Revolutionizing CRE Data: Royden Cooper’s Journey from Developer to PropTech Founder
Welcome to another episode of the A.CRE Consulting Podcast! In this episode, we sit down with Royden Cooper, Co-Founder and CEO of Epum, a cutting-edge prop-tech startup revolutionizing commercial real estate research. Royden’s journey is a unique one—starting as a commercial real estate developer, he transitioned into the world of real estate data science, ultimately founding Epum. His experience spans from acquiring marinas and developing self-storage projects to launching a geospatial AI platform that provides a “God’s-eye view” of commercial real estate activity. Epum is tackling one of the industry’s biggest challenges—tracking entitlement and zoning approvals—by aggregating data from planning commissions nationwide and making it accessible through their Approvals Archive platform.
In this conversation, Royden shares the story of his transition from real estate investing to prop-tech entrepreneurship, including the challenges of raising venture capital, the advantages of launching in Europe, and the innovative ways Epum is helping investors anticipate urban growth. We also explore how AI and geospatial data are shaping the future of commercial real estate, offering insights that can give developers, investors, and brokers a competitive edge. Whether you’re a seasoned investor or an aspiring entrepreneur, Royden’s journey and insights into the intersection of technology and real estate are sure to inspire. Tune in to learn how cutting-edge data analytics are transforming site selection, entitlement tracking, and market intelligence.
Michael and Royden talk about Revolutionizing CRE Data
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Resources from this Episode
- A.CRE Consulting
- Epum’s website: https://www.epum.com/
- Connect with Royden Cooper
Episode Transcript
Royden Cooper – Co-Founder and CEO of Epum
[00:00:00]
Michael Belasco:
Welcome to another episode of the ACRE Consulting Podcast. Today, I have a special guest, Royden Cooper, who’s joining us today. Uh, Royden is a former commercial real estate developer who fell in love with real estate data science. And went from buying marinas and developing self storage to founding a venture backed prop tech startup named Epum.
[00:00:34]
Michael Belasco:
Epum is building a God’s eye view commercial real estate research research platform using geospatial AI and satellite imagery. Right. And welcome to our podcast. How you doing?
[00:00:47]
Royden Cooper:
Thank you, Michael. I’m doing well. I’m very happy to be here.
[00:00:50]
Michael Belasco:
Excellent. Yeah. Very excited to talk to you about this. I spent some time.
[00:00:53]
Michael Belasco:
Actually, I did the free demo and was checking out Jacksonville, um, in your, uh, [00:01:00] in your, in, um, your, your platform. Why don’t you give everybody an overview? Um, a little, give a little bit more detail about what you’re doing or actually, you know what, let’s start off with your background and get more into more depth and kind of the story of how you got into what you’re doing.
[00:01:15]
Michael Belasco:
So maybe we start there and you can introduce the platform from that.
[00:01:18]
Royden Cooper:
Sure. So I, uh, I was actually telling Michael this, or telling you this before we started the podcast, but I studied real estate at the university of Southern California, and then I took the a CRE accelerator, which actually taught me how to underwrite.
[00:01:33]
Royden Cooper:
And my first job out of college, I was actually running underwriting for a German family office and we were raising a large joint venture. From AXA, the insurance company. And we were working with Harrison street and we were building student housing in Germany. And so it was like, I was dropped right into the fire, ACR.
[00:01:50]
Royden Cooper:
Thank you literally for everything.
[00:01:52]
Michael Belasco:
Awesome.
[00:01:54]
Royden Cooper:
So yeah, I did that. And then. I worked for a KKR joint venture building hostels in Spain because [00:02:00] I was just really interested in European real estate and then COVID hit, we had to ice the JV, so we had like five assets, but we, you know, KKR was like, we’re not buying anything else because of COVID and so I took some time.
[00:02:15]
Royden Cooper:
To figure out what I wanted to do, uh, and was generally looking for, you know, what product types are readable, you know, with an IRS open letter that I could, you know, use some hustle and collect some money to go in, uh, you know, maybe buy a few of them, get the portfolio premium and sell. Right. Yeah. And looked at pretty much everything ended up, uh, settling on marinas.
[00:02:38]
Royden Cooper:
Cause I had a friend that invested into safe Harbor before they sold the sun. Okay. Yeah, we went and raised a little bit of money. Uh, you know, Centerbridge Partners was our L. P. for that, and we bought six marinas. We still own four, and I learned a lot along the way and did some self storage development as well.
