What inspired Karly and Alena to found Hardline and how did their professional journeys shape the company’s mission? What are the biggest operational pain points Karly saw construction teams face that technology failed to address effectively? How does Hardline define “on-site tech enablement” and why is this an overlooked opportunity in the broader contech space? What were the early customer signals that validated the need for Hardline’s solution? How did time in the field influence Hardline's product design decisions and what constraints did they deliberately build around? Why does Hardline emphasize frontline usability over back-office integrations? How does Hardline think about trust-building with trade partners and GCs in an industry often slow to adopt change? What role did bootstrapping play in refining Hardline’s go-to-market strategy and product-market fit? How has the team navigated fundraising and investor education for a company rooted in field operations rather than data analytics? Why do Karly and Alena believe the next wave of construction technology will be shaped by founders with firsthand experience in the trades?

Karly Heffernan and Alena Tuttle - co-founders of Hardline, join Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the decisions to pursue passion at work with tech startups over lucrative established professional careers.

Why is creating real value for the end customer critical for startups to ensure a going concern? How has construction become responsible for such a large portion of global pollution? What did Jennifer observe about the construction space that she identified as a process opportunity for differentiating her firm from competitors? Why is there so much mistrust within construction? What about the tangibility of construction was so compelling to Jennifer? Why was starting a construction business during a recession an unexpected blessing? Why was the adoption of BuilderTrends instrumental in Jennifer scaling Scala Construction? What drew Jennifer back to entrepreneurship despite the success of her construction company? Why has the European adoption of construction innovation exceeded the pace of what is happening in the US? What about the Netherlands' historical business culture has contributed to its adoption of innovative construction technology? What factors have driven the circular economy adoption within Europe? Why is performance replacing sustainability in the construction technology vernacular? How has WerkWell established itself as a trusted bridge between European building materials and technologies and the US market? Why is building with resiliency the next frontier for construction in the US?

Jennifer Koster - CEO and founder of WerkWell Holdings, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how an off-the-cuff comment from her father led her to leave the technology startup world and jump into real estate construction.

What are the similarities between the terms 'proptech' and 'I love you'? Why was learning to speak English so important for Oscar? What lessons on entrepreneurship did Oscar learn from being a real estate agent? Why is it important to break out of your comfort zone and put yourself in uncomfortable situations? What did Oscar learn about himself after working as an accountant for several months? Why is making mistakes so critical for entrepreneurs? How did the decision to build an international relocation consultancy come about? Why was the COVID pandemic so devastating for Oscar's original business? What insight caused Oscar to rethink the business strategy around international mobility and transform the business into a software technology platform for all key stakeholders? Which issues were international students and professionals facing regarding their residencies post move-in that pointed to the need for a holistic real estate management solution? Why are professionals increasingly seeking international work experiences?

Oscar Rubio - CEO and co-founder of Lodgerin, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how attending university internationally helped him develop the necessary expertise to reinvent himself as a relocation expert for students and professionals.

How are Norway and the Upper East Side related in Joachim's mind? Why did Joachim decide to pursue a corporate job after initially starting as an entrepreneur? What makes 40 year old entrepreneurs more likely to succeed than some of their younger counterparts? What sparked the entrepreneurial desire within Joachim? How did Joachim and his team turn a customer's bankruptcy into a spinout opportunity for a new product company? Why have shared spaces in multifamily buildings been largely ignored by technology device vendors? What is Defigo doing with AI to help solve building accessibility issues that handicapped residents face? Why is the ease of Defigo installation a major point of pride for Joachim? What is Defigo's integration strategy with other solution providers? Why is Defigo exploring a white label strategy for its access device solution?

Joachim Stray - CEO and founder of Defigo joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the differences between selling and GTM strategies in the US and Europe, including the relative importance of security between the different regions.

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

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

Brian Elbogen - CEO and co-founder of Jubilee Homes, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a conversation with a professor on a recruiting trip around the opportunity to study operations researched tipped the scale in favor of attending Princeton over the Univeristy of Penn.

How does proptech differ for asset classes depending on the customer needs and expectations? Has AI adoption and development todate been more front-of-house or back-of-house? Why are American management consulting firm jobs so sought after by recent university graduates in the UK? What was it like working on a consulting engagement for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London? How did experiencing corporate bloat while on engagements as a management consultant translate into a bias for operating very lean at Zumper? What led Anth to explore entrepreneurial ideas around real estate and technology? Why is hiring the first technical team member so difficult for a non-technical founder? What lessons did Anth learn about online marketplaces from studying the success of Craigslist? Why is it important to make sure you are building a business based on a full solution and not just a feature? What are some brutal learnings for the early GTM efforts of Zumper? Why is professionalization of multi-family still in its early days with lots of innovation still to happen? What consumer AI usage change is now emerging with ChatGPT's recent rollout of real-time web crawls?

Anthemos Georgiades - CEO and co-founder of Zumper, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss the difficult evolution he had to work through as a startup CEO once Zumper crossed the $10M ARR level and why this critical leadership change is something that isn't taught at business school.

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

Julie Kheyfets - CEO of Block Renovation, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how working with insurance companies revealed to Julie how bad humans are at understanding risk due to our inability to think probabilistically.