Loading summary
Transcript171 lines
- [00:00]
T Mobile Announcer
Presented by T Mobile, the official wireless partner of Odyssey Sports. With an awesome network and great savings, there's never been a better time to join T Mobile. Visit your neighborhood store to make the switch today.
- [00:12]
Jason
Yeah, I like Jersey. It's, you know, less people.
- [00:15]
Evan Pettit
Yeah, it's nice.
- [00:28]
Joel
All right, looks like we are live. So, Evan Pettit, welcome to the show. Excited to have you back. We've had some great discussions just offline and just trying to get through Covid, you know, trying to, you know, power through the remaining year and hopefully put 2020 behind us. But I think, you know, there's a lot of exciting things ahead. So excited to kind of spend some time with you, with the community. We've got people all over the world dialed in, and we've got people that probably live just a couple miles away from us. So normally it would take like five minutes to meet that person, but with transit and with all that stuff, as you know, it could take two hours to meet somebody the way that New Jersey and New York have their connectivity going on. So. So you're in North Jersey, right?
- [01:21]
Evan Pettit
Yep. And thanks so much for having me, Joel. It's great to be here. Like you said, it's been a wild year. A lot of ups and downs. Looking forward to closing the chapter on 2020 and starting a new one in 2021. But, yeah, so I am located in northern New Jersey, Bergen county, small town called Glenrock, and spent seven years in New York City.
- [01:52]
Absolutely loved it there.
- [01:53]
Then moved outside of New York City to Hoboken for a couple years. And I just got married in October, and my wife is a elementary school teacher. So Hoboken was a nice kind of common ground for us. I was commuting to the city every day. That's where Metaprops offices. And my wife, Kelly, she was in northern New Jersey, so couldn't get her to come to New York City. That didn't make sense for Hoboken was kind of a nice common ground for us. And then, you know, when Covid hit, I wasn't commuting to New York City nearly as much. You know, a lot of our favorite bars and restaurants were kind of closed down and. And we were both working from home, and our one bedroom apartment felt a lot smaller than it normally did. We actually just got a new dog in May, so we had a puppy running around. It was loud. We were trying to work from home and we decided that we needed more space. So we actually just moved into a townhouse in northern New Jersey. So maybe a year earlier, than I would have liked because once you make the trip to the suburbs, it's tough to go back to the city, I feel like. So I was holding on to that for as long as I could, but it's been a pretty smooth transition. And, you know, we've been working remote since March. Metaprop's office is open for emergency purposes in Manhattan. Right now we're on 39th and 7th. But I've only been in a couple times over the last few months, so nice to have a little bit more space. And, you know, I'm in our basement right now, so it's been, it's been pretty good. Can't complain.
- [03:44]
Joel
Yeah, no, it's great. So tell me about the wedding. You know, did you guys do kind of like a virtual zoom wedding or how did you guys. How did you guys do it with the family? Is it postponed? Like, is it. Was it just a ceremony and then kind of a bigger party later or.
- [03:59]
Evan Pettit
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that question.
- [04:02]
That's.
- [04:02]
It's been, it's been a roller coaster for anybody who, you know, was supposed to get married over the past, you know, eight months or so. I'm sure they can relate as well. Our original wedding date was May 15. So Covid hit, you know, really bad at probably the beginning of March. And that's when we realized that we.
- [04:26]
Weren'T gonna be able to have, you.
- [04:28]
Know, the wedding that we had set out to plan and things like that. We had about 150 people invited, so we moved the wedding back from May to November, so about six months, thinking that would give us enough time. You know, people had to make some very difficult decisions. There wasn't much time to really, you know, assess the situation and figure things out. And everything was still very uncertain as well. And then, you know, the more time that went, by the summer and into the fall, we kind of realized, you know, November, you know, we weren't going to be able to have the 150 person wedding. And so we decided, you know, we really don't want to put our lives on hold much longer, you know, kind of take control of things. And so we decided to, you know, do a small outdoor wedding in October. We had 30 people there, you know, our closest friends and family. Fortunately, we got a beautiful fall day where it was about 65 degrees. You know, if it was cold and rainy, that really would have been tough. But so we kind of lucked out with that and, you know, we made a great day out of it. I really think there's something to be said to have your closest friends and family there, you know, intimate setting, still very special. And so we've put off kind of the big reception until October of 2021, so hopefully we'll be good to go by then. I'm optimistic about that time, but it turned out to be a wonderful day. And if anything, I do think that the trend of kind of smaller, more intimate weddings will sort of start to take off in the near future and beyond.
- [06:20]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [06:20]
Joel
No, it's great. Do you think some of the venues are. I guess, do you think a lot of them were pretty forgiving with postponing and stuff? Because it's got to put a crunch on some of the venues as well.
- [06:31]
Evan Pettit
Absolutely.
- [06:32]
The whole industry has really been crushed. You know, if you're a band or a dj, if you're a florist, you know, it's really. Photographers even. It's really difficult. And the venues especially. And so, you know, I guess every venue is a little different because, you know, we were so close to having our actual wedding. We had a lot of money tied up in the venue and, you know, to try to have it be as peaceful of a situation as possible. You know, we both agreed, you know, that if we could find a date whenever that is.