[00:02:59]
Michael Belasco:
Oh, right
[00:03:00]
on. All right. So you did that. There’s a lot we could dive into there, but I want to, uh, how are you feel? Are you, are you bullish on the Marina space still? Or, uh, what’s your thoughts there in general?
[00:03:10]
Royden Cooper:
I’m actually not, it’s, um, it’s a very interesting asset. If, if you bought the marquee assets, like safe Harbor did, cause they were first.
[00:03:20]
Royden Cooper:
Right. And, and we own one marquee asset. Right. And that’s good, but like any other marina that’s subscale, they’re difficult to operate incredibly high, uh, maintenance capex. Right. Because saltwater breaks everything. Yeah. Right. Right. And it’s hard because you don’t have third party managers that are really good at all in this space.
[00:03:40]
Royden Cooper:
Uh, you have to work with either subscale managers or do it yourself and it’s like running a hotel. So, uh,
[00:03:46]
Michael Belasco:
we’re seeing that a bit in the, you know, as, as folks know, I’m in the RV park space, we’re seeing the management’s it’s hard to come by. So, all right, well, let’s, um, I just wanted to get your quick sidebar.
[00:03:57]
Michael Belasco:
Cause I know there’s a lot of, um, uh, [00:04:00] interconnectivity between Marinos and RVs and all that. So I was curious just for my own. So, yeah, so let’s, let’s move in. So, okay. So you, you’re now in this. Prop tech space. You have this, you have this new ish company. It’s not, it’s about, well, you’ll, you’ll give us the details.
[00:04:15]
Michael Belasco:
So how did you venture over into the side, move on? You’re still in real estate, but you, you got out of like the direct investing, you’re now in the prop tech space. How did that happen?
[00:04:24]
Royden Cooper:
Yeah. So I was, I was, um, I was running this marina company, but as you know, like, unless you’re buying assets, right? Like the fees don’t increase, right?
[00:04:34]
Royden Cooper:
And you don’t have a big liquidity event until you sell. And so to make extra money on the side, I was actually helping my father. He’s a self storage developer, right? And so I was working on projects with him and I just continually. It was a bit exhausted that like, there’s so much competition for self storage sites nationwide.
[00:04:53]
Royden Cooper:
And even if you have a cost of capital advantage, only thing you can really do is hustle. And everyone’s [00:05:00] hustling, right? And so I began to think of like, well, what competitive advantages could we actually develop, uh, if we spent the time and we spent some money. And so I began to look into this field called geoinformatics, because I was obsessed with the idea of, okay, if we could forecast.
[00:05:17]
Royden Cooper:
The path of urban growth for a city and support it with, you know, present day and historical data, we’d have a huge advantage when it came to buying land for ground up development. And lo and behold, I ended up really falling in love with the field. And, um, was determined to build a company to be able to provide this sort of tooling, this sort of technology to the broader commercial real estate industry.
[00:05:41]
Royden Cooper:
And so fast forward, uh, I determined that it would be cheaper to launch in Europe because the salaries are about half of what they are in the U S and there’s a lot more research institutes for geoinformatics. And one of the best countries for this in the world is actually, uh, the Netherlands. And for some [00:06:00] reason they have all these amazing degrees and research institutes for geoinformatics.
[00:06:04]
Royden Cooper:
Or real estate data science. And so, uh, I ended up moving to Holland. I only knew two people, uh, ended up meeting our CTO and we launched the business. Um, and you know, August of 2023, we ended up, uh, then building out the rest of the team. So we, uh, recruited our chief data scientist and our chief R and D officer, uh, before finally raising some, uh, venture capital in July of last year and launching our MVP.
[00:06:34]
Michael Belasco:
Wow. So tell everyone there’s a, there’s a lot I want to ask you about. Tell us, first off, I’ve been looking a lot into. This space in terms of like, we look at drive distances, things like that. And almost all the companies that we found, you’re right. They’re coming out of Europe. Uh, it’s funny when you look at their free tools, it’s like the address starts, whether it’s in the UK or in the Netherlands.
[00:06:54]
Michael Belasco:
Um, so tell everyone a little bit, like exactly what this platform, you have this MVP, tell [00:07:00] us what exactly it is.
