Last Tuesday I ended my post with:
“So what is the market need to build a good end user facing CRE data platform? End users in CRE need to know where they SHOULD be regardless of where they are currently. It’s a hard question, but the first to build it will be the fist mover in more than one area.”
It got me thinking about why there is so much innovation in Silicon Valley but none is focused on CRE. People start businesses or new ventures in areas they are familiar with. They can get familiar through a degree at a university, by working in the department in an organization, working for a large vendor or simply experiencing it in their everyday life.
In CRE, that means there are almost no experts who come from a Programming/Development background who also deal with it on an everyday basis. The number of people who can start a new venture is extremely low making the probability that they jump out on their own very small.
There are almost no CRE degrees at known colleges – some master programs or MBA specializations but not undergrad. That means few students come out of school looking to work in the Real Estate group at Coca-Cola. Corporate real estate teams tend to be populated by people who have been with an organization for a significant amount of time and were eventually migrated there or people who came out of the brokerage community. Few people live CRE lease negotiations on a day to day basis making it difficult for experience to come about organically. There is a gap in providing a good startup culture.
I’ve been a student mentor the past 2 years at Georgia Tech and it has been a good reminder of just how isolated this industry can be. So few students have thought about going into Real Estate or even knew it was a possible route. It’s very low visibility.
So, reach out and encourage someone with a technical background to think critically about our problems or how to improve what we do. We need new blood and new ideas – and maybe that will lead to a good startup ecosystem.