I was very happy to be part of a panel at this year’s Blueprint conference.
Congrats to David Hirschman, Vik Venkatraman and team for assembling so much of the passion and talent within our industry in one giant space. In just a few years, they built Blueprint into one of the most important rallying points in our industry.
Thanks as well to my fellow panelists - Gavin Myers, David Weiden, Jenny Song - and moderator Sami Sparber.
Here’s some of what we discussed on stage:
1. “What are some of the latest, most exciting trends you’re pursuing within proptech?” -- I began by stating pretty emphatically how much I don’t like that question, but it was a great place to start, because Sami set me up to make a point that I think is really important. It’s not about trends. It’s not about hype cycles. It’s about the enormous gap between the massive scale of the real estate ecosystem and the still relatively low rate of technology adoption within that universe. Closing that gap is not easy, but there’s so much opportunity for people, and companies, and investors who figure out how to do it.
2. There is a robust and varied network of investors to support the best real estate technology entrepreneurs. This was not the case when we started Camber Creek. We were, to our knowledge, the first VC in the space exclusively focused on real estate technology. Now there are a number of firms with that focus in varying degrees. Gavin described Prudence as a former generalist, and David got excited about what he called moonshot investments, companies that will most likely fail, but if they succeed, will win big.
3. Jenny talked about insisting new technologies - be it crypto, AI, etc - solve existing problems within real estate. It’s a good bar to set, which many people don’t.
4. This one's obvious: great founders matter – Too great a focus on trends can obscure this constant. It’s evergreen.
All in all, quite an enjoyable panel.
#realestatetechnology #proptech #venturecapital #conference