[00:07:01]
Royden Cooper:
Yeah. So, uh, we launched MVP last year. We launched the full product actually this week. And, um, it’s called approvals archive. And it allows you to track, uh, planning application data on the parcel level throughout the U.
[00:07:14]
Royden Cooper:
S. So anytime a commercial real estate project is getting entitled, whether it’s a rezoning, a site plan approval, a special exception, if it’s spoken about in a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting and noted down in the meeting minutes. We use AI to extract it and then connect it to a parcel geometry so we can show it within our app.
[00:07:32]
Royden Cooper:
And I’d love to show you today if we have the time.
[00:07:34]
Michael Belasco:
Yeah, do we? I, we’ve never, I don’t think we’ve shared, but if you can, if you haven’t, um, queued up, I’d love to share it with our audience. I think this is really cool. You know, um, you know, various times throughout my career, you know, when I’ve been looking at opportunities, I’ve honed in in certain, like, counties, right?
[00:07:52]
Michael Belasco:
Like, I live in this county, Bucks County, and Bucks County, It’s better than most where they have some data where you can click on a map and everything’s so [00:08:00] disjointed and it’s like impossible to really get a view that you have right now, which is the entire country. So, um, I, I, when I got on the demo, I was really excited to see it.
[00:08:10]
Michael Belasco:
So yeah, why don’t you share and we can, we can walk through this. I’ll, I’ll pepper you with questions along the way too.
[00:08:14]
Royden Cooper:
Yeah, of course. So, um, let’s just say you pick a city, right? That’s very hot, right? Like Nashville, Tennessee. And, uh, everything you see on the screen, these colorized parcels are parcels with associated, uh, planning applications.
[00:08:28]
Royden Cooper:
And so let’s just say, you know, we click one well in the right sidebar, everything about, uh, that entitlement, that project and its entitlement process will pop up, right? So these, these guys have had five meetings as part of their entitlement process, and it was finally approved in 2023. And so if you want to view the primary source of where we actually got this data, Oh, I’m blocked because I’m in Europe.
[00:08:55]
Royden Cooper:
But
[00:08:55]
Michael Belasco:
if
[00:08:57]
Royden Cooper:
you use the app and you have a US ID address, [00:09:00] uh, you can open the source and you’ll see the meeting minutes where we actually extracted the data if you have to use that, uh, for your investment committee and the idea here, Michael, is, uh, Entitlement data is the first indicator of urban growth, right?
[00:09:16]
Royden Cooper:
Cause if something gets approved for development, the most likely will be built, especially if interest rates finally come down,
[00:09:24]
Michael Belasco:
right? So there’s a lot of like derivative data. So this is primary data that you guys are offering up. You have this aggregation. Of a tremendously valuable resource of primary data.
[00:09:37]
Michael Belasco:
Do you guys offer any derivatives of this data? Are you aggregating? Is that something you guys are working on? I could see a lot of companies coming in here and taking this and aggregating it themselves. I’m curious if you guys are, are doing anything.
[00:09:49]
Royden Cooper:
Are you saying like offering an API or what do you mean by
[00:09:52]
Michael Belasco:
like aggregating?
[00:09:53]
Michael Belasco:
Like there’s a lot of Intel here, right? But it’s pretty much this, there’s a primary source, right? Like whether there’s an approval of a 200 unit. [00:10:00] apartment building, right? Or, you know what, there’s, there’s this new mixed use building happening. There’s this opportunity to gather all this of every market, right?
[00:10:09]
Michael Belasco:
Like Jacksonville, for example, right? Um, so there’s these derivative reports. Well, we know that there’s this much. Um, this many units coming online and based on, you know, the historical, you know, pipeline. So there’s all these things that you could do with this data. So the question is, um, is there anything you guys are planning to do?
[00:10:27]
Michael Belasco:
And if not, I mean, this is a really valuable in and of itself.
[00:10:30]
Royden Cooper:
Uh, I mean, that’s exactly what we’re planning to do, right? So, uh, our vision is we want anyone to be able to access our platform and understand any commercial real estate project that’s of institutional quality. Uh, that’s in planning or under construction anywhere in the United States, and we’re going to be adding an analytics feature this month where you’ll be able to export reports for any given market, any sub market or radius around it and put an address.
[00:10:57]
Michael Belasco:
Awesome. That is super cool.
[00:11:00]
Super cool. All right. Is there, yeah. So keep, keep going. Keep showing us a little more here.
