Transitioning from Corporate to an Innovative Real Estate Tech Startup: Insights and Lessons from Maher Kaddoura and Stasiu Geleszinski

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, my cohost. Let's get started, all right. Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Kyle has a tummy ache so he is at home right now, but we have two people actually in the podcast room today Maher Stash, here we are. Welcome, guys.

Speaker 3: 0:46

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Thank you, yeah, yeah, so we had a. Actually he'll do that again. I had your mics down Because normally okay, say something, hello.

Speaker 3: 0:56

There you go, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Good, now we're good. All right, I'm going to start it over. All right, welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Kyle Stevy has a tummy ache so he is not in the studio today, but we have Maher, you're not dead. You're not dead, no, he's just he's recovering. So we have Maher and Stash here today. What's up, guys?

Speaker 3: 1:16

Hey, how are you? Thanks for having us, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. So I love having startup people on the show, especially SAS startup people. This is really exciting. We've had some conversations around. You know what you guys are doing. We got connected through one of the startup ecosystem groups here in Cincinnati and if nobody's familiar with Cincinnati, if you've got a startup, it's a very vibrant ecosystem here and you guys both have really awesome career backgrounds that have led you here and you're also not like 21 year old startup guys. Right, that's right.

Speaker 4: 1:51

That's right.

Speaker 2: 1:52

You guys are in the age range of like the ideal, I would say most successful startup people. They always say I think people that start early, you have a lot of failures and then a lot of VCs really like to get into. Those founders who have worked in the real world, understand how corporate works, have been around. And I mean you guys. Obviously you're doing a SAS startup, so how does this integrate with what everybody else is doing? You get that right. You're not trying to figure that out. You're not spending time trying to figure that out.

Speaker 4: 2:24

Exactly, we have plenty of experience 20 plus years in the industry very different industries between myself and Stash. Stash is kind of back on this commercial real estate, mine is finance and software, as well as data. It's kind of what the focus is. Stash, you want to give a little background about yourself.

Speaker 3: 2:42

Yeah, so my name is Stash. I'm a commercial real estate broker. I specialize in multifamily investment properties. I got my license in February of 08, which was a great time to start.

Speaker 2: 2:56

We started a SAS real estate company in 08. So yeah, I get it.

Speaker 3: 3:02

I was like hey guys, I'm here and the party had just ended and I was like gosh, so definitely struggled in the first couple of years and got some traction finally and have been going at it successfully now for a number of years, been with Capstone since 2016. And I've got a team, two other senior brokers that we've been together almost 10 years and we're just plugging away doing deals.

Speaker 2: 3:31

We have a lot of real estate people on the show just because I guess my background. We attract real estate people for some reason.

Speaker 4: 3:40

But we assume that that's the background is commercial estate data. That's one of them, yeah, so I didn't really think through what you guys were doing until we had the conversation talked through it and that made it clicked, but before that it must have been a lot of startup with commercial estate.

Speaker 2: 3:56

Oh, we had no idea what we were doing. We were just like, hey, how do we get rid of paper, how do we get rid of paper in the fax machine? How do we do that? Right, that was the main thing. You stumble into things as you're always pivoting, you're always changing and, guys, if you're listening, this is what happens. You think you've got the greatest idea in the world, but your idea probably isn't commercial like right now. There's probably something wrong with it, there's something about it that doesn't work with their ERP system or whatever that they have, or something's not right. But, like I said, this is why people who are more seasoned, people who've been in businesses and I mean you guys have been, I mean in corporate right.

Speaker 4: 4:37

This isn't like I mean you've been in, you've been in the stuff.

Speaker 2: 4:40

Like you've been deep in it, you know the way it is and, honestly, that's probably why you guys are doing this now. But I mean I, if I was in corporate I mean both of you guys probably love what you do, but I mean when I was in corporate I couldn't stand it. There's a lot of people that listen to this. They're like I just I'm not built for that. I'm built to be my own boss and to explore and do something different. I don't feel right in that structure. There's something that's not. It's not providing me. Do you either? You guys have that? Did you get that?

Speaker 3: 5:09

I mean, our day job, so to speak, are probably pretty different, because I'm in sales and it's like go bring it in, and so I've a lot of free reign. But and you like to me.

Speaker 4: 5:21

it feels like you're like your own boss, yeah for sure you don't have like the hierarchy. That goes through Like you're just bringing deals. Yeah, I mean I have some people above me, so to speak. Right right, right, I have important numbers and manage the process, but for the most part, you're on your own. For me, it's very different in the corporate structure. Working through deadlines and timelines, you're getting deliverables and putting stories together, but that's kind of what I do from day to day, all around data and the business performance for the most part. But I mean, the journey started. I would say I've known Stash for almost 12 years, right, yeah?

Speaker 2: 5:55

Oh, wow, that's another good thing.

Speaker 4: 5:57

Yeah, I mean I've been working with him. Myself and Stash's wife worked together at a financial institution here in town and we connected. We actually had a little group of we called ourselves the UN. We were like that first.

Speaker 2: 6:11

That's what my friend groups call Winam. And then I thought there was only one in Cincinnati.

Speaker 4: 6:16

So we used to like hang out together and get from time to time catch up. And then at some point I came to Stash and I said, hey, I have a group of you know business leaders here interested in personal commercial estate, and he's like, hey, hold on, hold up a second, here you have, I have an idea. How about we use your background, my background, bring together a solution to the market? And we embarked on the journey about a year and a half, two years ago and we've been kind of bootstrapping the whole solution, building the actual software and bringing the data and working through building AI, machine learning models to basically present the leads and match the buyers and sellers of the commercial estate together.

Speaker 2: 6:52

And this is what, when we were talking, this was perfect, right, like the two of you guys together. I mean, this was like you get the AI portion of it, you get the real estate portion and together, and plus the fact you guys have known each other for 12 years, and you've, you've done this, you've you're seasoned professionals, and then you decide, hey, why don't we start, as it's needle, right? Yeah, needle any DL guys at home. If you you don't see the logo right now, I'm looking right at it. But you guys said, look, you got the commercial real estate, you've got the analytical experience and you understand how to parse data, and yeah. So you put those two things together and boom, the company's born Exactly.

