In 2014, we set out to deliver a new category of software and data services that would empower the world’s most sophisticated real estate investment managers to operate at scale with speed and precision, to make the best investment decisions, and maximize risk-adjusted returns. Time flies when you’re building an integrated digital platform powering the full lifecycle of real estate investments!

Looking back on our first 10 years of partnering with clients, growing our organization, and launching a new category and solution for real estate deal management software, the progress and achievements have been a total team effort. As the CEO and Co-Founder of Dealpath, I am proud, honored, and grateful to work with such a talented and dedicated team with unmatched ambition to deliver client value. I want to give special thanks to our two Co-Founders, Kenter Wu and Andy Lee, our Founding Team, Gary Kao and David Knight, and each and every member of our fantastic team along with our clients, partners and investors for their support over the years and as we venture forward together.

Today, Dealpath is proud to be recognized by the industry as the category creator, market leader, and most trusted platform for real estate investment management. Our revolutionary platform has been purpose-built from the ground up to drive investment performance from pipeline to portfolio management for both equity and debt investors. We are powering hundreds of institutional managers, including 7 of the top 10, and have supported more than $10 Trillion in global investment decisions across acquisitions, dispositions, development, and debt. With Dealpath, clients are evaluating +20% more deals than they did previously, making 30% fewer errors in underwriting and due diligence, seeing a +50% increase in productivity, and a +60% lift in employee satisfaction. These are big, hard numbers measured from many hundreds of successful implementations.

Building a World-Class Team to Deliver Compounding Value

Our world-class team is spread across our dual headquarters in San Francisco and New York City and our offices in Toronto and Austin. We’ve been backed with over $60M from top-tier venture and growth investors including Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, Nasdaq, JLL, 8VC, and GreenSoil, including a $43M series C funding in 2022. The company is well resourced and capitalized for the long-term as we work diligently to build industry-defining solutions.

We started a decade ago with a wildly ambitious goal – to digitize real estate investing, the largest and oldest asset class in the world, bringing data-driven decision-making, speed, and efficiency through powerful business process automation and AI. We saw consolidation in real estate investment management as the largest institutions sought to benefit from even stronger economies of scale and lower costs of capital. They required purpose-built solutions to accomplish this and Dealpath would be the trusted partner to realize this massive potential.

Our vision and mission hasn’t drifted a bit – the opportunity has only become bigger and more clear for an integrated, digital platform powering the full lifecycle of real estate investment management.

The Problems We Set Out to Solve: Disparate, Siloed Data and Complex Business Processes

We saw two fundamental challenges that real estate investors and capital markets professionals were facing.

The first was the inability to easily assess accurate, up-to-date data across disparate sources. Investment professionals were spending too much time, money, and energy manually trying to cobble together necessary information through repetitive activities of scouring a dozen different data sources and trying to curate and format this data, which was then instantly lost again in spreadsheets and emails. The result was missed opportunities, costly errors and oversights and a major drag on the speed and quality of work.

The second was complex collaboration requirements across internal teams and systems, as well as with external partners. Legacy tools and business processes weren’t designed for competing in today’s digital universe and scaling real estate investment programs. Teams were bottlenecked by a lack of visibility, issues with controls and data security, and most of all, the ability to get things done efficiently.

Real Estate has specific needs – securing a parcel of land, constructing and maintaining operations on it, and underwriting a physical thing in the real world is different from other types of investments. With this said, we’ve observed relatable solutions in other markets. For example, taking the way back machine to the Buttonwood Agreement in 1792, when 24 merchants and stock brokers agreed to standardize how they trade among one another. 

Standardizing data and workflows enabled global capital to invest in local/regional businesses, driving scale and liquidity. This has evolved to what is today the NYSE, the foundation of today’s financial markets and financial infrastructure, including institutions like Bloomberg. Real Estate was still under the Buttonwood Tree – however the largest asset class in the world was poised for a belated and accelerated digital transformation.

Supercharging the Investment Process With Data, Automation, Collaboration, and Scale 

The bright and inevitable future is that real estate will look more similar to equity, debt, and currency, which together comprise the four major asset classes globally. Real estate will have increasing regulation with accounting and data standards (ex. ESG), increasing liquidity through online exchanges with electronic trading, and it will be driven by institutional investors and top brokerage firms – the largest, most sophisticated pools of capital and advisory services.

