What happens when you transition from corporate to startup? Maher and Stash, seasoned professionals in the tech industry, willingly plunge into the depths of their fascinating journey at nedl.us. From starting their SAS startup to turning their side hustles into a full-time gig, their experiences are an amalgamation of invaluable lessons that you won't want to miss.
Ever wondered about the intriguing world of PropTech and Real Estate? Well, our guests reveal the potential of Cincinnati as a PropTech capital and the rising influx of syndicators in the commercial real estate industry. Get the lowdown on the value of PropTech, what it takes to navigate complex property transactions, and the impact of information and current data on commercial real estate. Plus, they'll share insights on how their startup uses data to predict property transactions - an invaluable edge for investment opportunities.
But there's more. We're talking about the challenges of fundraising, the ins and outs of product development, and the struggles of tech talent acquisition. As we wrap up, Maher and Stash will share exciting insights into the world of syndication, ROI in Real Estate, and how partnering with banks can change the dynamics of brokers. If you are inspired by their journey, we invite you to join the Side Hustle City community on Facebook, a community of like-minded individuals, where the conversation continues. Bring your coffee, pull up a chair, and let's chat. See you next week!
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. That's where our trusted partner, Reversed Out Creative comes in.
With a team of experienced professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, they are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com. We also recently launched our YouTube Channel, Marketing Pro Trends, which summarizes all of our blog posts.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, mycohost.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:31):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Kyle has a tummy ache so he isat home right now, but we have
two people actually in thepodcast room today Maher Stash,
here we are.
Welcome, guys.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you, yeah, yeah , so we had a.
Actually he'll do that again.
I had your mics down Becausenormally okay, say something,
hello.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
There you go, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Good, now we're good.
All right, I'm going to startit over.
All right, welcome backeverybody to the Side Hustle
City podcast.
Kyle Stevy has a tummy ache sohe is not in the studio today,
but we have Maher, you're notdead.
You're not dead, no, he's justhe's recovering.
So we have Maher and Stash heretoday.
What's up, guys?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Hey, how are you?
Thanks for having us, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Thanks for having us.
Appreciate it.
So I love having startup peopleon the show, especially SAS
startup people.
This is really exciting.
We've had some conversationsaround.
You know what you guys aredoing.
We got connected through one ofthe startup ecosystem groups
here in Cincinnati and ifnobody's familiar with
Cincinnati, if you've got astartup, it's a very vibrant
(01:39):
ecosystem here and you guys bothhave really awesome career
backgrounds that have led youhere and you're also not like 21
year old startup guys.
Right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You guys are in the age range of like the ideal, I
would say most successfulstartup people.
They always say I think peoplethat start early, you have a lot
of failures and then a lot ofVCs really like to get into.
Those founders who have workedin the real world, understand
how corporate works, have beenaround.
And I mean you guys.
(02:12):
Obviously you're doing a SASstartup, so how does this
integrate with what everybodyelse is doing?
You get that right.
You're not trying to figurethat out.
You're not spending time tryingto figure that out.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Exactly, we have plenty of experience 20 plus
years in the industry verydifferent industries between
myself and Stash.
Stash is kind of back on thiscommercial real estate, mine is
finance and software, as well asdata.
It's kind of what the focus is.
Stash, you want to give alittle background about yourself
.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, so my name is Stash.
I'm a commercial real estatebroker.
I specialize in multifamilyinvestment properties.
I got my license in February of08, which was a great time to
start.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
We started a SAS real estate company in 08.
So yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I was like hey guys, I'm here and the party had just
ended and I was like gosh, sodefinitely struggled in the
first couple of years and gotsome traction finally and have
been going at it successfullynow for a number of years, been
with Capstone since 2016.
And I've got a team, two othersenior brokers that we've been
(03:25):
together almost 10 years andwe're just plugging away doing
deals.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
We have a lot of real estate people on the show just
because I guess my background.
We attract real estate peoplefor some reason.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
But we assume that that's the background is
commercial estate data.
That's one of them, yeah, so Ididn't really think through what
you guys were doing until wehad the conversation talked
through it and that made itclicked, but before that it must
have been a lot of startup withcommercial estate.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh, we had no idea what we were doing.
We were just like, hey, how dowe get rid of paper, how do we
get rid of paper in the faxmachine?
How do we do that?
Right, that was the main thing.
You stumble into things asyou're always pivoting, you're
always changing and, guys, ifyou're listening, this is what
happens.
You think you've got thegreatest idea in the world, but
your idea probably isn'tcommercial like right now.
There's probably somethingwrong with it, there's something
(04:19):
about it that doesn't work withtheir ERP system or whatever
that they have, or something'snot right.
But, like I said, this is whypeople who are more seasoned,
people who've been in businessesand I mean you guys have been,
I mean in corporate right.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
This isn't like I mean you've been in, you've been
in the stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Like you've been deep in it, you know the way it is
and, honestly, that's probablywhy you guys are doing this now.
But I mean I, if I was incorporate I mean both of you
guys probably love what you do,but I mean when I was in
corporate I couldn't stand it.
There's a lot of people thatlisten to this.
They're like I just I'm notbuilt for that.
I'm built to be my own boss andto explore and do something
different.
I don't feel right in thatstructure.
(05:02):
There's something that's not.
It's not providing me.
Do you either?
You guys have that?
Did you get that?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I mean, our day job, so to speak, are probably pretty
different, because I'm in salesand it's like go bring it in,
and so I've a lot of free reign.
But and you like to me.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
it feels like you're like your own boss, yeah for
sure you don't have like thehierarchy.
That goes through Like you'rejust bringing deals.
Yeah, I mean I have some peopleabove me, so to speak.
Right right, right, I haveimportant numbers and manage the
process, but for the most part,you're on your own.
For me, it's very different inthe corporate structure.
Working through deadlines andtimelines, you're getting
deliverables and putting storiestogether, but that's kind of
(05:43):
what I do from day to day, allaround data and the business
performance for the most part.
But I mean, the journey started.
I would say I've known Stashfor almost 12 years, right, yeah
?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Oh, wow, that's another good thing.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Yeah, I mean I've been working with him.
Myself and Stash's wife workedtogether at a financial
institution here in town and weconnected.
We actually had a little groupof we called ourselves the UN.
We were like that first.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
That's what my friend groups call Winam.
And then I thought there wasonly one in Cincinnati.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
So we used to like hang out together and get from
time to time catch up.
And then at some point I cameto Stash and I said, hey, I have
a group of you know businessleaders here interested in
personal commercial estate, andhe's like, hey, hold on, hold up
a second, here you have, I havean idea.
How about we use yourbackground, my background, bring
together a solution to themarket?
And we embarked on the journeyabout a year and a half, two
(06:38):
years ago and we've been kind ofbootstrapping the whole
solution, building the actualsoftware and bringing the data
and working through building AI,machine learning models to
basically present the leads andmatch the buyers and sellers of
the commercial estate together.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And this is what, when we were talking, this was
perfect, right, like the two ofyou guys together.
I mean, this was like you getthe AI portion of it, you get
the real estate portion andtogether, and plus the fact you
guys have known each other for12 years, and you've, you've
done this, you've you'reseasoned professionals, and then
you decide, hey, why don't westart, as it's needle, right?
(07:12):
Yeah, needle any DL guys athome.
If you you don't see the logoright now, I'm looking right at
it.
But you guys said, look, yougot the commercial real estate,
you've got the analyticalexperience and you understand
how to parse data, and yeah.
So you put those two thingstogether and boom, the company's
born Exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
And we had a boom, Boom.
That's it Exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You stacked your fingers and there was a, there
was an entire company.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Right, we did.
We did initially, we did a backof an napkin mask to say does
this make sense?
Is there a market for it?
Does it?
Is there like, is there enoughrevenue to go after?
And, based on some of theoriginal assumptions we had,
we're like okay, there'ssufficient revenue here to get
you know, really, x multiplier,let's go.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, you got to make sure the money's there, right,
right.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Well, yeah, so I mean to expand on the story a little
bit.
You know I've been pluggingaway and you know, when you
first start in real estatewhether it's residential or
commercial and any product type,really, it's like go figure it
out.
And that was that wasfrustrating, oh yeah.
But you know, I saw that we hadall this data and I'm like
(08:19):
there's got to be a way that wecould use data and analytics to
predict transactions before theyoccur.
So that was my hypothesis.
And then when Maher came to meand said, hey, you know, my
partners and I want to buy realestate and we have background in
software, I was like hold on,what about this?
(08:39):
And I pitched the idea and youknow he went back to his
partners and then we had lunchtogether and I about they're
like yeah, this thing has legs.
And I was overjoyed.
I like fell out of my chairabout because it was.
You know, I'd been thinkingabout it for a while.
I just I don't have the skillset, like I know it's there and
(09:04):
you know, we have a greatpartnership in that way, because
he knows how to put it togetherand I'm the subject matter
expert and the rest of ourdevelopment team like it's just
been tremendous.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Yeah, definitely awesome team we have together
for about a couple of years nowiterating, working through.
Yeah, we're excited that we'rein pilot right now.
So, like, actually go and provevalue and that's what we're
focused on between now and theyear is we are onboarding.
Where are we for three or fourdifferent companies that
actually piloting?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, oh, wow, yeah, We've got.
We've got one actively on theplatform, one active one that we
just signed up, and then we'vegot a couple more agreements out
just waiting for signature.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Nice.
Well, myra, I mean like for you, you've let you.
You look at anything and you'relike, oh, I can solve that,
like I can, I can figure thatout.
But for guys like us I meanwe're realistic is I'm not?
I own a digital agency, but I'mnot a software guy Like I'm not
going to write the actualsoftware.
So I come up with ideas all day.
Right, I could be a subjectmatter expert in several things.
You're a subject matter expertin this.
So you look at it and you'relike I have no idea about
(10:09):
software.
I have this great idea.
This would be awesome.
I know a ton of people thatwould buy it.
But it just seems like such amountain to climb when you don't
know someone like Maher.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
It was completely insurmountable, like I'd expect
some cash, like hey, is there,is there something to this?
And I got positive feedback,but nobody.
And until we came together,nobody.
Yeah, I think you had a coupleof engagement.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
It was a couple of consulting companies where they
you've paid some money like, hey, I have this data, what can I
do with it?
How can you help me predict thetransactions potentially?
And you didn't get muchtraction.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
No, they're like, yeah, we could build it for you.
It's going to cost a lot ofmoney.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And that's what everybody says, like it's going
to cost a bunch of money to dothis.
And that's where we the nichefor us, like, yeah, we can come
in and build this product,because if anybody else want to
replicate what we're building,it's going to cost them, you
know, ten, twenty million dollarplus.
We've been at it for a coupleof years now.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And this is you understand, because you work
with budgets at these bigcompanies and you know what they
charge.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Yeah, you need at least a couple of different
squads with, you know, eight,ten people per squad to build
what we've built as far, andthat's literally about two
million dollars per squad peryear.
So so you think about having atleast a couple of squads for a
couple of years.
You're you're upward of eightplus million dollars.
Just an expense for somebody todo this.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Any other company to do this it's wild yeah it's wild
, and this is why the sounds tome like a good call.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Sounds to me like a bill's coming later.
He's got his numbers.
Yeah, his guys numberscarefully added up it's going to
cost twenty million dollars onthe open market.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Anybody, anybody who comes to me and say, yeah, we
can do that.
I'm like, by all means, go forit.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
So there's a barrier to entry, though I mean this is
a good, this is a competitiveadvantage for you guys.
Yeah, because in order to buildsomething like this, you have
to understand like you've gotmodels that you've been working
with for years, probably thatyou understand.
When guys like us see it, we'relike OK, I don't even know
where to start.
I don't know how to map thisthing out.
I got friends who do do thisall day too, and it's like they
(12:12):
would just sit there and scratchit out on a napkin, like you
said, just scratch out and say,ok, well, this is what we need
first.
This is what.
We're going to have these pods.
We're going to have groups ofdevelopers in these pods.
We need this many people.
It's going to cost this much.
We're like what?
Like?
I just know people buy it.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
I can sell it, I can sell hell out of it.
Yeah, and that's Stash.
Stash is kind of the chiefoperating officer of sales
revenue, the whole thing.
He got that under control.