Speaker 4: 7:29

And we had a boom, Boom. That's it Exactly.

Speaker 2: 7:32

You stacked your fingers and there was a, there was an entire company.

Speaker 4: 7:35

Right, we did. We did initially, we did a back of an napkin mask to say does this make sense? Is there a market for it? Does it? Is there like, is there enough revenue to go after? And, based on some of the original assumptions we had, we're like okay, there's sufficient revenue here to get you know, really, x multiplier, let's go.

Speaker 2: 7:54

Yeah, you got to make sure the money's there, right, right.

Speaker 3: 7:56

Well, yeah, so I mean to expand on the story a little bit. You know I've been plugging away and you know, when you first start in real estate whether it's residential or commercial and any product type, really, it's like go figure it out. And that was that was frustrating, oh yeah. But you know, I saw that we had all this data and I'm like there's got to be a way that we could use data and analytics to predict transactions before they occur. So that was my hypothesis. And then when Maher came to me and said, hey, you know, my partners and I want to buy real estate and we have background in software, I was like hold on, what about this? And I pitched the idea and you know he went back to his partners and then we had lunch together and I about they're like yeah, this thing has legs. And I was overjoyed. I like fell out of my chair about because it was. You know, I'd been thinking about it for a while. I just I don't have the skill set, like I know it's there and you know, we have a great partnership in that way, because he knows how to put it together and I'm the subject matter expert and the rest of our development team like it's just been tremendous.

Speaker 4: 9:17

Yeah, definitely awesome team we have together for about a couple of years now iterating, working through. Yeah, we're excited that we're in pilot right now. So, like, actually go and prove value and that's what we're focused on between now and the year is we are onboarding. Where are we for three or four different companies that actually piloting?

Speaker 3: 9:35

Yeah, oh, wow, yeah, We've got. We've got one actively on the platform, one active one that we just signed up, and then we've got a couple more agreements out just waiting for signature.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Nice. Well, myra, I mean like for you, you've let you. You look at anything and you're like, oh, I can solve that, like I can, I can figure that out. But for guys like us I mean we're realistic is I'm not? I own a digital agency, but I'm not a software guy Like I'm not going to write the actual software. So I come up with ideas all day. Right, I could be a subject matter expert in several things. You're a subject matter expert in this. So you look at it and you're like I have no idea about software. I have this great idea. This would be awesome. I know a ton of people that would buy it. But it just seems like such a mountain to climb when you don't know someone like Maher.

Speaker 3: 10:21

It was completely insurmountable, like I'd expect some cash, like hey, is there, is there something to this? And I got positive feedback, but nobody. And until we came together, nobody. Yeah, I think you had a couple of engagement.

Speaker 4: 10:37

It was a couple of consulting companies where they you've paid some money like, hey, I have this data, what can I do with it? How can you help me predict the transactions potentially? And you didn't get much traction.

Speaker 3: 10:48

No, they're like, yeah, we could build it for you. It's going to cost a lot of money.

Speaker 4: 10:53

And that's what everybody says, like it's going to cost a bunch of money to do this. And that's where we the niche for us, like, yeah, we can come in and build this product, because if anybody else want to replicate what we're building, it's going to cost them, you know, ten, twenty million dollar plus. We've been at it for a couple of years now.

Speaker 2: 11:07

And this is you understand, because you work with budgets at these big companies and you know what they charge.

Speaker 4: 11:11

Yeah, you need at least a couple of different squads with, you know, eight, ten people per squad to build what we've built as far, and that's literally about two million dollars per squad per year. So so you think about having at least a couple of squads for a couple of years. You're you're upward of eight plus million dollars. Just an expense for somebody to do this.

Speaker 2: 11:27

Any other company to do this it's wild yeah it's wild, and this is why the sounds to me like a good call.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Sounds to me like a bill's coming later. He's got his numbers. Yeah, his guys numbers carefully added up it's going to cost twenty million dollars on the open market.

Speaker 4: 11:45

Anybody, anybody who comes to me and say, yeah, we can do that. I'm like, by all means, go for it.

Speaker 2: 11:49

So there's a barrier to entry, though I mean this is a good, this is a competitive advantage for you guys. Yeah, because in order to build something like this, you have to understand like you've got models that you've been working with for years, probably that you understand. When guys like us see it, we're like OK, I don't even know where to start. I don't know how to map this thing out. I got friends who do do this all day too, and it's like they would just sit there and scratch it out on a napkin, like you said, just scratch out and say, ok, well, this is what we need first. This is what. We're going to have these pods. We're going to have groups of developers in these pods. We need this many people. It's going to cost this much. We're like what? Like? I just know people buy it.

Speaker 4: 12:26

I can sell it, I can sell hell out of it. Yeah, and that's Stash. Stash is kind of the chief operating officer of sales revenue, the whole thing. He got that under control. Definitely that's his kind of subject matter expertise and heavily reliant on him and the subject matter expertise to help us to get to the next phase, post development. So we're excited that we are at this point. We have an MVP, we're piloting the MVP and now starting Q1 of next year is like let's go, man, let's sell it, let's see what Stash can do.

Speaker 3: 12:54

Yeah, Well, and it's a soft sell too, because it's like do you want to know what properties are going to trade before your competitors do? Of course you do, so you can go out and get in front of them and we're targeting our target markets. Initially, our commercial real estate brokers who specialize in multifamily, and it's probably not the guy that's at the top because he's like I don't need this, but it's the guys that are striving and trying to get take that market share Right. And then you know the thought process is well, loan brokers could use this as well, because they want to get in front of transactions. And then, you know, recently it seems like everybody in their brother has gotten into syndication.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Oh my God, everybody. I was just at one in Florida and it was just like they all have the same thesis 100%.

