Nov 2018 (Updated in 2020)

Written while listening to

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/64n686YmrOhzt2CefqJ4zO

Real Estate represents 13% of US GDP. Broken out, commercial real estate as a whole contributed $1.14 trillion to U.S. GDP and Generated $396.4 billion in salaries and wages.

Next biggest industry is State and Local government coming in at 9% of GDP. (Sorry Ludwig Von Mises.)

So you can imagine the excitement that washed over me when my friend Ben Seidl called and asked if I was interested in joining a Commercial Real Estate (CRE) startup he and his brother had launched in Oakland, CA.

But aside from GDP here's why I really joined and what the opportunity looked like.

70% of transaction volume in CRE exists in space with less than ~3,000 sq ft. Many of these spaces serve local communities as retail operations, restaurants and small service businesses. They are in every city and town in this country. And often times, in the typical boom and bust cycles our economy experiences they sit empty.

For weeks.

And months.

And sometimes years.