasing internationally? Are there opportunities to create deeper technological innovation within cross-border home buying?Chet Kittleson - co-founder and CEO of Far Homes, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how watching the personal struggles and triumphs of his real estate agent mother created a love of home ownership and a deep entrepreneurial drive from these deeply impactful childhood experiences. 

Why does coming to terms with the fact that you won't lose everything by becoming an entrepreneur help founders cross a mental threshold for diving into a new venture? How did the term 'burn it to the ground' directly apply to the entrepreneurial ventures of Brandon's family? Why is galvanizing a team and building a great culture central to entrepreneurial success? What was the importance of Geokey being hardware agnostic? Why is it important to use data to make better decisions and to then pivot based on these insights? What are the benefits of having a solid grasp of all functional groups and how they holistically impact an organization? Why is understanding the impact on NOI critical to companies looking to enter the multifamily space? What is the difference between a B2B company and a B2B2C company in the multifamily space? How many times on average does a person in a multifamily unit access their unit daily? What are the benefits of hardware implementations in multifamily? What does it mean to do deep integrations in the mobile access space for multifamily? Are there challenges to retrofitting an existing building for mobile access? What are the critical differences between multifamily and student housing industries that proptech companies need to fully understand?Brandon Peterson - co-founder and CEO of Geokey, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how being part of a serial entrepreneur family that has started more than 50 businesses across multiple industries, sees that success many times boils down to having a good idea that solves a problem and surrounding this idea with a team of great people who want be part of the journey.

Why is it important to include supply chain in the proptech tent? How do asset lifecycles contribute to the complexity of the real estate industry? In what ways did a class in entrepreneurial marketing at Harvard Business School cause a reset of notions around who can be an entrepreneur? How did a personal experience with a shipping oil spill in her backyard cause Kathleen to rethink how commerce and the environment need to interact? Why does the built environment provide such a large opportunity to impact sustainability? What are the different impact buckets that fall under the sustainability umbrella? Why was a product catalog of building materials and sustainability data forming a single source of truth desperately needed across multiple stakeholders in the built environment? Who are the constituents of Ecomedes' three-sided marketplace? How has the federal government taken the early lead in driving standardization and reporting of real estate sustainability? What circumstances led to there being over 100 different sources certifying and testing building materials? Why is building an API an important strategic initiative to broaden the distribution of impact awareness data? How will generative AI help a broader group of people engage with Econmedes' sustainability data?Kathleen Egan- co-founder and CEO of Ecomedes, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a missed opportunity to be a Disney Imagineer led to a career in consulting that enabled her to cultivate her broad interests as an intellectual dilettante. 

What macro factors motivated Eric's initial decision to enter the construction field right out of college? Why is it so difficult to drive change within the construction industry? Is technology adoption within the commercial construction sector finally starting to the hit the adoption hockey stick? What are the cost advantages of using technology in pre-construction to minimize in the field problem issues?  Where is the bulk of cost in construction projects? Why are back-office construction technology solutions easier to develop than in the field solutions? What are the two technology levers driving in the field construction innovation? Why are construction field crews so supportive of robotics innovation? What are the primary categories of construction robotics currently being used in the field today? Why is deconstruction better environmentally and economically as compared to demolition? What is meant by the term urban mining? Why are field tests so important for construction robotics? How do lumber mills participate in the partner ecosystem for reclaimed lumber? Why would a lumber rental model make sense for the construction industry? Can contaminated wood be reclaimed? Are there reclaiming opportunities for Urban Machine robots outside of the construction industry?Eric Law- co-founder and CEO of Urban Machine, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss why reclaimed lumber hitting price parity with virgin lumber is such an important milestone for the construction circular economy.