- [07:15]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [07:15]
Evan Pettit
Or we could have the wedding that we kind of signed up for, you know, that we would be comfortable moving forward with them. So with us it was fairly cordial. But I'm sure that venues and the industry is. Is having, you know, some. Some issues with some sort of lawsuits and things like that, which is tough. But, you know, again, I do think that there will be a lot of positive outcomes that, that come from kind of COVID And fortunately our venue has been in business for, I think it was like 80 years. Family business. They've done really well. One of the reasons why we went with them was, was because of kind of the customer service and things like that. So. But it's been difficult to kind of go through all those ups and downs, particularly for the brides and things like that. But fortunately, I think we made the most of it.
- [08:08]
T Mobile Announcer
Presented by T Mobile, the official wireless partner of Odyssey Sports. With an awesome network and great savings. There's never been a better time to join T Mobile, visit your neighborhood store to make the switch.
- [08:19]
Evan Pettit
Today we're married and very happy to move on with our lives and, you know, excited to throw the big party in 2021.
- [08:28]
Joel
Yeah, no, it's exciting and we're going to talk about community in a little bit, but I Think part of it is really just building the community and where you live because if you guys have a good experience and you're going to tell all your relatives to go there too, and that's probably what's kept them in business. So, yeah, we recently started using. We, you know, recently it was my wife's birthday, so we got like a, like a diamond, like diamond earrings and we, we don't really have like a family jeweler, but you know, we had a really good experience with that one person that we worked with and they, you know, they just kind of left us with a good feeling. So now it's like, if anybody asks us, we definitely would like highly recommend them. So I think it's kind of a long game. And you know, you talk about that with, with LPs and fundraising, but there's so many other parallels in life with just customer service.
- [09:19]
Interviewer/Host
Right.
- [09:20]
Evan Pettit
Referrals, customer service, especially in that industry and in many others, as you mentioned, that's the name of the game. So you gotta, gotta make a good.
- [09:28]
Impression and a lasting impression.
- [09:30]
Interviewer/Host
Sure, absolutely.
- [09:31]
Joel
Well, hey, excited. Glad that you guys made it happen.
- [09:35]
Evan Pettit
Right.
- [09:36]
Joel
We got a guest here. We got Zach Firestone. So see him in there.
- [09:41]
Evan Pettit
What's up, Zach? Good to see Zach here.
- [09:46]
Joel
Yeah, it's funny because when I did his episode, like a lot of his random friends popped in too. So glad that he's able to zoom bomb also return.
- [09:57]
Evan Pettit
Very cool.
- [09:58]
Good man, Zach.
- [10:00]
Joel
Evan is number one. Thanks for popping in, Zach. So, you know, I'm going to ask you the same thing that I asked Zach, you know, a couple episodes ago. You know, let's talk about your career into VC. MetaProp is a very well known prop tech company. You guys have been known to just invest in a lot of innovative companies, transforming the built world. But let's take a step back because some of the people in the audience are looking to break into vc. Some of them like to do direct investments. But as far as your journey, everybody has their own unique journey. So how did you break in and what was your pathway to get started?
- [10:46]
Evan Pettit
Yeah, it was, you know, a long road to get to where I am. So I started out at a college. I worked for a commercial real estate company doing some sales and finance stuff for them. You know, sort of learning the tricks of the trade in real estate. When I graduated from College, it was 2009, very difficult time in the market. A lot of my teachers in college were telling us to stay and get our masters at that time and things like that. I ended up getting A job for a commercial real estate company. Learning real estate, you know, thinking it was an industry that I wanted to learn more about, wanted to kind of hang in. And then I kind of got my first big break working at a hedge fund in Manhattan called Golden Tree. So pivoted a little bit there, opportunity came up in their operations group. Worked there for four years doing operations for them, some treasury and you know, had, at this point I was kind of entering my late 20s, had a good job for a good company, you know, getting paid well. I just, at the end of the day I really, I wasn't being fulfilled with kind of, you know, it felt more like a job and not a career, if that makes sense. Kind of felt like I was on the hamster wheel a little bit.
- [12:17]
T Mobile Announcer
Presented by T Mobile, the official wireless partner of Odyssey Sports. With an awesome network and great savings. There's never been a better time to join T Mobile, visit your neighborhood store to make the switch.
- [12:28]
Evan Pettit
Today my job was becoming more of a full time fund accountant role. That was kind of where the growth opportunities was. And so I decided to go back to business school. I went to Baruch College, the Zicklin School of Business. I was living in New York City at that time, so really great kind of value for your education. And so I spent two years there with kind of the goal of just, you know, pursuing something that I was more passionate about. What that was at the time, I'm not really sure I was crossing things off my list, but ended up coming across Metaprop. In the very early days there was an internship available, an MBA level internship. At the time they had kind of raised a friends and family fund, very small, just a couple million dollars. They were running an accelerator program, doing a lot of cool things. You know, I was very interested in entrepreneurship, obviously Metaprop, they were focused on real estate technology. So I had some real estate experience, some finance experience and I kind of wanted to, you know, get in at the ground level of whatever company. You know. Golden Tree, the hedge fund I was at, had a very corporate structure to it. So, you know, 15, 20 people in my operations group, 50 people on my floor, three different offices, shook the CEO's hand once at the Christmas party. In four years, it's very much a small fish in a big sea type feel. And so came across the opportunity at Metaprop, went in, met with Aaron Block, the managing partner and Zach Aarons, the other co founder and kind of immediately just fell in love with their, you know, their, their ambition, their energy. And at the end of the day, you know, I was kind of like, whatever these guys are building, I didn't necessarily have the best grasp on at that second, but I was like, I really want to get on board and just, you know, work hard and try to achieve the same goal that these guys are because, you know, I kind of, I caught up, I kind of bought into it. So I started with an internship at MetaProp for about eight months and as my graduation date came up, ended up getting a full time job with Metaprop. And so, you know, the evolution of my progress within the company sort of reflected the evolution of how Metaprop had kind of pivoted what our core business was along the way. Like I mentioned, when I first started at Metaprop, they had a friends and family fund, a couple million dollars, and they were running their accelerator program. And so, you know, I would help with recruitment of the accelerator program, I would help with programming, putting on the demo day event, throwing some other events, and helping with kind of our advisory work at the time, which we now call innovation services. And so along the way I kind of started focusing more from operations and research into what we called community. And so community sort of encompassed finding creative ways to get the strategic side of real estate. So the owners, managers, developers, construction companies, brokerages, the investors in real estate, and you know, the, the tech startup side of real estate as well.