Definitely that's his kind ofsubject matter expertise and
heavily reliant on him and thesubject matter expertise to help
us to get to the next phase,post development.
So we're excited that we are atthis point.
We have an MVP, we're pilotingthe MVP and now starting Q1 of
(12:51):
next year is like let's go, man,let's sell it, let's see what
Stash can do.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, Well, and it's a soft sell too, because it's
like do you want to know whatproperties are going to trade
before your competitors do?
Of course you do, so you can goout and get in front of them
and we're targeting our targetmarkets.
Initially, our commercial realestate brokers who specialize in
multifamily, and it's probablynot the guy that's at the top
because he's like I don't needthis, but it's the guys that are
(13:17):
striving and trying to get takethat market share Right.
And then you know the thoughtprocess is well, loan brokers
could use this as well, becausethey want to get in front of
transactions.
And then, you know, recently itseems like everybody in their
brother has gotten intosyndication.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Oh my God, everybody.
I was just at one in Floridaand it was just like they all
have the same thesis 100%.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
And we hear it all day from like we've had
instances where we've had a lotof people who have had a lot of
business.
We've had instances where we'llget the same letter of intent
from three completely differentbuyer groups and it's the same
pitch coming in.
Oh, my partner and I own 40,000units, and it's the same format
, everything's the same, andit's like hey, do you know
so-and-so?
No, I don't know who that is,and it's just, it's a.
(14:03):
So you know the acquisitionpeople, both professional, and
you know we'll call them notquite there yet professionals
yeah, oh yeah.
And you know the asset managersare going to want to know why
am I being blown up about thisdeal?
So you know, right there wehave four groups, maybe five,
you could say, of targetcustomers that were, that were
(14:26):
aiming this at.
And then you know we have othervendors in the commercial real
estate industry that we thinkcould benefit from this as well.
And so it's then like okay,once we master this vertical,
what's to stop us from lookingat hotels and industrial and
(14:47):
retail and office andself-storage and senior, you
know, assisted living?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
God, I got a conference coming up that you
guys got to go to.
That my buddy, Ash Patel he'sbig and does you know, Ash?
So he's got his, his.
I did his logo and everything,so I'm kind of proud of it.
But he's got a big thing comingup here.
He's going to be on the podcastnext month, Nice, but October
is when his, his deal is.
And gosh Kyle, how many, howmany syndicators we had on this
(15:15):
show and how many, how manysyndicators do we know?
Like you, got syndicators inyour family.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I am a syndicator, bitch hey, and you are a
syndicator.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
No he wrote a book on tokenization of real, of that
like tokenization real estate.
It's called digital melting.
You finished that what?
Six months ago, or something,kyle.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's just burning up the best seller
charts right now.
I would say that we had Joe.
Well, we have Joe Fairlis onthere.
Not he's Joe's previous client,the biggest name that I've ever
since.
Yeah, that's good, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
So he Joe's huge and I've been on Joe's podcast, oh
nice.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I can't remember whatthat's called, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Best podcast ever podcast yeah.
Yeah, I was on there twice withAsh Nice.
I was a co-host when I did it.
It was about the book and aboutthe building.
We'd go and write down thestreet from where you guys are
at right now.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, nate was on, we had a wholesaler on, we had a
couple wholesalers on yeah,nate's cool.
Yeah, we had a lot of people on.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Alex was on.
Most of the guys have been fromlike Cincinnati area that were
real estate.
We haven't had anybody, I think, nationally with real estate.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I don't remember yeah .
I don't remember anybody, butfor some reason there's a lot of
real estate professional likereal estate's a big deal here.
I mean, like we had, and Ialways try to say, like you know
, you've got those four pillarsthat the centrifuge group is
trying to kind of go after.
It's like FinTech, medtech,logistics technology, and then
(16:47):
there was another one.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
PropTech, yeah, proptech.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So PropTech is like that's what I'm like, let's go
after it.
That and logistics.
I think we have a strategiclocation in America, so why not
go after logistics train, youknow, river rail, all that stuff
?
So PropTech, in my opinion, iswe've got our company that we
already sold, now Zillow's herebecause of it.
You've got there's a coupleother ones out there that I've
(17:13):
actually helped work on.
My cousin's a CFO for one ofthese companies.
So there's several out there inCincinnati that are just
transform real estate Forwhatever reason.
These companies just pop uphere.
I think we could, with you guysas well, we can actually set
Cincinnati in this region up asthe PropTech capital.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
We'd love to.
We could argue that now,honestly, yeah, we've been
talking about like, hey, can wepull together a symposium for
PropTech in Cincinnati?
And then we do us to bring themtogether, because there's no
one avenue to bring these peopletogether and talk about.
And how do we create synergiesacross what we're doing?
Because it seems likeeverybody's very complimentary
from an offering perspective.
True, yeah, there's no directcompetition for what everybody's
(17:56):
doing, so it makes a lot ofsense for us to bring people
together and start talking.
How can we build each other upas a community and help each
other?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
when there's nobody for you, because it's going to
cost 20 million bucks to buildyour software.
And see, that's the beauty ofhaving you guys on because
you're early.
But a lot of early stagecompanies don't want to talk
about what they're doing becausethey're afraid there's going to
be some competition.
But I try to tell people.
I'm like look, people don'teven do their own ideas.
They're not stealing your idea,right?
They don't have the blend ofskills that you guys have and
(18:26):
the ability to build somethingand actually have the resources
to bootstrap it without havingto go friends and family and all
this other stuff.
And if you do, you know otherpeople who are working and they
can spare, you know, 20, 50grand, something like that.
Maybe I don't know, but butthere's not a lot of people out
there at your stage that arewilling to talk about their
product.
(18:46):
So let's explain to people andI think people kind of get the
idea of like where we're goingwith it.
But explain to people and Ilove this and, kyle, after I
talked to them, I'm pretty sureI told you about this because I
was so impressed by it.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You were so jazzed.
I love it I was jazzed.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I'm very jazzed because this predicts that a
property, a commercial property,is going to sell before it even
goes on the market, based onthe owner's activities.
And you guys are somehow ablewith your magic, Right.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
We're using a lot of different data elements to
basically predict which propertyshould transact, based on a lot
of different attributes, aswell as from the property itself
, from the ownership group, aswell as from the macro economic,
what's happening in the regionwhere the property is located.
So we're trying to really takea point of view of what are the
elements and, looking athistorical transactions, what
(19:39):
made this property transact, andreplicate that for the future,
pretty much to say.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then give people emails and phone numbers that
you can contact them.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Yeah, so not just that as well as loan details for
every property, what exists onit from terms of the rates, the
holding period, the loan detailsyou have, once you look at our
platform, you're able to reallylook at all the information you
would need in one click to thatone property and contact the
person who's actually on it.
Now the next phase is how wecan help you with some content
(20:07):
management and pushing out email, make it a little bit softer of
a call.
So there's a lot of roadmap andthings we're thinking about
what to do next, but it'sexciting to where we're going.
It's exciting about theoffering we have.
Very few people are actually inthat space right now, as Stash
would always tell me like, hey,I have all the data I need and
more.
I don't know what to do with it100%.
(20:29):
Now we're just bringing ittogether in a way that's
coherent that provides brokerslike Stash or a lot of different
use cases, like if you wannabring somebody up to speed
fairly quickly on the industryand who to call, why to call
like this is fairly quick foryou to bring them up to speed
and you don't need to spendhours and hours like Stash's you
know history like I don't knowhow many hours or years you
(20:50):
spend to get to where you are.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Traditionally, it takes two years of grinding to
get traction, and that'sassuming you do everything right
.
I mean it took me at least that.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
If you wanna get into commercial 100%.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
So there's that natural bariatric there too.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And define commercial , define what you guys are,
which part of commercial.
You said you're gonna expandout of these other ones, but
where are we starting right now?
Is this multi-family?
Is this?
Speaker 3 (21:16):
retail.
Yes, like start with what youknow.
So you know we've beentargeting 50 units and up.
So our platform and even mypractice as a broker, you know
it's 50 units and up existingassets, and really that's kind
of where we started because youknow, if you get, you know
(21:39):
technically commercial is.
You know commercialmulti-family properties are five
units and up.
But there's a big differenceeven between a 50 unit and 150
unit, because 150 unit you canstart to really the threshold is
maybe 100 units and that's whenyou can afford one full.
(21:59):
The rules of thumb are onefull-time maintenance, one
full-time manager per 100 units.
Typically that sounds aboutright, yeah, and then you can
afford a management company andreally as the owner, that's when
it becomes more of a cash flowplay, assuming that's just what
you want.
Now there are ways that you canforce value and appreciation by
(22:22):
doing value add and what that.
That means a variety of things.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Paint the place, put new shutters on like get rid of
it, puts some new plants in.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
It's a light value add, or you could completely gut
the units and you know newkitchens, baths, plumbing,
electric roofs, windows,everything.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
So yeah, you got those typical like Cincinnati 12
unit buildings where it's gotthat little galley kitchen type
of thing and some people justtake that wall out.
They'll take the wall out, openit up, which I think is a great
thing.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah, Because it opens the unit up, you don't
feel as claustrophobic.
Or even if you don't completelyremove the wall, you just maybe
do a half wall or a window.
You know a pass throughsomething like that.
I've seen all sorts ofdifferent things done in all
different types of property, youknow so.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, and where do you guys see real estate kind of
going?
So there's a lot of people onhere that are, you know, real
estate's a big deal right now.
I mean, you've got theseraising these interest rates
going up, yeah, and you've got alot more people renting because
there's less inventory, becausenobody wants to get rid of
their 4% interest rate.
They're just going to stay intheir house, right, instead of
moving out.
They're going to upgrade theirown place and they're just going
(23:30):
to live there.
They're, you know, nothing'sgoing on the markets.
You've got an entire generationand this is what I said the
other day to people.
I said you're going to have anentire generation that is
missing out on maybe two to fiveyears of wealth creation,
because a lot of us, you buildwealth, most Americans, I would
say a lot of their wealth is intheir home.
So you're going to have lessand less people being able.
(23:53):
That wealth is going to go intothe hands of, you know,
landlords, really, I mean, andthat's where it's going to go.
How long do you see this?
I say two to five years.
I don't know what it actuallyis.
What do you guys see happening?
And I think the fact thatyou're in this area, with this
software at this time.
Timing's everything.
(24:13):
Timing was everything for uswhen we built it.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Timing is great for what you're doing right now,
right right, at least from myperspective.
I'm not the expert fromcommercial estate and market
standpoint, but what I've seenis going to be a lot of pain for
some of the existing officebuilding space in terms of a lot
of people are overextended,they might have to take some
(24:37):
losses and those are going to beconverted into multifamily At
least what I'm seeing.
I don't know.
Stas, you're the other expertone.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
You know, as far as multifamily, I think that rates
are.
I hope they don't go up anymorejust for the sake of you know,
just creates so much uncertaintyand people freeze when there's
uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
People need to stop spending money.
Like what?
Eventually they're going to runout of credit card.
They're going to max out theircredit cards.
They're going to stop spendingmoney is what's going to happen,
but they just keep spending.
So these rates I mean, the Fedjust keeps looking at these
numbers and they're like this isup, that people are still
spending.
The jobs are great.
Raise the interest rates.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah.
So you know, what we think isthat rates are so a lot of
people made a lot of money overthe past, say, call it 10 years
on floating rate debt,adjustable rate mortgages,
essentially.
And you know those loans arebenchmarked to a target interest
(25:40):
rate and so when the Fed raisesrates, their rate goes up.
So if you bought something at,say, a three and a half cap or a
four cap and your loan was, youknow, 2.3 or 3% and you were
going to implement a value add,well, right now what we're
seeing is that those you knowcall it a three and a half
(26:00):
percent rate when you originallybought the deal.
It's now at 9% and we've seenit again and again.
Like you know, I've had sellersquote me.
You know I'm a seller at 65million and we're stretching to
get to 50.
Wow, and you know.
So we plug their loan detailsin to our model and you know, on
(26:25):
a call it a $50 million asset,they're cash flowing 70 grand a
year.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Jeez.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
It's like you're close.
So what's going to happen isthat these rates are going to
stay high and as these loans.
So, to get into the weeds maybea little bit, you can buy a
rate cap and that will freezeyour rate, but then those only
last for two to three years.
