Founders, you don’t know enough about your customer.

One of my biggest pet peeves about Proptech is that Founders often don’t have a solid understanding of how Real Estate Developers and Landlords work. And if you’re thinking, “that’s definitely not me, I was in the industry for a few years before I decided to solve a pain point,” you are exactly who I’m referring to.

As antiquated and backwards as this industry may seem, it should still command your respect, because the processes to develop and manage a building can take a lifetime to master. I’ve run into too many founders with starry eyed ambitions to change the entire industry when they haven’t experienced much beyond the pain point they’re solving. But the cold, hard truth is, proptech can’t disrupt real estate.

Once you’ve embraced this fact, you’ll understand that the real estate industry isn’t a mountain to climb and reshape. It’s an entire mountain range full of different asset classes and sub industries where you as a founder can carve out a niche and thrive. And if you understand how your niche fits into our spectrum of processes and decision making, then you can more effectively position and sell your products to us. Helping you to clearly see from a developer and owner’s perspective is the goal of the founders guide section of this blog.