Speaker 3: 13:41

And we hear it all day from like we've had instances where we've had a lot of people who have had a lot of business. We've had instances where we'll get the same letter of intent from three completely different buyer groups and it's the same pitch coming in. Oh, my partner and I own 40,000 units, and it's the same format, everything's the same, and it's like hey, do you know so-and-so? No, I don't know who that is, and it's just, it's a. So you know the acquisition people, both professional, and you know we'll call them not quite there yet professionals yeah, oh yeah. And you know the asset managers are going to want to know why am I being blown up about this deal? So you know, right there we have four groups, maybe five, you could say, of target customers that were, that were aiming this at. And then you know we have other vendors in the commercial real estate industry that we think could benefit from this as well. And so it's then like okay, once we master this vertical, what's to stop us from looking at hotels and industrial and retail and office and self-storage and senior, you know, assisted living?

Speaker 2: 14:54

God, I got a conference coming up that you guys got to go to. That my buddy, Ash Patel he's big and does you know, Ash? So he's got his, his. I did his logo and everything, so I'm kind of proud of it. But he's got a big thing coming up here. He's going to be on the podcast next month, Nice, but October is when his, his deal is. And gosh Kyle, how many, how many syndicators we had on this show and how many, how many syndicators do we know? Like you, got syndicators in your family.

Speaker 1: 15:21

I am a syndicator, bitch hey, and you are a syndicator.

Speaker 2: 15:24

No he wrote a book on tokenization of real, of that like tokenization real estate. It's called digital melting. You finished that what? Six months ago, or something, kyle.

Speaker 1: 15:34

Yeah, yeah, it's just burning up the best seller charts right now. I would say that we had Joe. Well, we have Joe Fairlis on there. Not he's Joe's previous client, the biggest name that I've ever since. Yeah, that's good, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:55

So he Joe's huge and I've been on Joe's podcast, oh nice.

Speaker 3: 15:57

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can't remember what that's called, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Best podcast ever podcast yeah. Yeah, I was on there twice with Ash Nice. I was a co-host when I did it. It was about the book and about the building. We'd go and write down the street from where you guys are at right now.

Speaker 2: 16:10

Yeah, nate was on, we had a wholesaler on, we had a couple wholesalers on yeah, nate's cool. Yeah, we had a lot of people on.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Alex was on. Most of the guys have been from like Cincinnati area that were real estate. We haven't had anybody, I think, nationally with real estate.

Speaker 2: 16:25

I don't remember yeah. I don't remember anybody, but for some reason there's a lot of real estate professional like real estate's a big deal here. I mean, like we had, and I always try to say, like you know, you've got those four pillars that the centrifuge group is trying to kind of go after. It's like FinTech, medtech, logistics technology, and then there was another one.

Speaker 4: 16:48

PropTech, yeah, proptech.

Speaker 3: 16:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:50

So PropTech is like that's what I'm like, let's go after it. That and logistics. I think we have a strategic location in America, so why not go after logistics train, you know, river rail, all that stuff? So PropTech, in my opinion, is we've got our company that we already sold, now Zillow's here because of it. You've got there's a couple other ones out there that I've actually helped work on. My cousin's a CFO for one of these companies. So there's several out there in Cincinnati that are just transform real estate For whatever reason. These companies just pop up here. I think we could, with you guys as well, we can actually set Cincinnati in this region up as the PropTech capital.

Speaker 4: 17:33

We'd love to. We could argue that now, honestly, yeah, we've been talking about like, hey, can we pull together a symposium for PropTech in Cincinnati? And then we do us to bring them together, because there's no one avenue to bring these people together and talk about. And how do we create synergies across what we're doing? Because it seems like everybody's very complimentary from an offering perspective. True, yeah, there's no direct competition for what everybody's doing, so it makes a lot of sense for us to bring people together and start talking. How can we build each other up as a community and help each other?

Speaker 2: 18:03

when there's nobody for you, because it's going to cost 20 million bucks to build your software. And see, that's the beauty of having you guys on because you're early. But a lot of early stage companies don't want to talk about what they're doing because they're afraid there's going to be some competition. But I try to tell people. I'm like look, people don't even do their own ideas. They're not stealing your idea, right? They don't have the blend of skills that you guys have and the ability to build something and actually have the resources to bootstrap it without having to go friends and family and all this other stuff. And if you do, you know other people who are working and they can spare, you know, 20, 50 grand, something like that. Maybe I don't know, but but there's not a lot of people out there at your stage that are willing to talk about their product. So let's explain to people and I think people kind of get the idea of like where we're going with it. But explain to people and I love this and, kyle, after I talked to them, I'm pretty sure I told you about this because I was so impressed by it.

Speaker 3: 18:59

You were so jazzed. I love it I was jazzed.

Speaker 2: 19:01

I'm very jazzed because this predicts that a property, a commercial property, is going to sell before it even goes on the market, based on the owner's activities. And you guys are somehow able with your magic, Right.

Speaker 4: 19:17

We're using a lot of different data elements to basically predict which property should transact, based on a lot of different attributes, as well as from the property itself, from the ownership group, as well as from the macro economic, what's happening in the region where the property is located. So we're trying to really take a point of view of what are the elements and, looking at historical transactions, what made this property transact, and replicate that for the future, pretty much to say.

Speaker 2: 19:43

And then give people emails and phone numbers that you can contact them.

Speaker 4: 19:46

Yeah, so not just that as well as loan details for every property, what exists on it from terms of the rates, the holding period, the loan details you have, once you look at our platform, you're able to really look at all the information you would need in one click to that one property and contact the person who's actually on it. Now the next phase is how we can help you with some content management and pushing out email, make it a little bit softer of a call. So there's a lot of roadmap and things we're thinking about what to do next, but it's exciting to where we're going. It's exciting about the offering we have. Very few people are actually in that space right now, as Stash would always tell me like, hey, I have all the data I need and more. I don't know what to do with it 100%. Now we're just bringing it together in a way that's coherent that provides brokers like Stash or a lot of different use cases, like if you wanna bring somebody up to speed fairly quickly on the industry and who to call, why to call like this is fairly quick for you to bring them up to speed and you don't need to spend hours and hours like Stash's you know history like I don't know how many hours or years you spend to get to where you are.