So as those rate caps burn off,they're going to have to make a
(26:53):
decision, whether it's refi orsell, and oftentimes the refi
decision is not, as in thiscurrent environment.
What we think is that it's notgoing to be.
You're going to take that offthe table.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
A good option?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah, you're just going to take that off the table
.
So it's like well, we got tosell and, you know, maybe cut
our losses or just kind of breakeven essentially on what we
have it into.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Well, they're going to be their cap rates going to
be negative pretty soon.
It seems like.
I mean it's going to be bad.
I mean they're going to belosing money every month if
their rates adjust to 9% andthey're used to a two or three
and they only got a three orfour cap.
Yeah, they're going to be introuble, I mean especially think
of California and New York andplaces like that where Texas is
seeing it.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
They're getting hit pretty hard, and that combined
with the raising insurance ratesas well.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
So I mean that's a different story, that's true.
And then you got multifamers inFlorida and you see what's
going on down there, wherethey're getting these special
assessments now because they allhave to get reinspected, they
have to get updated,everything's got to be to code.
And you've got these condoowners down there that are like
I can't afford it.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Yeah, I'm getting you know hit by 15, 20 grand bills.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, and insurance.
They're even getting theirinsurance dropped in some of
these places, which is wild,yeah.
So there's a lot going on toyour point and to be able to
find a good deal you need anedge is really what you have to
have.
So talk about what is in thesoftware.
You mentioned it just reallyquickly.
What's in the software that canhelp these people make a
(28:24):
decision on some of theseproperties?
So I get to see the propertyright.
Oh, this owner may be willingto sell here shortly.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Yeah, you're able to log into the platform.
First you'll see some overallmarket insights of what's
happening from a transactionvolume across the United States.
You're able to see what's hotmarket, who's transacting, what
are the details for those dealsand there's some just generic
information about the marketoverall for commercial with the
state.
Then you go into the platformdeeper, next click and you'll be
(28:52):
able to see every property thatwe've positioned for you for
any specific market.
You'll be able to see like allthe properties that we've said
there we can sort of hotly.
Basically they hit the top deskcell in our models that says
this deal should transact basedon all the data and attributes
we have for this property.
So then we position thatproperty with all the
information for the propertyloan details, contact
(29:14):
information, anything you needright there at your fingertips
for stash or any other broker,to just pick up the phone and
call.
You don't have to go to any ofthe other competitors I won't
name anybody on the show.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I mean it's doing your job for you?
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Yeah, pretty much, because other competitors, what
they have today, it's just likea platform where you're able to
I want to search a property bythose attributes.
It'll kick up a list for you,but it doesn't really prioritize
the list for you doesn't lookat the attributes of the
property deal itself and tellyou like how, why you should
contact this specific person,for what reason.
So that's what we're attemptingto do is like, hey, how can we
take all the status availablefor the property the market, the
(29:49):
ownership group, etc.
And say now it's free time foryou to transact this property
before they come to stash, knockon his door and say, hey, I
want to sell this property, butrather position that, that
property to stash?
To say it, I think you guys areready, and here's the reason
why have you thought about this?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
So if I'm wanting to purchase one of these properties
, I'm a syndicator.
Whatever I'm looking forproperty, Do I?
Is there a way for me to enterin, like my thesis, what I'm
looking for, what I'm willing tospend per door, or how do you
guys?
How do you guys do that?
So, or do you have to tell me?
Speaker 4 (30:24):
if you need to like secret sauce, but I'm hoping
right now, when I get a part ofthe roadmap of the product
itself.
I'd love to get to a pointwhere, as a syndicator, as
somebody who's selling it tolike, swipe right, swipe left
and you get a match.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Oh, like a, like a Tinder for syndicators and
commercial owners.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
So that's hopefully that, as we're iterating on the
product and application, we getto a point where we're changing
the whole game for commercialestate itself.
Now those are our baby steps ofhow we're going to get there.
But potentially, if you thinkabout it, this is exactly what
you're saying is like how can Imake it easy for people to
transact and make sure, likeyou're, matching between the
seller and the buyer fairly easy, but today it's it's.
(31:04):
You know, if you're anownership group, you can log on
the platform.
You can say, based on myprofile, what would be
interesting to me, based on whatI've purchased historically?
We have that.
So, as an ownership group, youcan pull up your profile and say
, hey, I own all theseproperties and here's the
recommendation for you of whatyou should buy next, based on
what you bought on historicallyas an example, so we are able to
(31:26):
do that.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Are you able to think you're?
Do you guys ever foresee beingable to like, have, like an well
, an accredited or investor baseor whatever, so that you could
start matching up the potentialinvestors with properties that
they're looking for as well?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
I feel like that becomes more of a market maker
kind of type of play, and we'renot into that right now.
It could be something we didn'tget into, to your point earlier
about the progression of asolution MVP, but for now we're
not trying to be a market makerfor any commercial estate
transaction.
That'll be your next company.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, that'll be a separate, a whole separate
company.
You spin that out of this orsomething and raise separate
money.
Well, also, I mean so, kyle,like you guys bought the
building down the street here inCovington and everybody's got
their own little share.
Some of the people are actuallygetting equity in the building
because they're the constructionteam and they're like, hey,
look, this is how much is goingto cost.
So, based on this amount ofmoney, I should get this much
(32:25):
share.
Like that would be.
A cool piece of software too, Ithink, is to help people bring
folks together.
Like you said, a market maker,right, but this would almost be
like a way to organize thatsyndication.
That's a really cool idea,Because then you, it's an all in
one platform, right, it'severything.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Yeah, I have not talked about that direction, but
I think that's a great idea.
How to bring everybody together.
You have a project.
What skills do I need?
Let's bring it all together.
A true one, submit an offer andbased on all the ownership
pieces that people cancontribute, based on their
skills and what they're bringingto the table.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, they put the money in or they commit to a
certain amount of money.
Well, then you know what youcan buy, because as you get more
commitment, the amount of moneyyou can spend goes up.
So then the recommendationsthat you get change based on
what you can afford.
Right, so, oh, I'm not at that50 unit building yet.
I'm looking at a 24 unit orwhatever.
Right now.
Oh, wow, somebody just came inand committed another 5 mil.
(33:20):
Boom Changes the game.
Right Now I can go look at 100units or whatever.
Yeah, so you're just, you'reconstantly changing the
recommendations based on whatyou see, because now you have a
peak.
You guys have a view into theactual syndicators, like cash.
You know what they've got andwhat they can spend.
(33:42):
And do you guys, what aboutlike?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
connected.
We've got a lot of differentideas, I think in our
conversation last time or adifferent conversation like, hey
, how about you guys build thosemodels and enable people to
tweak them slightly on the fly,based on what their needs are.
Can you do that?
And the answer is yes, but it's, you know, going to require
time and effort and to be ableto get there.
There's a lot of differentideas flying Right now.
(34:06):
We're just trying to focus onwhat is our kind of bread and
butter?
What can we make it take it tomarket.
It was an MVP that's going tobe successful and we feel like
we're very confident in theoffering that we have today and
where we're going next and fromthere then, once we onboard you
know we're making a little bitof revenue or onboarding clients
and we're seeing the benefitsand we'll talk about more about
(34:29):
we're trying to attack both theexpense side and the incremental
revenue side.
For anyone client or that weonboard, there's not just an
additional expense for them, butrather we want to prove that
the ROI that's what we're doingin this pilot right now.
We have really substantial ROIon the investment you're making,
on the subscription you'repaying.
But also we're trying to takeone of our competitors off the
table, because we're going to beable to provide the data to you
(34:51):
as well.
So those data providers todaythat are just providing data to
commercialize a broker, I meanwe're gonna.
We're doing that as a side gig,but the better butterfly for us
is all the models and thematching capability that we've
built over the past year and ahalf, two years now.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yeah, Well, when I think of who's got the most
money, I think of banks, right.
So that's the first thing Ithink I was like, oh, who's got
the most money that would beinterested in this and is
looking for deal flow Banks.
So, like, mezzanine financing,right, is part of this cap stack
that these people are going toraise.
So they're going to go out andthey're going to get money from
syndicators or they're going toget money from, you know, doing
the syndication, but then theremay be some mezzanine financing
(35:29):
they need.
There's some debt financingthey're going to go after, right
, so connecting them to banksthat could offer that, and then
you guys may be taking a pieceof that deal.
If banks would even be open tothat.
Like, maybe you take like aquarter point or something on
the whole deal or something youknow doesn't sound crazy, but a
quarter point on a hundredmillion dollar deals not bad.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
That's changing the whole market dynamic of the
broker and me and Stash.
We talked through this becauseStash says I don't want to
change the whole game, You'reputting me out of business.
I'm like, well, I mean, we haveto think about the big picture,
not just like the immediateimpact to you and how you're
thinking about your business.
But there's a lot of differentplaces we can go after that
would make sense.
That could be one of them, butright now we're positioning it
(36:11):
for brokers.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
This is what I love, though.
I love just speculating on crap, like you guys have an MVP
right now and I'm like going ina million different directions,
but you have to have an MVP.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Well, and it's easy to do Like we've.
You know, we've had, you know,these spin sessions where, oh
what if we did this or that?
Speaker 4 (36:26):
Man, this would be great.
Stash always does that.
I'm like I try to keep himfocused.
I'm like we're going and he'sreally good at that.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
He's good, I've learned I try and stay in our
lane, Because he's always gothis idea.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
And if we don't focus on what we're trying to build
and get an MVP out there, we'llnever get anywhere.
So I'm always like great ideaput in the backlog.
Right, I'm going to put in thebacklog.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
And so we have.
We have some sheets that havethat are many lines deep, when
this is a good pro like this is.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
This comes up at every startup, every startup.
Explain to people I mean, is aguy who gets it?
Is a guy who has to do thisprofessionally?
Also, explain to people theprocess.
Explain to people like the wayyou really should do a startup
versus.
Let me think of every possiblething that I could do.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
You know and never launch yeah it, you know the
most, most projects or moststartups.
The problem is what we callscope creep.
So basically, you startedbringing so much into the scope
before you're trying to solvefor, and then your scope goes
from you know a sin to a verywide, and then you just like I
don't even have to, I don't evenknow how to go to the next, you
(37:34):
know, my next MVP release.
I always try to keep focused onwhat we're trying to solve and
the one use case.
Build that use case.
Really make sure that you havethe right thought process of how
do I get from A to Z and justfocus on this and let nothing
else come in your way, becauseevery time, just like you said,
you would be through at me 10ideas sitting here for the past
half an hour and I'm like greatidea we're going to put in the
(37:56):
backlog, right, just because I'mfocused on delivering a product
that works, focus on deliveringon a value to our potential
future clients, and that's whatwe're focused on today.
I mean, I feel very confident,but what I'm trying to say
before we even go to the market,we're doing the pilot just to
make sure that we can prove ROIbefore we.
(38:17):
That's all about ROI right Tomake sure that, whatever you're
paying, you're getting five 10Xworth in the value I'm providing
to you for what you're payingme for today.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
And I think you know it's kind of like being an
introide in a mile deep.
You know you also have to makesure that what you have in mind
is actually solving a need thatthe market has.
That's because you could solvefor a problem, but if nobody
cares, well, what are you doing?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
We're trying to make the brokers and our clients more
efficient.
It's all about time.
Like you have so much, like youthink about your schedule, I
think about my schedule.
We're so soon like on our timeavailability, what we can do, so
we're trying to cut off, whenwe've mapped a persona for a
broker, what they do to be ableto call one customer.
(39:05):
They spend all this timelooking at data from different
sources, pulling together datatogether.
We're like, okay, well, let'sput it all at their fingertips
and let's tell you which one tocall.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Because, even if I've got all those different sources
of data, I don't know how toput them all together, unless
I'm somebody like Stash and I'vegot tons of years of experience
.
But, like you said, these youngbrokers, these young agents,
they don't.
They don't know, they don'teven know where to find this
data from.
And right now, the sources thatyou find the data from, people
complain about all the time.
I'm not going to name them, butthat's not.
Yeah, people that are listeningand know, they've tried them
(39:36):
before and I'm guessing you guysprobably get some of that data
from those guys, but if you justwent into one of those
platforms and tried to use it,you'd be confused.