How are many investors today differentiating proptech and construction tech? Is entrepreneurship genetic or learned? Why are the siloed dynamics typically involved in construction processes? What are the realities and challenges that residential homebuilding laborers face on the job site today? Why do we need a supply side solution to the housing crisis? How is BotBuilt's robotic system optimizing for cost efficiency? Why is velocity important in building momentum for a new startup brand and how did participating in YC help this? What factored into BotBuilt's decision to  bridge the gap between what is happening today in home construction and then pursue what is possible in the future using robotic manufacturing? How does the type of lumber (driven by cost) factor into the panelized framing products being produced today? Why did BotBuilt choose to target custom home builders to begin with? How quickly can framers complete a home with BotBuilt's penalized system? Why is understanding construction culture so important for technology startups within this space? How has robotics become more normalized in construction over the last few years?Brent Wadas - co-founder and CEO of BotBuilt, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss why he joined the military later in life, the leadership skills he developed while serving in special operations, and how he has translated this experience into the lofting goals he is pursuing with his team at BotBuilt.

How are smart cities and proptech-related terms? Which other investing domains typically fall under smart cities? What are all the different real estate asset classes that airports manage as part of their operations? How do the sizes of typical multifamily properties differ in North America compared to Europe? Does vertical transportation differ in European vs North American multifamily properties? How has the rise in interest rates provided a shock to startup tech entrepreneurs and reminded them of the need to be profitable? Where has all the real estate data on properties historically been locked up? How can asset owners unpack the real estate information in PDF documents and digitize them at scale? What are the benefits for tech startups to have a service offering while perfecting their SaaS application? Does a service offering increase the stickiness of a SaaS solution? How can implementing a Chat-GPT solution remove the gatekeeper problem? Are the US real estate markets much more transparent then their European counterparts? Why have real estate investment managers only made the beta of the market and not created any alpha? How has office evolved into a lazy real estate asset class and will it need to change going forward given the impact of work from home on corporation's office footprints? Will new technologies like Apple Vision Pro and smart glasses disrupt different real estate asset classes? Robin Rivaton - CEO of Stonal joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how European Union and country policy mandates are impacting the real estate industry and driving change for the better.

What was it like to work at WeWork during its hypergrowth phase? Which businesses outside of the WeWork mothership were Aleks involved with? What did Aleks learn about the right cost of capital for different business models while at WeWork? Why are boutique hotels generally not profitable? What serendipitous introduction led to the Cuby Technologies co-founders meeting? How do the start-up costs for an industrialized construction company differ from that of most other proptech companies? Why has construction efficiency been decreasing over the last couple of decades? How are construction companies planning to overcome a continued reduction in skilled labor in order to meet the chronic housing shortage? What are some of the scaling challenges for volumetric construction and how does this differ from the scaling challenges of 3D printing? Why is the manufacturing world moving towards a distributed network of localized manufacturing vs giga-factories? What was Ryan Homes doing in the 1950's that is similar in nature to what Cuby Technologies has innovated on? How are Tesla and Cuby Technologies similar? What are some of the benefits of using steel in the residential homebuilding process? Why does Cuby Technologies fall under the deep tech umbrella?Aleks Gampel - co-founder & CEO of Cuby Technologies, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a childhood fascination with big city building architecture led to a career in real estate development and proptech.

How do investors in businesses fundamentally differ from operators of businesses? What is intellectually compelling about building and running a business that has not been done before? Are there unique challenges for high-growth proptech businesses? Why do proptechs need to fundamentally understand how humans value where they live? What are the ripple effects within society of having a massive lack of housing supply? Why are smaller entry homes not being built by production homebuilders? What are the reasons there are no scale builders for infill housing today? Why is prefab construction well suited for infill housing? What is driving the ADU revolution? Define missing middle housing and what policies are local jurisdictions passing to stimulate the creation of this needed housing stock? What are the different pathways to homeownership that adding ADUs creates? Does Villa create a competitive advantage by owning the permitting process? Why do investor/operator groups represent a big opportunity for Villa? What changes at the GSEs are stimulating demand for asset capital investment? Which principles of e-commerce has Villa applied to homebuilding?Sean Roberts - CEO of Villa, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how consumer psychology is underappreciated as a driver of consumer behavior and sentiment for how individual consumers look at real estate.

