How has proptech evolved over time from solutions about the business of real estate to the automation and digitization of the physical buildings themselves? What lessons did Etrit take away from the hardships of his family re-establishing their lives in the US? How did entrepreneurship in Kosovo differ from what he experienced after moving to Michigan and integrating with the Albanian community? What learnings about the value of the product you are selling got instilled in Etrit when he was young? What lessons did Etrit take away from his experience in door to door selling laundry services? How did working at Chase during college open Etrit's eyes to how to successfully navigate the professional environment? What insights did Etrit take away from listening to an employee interaction with Jamie Diamond? Why is Etrit always trying to learn faster to do the right thing? Where did the initial interest in real estate originate? Why is customer service such a differentiation for KODE? What does having the GSA as a KODE customer mean to Etrit?

Etrit Demaj - co-founder of KODE Labs, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss immigrating to the US and the debt of gratitude he has for the opportunities presented to him because of this.

Should proptech be defined as a real estate specific problem to which a technology solution is applied to? Why can new real estate applications not ignore the workstream they are a part of and the ecosystem they must work nicely within? How is it possible for companies to balance encouraging innovation but not concurrently creating shadow IT departments? Why is the build vs buy decision front and center again for CTOs and other innovation leaders in proptech? Why was it a blessing in disguise for David to start off his professional career as a custody fund accountant? What led David to start a business operations group? Why is bottoms up technology adoption much easier than top down mandates? What led Dave to uncover the opportunity in real estate AP coding? What percent of general ledger transactions originate in AP? Who are the different purchasers of PredictAP? What new insights has the deployment of PredictAP within customers surfaced? In the fast changing world of AI, how do companies differentiate between solutions that demo well and give the appearance of solving a problem versus well architected and researched solutions that truly solve the fundamental business problem?

David Stifter - Founder and CEO of PredictAP, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how we worked at the first social network in college just prior to the early 2000s dot-bomb crash.

What has lead to the increase in 'better' companies succeeding in the proptech space? How did an early interest in climate change lead to a journey within the built environment? What did Tyler discover about real estate development that caused him to focus his attention on this space? How did the USC undergraduate experience prove challenging for a first in his family college student from the suburbs of New Jersey? Why did Tyler not end up finishing his PhD at UC Berkeley? How have many of the most vulnerable members of society ended up with housing in areas of cities with the greatest exposure to climate change risk? What was the premise behind establishing UC Berkeley's Terner Center? Why did Terner Labs decide to spin out of UC Berkeley's Terner Center? Why is there so much friction between housing innovation companies and affordable housing developers? What problems having engineering focused housing innovation companies encountered when trying to bring solutions to market? How have CA state legislatures engaged Terner Labs to understand the levers the state may be able to effect in order to reduce housing costs and increase housing production speed?

Tyler Pullen - Head of Building Innovation at Terner Labs, joins Proptech Espresso to answer these questions and discuss how his unique professional background enables him to act as a translator amongst the different parties looking to advance industrialized construction.