It doesn't give you a fullscope, a full picture.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Yeah, we have our own data sources, but we also have
other APIs we will have accessto is where we're getting our
data.
So we've built our own datamodels.
We've built our own data set.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
And did you guys?
Do you guys got a pattern orare you in a process of
patenting any of that?
Speaker 4 (40:00):
We are working through that.
Yeah, it was our lawyers, sowe've retained a law firm here
in town that's going to help usthrough the whole next phase in
terms of our commercialization.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Nice.
Well, how did you guys get this?
Like, where did you go first toget into this whole like
ecosystem?
So I mean, there's a lot ofpeople that aren't from
Cincinnati so they're not goingto understand it, but a lot of
these startup ecosystems arebuilt similar right they all
have there's like a head,there's like a one hub and then
you got a bunch of spokes right.
So how did you guys get intothis?
(40:31):
Who told you about?
You know, get like where to go,what to do?
People have no idea.
They have an idea, they, andthey're about where you guys are
with the relationship.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
How do you guys get that?
So we spent the past year and ahalf to years just building the
actual solution yeah, before weeven thought about customers,
how to get funding, how, like,who should support us?
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Well, the first step was let's make sure it works,
let's make sure that we have sohave?
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Yeah, so we actually built the models and then we
sent spreadsheets out.
Yeah, we built the models andwe said does this work?
Let's send stats somespreadsheet and to his friends
and have them call off ourmodels.
And the feedback was verypositive, like and now let's put
together an actual SaaSsolution around the data.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Good, yes, to make it pretty presentable.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
We don't want to go to an offering with Excel
spreadsheets.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
So that's why we built a front end.
It organized it Exactly.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
So we built a very user friendly front end that
looks very intuitive.
I don't even like feel anytimewe presented to anybody, they
never asked any question aboutit.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
No, it looked great.
I look finished.
They complete.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Yeah.
So it looks very easy to use,very kind of intuitive, easy to
click through.
Really, it's like I feel likeit's you sign in If you want
market intelligence, clickyou're there.
If you want the leads, clickyou're there.
You want more details, clickyou're there.
Like literally, it's like twoclicks, three clicks and you
already have everything at yourfingertips.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
And that's what we're aiming for.
Click is because, once you getto the leads page, you click,
one click and you have all theinformation at your fingertips.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, I mean this is the way it should be.
I mean it's crazy, but likeKyle and I could go.
I mean I got my real estatelicense.
Like Kyle and I could go starta syndication with just your
software.
It seems like, yeah, like it'slike that easy.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
It'd be yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
I mean it wouldn't even be that hard, like I
wouldn't even have to go aroundlike looking for things, but
it's, you know, that's the wayit should be.
I mean it seems like that wouldbe a low barrier to entry for
somebody who's looking tosyndicate a property.
Because I go in there I'mlooking for deals.
I need to be able to sell adeal to investors.
(42:35):
That's like the first thing islike find a deal, then go out
there and pimp it to investorsand say, hey, look, I got this
great deal.
You guys show them how greatthe deal is, like, look, this is
a four cap.
You guys are used to dealingwith what Then?
Like a negative cap right now,probably.
Or like a two or maybe a three,but especially if you're on the
(42:57):
coast and you this, where allthe money's at anyway, their cap
rates are tight.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
Yeah, that's really a good point that you bring up is
we're also opening it for otherbrokers that you know your
client base is not somebodywho's in town around you.
Now with the solution you'reable to see all the ownership
groups that you couldpotentially present this
property to across the country.
So it's not like you areconstrained by your geography.
Like stash knows, everybody wasin Cincinnati, kentucky,
(43:25):
columbus, cleveland et cetera.
That's his market.
But now was our solution.
Now he can you know, oh, I havethis deal for you know, this
owner's group and this one'sgroup lives in mostly our
whatever New York or West Coast,east Coast, et cetera.
So that is really opening evenfurther for him to find
potential buyers for propertythat maybe historically they
(43:46):
won't even look at it justbecause it's in Cincinnati or
somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Right, right.
So what is the next step foryou guys?
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Now through end of year as pilot, our beta testing.
Going through that approve theROI, put together our white
paper.
We're doing a Q1, we'retargeting some fundraising and
go to market after that Nice.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
So everybody you've talked to have they pretty much
like been excited about what youguys are doing.
I mean, what's the feedbackyou've gotten that makes you
think like, oh God, I don't wantto have to go back to square
one on this thing, or is thereany of that kind of stuff, or is
it all mostly positive, mostlypositive?
Speaker 4 (44:27):
The only one feedback that I keep getting is that,
hey, you got to get your mobileapp fairly quickly because
everybody is mobile versus being.
So our application is desktop,you know even a handheld device,
but it's not, you know, mobilefriendly yet.
So we're going to work ongetting at least an MVP from a
mobile application standpoint.
That's on our roadmap.
We're working through that.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
But you could start with a mobile website.
I mean, you can just make allthe components, we are yeah, so
I think we are mobile friendly.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
We are.
I mean, it's for a handhelddevice, like you know, like
tablet or something.
Yeah, but it's not like anactual, you know, mobile phone
application.
You can go to our websitethrough your mobile phone.
You can work through it.
Like all, like our application,you can work through it.
It's just not going to look asneat compared to yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I mean, we designed it with the desktop primarily in
mind.
Yeah, but then the nextiteration is going to be on the
app store, right?
Yep, exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Love it.
So talk about what you guys aredoing right now.
Are you you're out here raisingmoney, or are you guys still
you?
You still working on your ownstuff, or we're.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
We're not raising money yet.
We don't plan until like somepoint in Q1, q2.
We've self-funded the wholething ourselves thus far.
We're you know excited to havebeen able to do that and having
a product to go to market waszero funding from anybody
outside.
So that's kind of to scale itat the level we wanted.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I think we'll probably most likely need to go
get some funding in Q1, Q2, andfrom there and see, where you
know, hire some people, Becausethere may be people listening to
this that are like, yo, I canget a 20, hopefully they're not
raising it at a $20 millionvaluation but I'm getting a $20
million piece of software.
I've invested in it at five or10 or whatever you guys start at
.
But I mean, even if you know ifsomebody's listening out here,
(46:14):
you're a syndicator.
We got a lot of real estatepeople that want to listen to
the podcast.
I mean they could check out,they could do a demo with you
guys, they could.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Our website is up and running needleus, so just
needlus Login's there.
You can send us a note.
We'll have you set up somedemos, but we don't plan on
onboarding anybody until thisbeta pilot you know period is
over and which is by end of year.
So we're like walk on it.
We want to make sure it'sreally ready for
(46:43):
commercialization and we'regetting feedback from really,
you know, awesome, you know topcommercial estate brokers in the
country, so it's pretty cool tobe in the position we're at.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
You're in that phase right now.
It's like what can we do to getas much feedback as possible
and make this thing perfect?
Like it's perfect, it's nevergonna be perfect, yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:04):
I don't know, stash, do you have anything feedback
you've received from some of thebrokers we have, I mean so far
it's been all positive.
Very little feedback on the UIUX itself.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
It's just hey, can we add this or what if we, you
know, make a slight tweak hereand there?
Did that.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
And some people just give you feedback, just to give
you feedback, like they're likeah, what if you did this?
No-transcript.
Okay, that's not like there'snothing's broke.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
Yeah, it's yeah, we do, and some of the feedback
we've gotten has been verypositive, very good feedback.
We've also made some.
We do monthly releases for thesoftware.
So we're doing a monthlyrelease tomorrow, actually for
the next iteration, based on thefeedback we've received.
So like we have a goodstructure in place to how we do
releases it's monthly.
We get feedback.
We think through that.
Is it aligned to our roadmapand MVP product?
(47:52):
If it is, let's move it intothe back of out of the backlog
and drive it forward.
So it's you know it's workingexactly how we want it to be.
We're super excited to seewhere this can go.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And well, I'm excited to have you guys on the show,
because then one of these days,I'm going to go back to this,
and you guys will too, after youknow sell for $10 billion or
whatever.
And you go back and be likeremember that time we went to
Adam's office and we were inthat little room, we were
nervous yeah we went to thatlittle room and we were talking
about it.
We were in the MVP stage andyou knew you're on your yachts
and you're racing them down theyou know the French.
(48:26):
Riviera, the Mofi coast, yeah.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
Oh, that's gonna be awesome.
Yeah, my goal is always to howmore good can I do and how can
like any this that comes out ofthis is to drive you know into
investment to the community.
How can we do better things andto support our ecosystem,
support other you know startups.
So for me, the driver is notjust about money, but actually
how can we give back and how canwe make more out of it for
(48:51):
other people as well.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Oh, I got two kids in college so you can start with
them back there.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yeah, I have two as well, so they're gonna need jobs
, so they're gonna need to gettheir resumes together now.
So when these guys raise money.
They're gonna be looking forpeople.
So that's the one tough thingin Cincinnati is talent.
You know, trying to find enoughtalent, because it all seems to
coalesce on the on the coast.
So it's like getting that goodtech talent here and multiplying
(49:17):
.
You guys Like, how do you dothat?
How do you find another brokeror another real estate guy with
enough experience to come in andknow what they're doing?
Like you have to train them,right?
Yeah, because they're working,they're doing their thing,
they're just like startup, Idon't, you know.
Like you have to bring somebodyand actually train them.
And that's tough.
I mean especially on whatyou've done and how you've built
it, the, the language you'veused to build it in.
(49:39):
Like there's a lot.
I mean we've been down thatroad and it's.
It can be, it can be tough, butI mean you guys got your heads
on your shoulders right.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
So our team is an amazing team.
That been really awesome.
Yeah, they take the feedback.
They run was that they workthrough it.
So it's been great to havereally good talent to drive this
forward.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
That's exactly what you need.
That's exactly what guys.
This has been awesome.
Good luck with everything.
Needle, thank you for having us.
Yeah, anything else you guyswant to say, or leave with the,
leave with the community here.
Is there a?
Is there an event coming up oranything that you guys are going
to be at to showcase whatyou've got going on?
Speaker 3 (50:13):
We'd be happy to you know present what we've got at
the event that you mentionedearlier at the top.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Oh, yeah, yeah, oh God, I can't even yeah, but no,
any of those kind of things thatyou want to do, like if you
want to get with Osh and getthere, I mean I could, yeah,
send that out to him and see ifhe's got some room or something
for you guys to jump in and just, yeah, do run a demo, get into
a room.
I mean, yeah, let's just run ademo in a room.
Like I mean, there's got to besome room.
Speaker 4 (50:39):
We can do demo anytime.
It's again, the solution is upor software is up, like we can
present anytime and get you know, provide.
Here's how it works, here's howeasy it is.
Here's the value to you guys.
I mean it's huge value.
Yeah, it's huge value.
We're excited, for sure.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
If you guys could do a demo and I know this is your
because your wheelhouse rightnow is the multifamily but a lot
of this is going to be thecommercial flex based stuff, I
think is what they're reallygoing to be looking at for this.
I think it's more like a beyondmultifamily type conference.
Speaker 4 (51:11):
If you think about it , I'm not overly concerned about
the other verticals because wehave access to the data.
Yeah, the only thing is justabout training our models.
So the software is up.
The next step is, like you needthis vertical, whatever.
It is like great, we havealready have access to all the
data in the country for everycommercial asset property, so
that's not an issue I mean forevery.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
I'm just saying when you, when you go to gear, you're
when you go to gear just forthe crowd you're going into.
I was just like you know oh,thank you.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
Yeah, that makes sense, but as we're thinking
about the solution itself, wehave access to all the data.
The solution is built right nowis building another model for a
very specific type of propertyand pushing those, those results
from the models, into thesoftware, and it could be as
simple as on the leads page.
Potentially it could be likehey, you just multiply the
product.
(52:00):
Yeah, filter by whatever typeof property you want, and that
could be the exterration.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
So love it, love it.
Well, guys, thanks for comingin today.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
This has been awesome Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
It's been great and sharing with people because they
you know, people don't know,they don't know where they stand
with their stuff and they needto understand different
perspectives and how you guysdid your thing and you don't
have to be 21 years old to do astartup Like, yeah, you can be
fully into a career.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Well, and there's no way that I or myself that we
could have gotten to where we'reat or have the experience or
the knowledge of how to do this,even do this.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
Yeah, like you, yeah, yeah, no way.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
Yeah, we would have probably, yeah, stumbled a lot
more.
