A Primer on Real Estate Tech (PropTech) with Zachary Aarons and Brad Hargreaves

Erik is joined by Brad Hargreaves (@bhargreaves), founder and CEO of Common and co-founder of General Assembly, and Zach Aarons (@ZacharyAarons), co-founder and partner at MetaProp, a proptech venture fund.The guests explain what exactly proptech is and why it’s an exciting space for entrepreneurs. They go over some of the sub-segments within proptech, some of the existing unicorns in the space, as well as the incumbents that new entrepreneurs might encounter and how they themselves getting involved in the crossover of tech and real estate. Brad explains how his time at General Assembly informed Common and how he “navigated the idea maze.” He points out that there are a lot of adults living with non-family roommates but that virtually none of the existing structures in real estate and property management are set up for that arrangement.They discuss the differences between residential and commercial real estate and why “they’re almost like separate industries." WeWork has even had trouble trying to add residential to their existing commercial business. They also talk about some of their requests for startups in the space and the unique structure of new investment vehicles, given that they are investing in both operating companies and real estate assets and receive returns on each of those investments in the same fund.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.