Are we in the early days of proptech or have we moved into a period of real estate technology maturity? Why has it taken so long for deeper technology solutions to be introduced into proptech? What are the parallels between automobile manufacturing advancements and building automation advancements? Why have mentorships become a cultural tenant at PassiveLogic? When designing solutions, why is it important to allow yourself to be a novice again and design the right solution for the problem at hand? How have buildings become the most complex robotics systems by orders of magnitude? What is a fully autonomous building platform? Why are real estate owners and operators now starting to invest in digital transformation strategies? How do building automation and autonomous buildings differ? How is the growing issue of lack of skilled labor impacting building operations & maintenance? Where and what type of AI is finding success in the built environment architectural world?Troy Harvey - Co-founder & CEO of PassiveLogic, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how an engineering job in high school at an electronics engineering consultancy led to an unorthodox college timeline but a clear focus on what problems he was passionate about working on.

Does it make sense to be thinking about proptech as the technology that real estate companies should be building but can't? How is the digital transformation of media companies relevant to real estate owners and operators? Have we already entered a transition point where we are moving from the flat two-dimensional web (screen) to the spatial web (location)? Is the real world becoming the canvas for the digital world, and if so, isn't real estate a huge player in this transformation and the lynchpin to ultimately make this scale? What is unique about outdoor advertising that makes it the one area of traditional advertising that is still growing? How are digital asset rights positively impacting property valuations? Are the tokenization and fractionalization of real-world assets impacting property valuations? Is there a marketplace today for the trading of fractional shares of digital asset rights?Dominic Collins - CEO & co-founder of Darabase, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how an early role at a prominent magazine company allowed him to identify opportunities to exploit the disruption of print media and set the stage for a career helping companies successfully navigate digital transformations within their industries.

Do investors or customers drive the naming of tech sectors? Will co-buying be rebranded as mommunes or boommates as shared housing continues to explode? Why leave the Bay Area to experience winters and explore self growth? Which traditional routes of homeownership are now showing up as alternative modern options? What does the phrase act with urgency and maintain patience mean and how does it apply to start-ups? How can homeownership be hacked? Why might people buy their second home first? What is Gen Z learning from watching Millenials struggle to achieve homeownership? How do you define the drunken walk of the entrepreneur? What are the different strategic ecosystem partnerships of the Nestment platform? What are the five points of friction in co-buying? Why have agents historically shied away from assisting or suggesting co-buying transactions? What makes agents important in the co-buying process? Why is participating in the home finding so important to first-time homebuyers?Niles Lichtenstein - co-founder and CEO of Nestment, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and shares how experiencing a parent passing at an early age influenced his perspective of homeownership and the financial options afforded to homeowners.

Is the correct definition of proptech the application of all things technology to real estate in order to achieve improved business results in the 21st century? What are the benefits of working on large built world infrastructure projects on multiple continents? Why did Arunabh switch from working for multinational firms to starting his own company? What are the supply chain challenges of hyper-local residential renovation? Why switch from real estate development into real estate investment? How is Western policy regarding real estate different from that of developing countries? Why do multifamily investors need a decision support system for their portfolios? Why is real estate analysis still so reliant on Excel? What are the challenges of data ingestion and integration in the real estate industry? How is AI being implemented within real estate data insights? Why is it important to move from pure data visualization to data insights for real estate data analysis? Arunabh Dastidar - Co-Founder and CEO at RealSage joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the decisions that led him to set aside a likely career in computer science to forge a new path to study civil engineering and physical real estate.