[00:11:05]
Royden Cooper:
Yeah. So I think what’s really interesting is of course, look, you can find acquisition opportunities. Uh, you can understand potential demand generators, right? Like new housing, if you’re building self storage or something, right.
[00:11:17]
Royden Cooper:
You can understand coming, you know, competitive supply. But I really like looking at macro trends, right? So I’m just, I just filtered for new multifamily housing and single family housing that’s been approved. And now if you look at the map, Michael, these are all the red on the screen is approved housing developments within the last three years across the United States.
[00:11:39]
Royden Cooper:
So you can see these urban growth trends happening, right? Like, you know, right now it’s very hot, Charlotte, between Charlotte and Raleigh, you know, this corridor. And one thing we’ve seen is new corridors are forming between these major, uh, major urban agglomerations, such as between Atlanta and Charlotte and between Raleigh and Richmond, especially
[00:12:00]
because they just approved new high speed rail to be developed there over the next five years.
[00:12:05]
Royden Cooper:
And so we think this is going to be really powerful in the hands of developers with capital to deploy.
[00:12:10]
Michael Belasco:
Amazing. Amazing. This is awesome. So how, um, first, how long did this take to develop? Um, it sounds like you guys started, it was 2023. Is that like the literal inception of this? Or give us more background on how you, how you put this all together.
[00:12:26]
Royden Cooper:
We spent. Uh, about nine months, uh, actually building. We spent about six months interviewing, you know, interviewing people like yourself, like actual developers in the field, interviewing capital markets, advisors, and really trying to understand like what was the best form factor. Uh, for this data. So like how, what would be the best way to deliver it to the user, uh, before we even built anything?
[00:12:49]
Royden Cooper:
So it was around nine months of work, uh, and, um, we’re just getting started, right, right now we have about 40 percent coverage of the U S and we’re hoping to completely cover the U S within the next
[00:13:00]
six months. between the AI pipeline we built and the research team we built in Southeast Asia.
[00:13:06]
Michael Belasco:
Wow. So how, how big is your team now?
[00:13:08]
Michael Belasco:
Cause by the way, what I love with this, with this, um, podcast that we’re doing a lot of this is also to give value back to, um, our. Our listeners or viewers and readers, wherever, however we want to describe them and what you’ve done here is incredible. Just the fact that you’ve, you’ve gotten this thing going.
[00:13:26]
Michael Belasco:
You guys had a recent seed round of funding as well, right? Um, were you guys successfully raised? That was not too long. That was like the summer of. 2024, right? Where you guys completed everything.
[00:13:36]
Royden Cooper:
Um, give us,
[00:13:38]
Michael Belasco:
give us some insight for like aspiring people as a prop tech, you know, with, with, um, generative agentic AI, that’s coming down.
[00:13:44]
Michael Belasco:
There’s gonna be a lot of like opportunity coming down the road here. Um, I’d love for you to kind of speak to a bit about. You know what it was like, you gave us a little bit, but give us a little bit more about like the process of raising money. And, you know, we have some experience
[00:14:00]
on the real estate side, but just, I’d love to hear it from just the, the prop tech side, um, or any other type of advice for people getting to where you are now, which is, again, you have your first round of funding in and you’re off to the races.
[00:14:12]
Michael Belasco:
You’re showing this product that you have now. I’d love to come here a little more of that.
[00:14:15]
Royden Cooper:
Of course. So let me first say that the prop tech industry needs more actual real estate professionals, right? There’s a lot of people that come from adjacent tech industries or, you know, they have no real commercial real estate experience and the industry really needs people that know that, you know, know the industry, know what GPS want, know what capital markets at once and then delivers a product for them.
[00:14:41]
Royden Cooper:
And so how the process works. We raised from European VCs and that was because we were in Europe, right? And so it was a bit different, right? These were Dutch and German VCs and what they really wanted to see and what pretty much any VC wants to see. Uh, is okay. What’s the team
[00:15:00]
quality, right? So to raise money, raise venture capital, you really need a highly technical team, right?
[00:15:05]
Royden Cooper:
I’m, I’m quasi technical, but we, we have three technical co founders, right? One has a PhD in geospatial artificial intelligence. Another one’s a machine learning engineer, and another one worked at a major tech company for eight years as a software engineer, right? So, first you want to get the good team in place, uh, and then you need to build an MVP, and you need to get initial traction.