Through our work over the past decade with hundreds of leading firms, Dealpath has identified these four key pillars for building value and operational excellence through investment performance engineering: Data, Automation, Collaboration, and Scale, which we refer to as “DACS“, our methodology.

DACS is a framework for understanding, competing, and operating in the digitally transformed business and network of real estate. We see a new breed of investment manager deploying DACS and growing an operational backbone without traditional constraints, unlocking value exponentially with inherent relentlessness in execution.

A Decade-Long Partnership with 7 of the Top 10 Real Estate Institutional Investors

This transformation did not happen overnight or in a vacuum; our team has worked tirelessly to deliver on this mission and vision of digitizing CRE investment decisions over the past decade. Our partnerships with hundreds of institutional clients across the CRE industry have informed and continue to drive our product roadmap. It’s truly a privilege to see firms of all sizes optimize investment performance with purpose-built software. 

Dealpath makes it easy for clients to bring in new deals for initial screening and centralizing data at the top of the funnel, promoting adoption to build a data advantage with the full scope of every deal and asset that crosses their desks.

We provide powerful and intuitive workflow automation that works for our clients’ specific needs and drives efficiency across underwriting, investment committee, diligence, closing and related reporting to operate at scale with speed and precision to make the best investment decisions and generate optimal risk adjusted returns.

As the arms race for data-driven precision continues, we’re seeing the industry pull every lever possible to maximize value creation. 

The Next 10 Years of Engineering Real Estate Investment Performance

At Dealpath, we believe that real estate is driven by people with information to shape our built world and that intuitive, purpose-built software and data-driven analysis empower smart decisions and performance. Everything we do continues to be in pursuit of maximizing the important work of real estate investment and capital markets in today’s digital universe and age of AI.

We’re just getting started and I couldn’t be more excited for our next decade of growth and innovation! Looking forward, it’s clear and inevitable that the next ten years will move even faster as Dealpath helps empower the digital transformation of real estate and real assets globally. There is so much more work to do, which is just the way we like it. Go Dealpath!

The post Dealpath Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary & Next Growth Phase appeared first on Dealpath.

Looking back on the past eight years of partnering with clients, growing our organization, and building a new category and solution for real estate deal management software, the fantastic progress we have made has been a total team effort. Since we first launched our platform in 2014, we’ve supported over $10 trillion in investment transactions. Over the past year alone, our world-class team has nearly doubled to 100 professionals across our three offices in San Francisco, New York City and Toronto. We experienced much of this growth through a global pandemic, social unrest, and market volatility. Dealpath is solving real business needs and has so much opportunity to grow together with our clients.

Looking forward, it’s clear and inevitable that the next eight years will move even faster as Dealpath empowers the digital transformation of real estate globally. Morgan Stanley is the perfect partner for this next phase of growth towards our vision of becoming where the built world transacts digitally.

As the CEO and Co-Founder of Dealpath, I am both honored and grateful to work with such a talented and dedicated team who have collectively built this strong foundation and break-out momentum with a bright future ahead. I want to extend a big thank you to our team members, clients, and investors for your partnership over the years and as we venture forward. 

Delivering a Better Solution for Real Estate Investment Teams

Institutional real estate investment managers, developers, lenders and advisors have been underserved by software and technology to support their important work for far too long, defaulting to information stored locally in spreadsheets, emails and drives for guidance.

Speed and precision are vital differentiators in today’s market environment, as investors deploy global capital on inherently localized investment strategies to meet and exceed investor expectations.   

We set out to deliver a deal management solution that would enable investment teams to confidently and nimbly make the best investment decisions at scale, driven by centralized, real-time data, workflow automation, and effective collaboration. Our vision was clear: to make Dealpath where the built world transacts digitally by creating an investment command center, serving as the centralized source of truth from pipeline through portfolio management. 

Eight years after first launching Dealpath, the platform has now grown to become the real estate industry’s leading and most trusted deal management solution being leveraged by hundreds of top performing firms. If not for these close partnerships with the real estate industry, including six of the top ten institutional investors, we would not have been able to mold our software to deliver the value we do. 