Why did the pace of social impact work cause a career pivot to technology and data analysis? What makes culture so important in company building? What were some of the technical hurdles that needed to be solved in order to stream audio from satellites? Did the lack of challenges while working at the DoD set the stage for a professional move into entrepreneurship? How did a lack of female technology mentors also contribute to Masha's desire to start her own company? What was the opportunity in commercial real estate finance that Masha observed that screamed out for a technology solution? What happened to the commercial lending startup that Masha co-founded during the COVID pandemic? How did participating in Toptal Network during a career break lead to the opportunity to work with AvenueOne? What is the attraction of optimizing the operations of a hard asset that drew Masha into working extensively with AvenueOne?Masha Sharma - Head of Product Engineering at AvenueOne, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how experiencing the immersive audio environment at XM Satellite Radio (SiriusXM) headquarters caused her to turn down a more lucrative job offer to work in an office and culture which she absolutely loved coming to every day.

What is the definition of industrialized construction and how does this fit within proptech? Which benefits to construction should be realized with the adoption and ongoing innovation of industrialized processes? How does American foreign policy on energy relate to housing? How did a student group at MIT help shift leadership from traditional energy to sustainable energy? What is building science and how does it relate to energy? Who famously said "building energy efficiency isn't the low hanging fruit, but the fruit that has fallen on the ground and rotted"? Why has building energy efficiency historically been so catastrophically bad that it is nothing short of a tragedy? Where are energy efficient buildings best built? How does the reindustrialization of the US economy intersect with the future of housing? What are the 2 major things causing headwinds against the industrialization of construction in the US? Why does housing and real estate need to be a product vs being a project? What is causing trade unions to start to shift their resistance towards industrialized construction? Why are the margins of general contractors in real estate so small relative to other industries? Why have industrialized construction companies over the last 100 years typically failed to survive for more than a few years? How is ADL Ventures working to partner large industry leading companies with smaller companies to drive innovation in and around cleantech? What is an industrialized construction epicenter and why will this be a game changer in creating success in industrialized construction?Nolan Browne - founding partner of ADL Ventures, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share a fascinating story about the Hershey family and their largely unknown success in industrialized construction. 

What challenges does the range of real estate asset classes present to technology innovators? Does an interdisciplinary approach to the challenges faced by the built world provide a beneficial approach? How did the concepts of ecosystem revival intersect with real estate during graduate studies at Stanford? Why has curiosity to improve the impact humans have had on the planet been a driving force for pursuing a career in the built environment? How did a diversity of educational backgrounds and expertise form the foundation of problem resolution at Kit Switch? What are the challenges of keeping people in mind when solving for built world issues? What is the Ivory Innovation Hack-A-House Competition and what did participating in this lead to? How did having a sponge mindset at Stanford help create opportunities? What does "Lighting up your soul" mean and how did it help set the business course for Kit Switch? How has bespoke construction led to many of the challenges around real estate adaptive reuse? What is the premise behind productized interiors for real estate? Why is room flexibility important for newly constructed real estate? Having been recently selected to participate in the Terner Center's Housing Lab, what does Kit Switch hope to achieve during this program? What opportunities exist for cities to reimagine their urban planning efforts and take advantage of more intentional urban mixed-use real estate?Candice Delamarre and Armelle Coutant - co-founders of Kit Switch, join Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the challenges and the benefits of starting a physical construction product company during the onset of the COVID pandemic. 

Where do proptech and construction tech intersect and where do they diverge? What was life like growing up in a family homebuilder business in Finland? What entrepreneurial ventures did Harri get involved with as a kid to enable him to buy Christmas presents for his family? Did Harri's initial foray into software coding lead to a lucrative early professional career? What pulled an independent entrepreneur back into the family homebuilding business? How do you build credibility with the workforce of a family business when you haven't spent your entire career there? Why are the processes within homebuilding so siloed and manual? What did Harri see in BIM that led him to believe this would be transformational for the homebuilding sector? Why did Harri acquire the code of a CAD solution company? What were the early results of Harri's homebuilding company eating the dog food of the software code they had purchased? Why did GBuilder introduce environmental impact reporting in its solution? What are the benefits of a digital twin for homebuyers when purchasing from a builder that has digitized the end-to-end building process? Harri Majala - CEO & founder of GBuilder, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a special bond with his uncle led him to chase a dream of earning an economics degree from the Helsinki School of Economics. 

