CRE Agents – Spencer’s New Venture | S5E6
In this exciting episode of the Adventures in CRE Audio Series, Spencer Burton unveils his latest venture, CRE Agents, a vertical AI agentic platform designed to revolutionize commercial real estate operations. Built upon technology prototyped at Stablewood, CRE Agents aims to automate repetitive tasks across 17 key functional areas in the industry, empowering professionals to focus on higher-value activities.
Spencer and Michael discuss the strategic decision to launch this new company, how AI agents are poised to reshape the industry, and the importance of vertical AI in tackling complex, real-estate-specific tasks. They also highlight the impressive team behind the venture, led by Spencer and his co-founder, Gert Stahl, whose combined expertise bridges both technology and real estate.
Learn how CRE Agents plans to make a transformative impact on CRE workflows and what’s in store for the platform in the coming year.
CRE Agents – Spencer’s New Venture
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Episode Transcript
Michael Belasco (00:08):
All right. Welcome back to another episode of the ACRE Audio Series, Season Five. And in this episode, we are going to get into it with Spencer about CRE Agents, his new company that he has recently launched this year. It’s very exciting. Spencer, give us a brief overview before we get into details on CRE Agents.
Spencer Burton (00:28):
Yeah, so CRE Agents, we are building a vertical AI agentic platform for commercial real estate, born out of technology actually that we developed at Stablewood. So I’ve been at Stablewood for the last five years, most recently president. My role was to pair the right people with the processes and then develop some technology to make that team more efficient. And one concept that we call it prototyped, although successfully operated, was effectively what we might think of as a digital coworker, an AI agent, that performs certain repetitive tasks at Stablewood such that our people could elevate.
(01:09):
For one example of a task, we underwrote over 50,000 deals. Built this incredibly big database, or this digital coworker, built this massive database, which is quite the edge now for Stablewood. Every one of those had an investment committee memo. The entirety of the work, I calculated, the equivalent of 20 analysts working full-time for four years to do that. So we prototyped that. We’re now taking this concept, Stablewood as a partner, myself as a co-founder together with Gert Stahl, to industry, such that we will build digital coworkers that will automate repetitive tasks across 17 functional areas. Essentially, if you have a repetitive task in your area of real estate, we’ll eventually be able to build a AI agent that can perform that repetitive task, or help you perform that repetitive task.
Michael Belasco (02:02):
Amazing. So there are other things that have tried to do this before, but we didn’t have the technology available. And so there’s this term that we’re using a lot now, agents, AI agents. Why AI agents? Maybe give us a little bit more, like why this? Why this strategy? Why AI agents?
Spencer Burton (02:19):
This was a very strategic decision for me personally. I was at a great place, think the world of them. I was an early member of the founding team and partner, and I’m almost 25 years in the business. It’s a little scary to start a tech startup. Now, I’ve done startups before, but they’ve all been real estate-related startups. ACRE, I guess you could classify as a startup and is adjacent. One of the reasons, though, why this made so much sense was because AI agents are coming. They’re here right now in small ways, and in the coming months and years, they’re going to have a bigger and bigger and bigger impact into all industries and our personal lives. And that was obvious to me 18 months ago. It’s more obvious to me now, and I wanted to be part of that as it related to commercial real estate.
Michael Belasco (03:13):
Got it. So let’s dive in to commercial real estate. So you see an opportunity. Obviously you’ve had this background. You’ve always been passionate and interested in it. So what are you seeing in commercial real estate? How is CRE agents going to take advantage of this opportunity now and in this moment in time?
Spencer Burton (03:30):
Well, why commercial real estate? So it is a industry with 3 million people working in it, many of which are working on tasks that are highly repetitive, highly administrative, I think, and this is a personal opinion, not fully suitable for our full potential. I don’t want to say beneath us, because that sounds wrong, but how many of us-
Michael Belasco (04:03):
How many of us are like brain drain? It’s not even brain drain. It’s just like-
Spencer Burton (04:06):
Yeah, I’m trying to be nice about it, but the reality is many of us do tasks that we shouldn’t be doing. Life is too short. We are too smart to be 10-keying in values transposed from one piece of paper into an Excel file, and we make our people do it, because someone has to do it. And there’s no disrespect to any of us, and I’ve done way more time doing this.
(04:33):
So this is an industry ripe with those sorts of tasks. It also is a highly technical industry, and therefore to produce agents for our industry requires a level of practitioner knowledge that make it challenging for someone who is outside of industry to come in and do this. And so, in a way it was, hey, it’s an industry I know very well and my partner knows very well, and we can make the impact. I’m not going to go create AI agents for the medical field. That’s not an industry I know.
Michael Belasco (05:05):
So let’s talk about that. You had alluded to your partner. So one of the things that makes a successful company is the team that you build around it. So one of the questions you kind of answered, though, is why you, right?
Spencer Burton (05:12):
Yeah.
Michael Belasco (05:15):
And there’s all the reasons in the world on the commercial real estate side, even the tech side, why you. But what I want to touch on is why the team that you have. Who is your team? Why is it that this team is so adept and capable of trailblazing into this space, into this company that you’re starting?
Spencer Burton (05:34):
Well, first off, my co-founder and I were key members that built the prototype at Stablewood. So Gert understands the technology as well or better than most anyone in the world. He also understands real estate quite well. He’s been in prop tech now going on over a decade, worked in the early days of crowdfunding in commercial real estate, spent some time building automated valuation models in the single-family space. So understands automation, understands commercial real estate more generally. And then of course, yeah, we’ve worked together now for years. So we have the technical capability. We have the subject matter knowledge. I have deep relationships in the industry both through the fact that I’ve been in the industry for a very long time, and thanks to the ACRE platform.