[00:15:26]
Royden Cooper:
And so we signed some LOIs, we got some initial revenue, it was like 5, 000 in revenue, and then we were able to raise our pre seed. And that’s typically the playbook that I think everyone follows. Some things I, I learned though are it’s really a game of playing hard to get. Venture capital is fascinating because the people that are investing, unlike in commercial real estate, Michael, right?
[00:15:49]
Royden Cooper:
Like an LP and KKR really knows RD parks, right?
[00:15:52]
Michael Belasco:
A
[00:15:54]
Royden Cooper:
VC doesn’t know anything about commercial real estate or the vast majority of them. They have
[00:16:00]
no clue. And so you’re really trying to educate them while making them believe in your grand vision, which is very different from my experience in the commercial real estate.
[00:16:09]
Royden Cooper:
Yeah.
[00:16:10]
Michael Belasco:
So it’s almost like, I mean, not to put it in sort of a pejorative sense. It’s like you could sell snake oil because it’s very. foreign to the investment base if they don’t understand, you know, what they’re doing. But I guess it’s a numbers game for them as well. Right? Like it’s investing enough of them then like some, so that’s, that’s fascinating to think about.
[00:16:29]
Michael Belasco:
Right. Cause these people aren’t, you know, real estate, it’s, it’s easy to get your head around if you’ve been seasoned in it. You get it. Even if you’re kind of flipping between asset classes are still the fundamental basics of what you need to ask and get answered. Right. Team experience being one of them, which I think sounds like, I mean, that permeates through probably any type of business that you’re starting.
[00:16:48]
Michael Belasco:
Right. And that’s somewhere that we had trouble when we started with the RV park space, which seems like a. Generic and mundane, not mundane, but like, um, uh, you know, it’s not institutional. So you would have thought it
[00:17:00]
was easier, but really that subject matter expertise became more critical for our team.
[00:17:04]
Michael Belasco:
So, so fascinating. All right. So you basically, you build this team out, you’re sort of self funding to get that MVP, it sounds like. Is that, is that correct? So there’s, I self
[00:17:15]
Royden Cooper:
funded for a year. It was, it was pretty painful, uh, or more than a year. It was pretty painful, but, um, look, you got to believe in yourself.
[00:17:23]
Royden Cooper:
Right. And, uh, I think as you, as you did when you spun out and launched your own firm, right, like you got to put your money where your mouth is until. You can then start to maybe pay yourself. Um, so yeah, it was a self funded process for a while.
[00:17:37]
Michael Belasco:
Yeah. I love that too. That’s like this entrepreneurial thing.
[00:17:40]
Michael Belasco:
It’s like, you almost rather live in poverty than like not pursue something that gets you exciting. Like I. You know, I’ve been in the corporate world. I’d love my, my time there, but like, ultimately I needed to get out there. And even if it was risky, right. Um, and you’re willing to put yourselves in some uncomfortable, like you went to the
[00:18:00]
Netherlands.
[00:18:00]
Michael Belasco:
Was it really just because the geospatial tech, not like the people that were doing that were there, like what else brought you there? Do you have ties? Um,
[00:18:07]
Royden Cooper:
no ties, no ties. It was really, um. How do we get this started as cheaply as possible? Right. And you can be the most amazing business person in the world, right?
[00:18:17]
Royden Cooper:
You can have a ton of contacts to sell and commercial real estate, but if you can’t build it. Right. Then no one’s going to fund you and no customers are going to be able to pay for your product. And so it would, it would have costed, you know, maybe 500, 000 to get started. Uh, yeah, maybe, uh, doing it in America, but it’s just way cheaper in Europe.
[00:18:37]
Michael Belasco:
Wow. And so you just had the ability, you say we, is there anybody else involved at the start of this or is this really just your baby alone?
[00:18:45]
Royden Cooper:
No. Um, so my partner and you know, my best friend since I was a kid, uh, you know, we worked on the marina, we built the marina company together. We worked on the self storage business together.
[00:18:56]
Royden Cooper:
Uh, he put in money as well. And then we
[00:19:00]
met, uh, our CTO, uh, very early on, like two months after I moved to the Netherlands. And he ended up just being a godsend, right? Cause he’s an exceptional engineer. And he’s also one of those people from a very difficult background. Uh, you know, from a low income background in Brazil and like, he just understands how to take pain.