I mean, we're still sumbling,but a lot more Sure.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
There have been some drinking binges kind of in
between there too, and a littlebit of party and some
girlfriends getting in the wayLike it would have been some
issues, younger days, all rightguys.
Well, I really appreciate it,thanks.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Yeah, thank you, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,Side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(53:17):
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, mycohost.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:31):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Kyle has a tummy ache so he isat home right now, but we have
two people actually in thepodcast room today Maher Stash,
here we are.
Welcome, guys.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you, yeah, yeah , so we had a.
Actually he'll do that again.
I had your mics down Becausenormally okay, say something,
hello.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
There you go, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Good, now we're good.
All right, I'm going to startit over.
All right, welcome backeverybody to the Side Hustle
City podcast.
Kyle Stevy has a tummy ache sohe is not in the studio today,
but we have Maher, you're notdead.
You're not dead, no, he's justhe's recovering.
So we have Maher and Stash heretoday.
What's up, guys?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Hey, how are you?
Thanks for having us, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Thanks for having us.
Appreciate it.
So I love having startup peopleon the show, especially SAS
startup people.
This is really exciting.
We've had some conversationsaround.
You know what you guys aredoing.
We got connected through one ofthe startup ecosystem groups
here in Cincinnati and ifnobody's familiar with
Cincinnati, if you've got astartup, it's a very vibrant
(01:39):
ecosystem here and you guys bothhave really awesome career
backgrounds that have led youhere and you're also not like 21
year old startup guys.
Right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You guys are in the age range of like the ideal, I
would say most successfulstartup people.
They always say I think peoplethat start early, you have a lot
of failures and then a lot ofVCs really like to get into.
Those founders who have workedin the real world, understand
how corporate works, have beenaround.
And I mean you guys.
(02:12):
Obviously you're doing a SASstartup, so how does this
integrate with what everybodyelse is doing?
You get that right.
You're not trying to figurethat out.
You're not spending time tryingto figure that out.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Exactly, we have plenty of experience 20 plus
years in the industry verydifferent industries between
myself and Stash.
Stash is kind of back on thiscommercial real estate, mine is
finance and software, as well asdata.
It's kind of what the focus is.
Stash, you want to give alittle background about yourself
.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, so my name is Stash.
I'm a commercial real estatebroker.
I specialize in multifamilyinvestment properties.
I got my license in February of08, which was a great time to
start.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
We started a SAS real estate company in 08.
So yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I was like hey guys, I'm here and the party had just
ended and I was like gosh, sodefinitely struggled in the
first couple of years and gotsome traction finally and have
been going at it successfullynow for a number of years, been
with Capstone since 2016.
And I've got a team, two othersenior brokers that we've been
(03:25):
together almost 10 years andwe're just plugging away doing
deals.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
We have a lot of real estate people on the show just
because I guess my background.
We attract real estate peoplefor some reason.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
But we assume that that's the background is
commercial estate data.
That's one of them, yeah, so Ididn't really think through what
you guys were doing until wehad the conversation talked
through it and that made itclicked, but before that it must
have been a lot of startup withcommercial estate.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh, we had no idea what we were doing.
We were just like, hey, how dowe get rid of paper, how do we
get rid of paper in the faxmachine?
How do we do that?
Right, that was the main thing.
You stumble into things asyou're always pivoting, you're
always changing and, guys, ifyou're listening, this is what
happens.
You think you've got thegreatest idea in the world, but
your idea probably isn'tcommercial like right now.
There's probably somethingwrong with it, there's something
(04:19):
about it that doesn't work withtheir ERP system or whatever
that they have, or something'snot right.
But, like I said, this is whypeople who are more seasoned,
people who've been in businessesand I mean you guys have been,
I mean in corporate right.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
This isn't like I mean you've been in, you've been
in the stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Like you've been deep in it, you know the way it is
and, honestly, that's probablywhy you guys are doing this now.
But I mean I, if I was incorporate I mean both of you
guys probably love what you do,but I mean when I was in
corporate I couldn't stand it.
There's a lot of people thatlisten to this.
They're like I just I'm notbuilt for that.
I'm built to be my own boss andto explore and do something
different.
I don't feel right in thatstructure.
(05:02):
There's something that's not.
It's not providing me.
Do you either?
You guys have that?
Did you get that?
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I mean, our day job, so to speak, are probably pretty
different, because I'm in salesand it's like go bring it in,
and so I've a lot of free reign.
But and you like to me.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
it feels like you're like your own boss, yeah for
sure you don't have like thehierarchy.
That goes through Like you'rejust bringing deals.
Yeah, I mean I have some peopleabove me, so to speak.
Right right, right, I haveimportant numbers and manage the
process, but for the most part,you're on your own.
For me, it's very different inthe corporate structure.
Working through deadlines andtimelines, you're getting
deliverables and putting storiestogether, but that's kind of
(05:43):
what I do from day to day, allaround data and the business
performance for the most part.
But I mean, the journey started.
I would say I've known Stashfor almost 12 years, right, yeah
?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Oh, wow, that's another good thing.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Yeah, I mean I've been working with him.
Myself and Stash's wife workedtogether at a financial
institution here in town and weconnected.
We actually had a little groupof we called ourselves the UN.
We were like that first.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
That's what my friend groups call Winam.
And then I thought there wasonly one in Cincinnati.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
So we used to like hang out together and get from
time to time catch up.
And then at some point I cameto Stash and I said, hey, I have
a group of you know businessleaders here interested in
personal commercial estate, andhe's like, hey, hold on, hold up
a second, here you have, I havean idea.
How about we use yourbackground, my background, bring
together a solution to themarket?
And we embarked on the journeyabout a year and a half, two
(06:38):
years ago and we've been kind ofbootstrapping the whole
solution, building the actualsoftware and bringing the data
and working through building AI,machine learning models to
basically present the leads andmatch the buyers and sellers of
the commercial estate together.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And this is what, when we were talking, this was
perfect, right, like the two ofyou guys together.
I mean, this was like you getthe AI portion of it, you get
the real estate portion andtogether, and plus the fact you
guys have known each other for12 years, and you've, you've
done this, you've you'reseasoned professionals, and then
you decide, hey, why don't westart, as it's needle, right?
(07:12):
Yeah, needle any DL guys athome.
If you you don't see the logoright now, I'm looking right at
it.
But you guys said, look, yougot the commercial real estate,
you've got the analyticalexperience and you understand
how to parse data, and yeah.
So you put those two thingstogether and boom, the company's
born Exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
And we had a boom, Boom.
That's it Exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You stacked your fingers and there was a, there
was an entire company.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Right, we did.
We did initially, we did a backof an napkin mask to say does
this make sense?
Is there a market for it?
Does it?
Is there like, is there enoughrevenue to go after?
And, based on some of theoriginal assumptions we had,
we're like okay, there'ssufficient revenue here to get
you know, really, x multiplier,let's go.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, you got to make sure the money's there, right,
right.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Well, yeah, so I mean to expand on the story a little
bit.
You know I've been pluggingaway and you know, when you
first start in real estatewhether it's residential or
commercial and any product type,really, it's like go figure it
out.
And that was that wasfrustrating, oh yeah.
But you know, I saw that we hadall this data and I'm like
(08:19):
there's got to be a way that wecould use data and analytics to
predict transactions before theyoccur.
So that was my hypothesis.
And then when Maher came to meand said, hey, you know, my
partners and I want to buy realestate and we have background in
software, I was like hold on,what about this?
(08:39):
And I pitched the idea and youknow he went back to his
partners and then we had lunchtogether and I about they're
like yeah, this thing has legs.
And I was overjoyed.
I like fell out of my chairabout because it was.
You know, I'd been thinkingabout it for a while.
I just I don't have the skillset, like I know it's there and
(09:04):
you know, we have a greatpartnership in that way, because
he knows how to put it togetherand I'm the subject matter
expert and the rest of ourdevelopment team like it's just
been tremendous.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Yeah, definitely awesome team we have together
for about a couple of years nowiterating, working through.
Yeah, we're excited that we'rein pilot right now.
So, like, actually go and provevalue and that's what we're
focused on between now and theyear is we are onboarding.
Where are we for three or fourdifferent companies that
actually piloting?
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Yeah, oh, wow, yeah, We've got.
We've got one actively on theplatform, one active one that we
just signed up, and then we'vegot a couple more agreements out
just waiting for signature.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Nice.
Well, myra, I mean like for you, you've let you.
You look at anything and you'relike, oh, I can solve that,
like I can, I can figure thatout.
But for guys like us I meanwe're realistic is I'm not?
I own a digital agency, but I'mnot a software guy Like I'm not
going to write the actualsoftware.
So I come up with ideas all day.
Right, I could be a subjectmatter expert in several things.
You're a subject matter expertin this.
So you look at it and you'relike I have no idea about
(10:09):
software.
I have this great idea.
This would be awesome.
I know a ton of people thatwould buy it.
But it just seems like such amountain to climb when you don't
know someone like Maher.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
It was completely insurmountable, like I'd expect
some cash, like hey, is there,is there something to this?
And I got positive feedback,but nobody.
And until we came together,nobody.
Yeah, I think you had a coupleof engagement.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
It was a couple of consulting companies where they
you've paid some money like, hey, I have this data, what can I
do with it?
How can you help me predict thetransactions potentially?
And you didn't get muchtraction.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
No, they're like, yeah, we could build it for you.
It's going to cost a lot ofmoney.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
And that's what everybody says, like it's going
to cost a bunch of money to dothis.
And that's where we the nichefor us, like, yeah, we can come
in and build this product,because if anybody else want to
replicate what we're building,it's going to cost them, you
know, ten, twenty million dollarplus.
We've been at it for a coupleof years now.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And this is you understand, because you work
with budgets at these bigcompanies and you know what they
charge.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Yeah, you need at least a couple of different
squads with, you know, eight,ten people per squad to build
what we've built as far, andthat's literally about two
million dollars per squad peryear.
So so you think about having atleast a couple of squads for a
couple of years.
You're you're upward of eightplus million dollars.
Just an expense for somebody todo this.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Any other company to do this it's wild yeah it's wild
, and this is why the sounds tome like a good call.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Sounds to me like a bill's coming later.
He's got his numbers.
Yeah, his guys numberscarefully added up it's going to
cost twenty million dollars onthe open market.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Anybody, anybody who comes to me and say, yeah, we
can do that.
I'm like, by all means, go forit.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
So there's a barrier to entry, though I mean this is
a good, this is a competitiveadvantage for you guys.
Yeah, because in order to buildsomething like this, you have
to understand like you've gotmodels that you've been working
with for years, probably thatyou understand.
When guys like us see it, we'relike OK, I don't even know
where to start.
I don't know how to map thisthing out.
I got friends who do do thisall day too, and it's like they
(12:12):
would just sit there and scratchit out on a napkin, like you
said, just scratch out and say,ok, well, this is what we need
first.
This is what.
We're going to have these pods.
We're going to have groups ofdevelopers in these pods.
We need this many people.
It's going to cost this much.
We're like what?
Like?
I just know people buy it.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
I can sell it, I can sell hell out of it.
Yeah, and that's Stash.
Stash is kind of the chiefoperating officer of sales
revenue, the whole thing.
He got that under control.
Definitely that's his kind ofsubject matter expertise and
heavily reliant on him and thesubject matter expertise to help
us to get to the next phase,post development.
So we're excited that we are atthis point.
We have an MVP, we're pilotingthe MVP and now starting Q1 of
(12:51):
next year is like let's go, man,let's sell it, let's see what
Stash can do.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, Well, and it's a soft sell too, because it's
like do you want to know whatproperties are going to trade
before your competitors do?
Of course you do, so you can goout and get in front of them
and we're targeting our targetmarkets.
Initially, our commercial realestate brokers who specialize in
multifamily, and it's probablynot the guy that's at the top
because he's like I don't needthis, but it's the guys that are
(13:17):
striving and trying to get takethat market share Right.
And then you know the thoughtprocess is well, loan brokers
could use this as well, becausethey want to get in front of
transactions.
