Tangent: Conversations with Real Estate & Tech Innovators

Yardi CEO Rob Teel on Building Real Estate’s System of Intelligence & How to Serve Clients in the AI Era

Rob Teel is the CEO of Yardi, the property management and real estate investment software company founded in 1984 whose platform serves owners and operators of commercial and residential space worldwide. He joined Yardi in 2003 and spent more than two decades leading its Global Solutions business, overseeing product direction, services, and client relationships across investment management, international, and commercial property owners before being appointed CEO in January 2026. Before Yardi, he was a consulting manager at Accenture focused on ERP and business process outsourcing, where he managed multinational systems implementations for Fortune 100 organizations. Rob is based in Santa Barbara. (1:05) - Live from Javits Center at CREtech NY (02:08) Comparing innovation cycles (03:55) Private company advantage (06:33) Building AI without chasing short-term revenue (08:57) SaaS is dead? (10:38) Leasing chatbot evolution (14:38) Open vs. closed AI ecosystems (18:09) Build vs. buy tech (22:28) Non-real estate tech acquisition: Sidero Labs (24:10) Yardi lessons year 1 & year 23 (27:47) What’s overhyped and underrated in CRE AI (31:17) Collaboration superpower: Anant Yardi (Wiki) 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Yardi -Rob Teel on LinkedIn -Discover Yardi's AI platform Virtuoso 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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Improve CRE NOI by Cutting Energy Waste with Physical AI, with R-Zero CEO Jennifer Nuckles

Jennifer Nuckles is CEO of R-Zero, a physical AI platform that connects building data to continuously uncover energy savings and improve performance, delivering 20-40% HVAC energy savings with no major retrofit required. She previously served as EVP at SoFi and CMO at Zynga, and spent nearly a decade as a Global Business Lead at Clorox. She is a board member and chairperson of the American Lung Association and a trustee at UC Riverside. Based in San Francisco. (02:04) From room intelligence to physical AI (03:51) Buildings have known about waste for decades (05:00) What changed: hardware costs, software, and regulation (07:33) Energy as a constraint (08:12) Local Law 97 (10:08) The end of piloting: choosing and deploying (11:20) R=Zero model (14:23) Building efficiency investments (17:40) Savings Expectations: Qualcomm, Stanford Children’s (21:03) Energy as an NOI lever: 20-40% HVAC savings (23:53) The autonomous building continuum (25:22) What building owners get wrong about energy operations (28:32) Collaboration superpower: Walt Disney and Yannick Noah 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit R-Zero -Jennifer Nuckles on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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Protecting Homes After the LA Fires: The Case for Fire Prevention Tech, with CitroTech's CEO Wes Bolsen

Wes Bolsen is the CEO and board member of CitroTech (NYSE AM: CITR), the company behind the only EPA Safer Choice recognized fire inhibitor in the United States. Before CitroTech, Wes co-founded LaderaTech, a wildfire prevention company built on patents from Stanford University and MIT, which he subsequently sold to Perimeter Solutions (NYSE: PRM) and joined their leadership team overseeing global wildfire prevention ahead of the company's $2 billion public listing. He also served as board member and CEO of Imidex, a medical device company focused on early-stage lung cancer detection. Earlier in his career, Wes held executive roles at Cool Planet Energy Systems, Codexis (NASDAQ: CDXS), Coskata, and ICM, and consulted at McKinsey from 2000 to 2006 across the Chicago and Palo Alto offices. Wes is based in Oceanside, California. (02:08) From LaderaTech to CitroTech: why Wes came back (03:21) The Palisades fire & what it changes for developers (05:09) Why community-wide protection beats home by home (06:55) Suppression vs. prevention: the 1-to-7 cost argument (08:38) What home builders are hearing from insurance (11:02) Fire resilience as a marketing differentiator (14:39) Cost of fire-resistant construction vs. traditional methods (16:31) The three layers of CitroTech's approach (22:27) The Hexion JV (26:01) Getting into Lennar, DR Horton, KB Homes, and national spec (27:22) Fire risk across California, Colorado, Montana & Idaho (29:03) Mass timber, CLT, and the fire retardancy case (31:43) What a REIT looks like after deploying CitroTech (33:34) Collaboration superpower: Jesus and Elon Musk 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit CitroTech -Wes Bolsen on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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Industrial Real Estate Leasing from 12 Weeks to 1 Day, with Warehub's Founder James Holbrook