Are WeWork and Airbnb proptech companies? How did attending SXSW influence and create a desire to participate in the startup technology sector? What large data problem was Wines.com facing and how was this similar to data problems the MLS is resolving? How do you get a product management job without even knowing what product management is? Why do great technology companies fail if they cannot create a monetization strategy? How do unsuccessful startup experiences create a fire to do the startup cycle again but the next time around to do it right? Why is it that so many startup technology companies repeat the common mistake of not doing enough market research? What skill sets do you develop when going deep on market research to understand and become an expert on global industries? How did market research on smart homes lead to a job opportunity at Keller Williams? Why was Keller Williams so interested in bringing in experts from outside of real estate? What are some of the common misconceptions about real estate agents and their use of technology? Why are there so many agent personas in residential real estate? What about today's environment makes it ideal for innovation within real estate? Why has there been a shift in younger generations going to talk to lenders before they talk to real estate agents? What opportunities exist to expand partnerships with credit unions that at their core focus on member benefits?  Adi Pavlović - CEO of Newzip, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share a story about his early days at Keller Williams investigating the technology investments happening within real estate and how his conversation with the leading market research firm at the time helped to shape what was and what was not included in the early definitions of proptech. 

Does proptech have a fixed definition or is it in a constant state of evolution? What makes Los Angeles a particularly challenging real estate market to have success in? How did a customer focused approach of relentlessly seeking opportunities for clients create success despite a limited track record in the luxury home market? Why is building relationships the cornerstone of success, whether as a real estate agent or as a tech entrepreneur? How do the sales cycles of luxury real estate differ from the typical house transaction and how does this mirror an enterprise sales process? What is the tech stack for a highly successful luxury real estate agent? Why don't brokerages focus more tech development and spending on lead generation? Has the proliferation of technology become overwhelming for the average real estate agent? What was missing in the CRM world for real estate agents that Rila helps solve? Which business scaling issue does Rila help solve for real estate agents?Ben Bacal - CEO & founder of Rila and Revel Real Estate, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how respectfully ignoring the advice of his successful real estate agent mother led him to conquer the LA luxury real estate market and sell some of the most expensive homes ever sold in the US. 

What is the real estate lifecycle and why is this different from other sectors? Why did Derek experience a rebellious phase during college that entailed exploring career options outside of the engineering track he was ushered down? How does one become a strategy consultant by accident? Why did getting to know a tennis shop customer lead to a career change into real estate development? What else did Derek do to go all in on real estate as a profession? Are the advantages to working in a small family office focused on real estate development? Where did Derek cut his teeth on proptech? What gives one the confidence they have enough knowledge to be a real estate development entrepreneur? How did Derek choose to differentiate himself from his real estate development peers? What are the realities of the underlying economics of the coliving companies that have sprung up in the US? Why do proptech companies have a history of never reaching profitability? Why are there so few technical engineers in real estate development? What are the implications of poor proptech investment decisions for real estate developers? What is the importance of real estate developers asking what could possibly go wrong when considering proptech investments? Why is the so much hubris in proptech? What makes it so difficult to solve the people problems of real estate with software?Derek Hsiang - founder of The Proptech Scout, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how the fight against a desk job led to a journey of monetizing his passions starting with a brick-and-mortar tennis store and its nascent e-commerce presence, which helped develop his chops as an entrepreneur and strengthen his grit.

Is the headline "Proptech Needs to Die" hyperbole or does it point to a distorted truth? What are the lifecycle stages of ownership and how does this differ by real estate asset class? How did an accounting close process lead to a career interest in data intelligence and analytics? What is the Netflix culture deck and why is Netflix's culture so revered in tech companies? Why was participating in On Deck so beneficial as an aspring entrepreneur? What are some of the challenges faced when transitioning from the corporate employee world into being an entrepreneur? As an entrepreneur how do you decide which opportunities to focus on and which opportunities to walk away from? How did the personal experience of building an ADU during Covid spark the idea for Builty? What were some of the technical challenges encountered when creating a unified set of building permit data across many real estate asset classes? How many municipal building departments are there in the US that permits must be collected from to create a nationwide platform? Why is building permit data not yet commoditized? How many synonyms has Builty identified for ADU in the data it has processed so far? What are the four different data objects that permit data deals with and how is this unique compared to other real estate data?Kat Gordiienko - co-founder & CEO of Builty joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and gives my favorite answer ever to the definition of proptech (spoiler alert: Kat's answer was "a set of technologies to modernize the real estate industry"). 