And then, you know, recently itseems like everybody in their
brother has gotten intosyndication.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Oh my God, everybody.
I was just at one in Floridaand it was just like they all
have the same thesis 100%.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
And we hear it all day from like we've had
instances where we've had a lotof people who have had a lot of
business.
We've had instances where we'llget the same letter of intent
from three completely differentbuyer groups and it's the same
pitch coming in.
Oh, my partner and I own 40,000units, and it's the same format
, everything's the same, andit's like hey, do you know
so-and-so?
No, I don't know who that is,and it's just, it's a.
(14:03):
So you know the acquisitionpeople, both professional, and
you know we'll call them notquite there yet professionals
yeah, oh yeah.
And you know the asset managersare going to want to know why
am I being blown up about thisdeal?
So you know, right there wehave four groups, maybe five,
you could say, of targetcustomers that were, that were
(14:26):
aiming this at.
And then you know we have othervendors in the commercial real
estate industry that we thinkcould benefit from this as well.
And so it's then like okay,once we master this vertical,
what's to stop us from lookingat hotels and industrial and
(14:47):
retail and office andself-storage and senior, you
know, assisted living?
Speaker 2 (14:54):
God, I got a conference coming up that you
guys got to go to.
That my buddy, Ash Patel he'sbig and does you know, Ash?
So he's got his, his.
I did his logo and everything,so I'm kind of proud of it.
But he's got a big thing comingup here.
He's going to be on the podcastnext month, Nice, but October
is when his, his deal is.
And gosh Kyle, how many, howmany syndicators we had on this
(15:15):
show and how many, how manysyndicators do we know?
Like you, got syndicators inyour family.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I am a syndicator, bitch hey, and you are a
syndicator.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
No he wrote a book on tokenization of real, of that
like tokenization real estate.
It's called digital melting.
You finished that what?
Six months ago, or something,kyle.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's just burning up the best seller
charts right now.
I would say that we had Joe.
Well, we have Joe Fairlis onthere.
Not he's Joe's previous client,the biggest name that I've ever
since.
Yeah, that's good, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
So he Joe's huge and I've been on Joe's podcast, oh
nice.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I can't remember whatthat's called, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Best podcast ever podcast yeah.
Yeah, I was on there twice withAsh Nice.
I was a co-host when I did it.
It was about the book and aboutthe building.
We'd go and write down thestreet from where you guys are
at right now.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, nate was on, we had a wholesaler on, we had a
couple wholesalers on yeah,nate's cool.
Yeah, we had a lot of people on.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Alex was on.
Most of the guys have been fromlike Cincinnati area that were
real estate.
We haven't had anybody, I think, nationally with real estate.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I don't remember yeah .
I don't remember anybody, butfor some reason there's a lot of
real estate professional likereal estate's a big deal here.
I mean, like we had, and Ialways try to say, like you know
, you've got those four pillarsthat the centrifuge group is
trying to kind of go after.
It's like FinTech, medtech,logistics technology, and then
(16:47):
there was another one.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
PropTech, yeah, proptech.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So PropTech is like that's what I'm like, let's go
after it.
That and logistics.
I think we have a strategiclocation in America, so why not
go after logistics train, youknow, river rail, all that stuff
?
So PropTech, in my opinion, iswe've got our company that we
already sold, now Zillow's herebecause of it.
You've got there's a coupleother ones out there that I've
(17:13):
actually helped work on.
My cousin's a CFO for one ofthese companies.
So there's several out there inCincinnati that are just
transform real estate Forwhatever reason.
These companies just pop uphere.
I think we could, with you guysas well, we can actually set
Cincinnati in this region up asthe PropTech capital.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
We'd love to.
We could argue that now,honestly, yeah, we've been
talking about like, hey, can wepull together a symposium for
PropTech in Cincinnati?
And then we do us to bring themtogether, because there's no
one avenue to bring these peopletogether and talk about.
And how do we create synergiesacross what we're doing?
Because it seems likeeverybody's very complimentary
from an offering perspective.
True, yeah, there's no directcompetition for what everybody's
(17:56):
doing, so it makes a lot ofsense for us to bring people
together and start talking.
How can we build each other upas a community and help each
other?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
when there's nobody for you, because it's going to
cost 20 million bucks to buildyour software.
And see, that's the beauty ofhaving you guys on because
you're early.
But a lot of early stagecompanies don't want to talk
about what they're doing becausethey're afraid there's going to
be some competition.
But I try to tell people.
I'm like look, people don'teven do their own ideas.
They're not stealing your idea,right?
They don't have the blend ofskills that you guys have and
(18:26):
the ability to build somethingand actually have the resources
to bootstrap it without havingto go friends and family and all
this other stuff.
And if you do, you know otherpeople who are working and they
can spare, you know, 20, 50grand, something like that.
Maybe I don't know, but butthere's not a lot of people out
there at your stage that arewilling to talk about their
product.
(18:46):
So let's explain to people andI think people kind of get the
idea of like where we're goingwith it.
But explain to people and Ilove this and, kyle, after I
talked to them, I'm pretty sureI told you about this because I
was so impressed by it.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You were so jazzed.
I love it I was jazzed.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I'm very jazzed because this predicts that a
property, a commercial property,is going to sell before it even
goes on the market, based onthe owner's activities.
And you guys are somehow ablewith your magic, Right.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
We're using a lot of different data elements to
basically predict which propertyshould transact, based on a lot
of different attributes, aswell as from the property itself
, from the ownership group, aswell as from the macro economic,
what's happening in the regionwhere the property is located.
So we're trying to really takea point of view of what are the
elements and, looking athistorical transactions, what
(19:39):
made this property transact, andreplicate that for the future,
pretty much to say.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then give people emails and phone numbers that
you can contact them.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Yeah, so not just that as well as loan details for
every property, what exists onit from terms of the rates, the
holding period, the loan detailsyou have, once you look at our
platform, you're able to reallylook at all the information you
would need in one click to thatone property and contact the
person who's actually on it.
Now the next phase is how wecan help you with some content
(20:07):
management and pushing out email, make it a little bit softer of
a call.
So there's a lot of roadmap andthings we're thinking about
what to do next, but it'sexciting to where we're going.
It's exciting about theoffering we have.
Very few people are actually inthat space right now, as Stash
would always tell me like, hey,I have all the data I need and
more.
I don't know what to do with it100%.
(20:29):
Now we're just bringing ittogether in a way that's
coherent that provides brokerslike Stash or a lot of different
use cases, like if you wannabring somebody up to speed
fairly quickly on the industryand who to call, why to call
like this is fairly quick foryou to bring them up to speed
and you don't need to spendhours and hours like Stash's you
know history like I don't knowhow many hours or years you
(20:50):
spend to get to where you are.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Traditionally, it takes two years of grinding to
get traction, and that'sassuming you do everything right
.
I mean it took me at least that.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
If you wanna get into commercial 100%.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
So there's that natural bariatric there too.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And define commercial , define what you guys are,
which part of commercial.
You said you're gonna expandout of these other ones, but
where are we starting right now?
Is this multi-family?
Is this?
Speaker 3 (21:16):
retail.
Yes, like start with what youknow.
So you know we've beentargeting 50 units and up.
So our platform and even mypractice as a broker, you know
it's 50 units and up existingassets, and really that's kind
of where we started because youknow, if you get, you know
(21:39):
technically commercial is.
You know commercialmulti-family properties are five
units and up.
But there's a big differenceeven between a 50 unit and 150
unit, because 150 unit you canstart to really the threshold is
maybe 100 units and that's whenyou can afford one full.
(21:59):
The rules of thumb are onefull-time maintenance, one
full-time manager per 100 units.
Typically that sounds aboutright, yeah, and then you can
afford a management company andreally as the owner, that's when
it becomes more of a cash flowplay, assuming that's just what
you want.
Now there are ways that you canforce value and appreciation by
(22:22):
doing value add and what that.
That means a variety of things.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Paint the place, put new shutters on like get rid of
it, puts some new plants in.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
It's a light value add, or you could completely gut
the units and you know newkitchens, baths, plumbing,
electric roofs, windows,everything.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
So yeah, you got those typical like Cincinnati 12
unit buildings where it's gotthat little galley kitchen type
of thing and some people justtake that wall out.
They'll take the wall out, openit up, which I think is a great
thing.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah, Because it opens the unit up, you don't
feel as claustrophobic.
Or even if you don't completelyremove the wall, you just maybe
do a half wall or a window.
You know a pass throughsomething like that.
I've seen all sorts ofdifferent things done in all
different types of property, youknow so.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, and where do you guys see real estate kind of
going?
So there's a lot of people onhere that are, you know, real
estate's a big deal right now.
I mean, you've got theseraising these interest rates
going up, yeah, and you've got alot more people renting because
there's less inventory, becausenobody wants to get rid of
their 4% interest rate.
They're just going to stay intheir house, right, instead of
moving out.
They're going to upgrade theirown place and they're just going
(23:30):
to live there.
They're, you know, nothing'sgoing on the markets.
You've got an entire generationand this is what I said the
other day to people.
I said you're going to have anentire generation that is
missing out on maybe two to fiveyears of wealth creation,
because a lot of us, you buildwealth, most Americans, I would
say a lot of their wealth is intheir home.
So you're going to have lessand less people being able.
(23:53):
That wealth is going to go intothe hands of, you know,
landlords, really, I mean, andthat's where it's going to go.
How long do you see this?
I say two to five years.
I don't know what it actuallyis.
What do you guys see happening?
And I think the fact thatyou're in this area, with this
software at this time.
Timing's everything.
(24:13):
Timing was everything for uswhen we built it.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Timing is great for what you're doing right now,
right right, at least from myperspective.
I'm not the expert fromcommercial estate and market
standpoint, but what I've seenis going to be a lot of pain for
some of the existing officebuilding space in terms of a lot
of people are overextended,they might have to take some
(24:37):
losses and those are going to beconverted into multifamily At
least what I'm seeing.
I don't know.
Stas, you're the other expertone.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
You know, as far as multifamily, I think that rates
are.
I hope they don't go up anymorejust for the sake of you know,
just creates so much uncertaintyand people freeze when there's
uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
People need to stop spending money.
Like what?
Eventually they're going to runout of credit card.
They're going to max out theircredit cards.
They're going to stop spendingmoney is what's going to happen,
but they just keep spending.
So these rates I mean, the Fedjust keeps looking at these
numbers and they're like this isup, that people are still
spending.
The jobs are great.
Raise the interest rates.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah.
So you know, what we think isthat rates are so a lot of
people made a lot of money overthe past, say, call it 10 years
on floating rate debt,adjustable rate mortgages,
essentially.
And you know those loans arebenchmarked to a target interest
(25:40):
rate and so when the Fed raisesrates, their rate goes up.
So if you bought something at,say, a three and a half cap or a
four cap and your loan was, youknow, 2.3 or 3% and you were
going to implement a value add,well, right now what we're
seeing is that those you knowcall it a three and a half
(26:00):
percent rate when you originallybought the deal.
It's now at 9% and we've seenit again and again.
Like you know, I've had sellersquote me.
You know I'm a seller at 65million and we're stretching to
get to 50.
Wow, and you know.
So we plug their loan detailsin to our model and you know, on
(26:25):
a call it a $50 million asset,they're cash flowing 70 grand a
year.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Jeez.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
It's like you're close.
So what's going to happen isthat these rates are going to
stay high and as these loans.
So, to get into the weeds maybea little bit, you can buy a
rate cap and that will freezeyour rate, but then those only
last for two to three years.
So as those rate caps burn off,they're going to have to make a
(26:53):
decision, whether it's refi orsell, and oftentimes the refi
decision is not, as in thiscurrent environment.
What we think is that it's notgoing to be.
You're going to take that offthe table.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
A good option?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah, you're just going to take that off the table
.
So it's like well, we got tosell and, you know, maybe cut
our losses or just kind of breakeven essentially on what we
have it into.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Well, they're going to be their cap rates going to
be negative pretty soon.
It seems like.
I mean it's going to be bad.
I mean they're going to belosing money every month if
their rates adjust to 9% andthey're used to a two or three
and they only got a three orfour cap.