- [16:33]
T Mobile Announcer
Finding creative, presented by T Mobile, the official wireless partner of Odyssey Sports. With an awesome network and great savings, there's never been a better time to join T Mobile, visit your neighborhood store to make the switch today, ways to.
- [16:46]
Evan Pettit
Get all of them to really engage. And so that included doing work with the accelerator program, which we can talk a little bit more about. That included running NYC Real Estate Tech Week, which was a week long series of events that took place in November. This was the first year we had to do it virtual. That included kind of preparing our weekly newsletter where we have about 30,000 tech and real estate enthusiasts that we send it to every week. And that included some of our industry research, like a couple white papers and.
- [17:30]
Reports that we publish.
- [17:32]
So that's when Metaprop really started pivoting from kind of, you know, we would say we were kind of the nexus of real estate technology, you know, finding ways to get our hands dirty in all different areas, to really pivoting and focusing on venture capital as our core business and building out the firm, which is now about 13 people now. And so, you know, we raised a second fund which was $40 million. We have about 30 core positions in that fund. And we are now raising our third fund. And that business is supported by what we call platform. So we have a team that leads startup services and basically they're just kind of putting wins on the board for all of the companies that we invest in through customer introductions and accessing a pool of talent, speaking opportunities and engagements, things like that. And also Innovation Services, which is kind of our management consulting arm in which we're providing strategic advice to a lot of our LPs, many of which.
- [18:49]
Who are those?
- [18:49]
Strategic real estate companies and then community as well. So through that platform we've been able to kind of lift everything else up with our core business of venture capital. And so, you know, I would say to an extent, I didn't necessarily set out to get into venture capital, but meeting, you know, the co founders and the partners and feeling that energy that I was kind of looking for in combining real estate and finance and entrepreneurship, which were three things that I was pretty passionate about, sort of pushed me in that direction. And you know, over the past few years I've had to kind of build up my muscle in the venture capital world to kind of get up to speed on things. So that's kind of my journey into venture capital.
- [19:40]
Joel
That's great. Yeah. And I'd love to learn a little more about the accelerator. So it sounds like is that were you kind of one of the early people that helped to build that from the ground up?
- [19:50]
Evan Pettit
Yeah. So Metaprop was founded in 2015 when I started my internship for meta profit was 2016. So they we have now to date graduated seven classes total, over 30 companies who have gone on to raise over $50 million. Great success story. One of them today, a company called Avail, was actually that was in the first accelerator class ever. So unfortunately I wasn't around, but I know the CEO fairly well. They were acquired by realtor.com today, literally today. So I mean that was pretty amazing. And one of the great success stories of the accelerator. Yeah, but so I came in, I helped recruit for the accelerator and helped put together a lot of the programming. So 22 week program. One of the cool things is every two weeks, all of the CEOs and we've recruited companies from all around the country and even a few in Europe. Barcelona, London, LA, San Francisco, Toronto. Every two weeks the CEOs would fly into New York to Metaprop's office to do to have an in person.
- [21:14]
Session which was pretty cool.
- [21:16]
And so we would bring in industry experts to help build up skills that we've sort of identified as being very important for these early stage companies, many pre seed or seed level, to help them build up these skills to succeed. And then the program at the end of the 20 weeks kind of culminated with a bi coastal demo day event. One in New York City, one in San Francisco. In San Francisco we would have it at Zillow's office in New York City. We had it at Blackstone's innovation space. One time we had it at WeWork Space. So you know, bringing a lot of important investors and players from around the real estate world, you know, into the same room to try to give these startups as much exposure as possible.
- [22:10]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [22:11]
Evan Pettit
So very rewarding program. It's a great source of deal flow for metaprop and one of I would say the most important things that metaprop is kind of sought out to achieve in our five years or so is really just helping startups grow and helping the real estate technology space take off. And I think the accelerator.
- [22:42]
Has been.
- [22:42]
A huge part of that and continues to be. And we've been fortunate enough to be able to partner with Columbia University. One of our co founders, Zach Aarons, is a professor at Columbia. He teaches a real estate technology or.
- [22:57]
A prop tech class.
- [22:58]
So we have pretty close ties to Columbia and they've been a great resource for us as well in the accelerator.
- [23:03]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [23:04]
Joel
And if one were to start an accelerator, any tips on where to start? Because I know there's a recruiting piece finding talented startups. So that would almost be pretty much like working at a fund. Right. I mean just focusing on the investment team. I'm assuming it's the same type of frameworks. But then the programming part is really thoughtfully organizing how you're going to put together those 22 weeks. And is 22 weeks enough? So maybe you can walk us through kind of, you know, if someone were to do this from the ground up, you know, what were some pointers that you would probably recommend for us?