James Holbrook is an industrial real estate entrepreneur and technology innovator, and the founder of Payson Smith Holbrook and Warehub, where he serves as Executive Chairman. Over the past 5+ years, he and his team have led more than $500 million in industrial leasing transactions, representing landlords and tenants across millions of square feet of short-term warehouse space nationwide. Seeing early that industrial real estate was overdue for modernization, he founded Warehub, an AI-enabled platform built to digitize and accelerate the way warehouse space is discovered, leased, and activated. Today, his work focuses on reducing friction in industrial transactions and helping the logistics economy operate more efficiently through smarter use of data and technology. (02:24) 2,500 transactions and one infrastructure gap (03:57) What industrial real estate covers (05:39) Why short-term leasing demand is surging (07:11) Tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty (08:42) The hidden cost of vacancy (10:11) What to standardize vs. negotiate (11:38) What Warehub is & who it serves (13:42) Transactions from 12 weeks to one day (15:50) Early pushback and first transaction reality (17:03) AI-enabled vs. AI-native (19:43) The most underestimated force: volatility (22:22) Columbus, Kansas City, and the inland shift (24:00) AI-powered supply chain optimization (25:49) Self-driving trucks & underwriting for optionality (27:20) Power as the new site selection constraint (28:11) How the broker's role shifts with AI (29:59) Collaboration superpower: Aristotle 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Warehub -James Holbrook on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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The CRE Finance Back Office Problem AI Is Finally Solving, with PredictAP's Founder & CEO David Stifter

David Stifter has spent more than two decades at the intersection of real estate, technology, and finance. As Managing Director and functional CTO at Digital Bridge (formerly Colony Capital), he led data architecture, process improvement, and finance transformation initiatives across major acquisitions. In 2020, he co-founded PredictAP with a team of B2B SaaS and AI veterans from Blizzard, Apple, and HubSpot. Since then, the company has grown to serve more than 130 real estate firms and process more than 7 million invoices a year. David is based in Lincoln, MA. (02:20) From Colony Capital to founding PredictAP (05:11) When a $60B firm couldn't pay bills (07:23) Why invoice coding is harder than it looks (09:29) CAM pools, triple net leases, and the permutation problem (13:43) When institutional knowledge walks out the door (16:38) How to tell a real solution from a pretty demo (20:48) PredictAP: From inbox to Yardi in 30 seconds (24:47) Related Group, Cushman & Wakefield, and what 130 clients taught PredictAP (27:59) Why integration makes or breaks AP automation (30:17) Build vs. buy: what CFOs & COOs get wrong (33:51) Sheriff vs. shepherd: how to manage AI adoption internally (35:50) AP coding, audit risk, and financial misstatement (38:44) Collaboration superpower: Richard Feynman 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit PredictAP -David Stifter on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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The Risks CRE Investors Aren't Pricing In, with Moody's Analytics' Jeffrey Havsy

Jeffrey Havsy is the commercial real estate industry practice lead at Moody's Analytics, where he focuses on combining property fundamentals with economic, credit, climate, and alternative data to help lenders, investors, and operators make better decisions. He has spent his career at the intersection of economics and real estate, including roles at NCREIF and CBRE. Moody's Analytics covers more than 600 million public and private entities worldwide and generated over $7 billion in revenue in 2025. Jeffrey is based in Needham, Massachusetts. (02:46) From data scarcity to data curation (03:39) What lenders and investors miss beyond property fundamentals (05:34) Tenant credit, crime data, and truck traffic as signals (09:16) Moody's commercial location score explained (12:52) Cap rates: overrated, underrated, or misused (15:39) Moody's MCP launch and what it means for CRE decisions (18:32) Why Moody's stays AI platform-agnostic (20:44) Where the human stays in the loop (23:33) Physical risk vs. ESG (26:11) The hidden risks in industrial real estate (30:06) How robotics changes what a warehouse is worth (31:09) The one macro data point CRE ignores: productivity (33:10) Collaboration superpower: Abraham Lincoln 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Moody's Analytics / Moody's CRE -Jeffrey Havsy on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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Multifamily | AI Fraud Is Breaking Rental Screening, with Docuverus' CEO Jamie Borodin

