Sjoerd Handgraaf: And could you share a little bit, like, what were the things that you're like, "Ah, this is, you know, we, first thing I'm going to do at CREXi, this is what we're going to do. And a lot of them were really, you know, antiquated, kind of web 1.0 version technology that I thought could be enhanced and taken so much further than it was.
#The middleman episodes software#
Michael DeGiorgio: As I kind of started to learn the different ways commercial real estate was sold and really started to get to know some of the software that was available to us in the space, because we still used other software platforms to help our process, I started to see that there was none I really believed in, and there was a much better way of doing it. I think over time, as I learned how the transaction works for real estate really well, I probably sold 600 commercial real estate properties during my time there. I think especially, you know, at first, I was very bought into the vision. And during your time at Auction, you were just thinking, "Ah, we could do this so much better." Is that what happened? So basically, you are this, well, let's say, hardcore real estate veteran.
And I responded by telling him, "I think there's a way to bring, really, everything about commercial real estate, leasing, transacting, data, online in an intuitive way that's not out there, and I would go start that company." And he became my first investor, and I left my career behind about a month and a half later to go start CREXi. I was pushed by a former mentor of mine, uh, over drinks one night, to kind of, threw a, lobbed a question at me asking what I would do if I could go kind of out on my own. And so, you left, and then immediately after, you started CREXi? Or did you leave really to start CREXi?
#The middleman episodes plus#
The company grew to 1,000 plus people during my time there. We raised $50 million at a 1.2 billion valuation. My, after being there for about three years, we had raised a large round from Google Capital. Michael DeGiorgio: So when we started, I was, you know, maybe one of the first five people on the commercial division. The rest of our process was, uh, still very much like a broker. Uh, what we did was really just bring that auction part online. Auctions were still, at the time, were a known way of transacting commercial real estate and residential real estate, typically for distressed real estate. It was, uh, taking the traditional process, which is, you know, very manual, and bringing it to an online auction. Michael DeGiorgio: It was really just a different way to transact. So there was already effectively a marketplace, ? And then, left about five years ago to form CREXi. Uh, I spent about four years there, had 10 different roles while I was there, did everything from broker deals to be an auctioneer on auction day, and oversaw multiple different teams, uh, during my run there. Uh, I was one of the first people on their commercial division, so I was really trying to take commercial real estate transactions online and to online auctions, uh, where I got a pretty good sense of the ecosystem, the software available in our space, and some of the deficiencies in our space.
I started it at a company called, where we were trying to change the way people bought and sold both residential and commercial real estate. Started my career about 11 years ago now in commercial real estate. I was born on the East Coast of the United States. Hey, before we dive super into the world of CREXi, can you tell the audience a little bit about who you are? This is a really intriguing talk, and I think there are some great insights in here for anyone building a marketplace business.
#The middleman episodes how to#
I talk with Mike about how to build productivity tools for one side of the marketplace and also about how, instead of getting rid of the middleman, which is something that you often see when marketplaces enter a space, CREXi actually embraced the middleman. This is an area, uh, as you'll hear, which I knew absolutely nothing about, but it turns out to be an actually fascinating industry which was ripe for some serious disruption, as you'll hear. For this episode, I talked to Michael DeGiorgio, founder and CEO of CREXi, a marketplace for commercial real estate. I'm Sjoerd, CMO at Sharetribe, and I am your host. Speaker 2: Welcome to Two-Sided, the marketplace podcast, brought to you by Sharetribe. Michael DeGiorgio: And I kind of, in the back of my mind, thought, "If nothing else, you know, this'll be a platform that we can transact on ourselves if people didn't want to use it."
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