Most importantly, these first eight years have validated our hypothesis that purpose-built software with powerful data analytics and collaborative workflows enables players of all sizes to uncover the most profitable opportunities and build value into the future. I’m proud to say that our customers have achieved impressive business outcomes, including evaluating 194% more deals, boosting the number of deals closed by 154%, and increasing deal velocity by 120%.

The Opportunity Ahead: Ushering a Rapidly Evolving Industry Forward

The real estate industry continues to transform digitally, as firms of all sizes digitize their operations to transact with greater speed, precision and conviction. In an $18 trillion market, deal management software is quickly becoming a necessity to compete and deliver compelling investment programs and returns.

This funding is pivotal to the next phase of Dealpath’s rapid global expansion as we aim to build our world-class team, including new roles that will bolster our product, leadership and market facing capabilities. We will continue to create compounding value as an end-to-end solution that drives optimal portfolio performance, empowering our clients to invest with the speed and precision they need in this competitive market. By doing so, we look forward to continued partnerships with our industry-leading clients that have driven exponential growth across all real estate asset classes and markets.

As the real estate industry continues to evolve to fully leverage digital solutions, the opportunity to realize exponential growth is exceptionally massive. We are excited to continue to drive operational excellence as we grow, but most importantly, to empower data-driven portfolio growth for our valued clients to invest in and responsibly make the most of our built world. We’re just getting started, and we couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead! Go Dealpath!

The post Announcing Our $43M Series C Funding Led By Morgan Stanley appeared first on Dealpath.

We’re impressed by the thoughtful responses we’re seeing in this trying business environment, with top real estate investment firms adjusting with agility, resilience, and opportunities.

Given the unique challenges of these uncertain times, Dealpath has prepared a summary of best practices and recommendations:

Maintain Business Continuity

We’re observing impacts differing by region, business strategy, and team, all the way to families and individuals. We are all affected through our own circumstances. It’s critical for protecting enterprise value to have centralized data that is globally accessible, institutional grade data security, and collaboration across teams, partners, and systems.

Empower Remote Work

It is proving challenging to forecast global health issues and prevention measures with accuracy. Of the many things this impacts, perhaps most noticeable across the industry is no longer having the ability to meet in person, travel and visit properties, and attend industry events. With changes in the business environment, teams can adjust to enable capabilities for remote work, evolve processes, and establish new ways of collaborating with best-in-class tools.

Execute Portfolio Repositions & Investment Opportunities 

The next 12 months are certain to bring change for nearly every investment manager. Understanding the performance of your portfolio and strategy with speed and precision is critical. Visibility into underwriting and the ability to execute on investment opportunities will drive optimal risk-adjusted returns.

Our Customer Success and Sales teams are always happy to walk through specific use cases with you, share detailed best practices and both train and re-train teammates.

Please let us know if we can be helpful and take care!

The post Pragmatic in a Time of Uncertainty appeared first on Dealpath.

The investment will allow Dealpath to further accelerate our efforts to advance a seamless, interactive marketplace for real estate.

Dealpath is the real estate industry’s leading cloud-based deal management platform and has now surpassed $5 trillion in transactions supported on the platform with institutions across the world.

We are taking an industry that has $1 trillion transacted annually with only make-shift means of deal management – either by cobbling together legacy systems such as Excel+Word+Email or spending enormous resources attempting to customize CRM systems. Dealpath is transforming this and our clients are benefiting from immediate returns and proven results, including 475% ROI, 20% more deals evaluated, 30% fewer errors in underwriting and due diligence and 50% increase in weekly productivity.

I’m speaking for our entire team when I say that we couldn’t be more excited to accelerate building out our platform and organization and raising the bar for service to our clients and community. This investment partnership with Blackstone is the result of our shared views on the incredible opportunity as real estate is digitally transformed, and we unlock the value of structured data and intelligent work.

Go Dealpath! Onward!!

Mike Sroka
CEO & Co-Founder

The post Dealpath Announces Investment From Blackstone appeared first on Dealpath.

In 2015, real estate technology received $1.8 billion in venture investment according to monthly REtech reports. By 2017, that number grew more than tenfold to $12.6 billion, and in Q3 2018 alone it hit $4.6 billion. With global powerhouse investors like SoftBank Group leading the way, and key strategic initiatives including JLL’s $100 million PropTech fund, real estate technology has significant resources for accelerating growth into the future.

