Rich Sarkis, founder and CEO of Reonomy

NEW YORK CITY—The New York City-based tech company Reonomy just added the real estate services and investment firm CBRE to its client list. We caught up with Rich Sarkis, Reonomy's CEO to find out what their platform offers to CRE clients.

Reonomy has two parts to its business: One is “similar to a Zillow for commercial real estate,” says Sarkis. Clients can use a web-based application to look up information about commercial assets.

The second, the Data-as-a-Service component, licenses the data and technology that Reonomy has developed to corporate clients.

All major brokerage firms have massive amounts of data which they are adding to databases and CRM systems on an ongoing basis. “But all of that data is very siloed and fragmented and difficult for them to use, interpret and analyze. Our platform has created this common language that will allow them to take all that data, harmonize it and basically make sense of it.”

He explains what's different about the Reonomy D-a-a-S. A database stores information. But their platform is more like a mobile phone which allows people to add applications to make better use of the smartphone. Companies can build applications for different uses, organizing and analyzing vast amounts of data.

Every large corporation including real estate advisory firms have dozens of different, uniques systems and databases “that don't necessarily play well with one another,” says Sarkis. “What they use our platform for is to make all of those databases and systems talk well to one another.”

The company states it has data on commercial property across the US—over 50 million commercial assets. Their technology collects data from public source such as tax assessors, municipalities, and third-party data partners including credit rating agencies and title companies. “All of that is ingested into our platform then served up to our users,” he explains.

The platform has multiple products available on it. Brokers can use a prospecting tool to find new lead lists. Roofers can use a different application with the platform. Customers select parts of the platform to just use the data that's relevant to their particular needs.

So, how's business since Sarkis founded the company six years ago? Reonomy's marketing material notes it has been backed by over $68 million in venture capital. Sarkis declined to disclose the exact annual figures but stated they more than tripled revenue in the last year. He also provided that the company is “well into double-digit millions in recurring revenue.”