- [23:44]
Evan Pettit
Yeah, so a few things that I can think of are, you know, give yourself plenty of time for recruitment. You know, you don't want to feel under the gun. We accepted between six and eight companies on average out of about anywhere from 150 to 200 applications. But what we realized the last few years is to give us an extra four to six weeks to find who the best six or eight companies would be. Very important to have a strong team and a lot of dedication to the program. Sometimes, you know, the best startups didn't make the best accelerator companies because they might not necessarily take it as seriously. So finding the right CEO and the right team is very important. One of the key recruiting points for us was that the team needs to have either a strong technical co founder or some sort of technical team, because especially in the early days, that's incredibly important. And finding a technical co founder is very difficult. So taking on a great idea or a great CEO without a technical co founder, you know, can definitely lead to some problems down the road.
- [25:12]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [25:13]
Evan Pettit
And then, you know, being able to leverage your network to, you know, the fullest extent, because, you know, 20 in 22 weeks, that was for us, 10 or 11 in person sessions. And for us to have, you know, a really great speaker or an expert in some sort of field, whether that was, you know, teaching their, you know, chief marketing officer how to properly market the firm, or talking to their head of business development on proper sales strategy for them, how to talk to the media, things like that, were all very important skills that they have to be able to build up in that time. So being able to leverage your network and understanding who you know, you can count on to be able to come in, make a really positive impression and help build the skills that these early stage companies really need in order to be successful in the future.
- [26:11]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [26:11]
Joel
And what was the application process? Was it just a survey that they filled out? Do they have to have like multiple interviews and meet your partners? I guess. How many rounds was the process?
- [26:23]
Evan Pettit
Yeah, so we would have a fairly quick filter. You know, there was a standard questionnaire of about 20 questions that people would have to fill out. You know, if they kind of passed that quick filter, I would kind of do an initial screening call, digging a little deeper. And then we kind of had a rule internally where they would have to talk to a minimum of two partners. At the time, we had three partners talk to a minimum of two partners.
- [26:58]
And get approval from both.
- [27:00]
And through that interview process, you know, there were times, you know, there were times where I think we only accepted five companies total. There were times where we accepted up to eight. And then of course, you know, the economics kind of have to work out and the timing and, you know, they have to, they have to agree to, you know, the in person meetings in New York, you know, for some people, particularly on the west coast or in Europe, you know, that that was a deal breaker for some, but that was something, you know, to get that in person time and to kind of build those relationships with your cohort and the other CEO, as we felt was really important. So, you know, it was very Difficult to kind of check all of those boxes and. But we were able to get to five to eight companies each time. So that was kind of how the recruitment process.
- [27:53]
Joel
Yeah, it's really helpful. And then as far as the 28, the 22 weeks, can you break that down into the big chunks of the pieces of content to get to demo day?
- [28:05]
Evan Pettit
Yeah. So, you know, the first, I would say eight to 12 weeks is kind of building up all of those skills that I kind of mentioned earlier. And then leading up to demo day, it's really grinding hard on your pitch deck because, you know, for a lot of these companies, they're very early, and being able to tell that story of their product or service was incredibly important. So we would just have, you know, iteration after iteration and, you know, in addition to that, being able to tell that story and give that presentation in front of a group of, you know, important investors and influencers around the industry is very difficult as well. So what we would do is we would leverage a couple of our partners at the time. You know, the Cushman and Wakefields of the world, the CBRE's, even Blackstone. We would kind of schedule these kind of practice sessions, you know, in their boardrooms and things like that. And we would bring in the entrepreneurs and they would kind of give their presentations and they would get constructive criticism from people from around the industry, what they liked, what they thought they could improve until they really kind of hammered down that pitch in preparation for. For demo day. And that proved to be very successful. And as a matter of fact, you know, some of the startups were even able to kind of create partnerships from some of these meetings with some of the larger players, which was pretty cool to see as well.
- [29:43]
Joel
What were some of the patterns of share whatever you're allowed to, but as far as the constructive feedback when it comes to just presentations, it's one thing when you're in a room, but then it's another thing where your nerves can get the best of you when you're on stage. So, you know, were some patterns like people talking too fast when they get on stage? Were they glazing over things? I guess. Did you see any patterns in just presentation style and just strong pitches and little tweaks that they could do to improve?
- [30:17]
Evan Pettit
Yeah, you mentioned one of them right away and that, you know, people tend to speak very quickly when, you know, they're under some sort of pressure and things like that. One of the big criticisms that we saw with decks is too much writing, a lot of writing on the decks. And we would have to kind of, you know, refine that down into, you know, just ideally a few words that were very punchy and then you could kind of speak on each of those or just one major image on a slide.
- [30:56]
Joel
Yeah, I don't know if anybody watches TED Talks anymore, but that's how TED Talks were. Right. It was just like a funny image and it was really focused on the storytelling.
- [31:06]
Evan Pettit
Exactly. So that's sort of what we would push for. And that becomes more difficult because when you're first making a pitch deck or giving a presentation, it's very easy to become reliant on, on all of the information on the slides. So you get reading the slides a little too much. So you could really tell who was doing their homework and who wasn't as much by how well they knew their pitch. And so developing that elevator pitch and then eventually being able to give it over eight minutes or so, it takes a long time. And to finalize those slides where it's very punchy and you're able to tell that story and they're not too wordy, it's very difficult. And to be able to get up there in front of, you know, 100 or 150 people, you know, relying on technology and other things like that, your microphone and whatnot, it's nerve wracking. And, you know, we'd always do kind of a dress rehearsal the night before.