Yeah, they're going to be introuble, I mean especially think
of California and New York andplaces like that where Texas is
seeing it.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
They're getting hit pretty hard, and that combined
with the raising insurance ratesas well.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
So I mean that's a different story, that's true.
And then you got multifamers inFlorida and you see what's
going on down there, wherethey're getting these special
assessments now because they allhave to get reinspected, they
have to get updated,everything's got to be to code.
And you've got these condoowners down there that are like
I can't afford it.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Yeah, I'm getting you know hit by 15, 20 grand bills.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, and insurance.
They're even getting theirinsurance dropped in some of
these places, which is wild,yeah.
So there's a lot going on toyour point and to be able to
find a good deal you need anedge is really what you have to
have.
So talk about what is in thesoftware.
You mentioned it just reallyquickly.
What's in the software that canhelp these people make a
(28:24):
decision on some of theseproperties?
So I get to see the propertyright.
Oh, this owner may be willingto sell here shortly.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Yeah, you're able to log into the platform.
First you'll see some overallmarket insights of what's
happening from a transactionvolume across the United States.
You're able to see what's hotmarket, who's transacting, what
are the details for those dealsand there's some just generic
information about the marketoverall for commercial with the
state.
Then you go into the platformdeeper, next click and you'll be
(28:52):
able to see every property thatwe've positioned for you for
any specific market.
You'll be able to see like allthe properties that we've said
there we can sort of hotly.
Basically they hit the top deskcell in our models that says
this deal should transact basedon all the data and attributes
we have for this property.
So then we position thatproperty with all the
information for the propertyloan details, contact
(29:14):
information, anything you needright there at your fingertips
for stash or any other broker,to just pick up the phone and
call.
You don't have to go to any ofthe other competitors I won't
name anybody on the show.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I mean it's doing your job for you?
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Yeah, pretty much, because other competitors, what
they have today, it's just likea platform where you're able to
I want to search a property bythose attributes.
It'll kick up a list for you,but it doesn't really prioritize
the list for you doesn't lookat the attributes of the
property deal itself and tellyou like how, why you should
contact this specific person,for what reason.
So that's what we're attemptingto do is like, hey, how can we
take all the status availablefor the property the market, the
(29:49):
ownership group, etc.
And say now it's free time foryou to transact this property
before they come to stash, knockon his door and say, hey, I
want to sell this property, butrather position that, that
property to stash?
To say it, I think you guys areready, and here's the reason
why have you thought about this?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
So if I'm wanting to purchase one of these properties
, I'm a syndicator.
Whatever I'm looking forproperty, Do I?
Is there a way for me to enterin, like my thesis, what I'm
looking for, what I'm willing tospend per door, or how do you
guys?
How do you guys do that?
So, or do you have to tell me?
Speaker 4 (30:24):
if you need to like secret sauce, but I'm hoping
right now, when I get a part ofthe roadmap of the product
itself.
I'd love to get to a pointwhere, as a syndicator, as
somebody who's selling it tolike, swipe right, swipe left
and you get a match.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Oh, like a, like a Tinder for syndicators and
commercial owners.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
So that's hopefully that, as we're iterating on the
product and application, we getto a point where we're changing
the whole game for commercialestate itself.
Now those are our baby steps ofhow we're going to get there.
But potentially, if you thinkabout it, this is exactly what
you're saying is like how can Imake it easy for people to
transact and make sure, likeyou're, matching between the
seller and the buyer fairly easy, but today it's it's.
(31:04):
You know, if you're anownership group, you can log on
the platform.
You can say, based on myprofile, what would be
interesting to me, based on whatI've purchased historically?
We have that.
So, as an ownership group, youcan pull up your profile and say
, hey, I own all theseproperties and here's the
recommendation for you of whatyou should buy next, based on
what you bought on historicallyas an example, so we are able to
(31:26):
do that.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Are you able to think you're?
Do you guys ever foresee beingable to like, have, like an well
, an accredited or investor baseor whatever, so that you could
start matching up the potentialinvestors with properties that
they're looking for as well?
Speaker 4 (31:44):
I feel like that becomes more of a market maker
kind of type of play, and we'renot into that right now.
It could be something we didn'tget into, to your point earlier
about the progression of asolution MVP, but for now we're
not trying to be a market makerfor any commercial estate
transaction.
That'll be your next company.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, that'll be a separate, a whole separate
company.
You spin that out of this orsomething and raise separate
money.
Well, also, I mean so, kyle,like you guys bought the
building down the street here inCovington and everybody's got
their own little share.
Some of the people are actuallygetting equity in the building
because they're the constructionteam and they're like, hey,
look, this is how much is goingto cost.
So, based on this amount ofmoney, I should get this much
(32:25):
share.
Like that would be.
A cool piece of software too, Ithink, is to help people bring
folks together.
Like you said, a market maker,right, but this would almost be
like a way to organize thatsyndication.
That's a really cool idea,Because then you, it's an all in
one platform, right, it'severything.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Yeah, I have not talked about that direction, but
I think that's a great idea.
How to bring everybody together.
You have a project.
What skills do I need?
Let's bring it all together.
A true one, submit an offer andbased on all the ownership
pieces that people cancontribute, based on their
skills and what they're bringingto the table.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, they put the money in or they commit to a
certain amount of money.
Well, then you know what youcan buy, because as you get more
commitment, the amount of moneyyou can spend goes up.
So then the recommendationsthat you get change based on
what you can afford.
Right, so, oh, I'm not at that50 unit building yet.
I'm looking at a 24 unit orwhatever.
Right now.
Oh, wow, somebody just came inand committed another 5 mil.
(33:20):
Boom Changes the game.
Right Now I can go look at 100units or whatever.
Yeah, so you're just, you'reconstantly changing the
recommendations based on whatyou see, because now you have a
peak.
You guys have a view into theactual syndicators, like cash.
You know what they've got andwhat they can spend.
(33:42):
And do you guys, what aboutlike?
Speaker 4 (33:44):
connected.
We've got a lot of differentideas, I think in our
conversation last time or adifferent conversation like, hey
, how about you guys build thosemodels and enable people to
tweak them slightly on the fly,based on what their needs are.
Can you do that?
And the answer is yes, but it's, you know, going to require
time and effort and to be ableto get there.
There's a lot of differentideas flying Right now.
(34:06):
We're just trying to focus onwhat is our kind of bread and
butter?
What can we make it take it tomarket.
It was an MVP that's going tobe successful and we feel like
we're very confident in theoffering that we have today and
where we're going next and fromthere then, once we onboard you
know we're making a little bitof revenue or onboarding clients
and we're seeing the benefitsand we'll talk about more about
(34:29):
we're trying to attack both theexpense side and the incremental
revenue side.
For anyone client or that weonboard, there's not just an
additional expense for them, butrather we want to prove that
the ROI that's what we're doingin this pilot right now.
We have really substantial ROIon the investment you're making,
on the subscription you'repaying.
But also we're trying to takeone of our competitors off the
table, because we're going to beable to provide the data to you
(34:51):
as well.
So those data providers todaythat are just providing data to
commercialize a broker, I meanwe're gonna.
We're doing that as a side gig,but the better butterfly for us
is all the models and thematching capability that we've
built over the past year and ahalf, two years now.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Yeah, Well, when I think of who's got the most
money, I think of banks, right.
So that's the first thing Ithink I was like, oh, who's got
the most money that would beinterested in this and is
looking for deal flow Banks.
So, like, mezzanine financing,right, is part of this cap stack
that these people are going toraise.
So they're going to go out andthey're going to get money from
syndicators or they're going toget money from, you know, doing
the syndication, but then theremay be some mezzanine financing
(35:29):
they need.
There's some debt financingthey're going to go after, right
, so connecting them to banksthat could offer that, and then
you guys may be taking a pieceof that deal.
If banks would even be open tothat.
Like, maybe you take like aquarter point or something on
the whole deal or something youknow doesn't sound crazy, but a
quarter point on a hundredmillion dollar deals not bad.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
That's changing the whole market dynamic of the
broker and me and Stash.
We talked through this becauseStash says I don't want to
change the whole game, You'reputting me out of business.
I'm like, well, I mean, we haveto think about the big picture,
not just like the immediateimpact to you and how you're
thinking about your business.
But there's a lot of differentplaces we can go after that
would make sense.
That could be one of them, butright now we're positioning it
(36:11):
for brokers.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
This is what I love, though.
I love just speculating on crap, like you guys have an MVP
right now and I'm like going ina million different directions,
but you have to have an MVP.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Well, and it's easy to do Like we've.
You know, we've had, you know,these spin sessions where, oh
what if we did this or that?
Speaker 4 (36:26):
Man, this would be great.
Stash always does that.
I'm like I try to keep himfocused.
I'm like we're going and he'sreally good at that.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
He's good, I've learned I try and stay in our
lane, Because he's always gothis idea.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
And if we don't focus on what we're trying to build
and get an MVP out there, we'llnever get anywhere.
So I'm always like great ideaput in the backlog.
Right, I'm going to put in thebacklog.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
And so we have.
We have some sheets that havethat are many lines deep, when
this is a good pro like this is.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
This comes up at every startup, every startup.
Explain to people I mean, is aguy who gets it?
Is a guy who has to do thisprofessionally?
Also, explain to people theprocess.
Explain to people like the wayyou really should do a startup
versus.
Let me think of every possiblething that I could do.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
You know and never launch yeah it, you know the
most, most projects or moststartups.
The problem is what we callscope creep.
So basically, you startedbringing so much into the scope
before you're trying to solvefor, and then your scope goes
from you know a sin to a verywide, and then you just like I
don't even have to, I don't evenknow how to go to the next, you
(37:34):
know, my next MVP release.
I always try to keep focused onwhat we're trying to solve and
the one use case.
Build that use case.
Really make sure that you havethe right thought process of how
do I get from A to Z and justfocus on this and let nothing
else come in your way, becauseevery time, just like you said,
you would be through at me 10ideas sitting here for the past
half an hour and I'm like greatidea we're going to put in the
(37:56):
backlog, right, just because I'mfocused on delivering a product
that works, focus on deliveringon a value to our potential
future clients, and that's whatwe're focused on today.
I mean, I feel very confident,but what I'm trying to say
before we even go to the market,we're doing the pilot just to
make sure that we can prove ROIbefore we.
(38:17):
That's all about ROI right Tomake sure that, whatever you're
paying, you're getting five 10Xworth in the value I'm providing
to you for what you're payingme for today.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
And I think you know it's kind of like being an
introide in a mile deep.
You know you also have to makesure that what you have in mind
is actually solving a need thatthe market has.
That's because you could solvefor a problem, but if nobody
cares, well, what are you doing?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
We're trying to make the brokers and our clients more
efficient.
It's all about time.
Like you have so much, like youthink about your schedule, I
think about my schedule.
We're so soon like on our timeavailability, what we can do, so
we're trying to cut off, whenwe've mapped a persona for a
broker, what they do to be ableto call one customer.
(39:05):
They spend all this timelooking at data from different
sources, pulling together datatogether.
We're like, okay, well, let'sput it all at their fingertips
and let's tell you which one tocall.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Because, even if I've got all those different sources
of data, I don't know how toput them all together, unless
I'm somebody like Stash and I'vegot tons of years of experience
.
But, like you said, these youngbrokers, these young agents,
they don't.
They don't know, they don'teven know where to find this
data from.
And right now, the sources thatyou find the data from, people
complain about all the time.
I'm not going to name them, butthat's not.
Yeah, people that are listeningand know, they've tried them
(39:36):
before and I'm guessing you guysprobably get some of that data
from those guys, but if you justwent into one of those
platforms and tried to use it,you'd be confused.
It doesn't give you a fullscope, a full picture.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Yeah, we have our own data sources, but we also have
other APIs we will have accessto is where we're getting our
data.
So we've built our own datamodels.
We've built our own data set.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
And did you guys?
Do you guys got a pattern orare you in a process of
patenting any of that?
Speaker 4 (40:00):
We are working through that.
Yeah, it was our lawyers, sowe've retained a law firm here
in town that's going to help usthrough the whole next phase in
terms of our commercialization.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Nice.
Well, how did you guys get this?
Like, where did you go first toget into this whole like
ecosystem?
So I mean, there's a lot ofpeople that aren't from
Cincinnati so they're not goingto understand it, but a lot of
these startup ecosystems arebuilt similar right they all
have there's like a head,there's like a one hub and then
you got a bunch of spokes right.