Jamie Borodin is the founder and CEO of Docuverus, a document verification and fraud detection platform purpose-built for multifamily housing providers. With over 30 years in resident screening, Jamie founded Docuverus in 2017 to address a gap no existing tool was solving: authenticating income documents at the metadata level while simultaneously reading and calculating their contents. Docuverus is one of the only platforms with a direct connection to the Social Security Administration for synthetic identity detection. Jamie is based in southern New Jersey. (02:16) Why standard screening misses income fraud (05:03) How fraud evolved from COVID to AI-generated documents (07:13) What a sophisticated fake pay stub looks like today (09:09) What bad debt files actually reveal (13:10) Operators don't know how much bad debt is fraud (14:12) False security: when your PMS fraud tool isn't enough (18:27) Why bank account linking isn't fraud detection (19:11) Fraud hotspots: Houston, Atlanta, and why NYC is different (24:27) Social Security fraud and synthetic identity detection (25:36) What a CPN is and how it fabricates a credit file (27:58) Florida's felony law and the limits of regulation (29:29) Screening compliance: why the liability falls on the operator (33:27) Where fraud prevention goes as AI lowers the barrier (35:42) Collaboration superpower: Albert Einstein 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Docuverus -Jamie Borodin on LinkedIn -Sales line -Multifamily Applicant Fraud Trends Report: Q2 2026 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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How to Turn Property Data Into CRE Decisions, with ID Plans Chief of Growth Jordan Hearin

Jordan Hearin is the chief strategy officer at ID Plans, a platform that digitizes the physical reality of commercial real estate assets to support leasing, property management, construction, and asset management across the full property lifecycle. Founded in 1999, ID Plans now covers over 3 billion square feet across the US, with clients including Regency Centers, JLL, Brixmor Property Group, Kite Realty and DLC Management. Jordan is based in Tampa, Florida. (03:28) Who owns the CRE data problem (05:02) When leasing and property management diverge (06:00) How Proptech specialization fragmented teams (09:25) Data migration for traditional operators (13:38) Data diligence when buying a shopping center (16:22) Connecting leasing, ops, & construction (18:51) From vacancy to signed lease (22:20) Drone imagery & decision compression (23:53) Tenant selection strategy (27:14) Kroger, Amazon & grocery anchors (32:29) NYC city-run grocery stores (35:01) Collaboration superpower: Jon Gray 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit ID Plans -Jordan Hearin on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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How to Evaluate a Tenant Screening Vendor, Impact of ROAD to Housing Act to SFR Investors, with Boom Co-founder Rob Whiting

Rob Whiting is the co-founder and CEO of Boom, a proptech company building the future of rental financial services for residential property managers across single-family rental, manufactured housing and multifamily. Boom's three products — Boom Report for rent reporting, Boom Screen for applicant underwriting, and Boom CRM for agentic leasing and self-showing — serve hundreds of thousands of doors and count American Homes 4 Rent and Manage America among their key partners. Before Boom, Rob founded ventures in healthcare and education, including Haystack Health, a telemedicine company, and a financial aid organization focused on FAFSA access. Rob is based in Austin, Texas. (02:55) Why Rob built Boom (05:44) The ROAD to Housing Act, explained (07:11) The 350-home cap & how institutions keep buying (14:01) Rent reporting as a compliance path (16:09) What Boom does & who it serves (17:44) Is screening a commodity? Data quality & hit logic (21:51) How to evaluate a tenant screening vendor (25:47) How the ManageAmerica partnership came together (30:00) Lessons from partnering with AMH Homes (32:48) Closing the leasing stack gap with Boom CRM (35:52) Coexisting with Yardi, RealPage, & AppFolio (37:40) Collaboration Superpower: Daniel Ek 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Boom -Rob Whiting on LinkedIn -SFR Leasing Operating System Boom Secures $15M Series A Funding 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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Using AI to Make Better CRE Acquisition and Underwriting Decisions, with Diald CEO Steven Song