- [32:08]
And it's amazing.
- [32:11]
You know, the actual demo days always go way better than the dress rehearsal. It always seems to come together, but, you know, and then everybody goes out for drinks afterwards. It's. It's very rewarding.
- [32:22]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [32:23]
Evan Pettit
You know, unfortunately, this is the first year that we weren't able to run our accelerator. Um, okay. We do plan on picking it back up next year. And as I said, we've had about seven classes to date, so it's been very successful.
- [32:36]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [32:37]
Joel
And what about the good pitches? So the, you know, some of the best presentations that you've seen. What are some traits that you've noticed.
- [32:45]
Evan Pettit
With, with that, you know, I think.
- [32:48]
It just goes back to how much time you're putting into it, how well you know your own pitch. You can really tell when people have it nailed, have it refined. You know, it's not as much, you know, energy up and down. It's kind of like a smooth flow where at the end you're kind of like, wow, I totally understand why this makes sense. Sense why the industry needs it and how this person explained it in a really digestible way. So you Know, a lot of it has to do with the amount of time and energy that you put into it that can kind of be seen and your ability to tell the story, kind of how well you know your own product or service at the end of the day.
- [33:34]
Joel
Yeah. And I mean that, I think that piggybacks onto your earlier point on just how serious the people are taking it. Right. I mean, I'm sure the final class that you choose are people that are super serious, but all those people are looking to, you know, be successful and you know, obviously raise a lot of money and move on to have several exits in the future. So it's, you know, I can tell that's one of your biggest selection criteria is that the commitment is there. And as far as the community, supporting the community for the demo day with the virtual world, now if you guys were to do it, are there any other tools that you think can help the demo day with Now a lot of people going virtual and using Zoom and Slack and now there's streaming demo days that you can stream. So I guess is that probably something that you're going to do, do it in person, but then also probably stream it to kind of get the reach of the globe as well?
- [34:38]
Evan Pettit
Absolutely. You know, we're learning as well through this process. It was a tough decision not to go through with the accelerator this year. I think at the end of the day, you know, we thought because we didn't have the time to do the preparation for how everything would work virtually that ultimately we thought it would be better to kind of just push to next year. But with a lot of the trends that are coming out of COVID and everything going virtual, you know, I'm optimistic that we'd be able to have an in person demo day next year. But with the software and the tools to be able to welcome a global audience to our demo day events. And actually, so as part of our community work, we lead NYST Real Estate Tech Week as well. That started in 2016, just had a couple events, you know, everything was free to attend. We're basically, you know, begging the real estate world and the prop tech world to kind of show up. I think There was about 400 attendees total across two or three different events. We've built that up. In 2019, we had 3,500 attendees represented by 40 countries attend 10 different events in New York City last November.
- [36:08]
Joel
That's incredible.
- [36:10]
Evan Pettit
We had Blackstone as our lead sponsor, Capital One rxr, Thornton Tomasetti, Goodwin Proctor, all sponsors.
- [36:22]
And you know, I think that's A.
- [36:26]
Big indication of how, you know, the industry as a whole has sort of taken off. And so we ended up, you know, we did go through with Real Estate Tech Week this year. It was all virtual.
- [36:39]
Joel
Yeah.
- [36:40]
Evan Pettit
And it was kind of anchored by the Propel by mipm event that's done by the Reed Medem team, which is a big French conference company. They do events all over the world. Their main one, miphone, is in Cannes, France, Hong Kong, London. And the one major conference they put on every year is during Real Estate Tech Week in New York City called Propel by MIPM. And last year it was a two day event that had about 2,000 plus attendees. And this year they put it on virtually for the first time. And, you know, you can definitely see that all of the major events and conference companies have really put a lot of time and effort into, you know, moving everything virtual. And they have a business that they have to run. It was free to attend, which is different than in the past. But you know, the numbers were huge. You had people from all over the world that were attending and listening to panels. And I do think that, you know, there's a lot to be said about meeting somebody in person one on one, but to be able to extend your reach, you know, globally to everyone is also pretty incredible. So I definitely think that, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of positives that are going to come out of, you know, moving everything virtual temporarily.
- [38:15]
Joel
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, one of the points we wanted to talk about too, just going one step further is your portfolio, you know, because you have the, you had the accelerator and then you guys also have the fund that you guys are investing out of is the accelerator. I guess those seven to eight companies is there just a small allocation that you guys put into those companies and then the remaining assets under management is mainly just to go directly and invest in early stage companies separately from the accelerator.
- [38:47]
Interviewer/Host
Right?
- [38:48]
Evan Pettit
That's exactly right. So on average, the accelerator companies are even earlier stage than many of our other investments from.
- [38:58]
Joel
So possibly pre seed.
- [39:00]
Evan Pettit
So possibly pre seed could just be really an idea with a CEO and a cto, but mostly pre seed and seed level. And part of the gig for the accelerator is we'll write up to a $250,000 check for the companies that graduate the program. So a smaller allocation than we would normally make for our portfolio companies, but nonetheless, we've had some of our most successful investments come straight from the accelerator. I mentioned avail today. There's another good example of a company Called Bowery Valuation. Special to me because they were in the first accelerator class when I started as an intern at Metaprop. And basically they do tech enabled commercial building appraisal. So a process that like the rest of the real estate industry has been done very old fashioned in the same way for the last however many years. And they have kind of streamlined that process from normally taking seven plus days to be able to complete a commercial building appraisal in under 48 hours. Um, so we kind of called them like the, the turbo tax of building appraisal.