Speaker 3: 20:51

Traditionally, it takes two years of grinding to get traction, and that's assuming you do everything right. I mean it took me at least that.

Speaker 2: 21:02

If you wanna get into commercial 100%.

Speaker 3: 21:04

So there's that natural bariatric there too.

Speaker 2: 21:07

And define commercial, define what you guys are, which part of commercial. You said you're gonna expand out of these other ones, but where are we starting right now? Is this multi-family? Is this?

Speaker 3: 21:16

retail. Yes, like start with what you know. So you know we've been targeting 50 units and up. So our platform and even my practice as a broker, you know it's 50 units and up existing assets, and really that's kind of where we started because you know, if you get, you know technically commercial is. You know commercial multi-family properties are five units and up. But there's a big difference even between a 50 unit and 150 unit, because 150 unit you can start to really the threshold is maybe 100 units and that's when you can afford one full. The rules of thumb are one full-time maintenance, one full-time manager per 100 units. Typically that sounds about right, yeah, and then you can afford a management company and really as the owner, that's when it becomes more of a cash flow play, assuming that's just what you want. Now there are ways that you can force value and appreciation by doing value add and what that. That means a variety of things.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Paint the place, put new shutters on like get rid of it, puts some new plants in.

Speaker 3: 22:30

It's a light value add, or you could completely gut the units and you know new kitchens, baths, plumbing, electric roofs, windows, everything.

Speaker 2: 22:40

So yeah, you got those typical like Cincinnati 12 unit buildings where it's got that little galley kitchen type of thing and some people just take that wall out. They'll take the wall out, open it up, which I think is a great thing.

Speaker 3: 22:52

Yeah, Because it opens the unit up, you don't feel as claustrophobic. Or even if you don't completely remove the wall, you just maybe do a half wall or a window. You know a pass through something like that. I've seen all sorts of different things done in all different types of property, you know so.

Speaker 2: 23:08

Yeah, and where do you guys see real estate kind of going? So there's a lot of people on here that are, you know, real estate's a big deal right now. I mean, you've got these raising these interest rates going up, yeah, and you've got a lot more people renting because there's less inventory, because nobody wants to get rid of their 4% interest rate. They're just going to stay in their house, right, instead of moving out. They're going to upgrade their own place and they're just going to live there. They're, you know, nothing's going on the markets. You've got an entire generation and this is what I said the other day to people. I said you're going to have an entire generation that is missing out on maybe two to five years of wealth creation, because a lot of us, you build wealth, most Americans, I would say a lot of their wealth is in their home. So you're going to have less and less people being able. That wealth is going to go into the hands of, you know, landlords, really, I mean, and that's where it's going to go. How long do you see this? I say two to five years. I don't know what it actually is. What do you guys see happening? And I think the fact that you're in this area, with this software at this time. Timing's everything. Timing was everything for us when we built it.

Speaker 4: 24:16

Timing is great for what you're doing right now, right right, at least from my perspective. I'm not the expert from commercial estate and market standpoint, but what I've seen is going to be a lot of pain for some of the existing office building space in terms of a lot of people are overextended, they might have to take some losses and those are going to be converted into multifamily At least what I'm seeing. I don't know. Stas, you're the other expert one.

Speaker 3: 24:47

You know, as far as multifamily, I think that rates are. I hope they don't go up anymore just for the sake of you know, just creates so much uncertainty and people freeze when there's uncertainty.

Speaker 2: 25:00

People need to stop spending money. Like what? Eventually they're going to run out of credit card. They're going to max out their credit cards. They're going to stop spending money is what's going to happen, but they just keep spending. So these rates I mean, the Fed just keeps looking at these numbers and they're like this is up, that people are still spending. The jobs are great. Raise the interest rates.

Speaker 3: 25:19

Yeah. So you know, what we think is that rates are so a lot of people made a lot of money over the past, say, call it 10 years on floating rate debt, adjustable rate mortgages, essentially. And you know those loans are benchmarked to a target interest rate and so when the Fed raises rates, their rate goes up. So if you bought something at, say, a three and a half cap or a four cap and your loan was, you know, 2.3 or 3% and you were going to implement a value add, well, right now what we're seeing is that those you know call it a three and a half percent rate when you originally bought the deal. It's now at 9% and we've seen it again and again. Like you know, I've had sellers quote me. You know I'm a seller at 65 million and we're stretching to get to 50. Wow, and you know. So we plug their loan details in to our model and you know, on a call it a $50 million asset, they're cash flowing 70 grand a year.

Speaker 1: 26:32

Jeez.

Speaker 3: 26:33

It's like you're close. So what's going to happen is that these rates are going to stay high and as these loans. So, to get into the weeds maybe a little bit, you can buy a rate cap and that will freeze your rate, but then those only last for two to three years. So as those rate caps burn off, they're going to have to make a decision, whether it's refi or sell, and oftentimes the refi decision is not, as in this current environment. What we think is that it's not going to be. You're going to take that off the table.

Speaker 2: 27:07

A good option?

Speaker 3: 27:07

Yeah, you're just going to take that off the table. So it's like well, we got to sell and, you know, maybe cut our losses or just kind of break even essentially on what we have it into.

Speaker 2: 27:16

Well, they're going to be their cap rates going to be negative pretty soon. It seems like. I mean it's going to be bad. I mean they're going to be losing money every month if their rates adjust to 9% and they're used to a two or three and they only got a three or four cap. Yeah, they're going to be in trouble, I mean especially think of California and New York and places like that where Texas is seeing it.

Speaker 3: 27:36

They're getting hit pretty hard, and that combined with the raising insurance rates as well.

