Why are many of the most successful real estate agents true entrepreneurs at heart? How is Redfin able to focus on solving the core issues of the real estate agent and in turn solve problems for the homebuying consumer? What has been the driver of more and more homebuyers looking to purchase real estate properties outside the US? Why is purchasing real estate internationally such a black box? What are the primary differences between purchasing a home in the US and purchasing a home in Mexico? Why is working with a real estate agent in Mexico as important for home purchases as it is in the US? Why aren't cross border mortgage products more readily available to international homebuyers? How do marketplace business models make or break growth dynamics for early stage tech businesses? Why are the best real estate agents so relationship focused? What telephony challenges for international real estate transactions has Far Homes needed to build technology to help solve? Why has technology for the real estate agents in Mexico not achieved the adoption levels of their US counterparts? How do you solve for listing aggregation when there is no MS equivalent in international markets? What are the profile types of US buyers purchasing internationally? Are there opportunities to create deeper technological innovation within cross-border home buying?

Chet Kittleson - co-founder and CEO of Far Homes, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how watching the personal struggles and triumphs of his real estate agent mother created a love of home ownership and a deep entrepreneurial drive from these deeply impactful childhood experiences.

Why does coming to terms with the fact that you won't lose everything by becoming an entrepreneur help founders cross a mental threshold for diving into a new venture? How did the term 'burn it to the ground' directly apply to the entrepreneurial ventures of Brandon's family? Why is galvanizing a team and building a great culture central to entrepreneurial success? What was the importance of Geokey being hardware agnostic? Why is it important to use data to make better decisions and to then pivot based on these insights? What are the benefits of having a solid grasp of all functional groups and how they holistically impact an organization? Why is understanding the impact on NOI critical to companies looking to enter the multifamily space? What is the difference between a B2B company and a B2B2C company in the multifamily space? How many times on average does a person in a multifamily unit access their unit daily? What are the benefits of hardware implementations in multifamily? What does it mean to do deep integrations in the mobile access space for multifamily? Are there challenges to retrofitting an existing building for mobile access? What are the critical differences between multifamily and student housing industries that proptech companies need to fully understand?

Brandon Peterson - co-founder and CEO of Geokey, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how being part of a serial entrepreneur family that has started more than 50 businesses across multiple industries, sees that success many times boils down to having a good idea that solves a problem and surrounding this idea with a team of great people who want be part of the journey.

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

Kathleen Egan- co-founder and CEO of Ecomedes, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a missed opportunity to be a Disney Imagineer led to a career in consulting that enabled her to cultivate her broad interests as an intellectual dilettante.

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

Eric Law- co-founder and CEO of Urban Machine, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss why reclaimed lumber hitting price parity with virgin lumber is such an important milestone for the construction circular economy.

How are many investors today differentiating proptech and construction tech? Is entrepreneurship genetic or learned? Why are the siloed dynamics typically involved in construction processes? What are the realities and challenges that residential homebuilding laborers face on the job site today? Why do we need a supply side solution to the housing crisis? How is BotBuilt's robotic system optimizing for cost efficiency? Why is velocity important in building momentum for a new startup brand and how did participating in YC help this? What factored into BotBuilt's decision to bridge the gap between what is happening today in home construction and then pursue what is possible in the future using robotic manufacturing? How does the type of lumber (driven by cost) factor into the panelized framing products being produced today? Why did BotBuilt choose to target custom home builders to begin with? How quickly can framers complete a home with BotBuilt's penalized system? Why is understanding construction culture so important for technology startups within this space? How has robotics become more normalized in construction over the last few years?

Brent Wadas - co-founder and CEO of BotBuilt, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss why he joined the military later in life, the leadership skills he developed while serving in special operations, and how he has translated this experience into the lofting goals he is pursuing with his team at BotBuilt.

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

Robin Rivaton - CEO of Stonal joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how European Union and country policy mandates are impacting the real estate industry and driving change for the better.

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

Aleks Gampel - co-founder & CEO of Cuby Technologies, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how a childhood fascination with big city building architecture led to a career in real estate development and proptech.

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

Sean Roberts - CEO of Villa, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how consumer psychology is underappreciated as a driver of consumer behavior and sentiment for how individual consumers look at real estate.