AUSTIN, TX—Launched in the fall of 2013, RealMassive is described as the first online source for real-time commercial real estate information. It also offers a variety of ways to use the information. Currently in 35 markets and offering a database of nearly 4.6 billion square feet, the RealMassive platform is being used by a host of regional and national firms that include Prologis, JLL, Cousins Properties and Avison Young. To hear co-founder and CEO Craig Hancock tell it, though, the RealMassive team is just getting started. GlobeSt.com caught up with Hancock recently, as part of our four-part series on Web-based platforms built around the marketing of and seeking of office space.
GlobeSt.com: Tell us how the RealMassive leadership team came together and how the concept that you've built your platform on came together.
Craig Hancock: The concept of RealMassive is based on an open-data philosophy and making certain commercial real estate data sets around building availabilities in the market freely accessible to anybody that would have interest. So it's an open data marketplace that's intended to produce better outcomes and value creation. We started building the management team around the particular areas of expertise we need to be exceptional at. One of our earliest team members was our CTO, Jason Vertrees; he has really good technical chops to build websites and deliver leading-edge technology, but also he has a Ph.D.in data science and machine learning. That gives you a little indication of where we might be going from a data perspective. Michael Westgate is our lead on the marketing side; obviously marketing is important for us as a start-up in terms of getting our brand out there, but his background is also from the agency side of the marketing world. To an extent, that is also what we do in the service of commercial real estate—helping them market themselves, their people, their buildings, their brand as extensively as possible.
Globe.St.com: Whereas a couple of the online platforms are geared toward specific outcomes and therefore have pretty narrowly defined parameters, the RealMassive platform appears to be more of a question of putting the data into professionals' hands, and there's quite an array of tasks they could accomplish by using this data.
Hancock: That's right. The basic function of listing an office space, or finding an office space, in our world really is just the beginning of what can exist when platforms are designed to create more value and bigger outcomes. We certainly do the listing and searching thing, but there's certainly far more to our marketplace than that.
GlobeSt.com: As you developed the platform, you must have looked at the different possibilities and interrelated tasks that people could perform with the data.
Hancock: Yes. That data, once it grows in breadth and depth, becomes valuable to a whole host of functions that have relevance in commercial real estate. The data, when packaged and presented in a very customized way, should be something that can help brokers, lenders, financiers, investors, asset managers, developers and municipalities make decisions around commercial real estate and the progress of their market and local economy. We're excited to unleash that part of our platform; that's still a little in the future for us, but that's definitely where we're headed.
GlobeSt.com: Can you give us an idea of what products you came to market with, and what stage the platform has reached at present?
Hancock: We've been in business for just about two-and-a-half years. This first stage of our company, which was designed to be a three-year effort, is really about installing the new open-data marketplace for listing commercial real estate data and searching for commercial real estate. That's what we've been focused on to start; if you talked to a bunch of real estate professionals, I'll bet most would consider us a listings site. That's not inaccurate; it's just the first stage in the life of our company as this open-data marketplace gets built out and refined, which includes the addition of more markets coming on line. I still see us at the foundational level, investing heavily in that foundation. Because al of the things we'd like to do in the future really depend on that solid foundation.
We're adopting, whenever it's appropriate, the most leading-edge technology we can bring to bear. We've partnered tightly with Google, and used them, their expertise, their engineering teams and their technologies in a host of different ways across the platform. We're trying to bring the best to bear to serve this industry.
AUSTIN, TX—Launched in the fall of 2013, RealMassive is described as the first online source for real-time commercial real estate information. It also offers a variety of ways to use the information. Currently in 35 markets and offering a database of nearly 4.6 billion square feet, the RealMassive platform is being used by a host of regional and national firms that include
GlobeSt.com: Tell us how the RealMassive leadership team came together and how the concept that you've built your platform on came together.
Craig Hancock: The concept of RealMassive is based on an open-data philosophy and making certain commercial real estate data sets around building availabilities in the market freely accessible to anybody that would have interest. So it's an open data marketplace that's intended to produce better outcomes and value creation. We started building the management team around the particular areas of expertise we need to be exceptional at. One of our earliest team members was our CTO, Jason Vertrees; he has really good technical chops to build websites and deliver leading-edge technology, but also he has a Ph.D.in data science and machine learning. That gives you a little indication of where we might be going from a data perspective. Michael Westgate is our lead on the marketing side; obviously marketing is important for us as a start-up in terms of getting our brand out there, but his background is also from the agency side of the marketing world. To an extent, that is also what we do in the service of commercial real estate—helping them market themselves, their people, their buildings, their brand as extensively as possible.
Globe.St.com: Whereas a couple of the online platforms are geared toward specific outcomes and therefore have pretty narrowly defined parameters, the RealMassive platform appears to be more of a question of putting the data into professionals' hands, and there's quite an array of tasks they could accomplish by using this data.
Hancock: That's right. The basic function of listing an office space, or finding an office space, in our world really is just the beginning of what can exist when platforms are designed to create more value and bigger outcomes. We certainly do the listing and searching thing, but there's certainly far more to our marketplace than that.
GlobeSt.com: As you developed the platform, you must have looked at the different possibilities and interrelated tasks that people could perform with the data.
Hancock: Yes. That data, once it grows in breadth and depth, becomes valuable to a whole host of functions that have relevance in commercial real estate. The data, when packaged and presented in a very customized way, should be something that can help brokers, lenders, financiers, investors, asset managers, developers and municipalities make decisions around commercial real estate and the progress of their market and local economy. We're excited to unleash that part of our platform; that's still a little in the future for us, but that's definitely where we're headed.
GlobeSt.com: Can you give us an idea of what products you came to market with, and what stage the platform has reached at present?
Hancock: We've been in business for just about two-and-a-half years. This first stage of our company, which was designed to be a three-year effort, is really about installing the new open-data marketplace for listing commercial real estate data and searching for commercial real estate. That's what we've been focused on to start; if you talked to a bunch of real estate professionals, I'll bet most would consider us a listings site. That's not inaccurate; it's just the first stage in the life of our company as this open-data marketplace gets built out and refined, which includes the addition of more markets coming on line. I still see us at the foundational level, investing heavily in that foundation. Because al of the things we'd like to do in the future really depend on that solid foundation.
We're adopting, whenever it's appropriate, the most leading-edge technology we can bring to bear. We've partnered tightly with
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