- [40:28]
And so you know they steps and.
- [40:31]
Joel
Then you got the appraisal immediately.
- [40:33]
Evan Pettit
Exactly.
- [40:34]
They actually just recently raised a series B sometime within the last couple months. So you know, that shows kind of the evolution of their business from, you know, at that point it was really an idea. And two guys who came from the building appraisal industry through the accelerator and have now gone on to do some big things for themselves just raised a series B. And one of their first major partnerships and customers was Cushman and Wakefield who we put them in touch with. So one of the great success stories that, that came out of that.
- [41:15]
Interviewer/Host
Sure, that's great.
- [41:16]
Joel
And do you guys also do infrastructure and hardware and smart cities or is it mainly software? Is it a little bit of both?
- [41:25]
Evan Pettit
It's a little bit of both. On average, more software. But we also do have some hardware companies called Entertiv. They install a box in like your boiler room and they kind of, it's like the brain of your building almost. They track your data and analytics. They do kind of preventative maintenance stuff, you know, on your elevator if a pipe is, you know, at risk of bursting, things like that. And then, you know, tech enabled services as well?
- [41:56]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [41:56]
Joel
Do you feel that the hardware businesses sometimes can be a little more capital intensive than the software ones?
- [42:04]
Evan Pettit
I would say yes. I think that is definitely the case. Probably one of the reasons why you will find more software businesses in our portfolio compared to hardware.
- [42:20]
Joel
That's great. And the future of proptech, where do you think that's heading as a whole? We talked about smart CDs. I had a really good conversation with Zach about this and he was telling me his, his thesis on this. But you know, we've got, you know, I've seen, you know, I think in on the west coast, you know, there was a company that was like 3D printing houses. So do you see some of those kind of technologies making you know, family, you know, multi family units and just construction a little simpler or do you think that's still a little early to really go mainstream with that.
- [42:58]
Evan Pettit
Yeah, I mean, it's still probably a little early, but we're investing in a company called Branch Technology that recently just raised a Series B and they are like a 3D printing company through robotics. So this crazy robot, you know, will create these massive structures. I think they've, as of last year had created the largest 3D printing structure in the world. That was down in Tennessee where they're headquartered. And the material is incredibly strong and lightweight. So we're kind of in the process of finding more commercial uses for the 3D printing and things like that. But modular construction is something that we're pretty bullish on in the construction tech space.
- [43:50]
And then as a whole we've seen.
- [43:53]
Some really strong indications on why, you know, the Metaprof team is so excited about the space in general. One of the research reports that we do is called the Global Prop Tech Confidence Index. We release it twice a year, once just after the new year and once in the middle of the year. And although the numbers were slightly lower this year based on all the uncertainty with COVID and the election and things like that, one of the statistics that really stood out to us is that 89% of investors believe that the pandemic is accelerating the adoption of prop tech within the real estate industry. So for us that's a huge indicator. And the reason why is because I think everybody agrees that real estate is a very slow moving industry. It's kind of been done the same way for the past 75 years or so. So and now, you know, we believe that a lot of the, you know, old school owners, managers, developers, construction companies have sort of acknowledged that, you know, PropTech is here to stay and kind of embrace that. But one of the major hurdles is actually getting these important people in the real estate world to adopt these technologies, scale them throughout their portfolio. That's been really the difficult thing.
- [45:29]
And for anybody who's listening, I think.
- [45:32]
One of the great resources, if you're trying to learn more about PropTech or about why we're bullish on PropTech, the co founders of Metaprop, they wrote a book that was an Amazon bestseller new release for a little while called PropTech101. I'd be happy to comp copies of the book to anybody listening that would be interested. Joel, if you wanted to get your information, reach out to me with anybody who wanted a complimentary copy of the PropTech 101 book. I think that would be great. And part of the process for us is Kind of educating people on the prop tech world, especially the strategic real estate players and the legacy players, because I do think the industry as a whole agrees that tech is really disrupting.
- [46:31]
The industry, but getting everybody on board in the adoption.
- [46:35]
And one of the things the pandemic has done, obviously it's adversely affected some of the asset classes within real estate.
- [46:45]
But it's forcing a lot of these.
- [46:47]
Owners, managers, developers to come up with.
- [46:51]
Creative solutions to either make their building more efficient or look for ways to cut costs and things like that. So that's one of the reasons why we're very bullish on proptech. And then when you compare proptech funding compared to something like fintech funding, you know, we're still in the very early innings. And since 2015, PropTech funding is more than quadrupled. I believe in 2019 there was 13 + billion invested into PropTech companies in that year, which was more than 4x where we were in 2015. So, you know, clearly we're on the upward trend. And you know, when you look at another industry like fintech, which really, you.
- [47:48]
Know, blew up.
- [47:52]
10, 15 years ago, I believe that proptech still has a ways to run and we're kind of still in the early innings there.
- [48:01]
Joel
And I think you make a good point. I think showing for the incumbents, showing the cost efficiency. So I think some of those technologies like heat Watch, where you put in like a device and then it may be automatically, because I've seen some technologies that can automatically update the heat settings so that you're, you're using, utilizing the heat in the most efficient way.
- [48:24]
Evan Pettit
Right.
- [48:25]
Joel
And then if you can show those numbers to the building and say, hey, I just saved you guys like 60 grand. I feel like that's the, the hand holding that you probably have to do to get to kind of help them understand.