Speaker 2: 27:43

So I mean that's a different story, that's true. And then you got multifamers in Florida and you see what's going on down there, where they're getting these special assessments now because they all have to get reinspected, they have to get updated, everything's got to be to code. And you've got these condo owners down there that are like I can't afford it.

Speaker 4: 28:00

Yeah, I'm getting you know hit by 15, 20 grand bills.

Speaker 2: 28:02

Yeah, and insurance. They're even getting their insurance dropped in some of these places, which is wild, yeah. So there's a lot going on to your point and to be able to find a good deal you need an edge is really what you have to have. So talk about what is in the software. You mentioned it just really quickly. What's in the software that can help these people make a decision on some of these properties? So I get to see the property right. Oh, this owner may be willing to sell here shortly.

Speaker 4: 28:30

Yeah, you're able to log into the platform. First you'll see some overall market insights of what's happening from a transaction volume across the United States. You're able to see what's hot market, who's transacting, what are the details for those deals and there's some just generic information about the market overall for commercial with the state. Then you go into the platform deeper, next click and you'll be able to see every property that we've positioned for you for any specific market. You'll be able to see like all the properties that we've said there we can sort of hotly. Basically they hit the top desk cell in our models that says this deal should transact based on all the data and attributes we have for this property. So then we position that property with all the information for the property loan details, contact information, anything you need right there at your fingertips for stash or any other broker, to just pick up the phone and call. You don't have to go to any of the other competitors I won't name anybody on the show.

Speaker 2: 29:26

I mean it's doing your job for you?

Speaker 4: 29:27

Yeah, pretty much, because other competitors, what they have today, it's just like a platform where you're able to I want to search a property by those attributes. It'll kick up a list for you, but it doesn't really prioritize the list for you doesn't look at the attributes of the property deal itself and tell you like how, why you should contact this specific person, for what reason. So that's what we're attempting to do is like, hey, how can we take all the status available for the property the market, the ownership group, etc. And say now it's free time for you to transact this property before they come to stash, knock on his door and say, hey, I want to sell this property, but rather position that, that property to stash? To say it, I think you guys are ready, and here's the reason why have you thought about this?

Speaker 2: 30:05

So if I'm wanting to purchase one of these properties, I'm a syndicator. Whatever I'm looking for property, Do I? Is there a way for me to enter in, like my thesis, what I'm looking for, what I'm willing to spend per door, or how do you guys? How do you guys do that? So, or do you have to tell me?

Speaker 4: 30:24

if you need to like secret sauce, but I'm hoping right now, when I get a part of the roadmap of the product itself. I'd love to get to a point where, as a syndicator, as somebody who's selling it to like, swipe right, swipe left and you get a match.

Speaker 2: 30:37

Oh, like a, like a Tinder for syndicators and commercial owners.

Speaker 4: 30:42

So that's hopefully that, as we're iterating on the product and application, we get to a point where we're changing the whole game for commercial estate itself. Now those are our baby steps of how we're going to get there. But potentially, if you think about it, this is exactly what you're saying is like how can I make it easy for people to transact and make sure, like you're, matching between the seller and the buyer fairly easy, but today it's it's. You know, if you're an ownership group, you can log on the platform. You can say, based on my profile, what would be interesting to me, based on what I've purchased historically? We have that. So, as an ownership group, you can pull up your profile and say, hey, I own all these properties and here's the recommendation for you of what you should buy next, based on what you bought on historically as an example, so we are able to do that.

Speaker 1: 31:27

Are you able to think you're? Do you guys ever foresee being able to like, have, like an well, an accredited or investor base or whatever, so that you could start matching up the potential investors with properties that they're looking for as well?

Speaker 4: 31:44

I feel like that becomes more of a market maker kind of type of play, and we're not into that right now. It could be something we didn't get into, to your point earlier about the progression of a solution MVP, but for now we're not trying to be a market maker for any commercial estate transaction. That'll be your next company.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Yeah, that'll be a separate, a whole separate company. You spin that out of this or something and raise separate money. Well, also, I mean so, kyle, like you guys bought the building down the street here in Covington and everybody's got their own little share. Some of the people are actually getting equity in the building because they're the construction team and they're like, hey, look, this is how much is going to cost. So, based on this amount of money, I should get this much share. Like that would be. A cool piece of software too, I think, is to help people bring folks together. Like you said, a market maker, right, but this would almost be like a way to organize that syndication. That's a really cool idea, Because then you, it's an all in one platform, right, it's everything.

Speaker 4: 32:42

Yeah, I have not talked about that direction, but I think that's a great idea. How to bring everybody together. You have a project. What skills do I need? Let's bring it all together. A true one, submit an offer and based on all the ownership pieces that people can contribute, based on their skills and what they're bringing to the table.

Speaker 2: 32:58

Yeah, they put the money in or they commit to a certain amount of money. Well, then you know what you can buy, because as you get more commitment, the amount of money you can spend goes up. So then the recommendations that you get change based on what you can afford. Right, so, oh, I'm not at that 50 unit building yet. I'm looking at a 24 unit or whatever. Right now. Oh, wow, somebody just came in and committed another 5 mil. Boom Changes the game. Right Now I can go look at 100 units or whatever. Yeah, so you're just, you're constantly changing the recommendations based on what you see, because now you have a peak. You guys have a view into the actual syndicators, like cash. You know what they've got and what they can spend. And do you guys, what about like?