Michael Belasco (06:28):
You guys are the complete… So it’s two sort of macro things. I kind of see this bridge of just all the technical capabilities that Gert has. And he also knows the industry. He’s spanning the commercial estate, and you have this superpower in the commercial real estate industry that spans into this AI space. It’s this sort converging between you two is how I see this company, or at least the head people.
Spencer Burton (06:57):
At the simplest form, myself, ACRE, I’ve trained the next generation of analysts for the last decade. Who better to think about how to train the AI agents that work with those analysts over the next decade? That’s another way of thinking about it. I think ultimately, when you’re looking at what’s the right team to bring a industry-changing tool or industry-changing concept to the world, you want a team that understands the problems and has the ability to execute those problems, the maturity to recognize when to shift, when to change. And I think that’s us. I don’t mean to pitch. I’m not pitching, but-
Michael Belasco (07:48):
Sorry, that question might have been like a [inaudible 00:07:51], but it’s true. That’s factual. So I want to get back to the CRE agents, this concept of vertical AI as opposed to… And that’s key, right? That’s an important-
Spencer Burton (08:02):
It’s a huge component. So again, I was in a very comfortable place at Stablewood, and I still have a role at Stablewood. I continue to act as an advisor to Stablewood. I sit on their investment committee. And again, they’re a pre-seed investor with us, and they have an advisory role here. But I’m leaving something very comfortable, and I’m moving into something that makes me a little uncomfortable, which that’s good, right? Discomfort is how we grow, and I’m not blind to that, but I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t think that there was this massive opportunity.
(08:44):
And here’s the massive opportunity. Vertical AI, in particular vertical AI agents, is an opportunity that’s at least 10 times the size of SaaS. And we can get into the math and why that is, but it is at least 10 times the size of SaaS. You actually look at, according to Y Combinator, they say it’s 10 times the size. It’s actually 13 times the size when you look at the area of GDP that you’re hitting with this product relative to what software hits. And because of that, there’s this massive opportunity to build something transformative.
(09:22):
And so that’s why. It’s big lofty goal. I enjoy that. I actually posted on LinkedIn this week, if I could, about this guy, and this seems a little silly and not that many people engaged with the LinkedIn post, but it was big for me. This guy did a million push-ups over the last 10 years.
Michael Belasco (09:42):
Oh, yeah. I remember you-
Spencer Burton (09:42):
You saw this post, right? And most people were like, “Oh, what a dumb goal.” But to me, it wasn’t about the goal, which by the way, I don’t think it’s a dumb goal because there’s a health component to it, whatever else. But why I found it so inspiring is I had been thinking about this concept of you can move a mountain with a spoon if you have enough time and the will to do it, because it’s just one spoonful at a time.
Michael Belasco (10:10):
It’s just keep at it. It’s one-
Spencer Burton (10:11):
You just need one spoonful at a time. And so then that article came out, and I just read this article about the guy who’s about to do his 1,000,000th push-up over 10 years. And it’s like, yeah, I mean, how do you do a million push-ups? For many people, that seems like an impossible task. You do it one push-up at a time. That, something big and lofty, is inspiring for me. And this seemed big and lofty, and I wanted to tackle it, right?
Michael Belasco (10:36):
Love it. That’s a great way to live your life. I think a lot of us-
Spencer Burton (10:40):
Life is too short to not do it.
Michael Belasco (10:42):
So let me ask. So CRE agents, what can we expect to see from CRE Agents over the coming year? Is there anything you can disclose? What should we be looking out for? Anything you want to-
Spencer Burton (10:56):
Yeah. So we have this concept of a skill. A skill is the ability for an AI agent to perform some repetitive task. That’s a skill. And the reason I use a skill intentionally because it’s like one of us learning a skill that performs that. And those skills take some integration to tools, whether it’s a Yardi integration, whether it’s a LoopNet integration, and there’s different ways that you develop these integrations, whether through APIs or some of these tools don’t have APIs. And so you have to use computer use models. Call them hacks if you want, but they’re not really hacks because it’s just mimicking how we as humans use tools.
(11:43):
But anyway. These skills take time, and there are literally thousands and thousands of skills that will and need to be developed in the coming years, and we need to focus on the highest impact, highest feasibility skills over the next year. So what that means is we will not have AI agents that can help everyone. In the coming years, we will, but this year we’re focusing on where can we make the biggest impact with the highest feasibility, and we’ll work with companies that have the need for those skills. And then as that skill library grows, we’ll work with more and more people.
Michael Belasco (12:30):
Awesome. That’s amazing. That’s part of what a lot of startups, it’s a lot of build-out, and this is getting started. You’ve had a long sort of pre-incubation period with Stablewood, and now you guys are really getting into it. And just from what you’ve told me, the interest has been incredible. And so, again, I’m just ecstatic to see where this goes. Anything else before we wrap this up, you want to add?
Spencer Burton (12:58):
Just to wrap up, I announced this within the last week, and the response was overwhelming. And so to those who reached out, thank you. Again, those sorts of decisions in life are tough. And given the response, I knew it was the right decision that I made. We’re going to talk next in the next episode, although it might not be organized this way, on the ramifications for people in real estate, and that’s one of the areas that gave me… I don’t want to say pause, because I know, so this is going to happen, so someone’s got to do it. But I think a lot about what this means for people, but the response I got told me I’m on the right path.
Michael Belasco (13:50):
Definitely. Awesome.
Spencer Burton (13:52):
Thank you.
Michael Belasco (13:52):
All right. Well, this was great. Again, CRE Agents, look out. There’s going to be a lot of amazing things coming down the road. And yeah, we will see you on the next episode.
Announcer (14:04):
Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Adventures in CRE Audio Series. For show notes and additional resources, head over to www.adventuresincre.com/audioseries.