[00:19:18]
Royden Cooper:
And so it was a godsend, uh, meeting Leonardo, our CTO.
[00:19:23]
Michael Belasco:
Awesome. And that happens, right? When you put yourself out there and you have this mission, like you’re willing to do what it takes. Even how it’s funny. I was talking with, with my father the other day about this, just like there’s all kinds of magic happening around you.
[00:19:36]
Michael Belasco:
It’s about like getting out there and having those conversations, even just having conversations, right? Like, um, uh, you know, he was out somewhere the other day and started talking to somebody and like his closest friend was childhood friends with like this person. It’s just like, there’s all these connectivity and it’s just, it’s amazing to kind of see like if you put yourself out there and you believe and you keep pushing.
[00:19:58]
Michael Belasco:
And you have a high pain
[00:20:00]
tolerance, right? You have a high pain threshold or you have some. Some safety net for some people, which is really fortunate, right. To be able to kind of push through. So, so that, that’s awesome. So where do you guys, I guess, what sort of your, um, um, I’d love to, if you have something where you want to share with the platform, please do, but also like when you think of like KPIs and things you’re trying to achieve in like the next year, the five years, like what’s the ultimate goal here, um, uh, for you guys, at least as terms of, in terms of like a servicing industry or be just your own, like Your own sort of goals internally.
[00:20:34]
Michael Belasco:
I’d love to kind of hear, hear more about that. And like, what’s your North star? What drives you guys?
[00:20:39]
Royden Cooper:
Yeah, I would say we’re driven by two things. One is obviously, uh, there are certain financial goals, right? Which, and I can talk about those in a second. Um, but I would say like, even more importantly, Which as I’ve gotten older, I realized it’s even more important is we have like an intellect intellectual curiosity, uh,
[00:21:00]
mission, which is we’re really interested in understanding urban growth and all its forms.
[00:21:04]
Royden Cooper:
And so along with building this product, uh, we actually, uh, conduct research on the side, right? So every week, uh, we can, you know, using the scientific method led by our chief R and D officer, who’s, you know, has a PhD and is well equipped to lead these kinds of projects. We’re studying how, you know, how to land values change as a result of proximity, uh, to projects in planning or projects under construction, right?
[00:21:28]
Royden Cooper:
A. K. A. urban growth. We’re studying, you know, how do new highways impact commercial real estate values over a five year term. And I think there’s so many of these questions, which I’m just, you know, I’m a huge real estate nerd, so they really excite me and they excite our team. And I think we’re really excited to continue to grow our resources by.
[00:21:50]
Royden Cooper:
You know, increasing revenue, increasing profitability of growing the audience of our app and, and then in turn having, you know, more bandwidth to tackle some of these big questions, uh, which could
[00:22:00]
benefit the entire industry.
[00:22:01]
Michael Belasco:
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. So you flipped over to this, um, this page you’re wanting to tell us about what we’re, what we’re looking at here.
[00:22:08]
Royden Cooper:
Yeah. So we also just offer the data in more of a bulk format and we’re going to allow exports very soon. You know, you can sort by status such as, is it approved? Is it approved with conditions? Is it denied? Um, you can sort by date, product type, petition type. And the idea here is just to make it really fast for you to work through large strokes of data.
[00:22:28]
Royden Cooper:
You know, one feature we’re going to be adding, uh, literally on Monday is you’ll be able to input an address anywhere in the U. S. and you’ll be able to say, okay, notify me anytime a new build to rent development is approved within a 20 mile radius of this address.
[00:22:46]
Michael Belasco:
Oh, awesome.
[00:22:47]
Royden Cooper:
You’ll be able to receive an email as soon as it’s approved anywhere in the United States for any tracker that you set, right?
[00:22:53]
Royden Cooper:
And that kind of intelligence can be the deciding factor for you winning a new deal, or at least that’s what we’re thinking. Yeah. Do
[00:23:00]
you agree with the logic? What do you think?
[00:23:02]
Michael Belasco:
Yeah. I mean, I think the more data you have, the better, the more Intel it’s, it. If it can be usable, right? Um, to me, I, and I say this all the time, no matter how sophisticated your strategy is, it comes down to supply demand and attractive pricing, right?