- [48:37]
Interviewer/Host
Right?
- [48:37]
Evan Pettit
Totally. That's exactly right. Being able to show, you know, how much money can you save, how easy is it to install in your building and how, you know, easy is it to kind of scale across your portfolio are all very important things for us to be able to show and, or the startup CEOs to be able to show. And what we're seeing now these days is a lot of these building owners, they might be willing to pilot the product or service in one of their buildings, see how it goes. And if they have positive results, then maybe scale it to five to 10 buildings and then across their entire portfolio. So you gotta walk before you can run.
- [49:22]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [49:23]
Evan Pettit
And so that's a lot of what.
- [49:25]
We'Re seeing right now.
- [49:26]
Joel
What's some of the really cool stuff that you're seeing in the new buildings? You know, I've seen some buildings have like, like really modular, like, you know, transformative designs where like, you know, some of the furniture kind of like folds away on its own. And you know, we, we're in New York so we've looked at like Murphy Beds and I always get fascinated by those. But have you seen any newer kind of properties maybe and some of these other, you know, more, more forward thinking cities like Japan. You're right. Japan always has a lot of cool sci fi stuff with some of their tech, with some of their buildings. Any, any things that you've been seeing recently kind of at some of these trade shows or.
- [50:07]
Evan Pettit
Right, yeah. So, you know, over the past eight months people are rethinking buildings, you know, from their office space to their lobbies to their elevators. And a lot of what we're seeing now, especially with what's going on, even though, you know, hopefully the vaccine and around the corner things will start to slowly go back to normal.
- [50:33]
But you know, people walking into a lobby and having their temperature taken automatically, you know, using, using certain kinds of technology, then being able to enter the elevator with touchless access so you're not pressing buttons, things like that. Then being able to enter your office space through an app like Latch or something else where you can scan your.
- [51:02]
Phone and go in.
- [51:03]
You're not pulling door handles and things like that. And then going into your office and having certain.
- [51:13]
Covers for your steam heaters.
- [51:15]
To trap the air and things like that to create a more comfortable temperature control and having, you know, sensors on the ceiling which are tracking space management so people aren't, you know, it's not overpopulated in certain rooms and things like that. These are all kind of trends that people are taking into consideration way more now and into the future than they.
- [51:42]
Have in the past.
- [51:43]
Air quality is another, is another part.
- [51:47]
Of that as well. So those are a few of the.
- [51:50]
Things that we're seeing being implemented into a lot of the buildings and the owners that we've talked to that are really top of mind at this point.
- [51:59]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [52:00]
Joel
No, it's really interesting. Well, I know we have about seven minutes, so I'll open it up for some questions. But yeah, that's really interesting. I think one, you know, I was at, I think I was at Nordstrom like a couple days ago because my wife wanted to pick up some gifts and I was like pressing the elevator with like my finger covered you know, I was kind of doing one of these things. I was like, man, that should totally just be a hover thing. You know, you hover over it. And then I even thought, like, with my phone, like, I thought that would be a really innovative gesture for Apple as well. Like, you know, if you kind of, like, just hovered over the screen instead of having to touch it. So I think maybe that could be a new type of, like, human computer interface where it's just kind of a hover gesture in general, and that could probably have a lot of other opportunities. But then, you know, I think the other thing is really the cost for retrofitting versus upgrading all the systems. And there's always probably some type of prioritization that goes along with that as well. Exactly.
- [53:05]
Evan Pettit
Right.
- [53:06]
Joel
Yeah. Especially with the incumbents as well.
- [53:09]
Evan Pettit
Cool.
- [53:10]
Joel
Well, hey, you know, we got five minutes. What I usually do with every guest is kind of heading towards the end. Just ask the guests if they have any parting words of wisdom. You know, could be a piece of advice that you got from a mentor or just kind of a life lesson that you've carried along with you in your career journey.
- [53:29]
Evan Pettit
Cool.
- [53:30]
You know, for me, I would say it is, you know, pursue something that you're passionate about. You know, I made a very difficult decision that changed my career in my late 20s. I could have been, you know, I was set up pretty well to kind of sit at this cubicle for the next 10 to 15 years. I was one of the younger people at that time, and looking around and people were married and had kids, and, you know, this was kind of what they were going to do for a long time coming. And, you know, I just kind of decided that, you know, that wasn't the right path for me. There was more out there that I wanted to pursue. And so, you know, sometimes you have to make difficult decisions to kind of find, you know, a path that you might be more passionate about. And, you know, I say sometimes that I took a half step back to take two steps forward. And looking back at where I am now, you know, it was absolutely the right decision. But, you know, my advice would be sometimes you have to make tough, tough calls in order to continue improving your career or pursuing something, you know, that will make you happy at the end of the day.
- [54:50]
Joel
Yeah, super helpful advice. So go ahead and open it up for questions. Anybody in the audience have any questions? I think, Jason, you had a question, right?
- [55:08]
Jason
I have one, yeah.
- [55:09]
Evan Pettit
Great.
- [55:09]
Joel
Okay, go ahead.
- [55:11]
Jason
So thanks, Evan. It's pretty, like, interesting, and, you know, it's I'm like at my late 28 and I could relate to what you just said because whenever I call my friends from college, everybody has one, two kids having houses and stuff. You know, like when you said that, it really like hits it, right, Right?
- [55:27]
Joel
Yeah.
