Olympus JV Lobs High-Tech Play for Building Industry Change

Olympus Real Estate Partners and RealFoundations are the joint venture partners for Hyphen-Solutions, a renamed, three-year-old software company that fell to 100% Olympus ownership under a recent settlement with its former teammate, the Holigan family of Dallas. RealFoundations, once a consultant for MH2Technologies, is now part owner.

"We're not releasing the details, but RealFoundations has significant ownership position and they're highly motivated to make it work," David B. Deniger, Olympus' CEO, tells GlobeSt.com, "but Olympus is still the majority owner."

With the legalities out of the way, the JV is building on a plan to take the products, Hyphen-BuilderPro and Hyphen-Supply, to a far wider market than homebuilders, which until now has been the target audience. The software is geared toward "any repetitive-based building process," meaning it's primed for multifamily and industrial development. Essentially, it connects field personnel to back office operations for schedule management to give hands-on crews real-time access to construction progress, and even digital purchase orders, to know if the project is ready for the next team's arrival. Deniger says the door is open for "field superintendents to work with Blackberries and Palms rather than clipboards."

The JV has named Mark Callin, a RealFoundations founder, as the Hyphen-Solutions leader and vice chairman. The 15-year professional is widely recognized as a specialist in industry technology and business process improvements. He will stay based in Newport Beach, CA, but make frequent trips to Dallas.

Callin already has opened the door for discussion to change from a subscription-based product to a licensing structure, a set-up he believes aids marketability to builders and their subcontractors and suppliers. With that will come a hard push in the leading 20 metro markets to convince the Top 10 builders in each city to jump on board as Hyphen-Solutions attempts to become a standard tool for the construction industry at large, he says.

Hyphen-Solutions, which has a staff of nearly 70, will remain headquartered in Dallas. Felix Vasquez, CEO of MH2Technologies, is now CEO of Hyphen, which also has an office in Redmond, WA.