Steven Song is the founder and CEO of Diald, an AI-powered decision intelligence platform for commercial real estate. Before founding Diald, Steven worked on both the investing and development sides of real estate, and built his career across architecture and urban planning, training at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pennsylvania. He was a founding principal at SCAAA, a global strategy, planning, and design firm, and is a partner at Axle Companies, a family office focused on real estate investment and social impact ventures. Steven is based in Los Angeles. (02:26) Why CRE Decisions Are Still Judgment-Driven (04:41) The Signal That Killed an Atlantic City Deal (07:44) Contextual Drift: The Risk Nobody Models (10:20) Diald's approach (11:59) AI Token Costs and Asking Better Questions (14:27) Tools vs. Workflows (15:52) Diald's Underwriting (17:58) Killing Bad Deals Earlier (19:18) How AI Upgrades the Analyst Role (20:44) Where General Purpose AI Fails at Underwriting (24:23) Does AI Make CRE More Efficient or More Competitive (26:02) What Underwriting Looks Like in 5 Years (27:14) Where Human Judgment Still Matters (29:06) The Local Signals Investors Miss (31:15) Collaboration Superpower: Denise Scott Brown and Reyner Banham 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Diald -Steven Song on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

Retail | How Can Landlords Solve the Tenant Visibility Problem, with Sytes CEO Rafael Weiss

Rafael Weiss is the co-founder of Sytes, a marketplace platform that connects commercial real estate landlords, developers, and brokers with tenants actively looking for space in real time. Rafael came to the problem as a developer who lost a deal because tenant demand was invisible until it was too late, and built Sytes to fix the information asymmetry at the core of retail leasing. The platform serves nearly 350 tenants and over 35,000 active site listings across all 50 states, with clients including Kimco, InvenTrust, Church's Chicken, and Dutch Bros. Rafael is based in Boca Raton, Florida. (01:04) Retail's Demand Visibility Problem (02:44) Why Sytes (04:04) A Filtration System for Tenant Demand (06:24) Getting First Customers to Pay Upfront (07:24) Why Tenant Demand Data Was Opaque (08:34) Anonymous Tenant Expansion (10:14) How a Deal Happens on Sytes (11:24) Church's Chicken Case Study (14:54) Kimco & MyEyeDoctor Portfolio Review (16:34) REITs & Strip Centers (18:04) The Subscription Model (19:24) Retail Is Back (22:44) AI Leasing Agents & the Broker's Future (24:04) Tenant Demand Index for Developers (27:24) Bootstrapping vs. Venture Capital Backing (28:24) Collaboration Superpower: Travis Kalanick 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Sytes -Rafael Weiss on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

Multifamily | How Renter Loyalty Programs Drive NOI & Housing Affordability, with Stake CEO Rowland Hobbs

Rowland Hobbs is CEO and co-founder of Stake, a fintech platform that rewards renters with cash back, working to make renting financially rewarding. Before Stake, he led design and innovation at Teneo and served as head of product design for Accenture North America, and he founded Post+Beam, an innovation design firm, and Linea, a computer vision driven photo sharing app. Rowland is based in Dallas, TX. (04:10) - Why Rent Was Left Out of Loyalty (06:00) - Loyalty Programs Go Multifamily (08:30) - Financial Amenities vs. Flashy Perks (12:20) - Cash back for Delinquency, Retention & Vacancy (14:40) - Rewarding Renters Instead of Punishing Them (15:50) - Bilt Rewards (24:50) - Stake's Cash back Business Model (27:10) - Cash back by Property Type (28:50) - UMoveFree Acquisition in Texas (31:10) - Vertical Integration in Multifamily (32:20) - Rising Housing Costs & Renter Churn (36:50) - Renter Loyalty's Next 25 Years (38:50) - Collaboration Superpower: Barack Obama & Loyalty Program's Inventor 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Stake -Rowland Hobbs on LinkedIn 🏙️ Virtual Events coming up: -AI & Innovation Forum: Multifamily: on 9/29 -SFR / BTR Forum: on 10/22 🏙️ In-person Events coming up: -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -Finance Forum: in NYC on 11/3 -All upcoming events 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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The Check Engine Light for Commercial Real Estate, with Field Technologies President Clayton Callander