- [55:29]
Jason
One question that I want to ask is like, what do you think will be the, like the future of protech in terms of like the space or like small segment? Like, is there like a. I see like some startup which is like a, you know, it's like a dom for like adults, like kind of similar to like a week walk, kind of like we live kind of thingy or like some like startup that I see that you. It's like a mix of rent to own clay, but then they mix it with some financing magic at the back. So it's a little different. You pay a rent and then it's like paying a loan, like interest in the principal. Right. So they kind of structure it that way. So I see a lot of stuff like that. And I'm very new to proptech. Like my parents do property business, so I've seen it, but I've never really get into it. So can you tell me a little bit more about the things that you will see in next five years?
- [56:14]
Evan Pettit
Sure. So, you know, proptech, very broad as a whole. You know, you can break prop tech down to construction tech, smart buildings. Obviously, technology is disrupting all different asset classes, whether that be, you know, single family, residential, multifamily, office. You mentioned that your parents were kind of property managers and things like that. And, you know, the multifamily industry has been, you know, hit pretty hard during COVID It's forcing people to make changes. And one of the portfolio companies that we have is a company called Till. And Till helps multifamily owners and landlords with rent collection by creating sort of a personalized payment schedule for tenants. They've really picked up with a lot of traction since COVID And what will happen is, you know, let's say I move into a new apartment in one of the buildings that uses Till. I will kind of take this questionnaire. They'll get a better understanding of what my income is and when during the month that I will sort of, you know, be the most cash healthy at that time.
- [57:38]
And let's say I was paying, you.
- [57:40]
Know, let's just say $2,000 a month for rent. They might take, you know, $700 for me on the 5th of the month and then $800 for me on the 15th of the month and the last $500 on the 22nd of the month. Because for my, you know, bank account and based on my income, that makes the most sense. So that's kind of one example where I sort of see rent collection going is not necessarily having to pay rent on the 1st of every month. And actually a lot of the building owners that have used till in the past have improved rent collection by, I think it was like 60% or something like that since going on their platform. So that's one example of how I see things changing, you know, which is a very outside of the box idea. You know, rent collection, how we all know it has been done the same way for as long as I can remember. And people, especially lately, have been, you know, defaulting on rent payments and things like that. So that's one example of, you know, sort of a technology that's changing the way that, you know, multifamily owners are collecting rent.
- [59:03]
Joel
Yeah. And I'd say in New York specifically, right. If you want to move into an apartment, you got to drop at least nine to $10,000 just to. Just to get in. And then I would say the property. Buildings have to hold that money with no interest as well. So there's probably a cost to store that. So I spoke with, I think, Rhino several years ago and I, from what I remember, I think they were tackling that problem with like a partner with a reinsurer. And, you know, if you, instead of having to pay the 10 grand up front, I think you just pay your rent. And I think there's like a. Think there's like a monthly fee that you pay, but it's just definitely cheaper than having to pay all that upfront. I'm not sure if you talked to Rhino or any other companies that are doing that, but I thought that was a pretty innovative model as well. Just kind of, if you don't pay, then you've paid an insurance every month and then the insurance will cover it and everybody's covered because normally people pay their rent. So insurance companies would get the premium anyways, Right?
- [60:10]
Evan Pettit
Yep, Yep, exactly.
- [60:12]
Yeah.
- [60:12]
Another interesting value proposition. And I think in general, you know, real estate is, is it's being rethought and it's being reinvented. It's an exciting industry to. To be a part of.
- [60:26]
And, you know, I'm really looking forward.
- [60:29]
To seeing where it goes. And hopefully Metaprop will be there along the ride.
- [60:34]
Joel
Yeah, absolutely. Well, looks like we went through most of the questions. I think we Talked about the 3D printed buildings, we talked about modular design the negative voices in your head, how do you handle that? That's one of the questions here.
- [60:53]
Evan Pettit
It's always difficult. The negative voices, they creep in all the time. That's human nature. I think a lot of that is, you know, when. When you've spent enough time thinking about.
- [61:10]
A hard decision and wanting to do something else, the, you know, the part of you that's like, let's just jump and do it, starts to become the dominant voice in your head as opposed to, you know, that. That negative voice that might be saying, you know, we've done it for this long, let's keep doing it the same way. You know, this is the safe route. You know, getting too comfortable and being too safe. You know, at the end of the day, being content is not the best thing. It's usually the easiest thing. So, you know, challenging yourself to get out of your comfort zone and, you know, using your ambition and the positive thoughts to kind of outweigh the negative is sort of how I go about.
- [61:55]
A lot of that.
- [61:57]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [61:57]
Joel
That was really helpful advice. And I know we're a little over, so thanks for being generous with your time and hope to catch you soon. You know, hopefully with the wife at some point and, you know, next year, hopefully a lot of this settles down. So.
- [62:16]
Evan Pettit
Joel, it's been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate everybody tuning in and would love to send some PropTech101 books out to anybody who's listening. So that'd be great.
- [62:28]
Joel
What do you need? Just their name and address.
- [62:30]
Evan Pettit
That's it.
- [62:30]
Name and address.
- [62:31]
That'd be awesome.
- [62:33]
Joel
All right, I'll collect that and send it over to you. And thanks for that too. Really appreciate it.
- [62:37]
Evan Pettit
Perfect. Thank you.
- [62:39]
Thanks so much, Joel and Zach, thanks for tuning in. Take care.
- [62:45]
T Mobile Announcer
Presented by T Mobile, the official wireless partner of Odyssey Sports. With an awesome network and great savings, there's never been a better time to join T Mobile. Visit your neighborhood store to make the switch today.