Why did Chase's parents convince him to attend UVA and how has it become one of the best decisions that he ever made? What program offered by the NFL allowed Chase to finish his master's degree? How did a degree in sports administration establish a foundation for Chase's future entrepreneurial endeavors? What is the difference between move-in day and turn at college campus housing? How was Chase able to create a nationwide company helping off campus student housing with turn from an opportunity where he was essentially doing it for free? Why is move-in day so chaotic and unorganized at colleges? How did this opportunity allow Chase to evolve his business into different service offerings that were less stressful and created recurring revenue streams? How has Chase been able to leverage his success and create additional companies under different brands as well as start doing investments in other companies to expand his portfolio beyond the student housing sector? What pain point/opportunity regarding move-in day for property managers did Chase identify and solve? How did Chase leverage his non-traditional tech background to build a successful proptech startup?Chase Minnifield - Founder & CEO of EZ OS joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a blue-collar upbringing in Lexington, KY where you had to earn everything and nothing was going to be given to you, fueled his success in athletics (leading to a stint in the NFL) and ultimately opened the door for his post athletic career as a multiple time entrepreneur.

What does it mean to streamline the real estate industry? How might AI further seep into the proptech sector beyond content creation and visual generation? Will AI be a part of every company going forward or is this a temporary tech fad? What was it like to work (at the time) in the largest square foot building in the US? Are there unique challenges when working for a company that has both employees and unions? How many roles did Ali apply to at Uber before finally getting her foot in the door? What part of tech startup culture was particularly attractive to someone early in their professional career? Why is speed of execution so important for successful startups? What does it mean to build an end-to-end real estate investment platform? Why is it important for Getaway to be a co-investor on properties with their customers? Do young first-time real investors prefer complete ownership of a property vs a fractional share? Why does vertical integration make sense for the end-to-end real estate investor? What are the advantages of a referral based GTM strategy where you have a complex partnership ecosystem?Ali Nichols - co-founder & CEO of Getaway joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and share how a childhood obsession of dragging her parents out to openhouse showings every Sunday planted the seed for a future career in helping others invest in real estate.

Can entrepreneurship be taught in school or does it need to be learned on the job? What sorts of opportunities can you create for yourself by taking a chance and directly immersing yourself in an emerging space? How critical to scaling a business is knowing how to sell? Why is listening an underappreciated aspect of being successful in sales? Can introverted people actually make good sales people? How are entrepreneurs and sales people alike? What is attractive about real estate investing which you don't get from having your head in a computer all day? Explain a "garden city" and why is this structure so unique? What does the tech stack look like for the average real estate agent? Why do real estate agents consider most CRMs to be clunky? What unique factors create an opportunity to provide financial health tools to real estate agents? Why are mobile first solutions for real estate agents seeing better adoption than legacy desktop solutions? What entrepreneurial attributes do successful real estate agents have?How do you productize relevant financial information vs regurgitting existing financial content?Evan Knowles - Co-founder & CEO of Symba joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his first entrepreneurial software endeavor despite positive outcomes at a small level had inherent structural issues which would prevent it from being able to be scaled to any material level ultimately taught him that sacrifice was necessary to have success. 