Clayton Callander is the founder of FTL (Field Technologies), a diagnostic platform built to give commercial buildings something like a check-engine light, closing the service gap for the roughly 95% of properties that enterprise vendors like Honeywell and Siemens can't economically reach. Before founding FTL, Clayton spent seven years maintaining nuclear systems aboard a US Navy submarine, worked at SpaceX, and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He built FTL for the people fixing America's commercial buildings because he used to be one of them, and the tool he needed didn't exist yet. Clayton is based in San Francisco, CA. (00:00) - Intro: Why Six Million Commercial Buildings Have No Real-Time Data (01:10) - Meet Clayton Callander, Founder of Field Technologies (02:40) - The Telephone Game: What Happens When an HVAC Unit Breaks (05:50) - Zach's Take: Preventative Maintenance's 20-Year Elusive Goal (07:10) - It's an Access Problem, Not a Technology Problem (09:40) - Why Building Controls Stay Complicated and Expensive (13:10) - What FTL Does (16:50) - Pricing FTL at a Fraction of Traditional Controls (20:20) - Why It's Called Facilities Triage (22:20) - Which Asset Classes Are Ready for FTL (25:00) - What 60 Site Deployments Taught FTL (26:30) - Unlocking the Other Six Million Buildings (29:30) - LoRaWAN Explained: Why Not Wi-Fi (32:30) - Proprietary vs. Open Systems: A VC's View (36:00) - Collaboration Superpower: Immanuel Kant (Wikipedia) and Ding Huan (Wikipedia) 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit FTL -Clayton Callander on LinkedIn 🏙️ NYC Real Estate Week: -CTO Exchange & Hackathon: 3-in-1 event on Oct. 19 featuring C-suite roundtables, a hackathon and the Power AI & Tech Awards reception (invite-only). Email ecohen@commercialobserver.com for info. 🏙️ CRE Events coming up: -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -All upcoming events 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

How to Build an AI-Powered Commercial Real Estate Operation, with Boxer Property President Justin Segal

Justin Segal is President of Boxer Property, where he oversees operations, leasing, technology, and marketing across a national portfolio of office, retail, and hotel assets. He co-founded Brava Systems, an AI-enabled platform originally built for Boxer's own operations and now deployed across the commercial real estate industry, and Relay Human Cloud, a global staffing and team augmentation company. Justin is based in Houston. (02:50) - Building the Data Foundation for AI (05:10) - The Data You Have vs. What You're Missing (06:30) - Why Data Cleanup Isn't a Massive IT Project (09:00) - Why Most CRE Companies Aren't Data-Ready (11:10) - The Chief Innovation Officer's Mixed Track Record (14:10) - Avoiding Agent Sprawl and Vendor Lock-In (17:20) - Vibe Coding: Great for Interfaces, Dangerous for Logic (20:20) - Rethinking How We Measure AI ROI (22:40) - What Boxer Actually Spends on Tokens and Compute (24:30) - Putting a Number on AI-Driven Deal Flow (27:30) - Balancing Employee Access to AI Tools With Governance (29:00) - Treating Tokens and Compute as a Trackable Line Item (31:50) - Where AI Adoption Creates the Need for More Humans (34:20) - Freeing People From Being "Professional Rememberers" (36:30) - Collaboration Superpower: Thomas Davenport (Wikipedia) 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Boxer Property -Visit Brava -Justin Segal on LinkedIn 🏙️ NYC Real Estate Week: -CTO Exchange & Hackathon: 3-in-1 event on Oct. 19 featuring C-suite roundtables, a hackathon and the Power AI & Tech Awards reception (invite-only). Email ecohen@commercialobserver.com for info. 🏙️ CRE Events coming up: -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -All upcoming events 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

