Proptech Espresso

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...

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 ...

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? Wh...

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 homebuil...

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 ...

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 a...

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 Payr...

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 drive...

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 es...

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 influe...

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...

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? W...

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, ...

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 mo...

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 ...

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 cam...

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 ...

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 wi...

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? W...