How did an internship for Senator Barbara Boxer lead to attending George Washington University? What transformative event happened while attending George Washington University resulting in a move back to the West Coast to attend the University of Southern California? How did a family event as a teenager in Ukraine spark an initial interest in real estate? Why leave a promising career in real estate investment banking to move to Hong Kong? How did an investment banking background prove to be a great building block for commodity supply chain underwriting? What factor about supply chain underwriting led to travel to more than 30 countries around the world? Why is Manganese an important commodity component of construction? How wasteful is the process of construction? What percent of carbon emissions globally is construction currently responsible for? What does it mean to be a net zero global community by 2050? How many years of landfill capacity does the US have remaining? What new technology is Palari developing to further accelerate offsite construction? How is Palari creating microgrids for one of its new home communities? Basil Starr - founder & CEO of Palari Group, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how an interest in skydiving led to a board position at the Jump For The Planet foundation which raises awareness and funds for climate refugees.

How did the desire to be a writer lead to an opportunity to be part of the emerging web 2.0 scene within social media marketing? Why were technical skills in account/brand management roles so valued by digital marketing agencies? What are some attributes of successful startup employees that can also make them not the best college or university students? How have the scope of problems that startups are solving for today become much more complicated than those being built in the early days of web 2.0? Have the barriers to entry for becoming a software startup employee increased or decreased since the early 2000s? What are the benefits of shipping embarrassing products that lack features and has lots of bugs? Why is it so important to have uncomfortable conversations with customers who aren't using your product? How many billions of dollars in deposits as Rhino saved renters so far? Why are thorny technical challenges so motivating for technical founders? Bryan Woods - co-founder of Rhino, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss his path to web development which came about while growing up as a 90s kid during the glory days of Geocities where he learnt HTML and CSS in order to build websites for multiple groups including his high school track team and a highly popular 2Pac fan website.

How did life on a farm stoke the entrepreneurial spirit of a young kid? What sorts of problem-solving skills were instilled as part of daily life on a farm? How did an advanced engineering degree further complement the entrepreneurial skill set developed growing up on a farm? How did a love for fixing cars and pickups create enough side hustle income to pay for college? What finally compelled a services based entrepreneur to transition to a technology product entrepreneur? How did a teacher dip his toe into real estate investing and property management? What experience with tenants and emotional support animals spark the idea that there must be a better way to manage pet policies for landlords? Is there a reasonability test for determining the validity of an emotional support animal? How big of a business is the online certification of emotional support animals? Today, how many companies are selling online emotional support animal certifications? What restrictive policy did airlines implement to fight the fraud around emotional support animals? How did HUD approach this issue differently than the airline industry? Why have property owners and operators historically been resigned to accepting all emotional support animals? How likely are landlords to collect on damages above and beyond the security deposit? What education can be provided by landlords to tenants on the legitimacy of their emotional support animal?Logan Miller - co-founder of Landlord Tech, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a career as an agriculture education teacher (which included a diverse curriculum of mechanics, welding, plant science, and construction to name a few) helped create a useful skill of being able to get young people excited about a topic they might off the cuff dismiss as dull and how this has served him well in his professional career while being simple in comparison.

How would one describe the current state of skilled trades in the built world? What are the transitions that the construction industry is facing? How many open jobs in the skilled trades are there at the moment in the US? Why are skilled tradespeople in the workforce aging out faster than new workers entering the profession? How can an increase in diversity within this industry help alleviate some of the resourcing needs? How can we create excitement around the skilled trade profession so more people explore careers in these fields? Is there a pay gap between men and women in skilled trades (spoiler alert, no there is not)? Why are high schools no longer offering courses which help cultivate interest in the skilled trades? Why has it been historically difficult to find/hire women in skilled trades? What is the telehealth but for DIY service that Matriach Build offers? What does it mean for Matriach Build to be a trusted source of truth for home renovation and other real estate related projects? How has Matriach Build become a platform for like-minded skilled tradeswomen to connect and build a community? What are some of the marketplace tools and features that the skilled trades need that aren't being met today? Lacey Soslow and Gabriella Ainslie - co-founders of Matriarchy Build, join Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a 20+ year friendship starting in college was strengthened by working together early in their careers and ultimately gave them the confidence to found a company together that empowers women in the building trades.