How CRE Brokers Are Prospecting in the AI Era, with DealGround CEO Dan Mosher | Live from ICSC+Proptech

Dan Mosher is the CEO of DealGround, an AI-native platform helping commercial real estate brokers and investors find deals faster by organizing property data, identifying opportunities, and connecting directly with property owners. A veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, operator, and investor, Dan previously built and led the Merchant team at Postmates through its acquisition by Uber, served as President of Presto, and helped scale BrightRoll tenfold before its acquisition by Yahoo. Live from ICSC+Proptech in Las Vegas. (01:09) AI Survey with FirstAmerican (03:07) How DealGround Helps Brokers Find More Deals (06:08) Why AI Adoption Outpaces Trust (10:14) MCPs, Integrations & Fitting Into Broker Workflows 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit DealGround -Dan Mosher on LinkedIn -Study: First American Data & Analytics & DealGround on AI Adoption in CRE -ICSC+Proptech 🏙️ NYC Real Estate Week: -CTO Exchange & Hackathon: 3-in-1 event on Oct. 19 featuring C-suite roundtables, a hackathon and the Power AI & Tech Awards reception (invite-only). Email ecohen@commercialobserver.com for info. 🏙️ CRE Events coming up: -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -All upcoming events 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

AI for Commercial Real Estate Due Diligence, with Tower Co-founder Noah Walters | Live from ICSC+Proptech

Noah Walters is the co-founder of Tower, a custom-built AI platform for every stage of the due diligence process. He previously practiced at Dentons Canada, where he focused on tech regulatory compliance, private M&A, and venture financings as a founding member of the firm's FinTech and AI industry teams. Noah is based in Canada. Recorded live at ICSC+Proptech in Las Vegas. (01:34) Due Diligence Bottleneck (03:44) Execution Risk & Trust (04:54) Tower's Approach (07:31) Beyond Document Review (09:39) Change Management for AI Adoption (15:11) Future of AI Deal Rooms (18:02) Collaboration Superpower: Kendall Jenner & Dario Amodei 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Tower -Noah Walters on LinkedIn -ICSC+Proptech 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn 🏙️ CRE Events coming up: -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -Data Centers Development & Infrastructure Forum: in NYC on 10/6 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -All upcoming events Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

Building the AI Operating System for Enterprise CRE, with Fyxt CEO Ryan Botwinick | Live from ICSC+Proptech

Ryan Botwinick is the founder and CEO of Fyxt, an AI operating system for commercial real estate that unifies workflows, data, and automation across enterprise portfolios. Ryan came to the problem from both sides, as a real estate broker and through building his own property management company, before founding Fyxt in 2017 to bridge the operational disconnect between owners, managers, tenants, and service providers. Fyxt has particular depth in net-lease and mixed commercial properties, with clients including Delta, Realty Income, STAG Industrial, Kite Realty, Global Net Lease, and Friedman Real Estate. Ryan is based in Los Angeles. Episode recorded live at ICSC+Proptech in Las Vegas. (01:20) How Ops Get Complex (02:56) Today's NOI Pressure (05:06) Where Ops Break Down (07:52) What Fyxt Actually Fixes (09:28) Operating System vs Point Tools (14:20) AI Impact on CRE Ops (15:28) Role of the PM of the future (17:20) AI & Automation Misconceptions (19:07) Collaboration Superpower: the Government 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Fyxt -Ryan on LinkedIn -ICSC+Proptech 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn 🏙️ Events coming up: -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -Data Centers Development & Infrastructure Forum: in NYC on 10/6 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -All upcoming events Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