Speaker 4: 33:44

connected. We've got a lot of different ideas, I think in our conversation last time or a different conversation like, hey, how about you guys build those models and enable people to tweak them slightly on the fly, based on what their needs are. Can you do that? And the answer is yes, but it's, you know, going to require time and effort and to be able to get there. There's a lot of different ideas flying Right now. We're just trying to focus on what is our kind of bread and butter? What can we make it take it to market. It was an MVP that's going to be successful and we feel like we're very confident in the offering that we have today and where we're going next and from there then, once we onboard you know we're making a little bit of revenue or onboarding clients and we're seeing the benefits and we'll talk about more about we're trying to attack both the expense side and the incremental revenue side. For anyone client or that we onboard, there's not just an additional expense for them, but rather we want to prove that the ROI that's what we're doing in this pilot right now. We have really substantial ROI on the investment you're making, on the subscription you're paying. But also we're trying to take one of our competitors off the table, because we're going to be able to provide the data to you as well. So those data providers today that are just providing data to commercialize a broker, I mean we're gonna. We're doing that as a side gig, but the better butterfly for us is all the models and the matching capability that we've built over the past year and a half, two years now.

Speaker 2: 35:06

Yeah, Well, when I think of who's got the most money, I think of banks, right. So that's the first thing I think I was like, oh, who's got the most money that would be interested in this and is looking for deal flow Banks. So, like, mezzanine financing, right, is part of this cap stack that these people are going to raise. So they're going to go out and they're going to get money from syndicators or they're going to get money from, you know, doing the syndication, but then there may be some mezzanine financing they need. There's some debt financing they're going to go after, right, so connecting them to banks that could offer that, and then you guys may be taking a piece of that deal. If banks would even be open to that. Like, maybe you take like a quarter point or something on the whole deal or something you know doesn't sound crazy, but a quarter point on a hundred million dollar deals not bad.

Speaker 4: 35:49

That's changing the whole market dynamic of the broker and me and Stash. We talked through this because Stash says I don't want to change the whole game, You're putting me out of business. I'm like, well, I mean, we have to think about the big picture, not just like the immediate impact to you and how you're thinking about your business. But there's a lot of different places we can go after that would make sense. That could be one of them, but right now we're positioning it for brokers.

Speaker 2: 36:12

This is what I love, though. I love just speculating on crap, like you guys have an MVP right now and I'm like going in a million different directions, but you have to have an MVP.

Speaker 3: 36:19

Well, and it's easy to do Like we've. You know, we've had, you know, these spin sessions where, oh what if we did this or that?

Speaker 4: 36:26

Man, this would be great. Stash always does that. I'm like I try to keep him focused. I'm like we're going and he's really good at that.

Speaker 3: 36:32

He's good, I've learned I try and stay in our lane, Because he's always got his idea.

Speaker 4: 36:38

And if we don't focus on what we're trying to build and get an MVP out there, we'll never get anywhere. So I'm always like great idea put in the backlog. Right, I'm going to put in the backlog.

Speaker 3: 36:46

And so we have. We have some sheets that have that are many lines deep, when this is a good pro like this is.

Speaker 2: 36:53

This comes up at every startup, every startup. Explain to people I mean, is a guy who gets it? Is a guy who has to do this professionally? Also, explain to people the process. Explain to people like the way you really should do a startup versus. Let me think of every possible thing that I could do.

Speaker 4: 37:13

You know and never launch yeah it, you know the most, most projects or most startups. The problem is what we call scope creep. So basically, you started bringing so much into the scope before you're trying to solve for, and then your scope goes from you know a sin to a very wide, and then you just like I don't even have to, I don't even know how to go to the next, you know, my next MVP release. I always try to keep focused on what we're trying to solve and the one use case. Build that use case. Really make sure that you have the right thought process of how do I get from A to Z and just focus on this and let nothing else come in your way, because every time, just like you said, you would be through at me 10 ideas sitting here for the past half an hour and I'm like great idea we're going to put in the backlog, right, just because I'm focused on delivering a product that works, focus on delivering on a value to our potential future clients, and that's what we're focused on today. I mean, I feel very confident, but what I'm trying to say before we even go to the market, we're doing the pilot just to make sure that we can prove ROI before we. That's all about ROI right To make sure that, whatever you're paying, you're getting five 10X worth in the value I'm providing to you for what you're paying me for today.

Speaker 3: 38:28

And I think you know it's kind of like being an introide in a mile deep. You know you also have to make sure that what you have in mind is actually solving a need that the market has. That's because you could solve for a problem, but if nobody cares, well, what are you doing?

Speaker 4: 38:45

We're trying to make the brokers and our clients more efficient. It's all about time. Like you have so much, like you think about your schedule, I think about my schedule. We're so soon like on our time availability, what we can do, so we're trying to cut off, when we've mapped a persona for a broker, what they do to be able to call one customer. They spend all this time looking at data from different sources, pulling together data together. We're like, okay, well, let's put it all at their fingertips and let's tell you which one to call.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Because, even if I've got all those different sources of data, I don't know how to put them all together, unless I'm somebody like Stash and I've got tons of years of experience. But, like you said, these young brokers, these young agents, they don't. They don't know, they don't even know where to find this data from. And right now, the sources that you find the data from, people complain about all the time. I'm not going to name them, but that's not. Yeah, people that are listening and know, they've tried them before and I'm guessing you guys probably get some of that data from those guys, but if you just went into one of those platforms and tried to use it, you'd be confused. It doesn't give you a full scope, a full picture.

Speaker 4: 39:47

Yeah, we have our own data sources, but we also have other APIs we will have access to is where we're getting our data. So we've built our own data models. We've built our own data set. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2: 39:57

And did you guys? Do you guys got a pattern or are you in a process of patenting any of that?

Speaker 4: 40:00

We are working through that. Yeah, it was our lawyers, so we've retained a law firm here in town that's going to help us through the whole next phase in terms of our commercialization.

Speaker 2: 40:11

Nice. Well, how did you guys get this? Like, where did you go first to get into this whole like ecosystem? So I mean, there's a lot of people that aren't from Cincinnati so they're not going to understand it, but a lot of these startup ecosystems are built similar right they all have there's like a head, there's like a one hub and then you got a bunch of spokes right. So how did you guys get into this? Who told you about? You know, get like where to go, what to do? People have no idea. They have an idea, they, and they're about where you guys are with the relationship.

Speaker 4: 40:40

How do you guys get that? So we spent the past year and a half to years just building the actual solution yeah, before we even thought about customers, how to get funding, how, like, who should support us?