[00:23:17]
Michael Belasco:
If you have the best indication of supply, um, you understand demand, which this is more around supply, right? This is really a supply side, like technology. So when I look at, maybe there’s some lagging demand indicators, right? Because like supply also inversely correlates, but A lot of these places end up getting, you know, there’s some, there’s some lulls in like rent catching up or there’s, there’s, um, a lot of vacancy as demand catches up with that supply.
[00:23:43]
Michael Belasco:
So, um, yeah, I think there’s incredible power here. This paired with other tools in my mind, like when I’m looking at that complete picture, being able to have a complete view in the world of supply, like the world, like if I have. You know, if I’m, if I’m
[00:24:00]
looking to expand, let’s just say the U S that’s what we’re looking at, or the state of Florida, right, Florida right now, if I had the better information I have on like population, we’re talking about multifamily, or if we’re talking about, even if we’re talking about like just straight up housing development, which for sale, which is even less and less these days, but being able to see in real time, The pipeline is a huge gap and to be able to push a button.
[00:24:25]
Michael Belasco:
So I was telling you earlier, like I live in Bucks County and I always kind of dabble around here and look, look for opportunities. And Bucks County, I saw, I actually zoomed in when I was on your, your, uh, your platform here earlier. And I had the county planning map and tediously, right? Like I pull in and I had an Excel as a CSV file, right?
[00:24:49]
Michael Belasco:
This is probably two, three years ago of like every development exhausting, by the way, right? It was like, it was exhausting. So to be able to come in here and be like, Oh, I’m in Bucks
[00:25:00]
County. Let me pull this data. I think is incredibly powerful. Um, now the, the most power, if you can organize, right? Like you said, you can pull like a, whatever, if a BTR is coming, you can pull it.
[00:25:10]
Michael Belasco:
If I can have that digestible and like summed up, like, okay, I want every multifamily deal that’s been approved. Address, number of units, right? Um, even if you could pull in like amenities and stuff that they offer, it’d be incredible, right? So the more data that you could see that that way, I think would be incredible.
[00:25:29]
Michael Belasco:
Yeah. I think this saves a ton of time.
[00:25:31]
Royden Cooper:
I mean, and our roadmap is directly in line with what you’re saying, right? So it’s okay, let’s make sure that any project in planning that’s of institutional relevance across the U S. Uh, shows up in approvals archive, then next construction permits, every construction permit across the country.
[00:25:48]
Royden Cooper:
We’re going to have it in the platform by the end of the year. Then we add zoning data, right? Yeah, right. The team’s working on it literally right now. But the idea is that, okay, if we know
[00:26:00]
every zoning map, we know every land use ordinance, we know every bulk regulation, and we can tell you anytime there’s a zoning text amendment.
[00:26:09]
Royden Cooper:
Well, this is when you can start to make decisions way faster and see into the future where you can maybe only do it for your local market because you happen to live in Bucks County, right? But now you can do it for Maricopa County. Now you can do it for Manhattan, whatever.
[00:26:23]
Michael Belasco:
Right.
[00:26:24]
Royden Cooper:
Um, this is the future of commercial real estate, in my opinion.
[00:26:26]
Royden Cooper:
And I know that you and Spencer feel the same based on everything you’ve been talking about.
[00:26:32]
Michael Belasco:
Yeah. So let’s take it even a step further. Like I could see so, um, there’s so much talk about like agentic AI and it’s, it’s like massive implications. And I was watching some video and somebody was talking, I didn’t hear Elon Musk say it, but that what they relayed was we are limited.
[00:26:50]
Michael Belasco:
By at this point, we’re essentially with the, with the advent of computers, we are limited in a way by our fingers, how fast we can type something right. Or how fast we can
[00:27:00]
pull some data. So before I was at the Bucks County planning department, like clicking, right. This is when I just left stable. When I was like building my, I was pulling all and it was tedious, right, or the amount of time.
[00:27:12]
Michael Belasco:
Then you guys can come along with a platform like this. And I probably create some, some, some, uh, map and that data could be pulled instantaneously. You know, a next step could be imagine applying like some agentic AI to be like, I’m looking at this deal, you know, run this three, run this through the platform and pull out like the best opportunity for me based on the data, you know?
[00:27:35]
Michael Belasco:
So, so I could see. this is like a step by the way, this is valuable in and of itself. And as we get there with like, you know, AI agents and things like that, that could be impacted by this platform specifically approvals. Archive can be, can be impacted by that too, as well. I’ll take it to the next level.