So how did you guys get intothis?
(40:31):
Who told you about?
You know, get like where to go,what to do?
People have no idea.
They have an idea, they, andthey're about where you guys are
with the relationship.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
How do you guys get that?
So we spent the past year and ahalf to years just building the
actual solution yeah, before weeven thought about customers,
how to get funding, how, like,who should support us?
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Well, the first step was let's make sure it works,
let's make sure that we have sohave?
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Yeah, so we actually built the models and then we
sent spreadsheets out.
Yeah, we built the models andwe said does this work?
Let's send stats somespreadsheet and to his friends
and have them call off ourmodels.
And the feedback was verypositive, like and now let's put
together an actual SaaSsolution around the data.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Good, yes, to make it pretty presentable.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
We don't want to go to an offering with Excel
spreadsheets.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
So that's why we built a front end.
It organized it Exactly.
Speaker 4 (41:24):
So we built a very user friendly front end that
looks very intuitive.
I don't even like feel anytimewe presented to anybody, they
never asked any question aboutit.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
No, it looked great.
I look finished.
They complete.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Yeah.
So it looks very easy to use,very kind of intuitive, easy to
click through.
Really, it's like I feel likeit's you sign in If you want
market intelligence, clickyou're there.
If you want the leads, clickyou're there.
You want more details, clickyou're there.
Like literally, it's like twoclicks, three clicks and you
already have everything at yourfingertips.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
And that's what we're aiming for.
Click is because, once you getto the leads page, you click,
one click and you have all theinformation at your fingertips.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, I mean this is the way it should be.
I mean it's crazy, but likeKyle and I could go.
I mean I got my real estatelicense.
Like Kyle and I could go starta syndication with just your
software.
It seems like, yeah, like it'slike that easy.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
It'd be yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
I mean it wouldn't even be that hard, like I
wouldn't even have to go aroundlike looking for things, but
it's, you know, that's the wayit should be.
I mean it seems like that wouldbe a low barrier to entry for
somebody who's looking tosyndicate a property.
Because I go in there I'mlooking for deals.
I need to be able to sell adeal to investors.
(42:35):
That's like the first thing islike find a deal, then go out
there and pimp it to investorsand say, hey, look, I got this
great deal.
You guys show them how greatthe deal is, like, look, this is
a four cap.
You guys are used to dealingwith what Then?
Like a negative cap right now,probably.
Or like a two or maybe a three,but especially if you're on the
(42:57):
coast and you this, where allthe money's at anyway, their cap
rates are tight.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
Yeah, that's really a good point that you bring up is
we're also opening it for otherbrokers that you know your
client base is not somebodywho's in town around you.
Now with the solution you'reable to see all the ownership
groups that you couldpotentially present this
property to across the country.
So it's not like you areconstrained by your geography.
Like stash knows, everybody wasin Cincinnati, kentucky,
(43:25):
columbus, cleveland et cetera.
That's his market.
But now was our solution.
Now he can you know, oh, I havethis deal for you know, this
owner's group and this one'sgroup lives in mostly our
whatever New York or West Coast,east Coast, et cetera.
So that is really opening evenfurther for him to find
potential buyers for propertythat maybe historically they
(43:46):
won't even look at it justbecause it's in Cincinnati or
somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Right, right.
So what is the next step foryou guys?
Speaker 4 (43:55):
Now through end of year as pilot, our beta testing.
Going through that approve theROI, put together our white
paper.
We're doing a Q1, we'retargeting some fundraising and
go to market after that Nice.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
So everybody you've talked to have they pretty much
like been excited about what youguys are doing.
I mean, what's the feedbackyou've gotten that makes you
think like, oh God, I don't wantto have to go back to square
one on this thing, or is thereany of that kind of stuff, or is
it all mostly positive, mostlypositive?
Speaker 4 (44:27):
The only one feedback that I keep getting is that,
hey, you got to get your mobileapp fairly quickly because
everybody is mobile versus being.
So our application is desktop,you know even a handheld device,
but it's not, you know, mobilefriendly yet.
So we're going to work ongetting at least an MVP from a
mobile application standpoint.
That's on our roadmap.
We're working through that.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
But you could start with a mobile website.
I mean, you can just make allthe components, we are yeah, so
I think we are mobile friendly.
Speaker 4 (44:54):
We are.
I mean, it's for a handhelddevice, like you know, like
tablet or something.
Yeah, but it's not like anactual, you know, mobile phone
application.
You can go to our websitethrough your mobile phone.
You can work through it.
Like all, like our application,you can work through it.
It's just not going to look asneat compared to yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
I mean, we designed it with the desktop primarily in
mind.
Yeah, but then the nextiteration is going to be on the
app store, right?
Yep, exactly.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Love it.
So talk about what you guys aredoing right now.
Are you you're out here raisingmoney, or are you guys still
you?
You still working on your ownstuff, or we're.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
We're not raising money yet.
We don't plan until like somepoint in Q1, q2.
We've self-funded the wholething ourselves thus far.
We're you know excited to havebeen able to do that and having
a product to go to market waszero funding from anybody
outside.
So that's kind of to scale itat the level we wanted.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I think we'll probably most likely need to go
get some funding in Q1, Q2, andfrom there and see, where you
know, hire some people, Becausethere may be people listening to
this that are like, yo, I canget a 20, hopefully they're not
raising it at a $20 millionvaluation but I'm getting a $20
million piece of software.
I've invested in it at five or10 or whatever you guys start at
.
But I mean, even if you know ifsomebody's listening out here,
(46:14):
you're a syndicator.
We got a lot of real estatepeople that want to listen to
the podcast.
I mean they could check out,they could do a demo with you
guys, they could.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Our website is up and running needleus, so just
needlus Login's there.
You can send us a note.
We'll have you set up somedemos, but we don't plan on
onboarding anybody until thisbeta pilot you know period is
over and which is by end of year.
So we're like walk on it.
We want to make sure it'sreally ready for
(46:43):
commercialization and we'regetting feedback from really,
you know, awesome, you know topcommercial estate brokers in the
country, so it's pretty cool tobe in the position we're at.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
You're in that phase right now.
It's like what can we do to getas much feedback as possible
and make this thing perfect?
Like it's perfect, it's nevergonna be perfect, yeah.
Speaker 4 (47:04):
I don't know, stash, do you have anything feedback
you've received from some of thebrokers we have, I mean so far
it's been all positive.
Very little feedback on the UIUX itself.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
It's just hey, can we add this or what if we, you
know, make a slight tweak hereand there?
Did that.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
And some people just give you feedback, just to give
you feedback, like they're likeah, what if you did this?
No-transcript.
Okay, that's not like there'snothing's broke.
Speaker 4 (47:31):
Yeah, it's yeah, we do, and some of the feedback
we've gotten has been verypositive, very good feedback.
We've also made some.
We do monthly releases for thesoftware.
So we're doing a monthlyrelease tomorrow, actually for
the next iteration, based on thefeedback we've received.
So like we have a goodstructure in place to how we do
releases it's monthly.
We get feedback.
We think through that.
Is it aligned to our roadmapand MVP product?
(47:52):
If it is, let's move it intothe back of out of the backlog
and drive it forward.
So it's you know it's workingexactly how we want it to be.
We're super excited to seewhere this can go.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And well, I'm excited to have you guys on the show,
because then one of these days,I'm going to go back to this,
and you guys will too, after youknow sell for $10 billion or
whatever.
And you go back and be likeremember that time we went to
Adam's office and we were inthat little room, we were
nervous yeah we went to thatlittle room and we were talking
about it.
We were in the MVP stage andyou knew you're on your yachts
and you're racing them down theyou know the French.
(48:26):
Riviera, the Mofi coast, yeah.
Speaker 4 (48:29):
Oh, that's gonna be awesome.
Yeah, my goal is always to howmore good can I do and how can
like any this that comes out ofthis is to drive you know into
investment to the community.
How can we do better things andto support our ecosystem,
support other you know startups.
So for me, the driver is notjust about money, but actually
how can we give back and how canwe make more out of it for
(48:51):
other people as well.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Oh, I got two kids in college so you can start with
them back there.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Yeah, I have two as well, so they're gonna need jobs
, so they're gonna need to gettheir resumes together now.
So when these guys raise money.
They're gonna be looking forpeople.
So that's the one tough thingin Cincinnati is talent.
You know, trying to find enoughtalent, because it all seems to
coalesce on the on the coast.
So it's like getting that goodtech talent here and multiplying
(49:17):
.
You guys Like, how do you dothat?
How do you find another brokeror another real estate guy with
enough experience to come in andknow what they're doing?
Like you have to train them,right?
Yeah, because they're working,they're doing their thing,
they're just like startup, Idon't, you know.
Like you have to bring somebodyand actually train them.
And that's tough.
I mean especially on whatyou've done and how you've built
it, the, the language you'veused to build it in.
(49:39):
Like there's a lot.
I mean we've been down thatroad and it's.
It can be, it can be tough, butI mean you guys got your heads
on your shoulders right.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
So our team is an amazing team.
That been really awesome.
Yeah, they take the feedback.
They run was that they workthrough it.
So it's been great to havereally good talent to drive this
forward.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
That's exactly what you need.
That's exactly what guys.
This has been awesome.
Good luck with everything.
Needle, thank you for having us.
Yeah, anything else you guyswant to say, or leave with the,
leave with the community here.
Is there a?
Is there an event coming up oranything that you guys are going
to be at to showcase whatyou've got going on?
Speaker 3 (50:13):
We'd be happy to you know present what we've got at
the event that you mentionedearlier at the top.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Oh, yeah, yeah, oh God, I can't even yeah, but no,
any of those kind of things thatyou want to do, like if you
want to get with Osh and getthere, I mean I could, yeah,
send that out to him and see ifhe's got some room or something
for you guys to jump in and just, yeah, do run a demo, get into
a room.
I mean, yeah, let's just run ademo in a room.
Like I mean, there's got to besome room.
Speaker 4 (50:39):
We can do demo anytime.
It's again, the solution is upor software is up, like we can
present anytime and get you know, provide.
Here's how it works, here's howeasy it is.
Here's the value to you guys.
I mean it's huge value.
Yeah, it's huge value.
We're excited, for sure.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
If you guys could do a demo and I know this is your
because your wheelhouse rightnow is the multifamily but a lot
of this is going to be thecommercial flex based stuff, I
think is what they're reallygoing to be looking at for this.
I think it's more like a beyondmultifamily type conference.
Speaker 4 (51:11):
If you think about it , I'm not overly concerned about
the other verticals because wehave access to the data.
Yeah, the only thing is justabout training our models.
So the software is up.
The next step is, like you needthis vertical, whatever.
It is like great, we havealready have access to all the
data in the country for everycommercial asset property, so
that's not an issue I mean forevery.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
I'm just saying when you, when you go to gear, you're
when you go to gear just forthe crowd you're going into.
I was just like you know oh,thank you.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
Yeah, that makes sense, but as we're thinking
about the solution itself, wehave access to all the data.
The solution is built right nowis building another model for a
very specific type of propertyand pushing those, those results
from the models, into thesoftware, and it could be as
simple as on the leads page.
Potentially it could be likehey, you just multiply the
product.
(52:00):
Yeah, filter by whatever typeof property you want, and that
could be the exterration.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
So love it, love it.
Well, guys, thanks for comingin today.
Speaker 3 (52:08):
This has been awesome Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
It's been great and sharing with people because they
you know, people don't know,they don't know where they stand
with their stuff and they needto understand different
perspectives and how you guysdid your thing and you don't
have to be 21 years old to do astartup Like, yeah, you can be
fully into a career.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Well, and there's no way that I or myself that we
could have gotten to where we'reat or have the experience or
the knowledge of how to do this,even do this.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
Yeah, like you, yeah, yeah, no way.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
Yeah, we would have probably, yeah, stumbled a lot
more.
I mean, we're still sumbling,but a lot more Sure.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
There have been some drinking binges kind of in
between there too, and a littlebit of party and some
girlfriends getting in the wayLike it would have been some
issues, younger days, all rightguys.
Well, I really appreciate it,thanks.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Yeah, thank you, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,Side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(53:17):
Thank you.
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