Speaker 3: 40:53

Well, the first step was let's make sure it works, let's make sure that we have so have?

Speaker 4: 40:57

Yeah, so we actually built the models and then we sent spreadsheets out. Yeah, we built the models and we said does this work? Let's send stats some spreadsheet and to his friends and have them call off our models. And the feedback was very positive, like and now let's put together an actual SaaS solution around the data.

Speaker 2: 41:13

Good, yes, to make it pretty presentable.

Speaker 4: 41:16

We don't want to go to an offering with Excel spreadsheets.

Speaker 2: 41:20

So that's why we built a front end. It organized it Exactly.

Speaker 4: 41:24

So we built a very user friendly front end that looks very intuitive. I don't even like feel anytime we presented to anybody, they never asked any question about it.

Speaker 2: 41:32

No, it looked great. I look finished. They complete.

Speaker 4: 41:34

Yeah. So it looks very easy to use, very kind of intuitive, easy to click through. Really, it's like I feel like it's you sign in If you want market intelligence, click you're there. If you want the leads, click you're there. You want more details, click you're there. Like literally, it's like two clicks, three clicks and you already have everything at your fingertips.

Speaker 3: 41:54

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 41:54

And that's what we're aiming for. Click is because, once you get to the leads page, you click, one click and you have all the information at your fingertips.

Speaker 2: 42:01

Yeah, I mean this is the way it should be. I mean it's crazy, but like Kyle and I could go. I mean I got my real estate license. Like Kyle and I could go start a syndication with just your software. It seems like, yeah, like it's like that easy.

Speaker 3: 42:14

It'd be yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:15

I mean it wouldn't even be that hard, like I wouldn't even have to go around like looking for things, but it's, you know, that's the way it should be. I mean it seems like that would be a low barrier to entry for somebody who's looking to syndicate a property. Because I go in there I'm looking for deals. I need to be able to sell a deal to investors. That's like the first thing is like find a deal, then go out there and pimp it to investors and say, hey, look, I got this great deal. You guys show them how great the deal is, like, look, this is a four cap. You guys are used to dealing with what Then? Like a negative cap right now, probably. Or like a two or maybe a three, but especially if you're on the coast and you this, where all the money's at anyway, their cap rates are tight.

Speaker 4: 43:01

Yeah, that's really a good point that you bring up is we're also opening it for other brokers that you know your client base is not somebody who's in town around you. Now with the solution you're able to see all the ownership groups that you could potentially present this property to across the country. So it's not like you are constrained by your geography. Like stash knows, everybody was in Cincinnati, kentucky, columbus, cleveland et cetera. That's his market. But now was our solution. Now he can you know, oh, I have this deal for you know, this owner's group and this one's group lives in mostly our whatever New York or West Coast, east Coast, et cetera. So that is really opening even further for him to find potential buyers for property that maybe historically they won't even look at it just because it's in Cincinnati or somewhere else.

Speaker 2: 43:50

Right, right. So what is the next step for you guys?

Speaker 4: 43:55

Now through end of year as pilot, our beta testing. Going through that approve the ROI, put together our white paper. We're doing a Q1, we're targeting some fundraising and go to market after that Nice.

Speaker 2: 44:11

So everybody you've talked to have they pretty much like been excited about what you guys are doing. I mean, what's the feedback you've gotten that makes you think like, oh God, I don't want to have to go back to square one on this thing, or is there any of that kind of stuff, or is it all mostly positive, mostly positive?

Speaker 4: 44:27

The only one feedback that I keep getting is that, hey, you got to get your mobile app fairly quickly because everybody is mobile versus being. So our application is desktop, you know even a handheld device, but it's not, you know, mobile friendly yet. So we're going to work on getting at least an MVP from a mobile application standpoint. That's on our roadmap. We're working through that.

Speaker 2: 44:48

But you could start with a mobile website. I mean, you can just make all the components, we are yeah, so I think we are mobile friendly.

Speaker 4: 44:54

We are. I mean, it's for a handheld device, like you know, like tablet or something. Yeah, but it's not like an actual, you know, mobile phone application. You can go to our website through your mobile phone. You can work through it. Like all, like our application, you can work through it. It's just not going to look as neat compared to yeah.

Speaker 3: 45:14

I mean, we designed it with the desktop primarily in mind. Yeah, but then the next iteration is going to be on the app store, right? Yep, exactly.

Speaker 2: 45:23

Love it. So talk about what you guys are doing right now. Are you you're out here raising money, or are you guys still you? You still working on your own stuff, or we're.

Speaker 4: 45:33

We're not raising money yet. We don't plan until like some point in Q1, q2. We've self-funded the whole thing ourselves thus far. We're you know excited to have been able to do that and having a product to go to market was zero funding from anybody outside. So that's kind of to scale it at the level we wanted.

Speaker 2: 45:53

I think we'll probably most likely need to go get some funding in Q1, Q2, and from there and see, where you know, hire some people, Because there may be people listening to this that are like, yo, I can get a 20, hopefully they're not raising it at a $20 million valuation but I'm getting a $20 million piece of software. I've invested in it at five or 10 or whatever you guys start at. But I mean, even if you know if somebody's listening out here, you're a syndicator. We got a lot of real estate people that want to listen to the podcast. I mean they could check out, they could do a demo with you guys, they could.

Speaker 4: 46:23

Our website is up and running needleus, so just needlus Login's there. You can send us a note. We'll have you set up some demos, but we don't plan on onboarding anybody until this beta pilot you know period is over and which is by end of year. So we're like walk on it. We want to make sure it's really ready for commercialization and we're getting feedback from really, you know, awesome, you know top commercial estate brokers in the country, so it's pretty cool to be in the position we're at.

Speaker 2: 46:52

You're in that phase right now. It's like what can we do to get as much feedback as possible and make this thing perfect? Like it's perfect, it's never gonna be perfect, yeah.