[00:27:56]
Michael Belasco:
So you
[00:27:58]
Royden Cooper:
absolutely nailed it. Right. So
[00:28:00]
our, uh, co founder. For his PhD dissertation, uh, he invented, and this is going to be super nerdy, just bear with me, invented a new methodology for saving geospatial data as a vector embedding, right? A vector embedding is a way to store information so that AI can read it.
[00:28:21]
Royden Cooper:
Right. And then really efficiently. And so the idea is, okay, the only way to make a geospatially aware AI or to use it in simpler terms, like a real estate aware is you first have to build all these data sets, right? And you have to build pipelines. So the data sets are up to date on a weekly basis. But if you do that, then you can arm an AI agent.
[00:28:45]
Royden Cooper:
With all this information and you can teach you how to make good decisions, you know, based on following the decisions of, you know, Michael Belasco or a Spencer Burton.
[00:28:54]
Michael Belasco:
Yeah, that is the
[00:28:55]
Royden Cooper:
future for sure.
[00:28:56]
Michael Belasco:
Incredible. And yeah, you ought to connect with Spencer. I don’t know if you’ve
[00:29:00]
been following with the launch of, um, Siri agents, but, uh, anyway, this is cool, but this is like, you know, this is a sense, right?
[00:29:07]
Michael Belasco:
Anybody that’s really. Critically thinking in the real estate space and like really has to validate their data and their assumptions. Like you keep asking the deeper questions and this is the data that you’re presenting here that gets to the deeper questions, right? Like, I can look at a market report from a broker, but I never, I, me and nobody should be satisfied with just that.
[00:29:26]
Michael Belasco:
You gotta go deep, like what is being approved? What corner of the street is it on? Real estate is location, right? Mm-hmm . Um, and very, and when I say location, what street corner, you know? And that’s what you’re getting here with this, with this, um, platform. You can get this by the way, but it is insane lift to do what you guys have done here.
[00:29:44]
Michael Belasco:
That’s the point It’s like if you really want to go through the pain You could do it, but this is like making life very easy. And then I’d be curious to see the derivative, like things that come off of this, you guys now have all this data inside your platform.
[00:30:00]
Um, so it’s very cool.
[00:30:03]
Royden Cooper: Super time intensive.
[00:30:04]
Royden Cooper:
We’re hoping to save people time, help them grow their businesses and make more money. And, um. I think at the end of the day, you know, we want to be guided by the community. All right. So, you know, please, whether it’s your community or someone listening, uh, generally to this podcast, like if you have any feedback for how we can improve, uh, please reach out anytime.
[00:30:24]
Royden Cooper:
Uh, I’m at royden. cooper. com and, you know, we ship quickly so we can always make changes.
[00:30:37]
Michael Belasco:
Awesome. Great. Yeah. We’d love to stay in touch and we’re gonna, we’re gonna check back in with you actually. Uh, maybe, maybe it’s a half a year, a year from now to see how things are going. Um, and, uh, yeah, I’m going to continue to explore this platform. I know when I click at the demo, I can only get Jacksonville.
[00:30:54]
Michael Belasco:
So, uh, Oh, yes, there you go. Awesome. Cool.
[00:31:00]
Well, Royan, this has been awesome. Um, I don’t know if you have any parting words, even just like Advice for folks who are looking to get in the prop tech space. You gave some good stuff, uh, before anything you might want to say or plug or anything, it’d be great as we, uh, sign off here.
[00:31:13]
Royden Cooper:
The only thing I’d plug is again, please check out approvals archive at EPUM. com EPUM. com. You know, it’s free to sign up. And if you email me at roydon. cooper at EPUM. com, I’ll upgrade you, let you try it out for free if you’re part of the ACRE community. In terms of advice, just focus. Number one thing I learned in the past business or this business is, you know, anytime you try to do more than one thing at a time, you fail.
[00:31:42]
Royden Cooper:
And so hyper focus is how you win. And I hope any, uh, younger people out there that are getting started, remember that as they continue on their journey.
[00:31:51]
Michael Belasco:
Sound advice, right. And thank you so much again, it’s approvals archive, uh, check it out. And, uh, yeah, we’re excited to see what the future holds for you guys.
[00:31:59]
Michael Belasco:
So,
[00:32:00] uh, thanks a lot. Appreciate you joining. Thank you, Michael. It’s a pleasure.