Here are five prediction for PropTech in 2019:

1. Real estate software services will (finally) be forced into an open ecosystem

   Many of the industry incumbents have built their software on closed, single-stack architecture, but their customers are seeking additional, purpose-built tools to complement their existing technology. To fully leverage their data, these customers require data interoperability across a range of tools and services. Unfortunately, legacy software providers have been slow to accommodate their needs, and customer demands have been received with “coming soon” promises.

   That’s why they’re beginning to utilize real estate technology stacks that integrate specialized, purpose-built tools into a network of systems that fits their distinct requirements. This new paradigm has led to the growth of third-party APIs, data standardization, and the open ecosystem of PropTech in 2019.

2. A real estate “operating system” will emerge

   To date, real estate organizations have utilized a mosaic of software tools for market data, deal management, property accounting, valuations, CRMs, and fund administration. With the proliferation of new tools and integrations in an open ecosystem, the industry will need a centralized interface to manage these best-of-breed applications and handle real estate transactions from the pipeline through to portfolio management.

   While the concept of a real estate “operating system” is still evolving, it’s becoming increasingly clear that an open ecosystem requires it. To justify their position in this ecosystem, software providers will need to prove their ability to integrate and deliver value in a modern real estate technology stack. A flurry of high-profile acquisitions, major private equity-backed roll-ups, and IPO announcements will shine a spotlight on this growing need.

3. Capital markets will tighten

   Compared to the last couple of years, there will be a higher premium placed on risk in 2019. Capital will continue flowing with even larger total dollar amounts, but expect there to be a fewer number of transactions. Instead, there will a greater focus on the most promising late-stage opportunities, higher expectations for business progress relative to valuations, and more protective terms and covenants.

4. Technology leadership has a seat at the table

   Executive leadership has recognized that they need to leverage the best technology tools and data services to continue delivering compelling risk-adjusted returns. True technology leadership will be integral toward that end, so expect them to be empowered with new directives and an increased budget. They will be depended upon for data security, system administration, and vendor procurement among other strategic initiatives. Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and Chief Data Officers will be in high demand in 2019, and they will have a major role to play as the industry becomes increasingly tech-enabled.

5. The talent gap will narrow

   With increased technology investment will come an equally large influx of talent. Real estate investment firms and PropTech companies alike will find more, higher quality talent knocking on their doors in 2019. This is a critical development since the real estate industry has struggled to attract new talent at times.

Real estate technology is in a period of dynamic maturation, and the next year will set in motion the trends that will define the industry for years to come. For PropTech in 2019, among the biggest drivers of change will be a full-fledged embrace of the “open ecosystem,” the race to become the real estate operating system, and an increased focus on technology leadership.

The post Five Predictions for PropTech in 2019 appeared first on Dealpath.

It’s hard to believe that only three years ago the $15 trillion commercial real estate industry had virtually no software support and was vastly underserved by available technology.

The opportunity to innovate in this space has been identified by gritty entrepreneurs and smart investors who have committed over $1.46 billion of early stage investment capital to build and capture the substantial value to be had. “CRE tech” is now a recognizable term used to identify and communicate this period where the commercial real estate industry becomes tech-enabled.

Today, there are hundreds of institutionally-backed software and other technology companies built for the specific needs of commercial real estate that are achieving various levels of traction and success. We’re even seeing early winners with valuations in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I have little doubt that this will grow to include publicly held companies that employ thousands of people and are measured in the billions of dollars as they power commercial real estate into the future.

While CRE technology continues to grow and mature in the commercial real estate market, we’re witnessing a healthy and necessary consolidation phase where resources become focused on the most promising opportunities.

In just the past nine months we’ve already seen the merger of VTS and Hightower to create a new force in leasing and asset management software with an estimated valuation of $300 million. There’s been a surge in later stage financing from top tier venture firms, including Cadre raising a $65 million Series C financing led by Andreessen Horowitz to fuel a tech-enabled institutional investment advisory management firm, Clutter raising a $64 million Series C financing led by Atomico and Sequoia to evolve the self-storage business, and Breather raising a $40 million Series C led by Menlo Ventures to bring flex office space and conference rooms to every major metro area. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions are happening every month: CBRE recently acquired Floored; Berkadia invested in RedIQ; MRI has made a multitude of acquisitions including ResidentCheck and CallMaX.