Speaker 4: 47:04

I don't know, stash, do you have anything feedback you've received from some of the brokers we have, I mean so far it's been all positive. Very little feedback on the UI UX itself.

Speaker 3: 47:18

It's just hey, can we add this or what if we, you know, make a slight tweak here and there? Did that.

Speaker 2: 47:24

And some people just give you feedback, just to give you feedback, like they're like ah, what if you did this? No-transcript. Okay, that's not like there's nothing's broke.

Speaker 4: 47:31

Yeah, it's yeah, we do, and some of the feedback we've gotten has been very positive, very good feedback. We've also made some. We do monthly releases for the software. So we're doing a monthly release tomorrow, actually for the next iteration, based on the feedback we've received. So like we have a good structure in place to how we do releases it's monthly. We get feedback. We think through that. Is it aligned to our roadmap and MVP product? If it is, let's move it into the back of out of the backlog and drive it forward. So it's you know it's working exactly how we want it to be. We're super excited to see where this can go.

Speaker 2: 48:03

And well, I'm excited to have you guys on the show, because then one of these days, I'm going to go back to this, and you guys will too, after you know sell for $10 billion or whatever. And you go back and be like remember that time we went to Adam's office and we were in that little room, we were nervous yeah we went to that little room and we were talking about it. We were in the MVP stage and you knew you're on your yachts and you're racing them down the you know the French. Riviera, the Mofi coast, yeah.

Speaker 4: 48:29

Oh, that's gonna be awesome. Yeah, my goal is always to how more good can I do and how can like any this that comes out of this is to drive you know into investment to the community. How can we do better things and to support our ecosystem, support other you know startups. So for me, the driver is not just about money, but actually how can we give back and how can we make more out of it for other people as well.

Speaker 1: 48:52

Oh, I got two kids in college so you can start with them back there.

Speaker 2: 48:56

Yeah, I have two as well, so they're gonna need jobs, so they're gonna need to get their resumes together now. So when these guys raise money. They're gonna be looking for people. So that's the one tough thing in Cincinnati is talent. You know, trying to find enough talent, because it all seems to coalesce on the on the coast. So it's like getting that good tech talent here and multiplying. You guys Like, how do you do that? How do you find another broker or another real estate guy with enough experience to come in and know what they're doing? Like you have to train them, right? Yeah, because they're working, they're doing their thing, they're just like startup, I don't, you know. Like you have to bring somebody and actually train them. And that's tough. I mean especially on what you've done and how you've built it, the, the language you've used to build it in. Like there's a lot. I mean we've been down that road and it's. It can be, it can be tough, but I mean you guys got your heads on your shoulders right.

Speaker 4: 49:46

So our team is an amazing team. That been really awesome. Yeah, they take the feedback. They run was that they work through it. So it's been great to have really good talent to drive this forward.

Speaker 2: 49:56

That's exactly what you need. That's exactly what guys. This has been awesome. Good luck with everything. Needle, thank you for having us. Yeah, anything else you guys want to say, or leave with the, leave with the community here. Is there a? Is there an event coming up or anything that you guys are going to be at to showcase what you've got going on?

Speaker 3: 50:13

We'd be happy to you know present what we've got at the event that you mentioned earlier at the top.

Speaker 2: 50:21

Oh, yeah, yeah, oh God, I can't even yeah, but no, any of those kind of things that you want to do, like if you want to get with Osh and get there, I mean I could, yeah, send that out to him and see if he's got some room or something for you guys to jump in and just, yeah, do run a demo, get into a room. I mean, yeah, let's just run a demo in a room. Like I mean, there's got to be some room.

Speaker 4: 50:39

We can do demo anytime. It's again, the solution is up or software is up, like we can present anytime and get you know, provide. Here's how it works, here's how easy it is. Here's the value to you guys. I mean it's huge value. Yeah, it's huge value. We're excited, for sure.

Speaker 1: 50:58

If you guys could do a demo and I know this is your because your wheelhouse right now is the multifamily but a lot of this is going to be the commercial flex based stuff, I think is what they're really going to be looking at for this. I think it's more like a beyond multifamily type conference.

Speaker 4: 51:11

If you think about it, I'm not overly concerned about the other verticals because we have access to the data. Yeah, the only thing is just about training our models. So the software is up. The next step is, like you need this vertical, whatever. It is like great, we have already have access to all the data in the country for every commercial asset property, so that's not an issue I mean for every.

Speaker 1: 51:33

I'm just saying when you, when you go to gear, you're when you go to gear just for the crowd you're going into. I was just like you know oh, thank you.

Speaker 4: 51:40

Yeah, that makes sense, but as we're thinking about the solution itself, we have access to all the data. The solution is built right now is building another model for a very specific type of property and pushing those, those results from the models, into the software, and it could be as simple as on the leads page. Potentially it could be like hey, you just multiply the product. Yeah, filter by whatever type of property you want, and that could be the exterration.

Speaker 2: 52:04

So love it, love it. Well, guys, thanks for coming in today.

Speaker 3: 52:08

This has been awesome Thanks for having us.

Speaker 2: 52:09

It's been great and sharing with people because they you know, people don't know, they don't know where they stand with their stuff and they need to understand different perspectives and how you guys did your thing and you don't have to be 21 years old to do a startup Like, yeah, you can be fully into a career.

Speaker 3: 52:23

Well, and there's no way that I or myself that we could have gotten to where we're at or have the experience or the knowledge of how to do this, even do this.

Speaker 2: 52:33

Yeah, like you, yeah, yeah, no way.

Speaker 4: 52:35

Yeah, we would have probably, yeah, stumbled a lot more. I mean, we're still sumbling, but a lot more Sure.

Speaker 2: 52:42

There have been some drinking binges kind of in between there too, and a little bit of party and some girlfriends getting in the way Like it would have been some issues, younger days, all right guys. Well, I really appreciate it, thanks.

Speaker 4: 52:53

Yeah, thank you, appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 52:55

Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests, Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, Side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.