How CRE is Implementing Agentic Workflows, with Lev CEO Yaakov Zar

Yaakov Zar is the founder and CEO of Lev, a software platform built to modernize the workflow of commercial real estate professionals. Yaakov started Lev after experiencing firsthand how broken the CRE financing process was, watching a $4 million loan take six months to close. What began as a tech-enabled brokerage has evolved into a purpose-built agentic workflow platform helping lenders, brokers, and investors manage deals, ingest unstructured data, and move faster. Yaakov is based in New York City. (02:26) Bottom Up vs Top Down (04:31) Slack Origin Tangent (05:59) MetaProp Skills Library (09:43) What Is Defensible AI (11:12) MCP & Rapid Change (12:41) Pilots Everywhere & Demo Fatigue (17:34) Same Workflow, Turbocharged (19:34) Real Estate's Move 37 Moment (22:04) Why Winning Is Hard to Define (26:07) Lev Agentic Workflows (29:14) Leapfrogging Past Salesforce (31:43) Data Quality Pushback (33:49) Ingesting Email Into CRM (35:54) Selling Software to CRE (39:06) Overhyped AI and Security Risks (42:50) Collaboration Superpower: Steve Jobs 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Lev -Yaakov on LinkedIn -MetaProp Labs Skills Library 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn 🏙️ Events coming up: -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -Data Centers Development & Infrastructure Forum: in NYC on 10/6 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -All upcoming events Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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Unlocking the Permitting Bottleneck, with Pulley Co-founder & COO Andreas Rotenberg | Live from ICSC+Proptech

Andreas Rotenberg is Co-founder and COO of Pulley, an AI-powered permitting platform helping developers and operators move projects through approvals faster. Before Pulley, he was part of the team at Honest Buildings through its acquisition, then served as Chief of Staff at Procore through its IPO. Pulley has supported over $15 billion in projects approved across the U.S. Live from ICSC+Proptech in Las Vegas. (0:00) - First ever ICSC+Proptech live podcast (1:47) - Why Permitting Is a Growing Bottleneck (2:41) - What's Happening During Permitting Timelines (4:13) - Jurisdictional Complexity Across the U.S. (5:08) - What CRE Teams Underestimate About Permitting (7:35) - Why Pulley (8:18) - The Origin Story (10:53) - Combining Technology with Local Expertise (14:26) - Where AI Creates Real Value in Permitting (17:36) - Trust, Hallucinations & Accuracy (19:07) - Municipalities & Public Sector Modernization (20:40) - Second & Third Order Effects of Faster Permitting (22:41) - Collaboration Superpower: Vaclav Smil 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Pulley -Andreas on LinkedIn -ICSC+Proptech 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn 🏙️ CO Events coming up: -Retail & Hospitality Forum: in NYC on 6/18 -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15 -All upcoming events Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

Residential | Are AI Agents Real Estate Agents' Best New Partners? with Breezy Founder & CEO James Harris

James Harris built his real estate career from scratch after relocating from the UK to Los Angeles. His latest venture is Breezy, an AI tool for real estate agents designed to reduce the administrative load that eats into most agents' days. Breezy recently raised a $10 million pre-seed round led by Ribbit Capital with participation from Fifth Wall, DST Global, and others. Over the past decade he's closed more than $6 billion in luxury residential sales across Beverly Hills and the Platinum Triangle, and appeared on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing LA for seven seasons spanning over nine years before stepping away to focus on his next chapter. He also hosts Rise Above the Ranks, where he talks through the practical side of the business: negotiation, discipline, and how to build something that lasts. (2:11) - What Proptech Gets Wrong About Real Estate Agents (6:49) - Realtor Painpoints (8:54) - What is Breezy (13:32) - Why Now (16:26) - Real Estate Agent & Founder Resiliency (18:31) - Brand, Distribution & Early Traction (21:42) - AI Agents Enhance and/or Replace Real Estate Agents (24:20) - First Mover Advantage (26:36) - What Parts of Real Estate Will Be Human-driven in 3-5 years (28:24) - The Power of Data & Workflow Platforms (29:16) - What Changes in Real Estate Over the Next 2-3 Years? (30:49) - Collaboration Superpower: The Founder Entrepreneur 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Breezy -James on LinkedIn -James on IG 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn 🏙️ Events coming up: -Retail & Hospitality Forum: in NYC on 6/18 -Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16 -All upcoming events Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds. 🏙️ In-person Events: -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -Breakthrough Awards Breakfast | NYC | 12/2 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -AI & Real Estate: You’ve Hired an Alien Superintelligence. Now What?: 11/10 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn

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