As we look ahead to more exciting developments in the great consolidation of CRE tech, watch for these five trends to gain ground in the coming 12 months:

1. Industry standard point solutions (e.g., property data, valuation, property accounting and portfolio management services) will be extended and combined with new offerings to deliver more comprehensive platforms for commercial property owners. For example, if MRI were to acquire Honest Buildings, they would be able to provide elegant and advanced tooling for managing capital projects with an open asset management platform. Additionally, we might see Altus Group acquiring a company like Waypoint to more deeply tie and entrench valuation into core use cases.
2. The revenue growth, market size and execution of leasing (revenue) data services are compelling for both private and public market investors leading to an IPO. Leasing data services have become necessary to creating and capturing value in this competitive market. We may see VTS raise $100 million-plus in Series D financing with its eye toward going public in 2019, or CoStar making moves by acquiring CompStak, or possibly something bigger.
3. Institutional investors expect professional, effective communication and transparent reporting, which is accomplished with software and is most valuable when bridging the chasm between front office and back office. One bridge that might make sense is the combination of Yardi or MRI and Juniper Square, but watch out for Cadre swooping in as they build out their own advisory and investment management empire.
4. Auctions and crowdfunding seem to be boiling down to better tooling and branding for originating transactions efficiently. We could see Ten-X acquiring Realty Shares for this very reason.
5. Robo-advisors who provide customers with an easy to manage, low cost, diversified investment platform need to deliver better exposure and visibility into the fourth asset class of commercial real estate. In which case, companies like Betterment could benefit from the acquisition of new comer Fundrise.

Industry activity is accelerating and it’s an exciting time to be in the mix where billions of dollars of value will be created and/or missed. We can further expect that in a couple of years the term CRE tech will be dead and the industry will absorb technology into its DNA to be software enabled. In order to compete in this increasingly competitive and complex market, firms will need to be proficient users of the best software tools.

The post Five Predictions For The Great Consolidation Of CRE Tech appeared first on Dealpath.

Commercial real estate deal management is a highly partisan issue in the 2016 election season. This issue is not between Democrats, Republicans or Libertarians, but make no mistake, it’s decision time and the stakes are high in the $15 trillion CRE industry. A new guard is driving change with innovative processes and tools powering effectiveness into the future.

Today we’re excited to launch Dealpath, a new software platform built for commercial real estate investment and development in the Internet Age.

Dealpath’s smart, intuitive and powerful software is designed to streamline deal management and help CRE professionals make the best investment decisions on their acquisitions, development projects, financings and dispositions.

To date, these valuable, time-sensitive transactions have been executed by a lot of people needing to exchange and understand information without specialized solutions or a standard way of doing things. They’ve managed by cobbling together a variety of different tools that were not designed for these challenges such as word document checklists of tasks, virtual data rooms, and lots and lots of email.

Dealpath is a cloud-based platform that automatically collects and organizes deal data. It enables users to efficiently distribute and track work both within their own firm and with external partners. Customizable reporting provides visibility and valuable insights into the deal pipeline that can also be exported for presentation or additional analysis. Dealpath is an easy-to-use platform freeing professionals from the administrative details that elegant software should be doing for them.

Dealpath has been borne out of years of frustration about the inefficiencies and lack of specialized solutions for CRE deal teams. I started my career at a large real estate private equity firm where I experienced these issues firsthand, and I’ve continued to hear and see the same challenges being faced by former colleagues and friends. The enormous amount of time, money, and energy poured into deal management is not the highest and best use of a firm’s valuable resources nor is it the most effective way to accomplish this important work. We hear you and we know there is a better way.

We started Dealpath more than two years ago with a clear view of the challenges to solve and the opportunities to improve deal management and collaboration. We’ve worked with hundreds of teams to understand their priorities and pain points. A new generation of CRE investment professionals has significant and growing responsibilities in this critical part of our economy. An increasingly competitive and complex marketplace requires specialized platforms, tools and services to achieve optimal outcomes.

If you’re acquiring, developing, or financing commercial property, we’re committed to raising the bar to provide better services to you.

Let’s build *real* value,

Mike

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