In the brokerage world, time is money — and a new platform has just launched to help brokers get some of their precious minutes back.
Sammy Greenwallwho laid the common foundation Leo In September 2019, started his own firm, Henrytogether Adam Prattthe Commercial Observer may report first.
Simply put, Henry is an artificial intelligence (AI) “co-pilot” that builds deal decks for commercial real estate brokers.
“Investment sales brokers spending three, four hours a day making presentations, whether it's a broker's opinion of price, an offering memo or something else, they're wasting time,” Greenwall said. what they're spending on startups or building relationships,” said Greenwall, who emphasizes that Henry's is not just a way to reduce operating costs but to maximize top-line revenue generation. There is a source. “Brokers are here to stay, and we want to empower them to get better and create more. Relationships are the drivers of deals, and we want to allow these brokers to make more deals.”
Henry launched today, following a gradual increase in market activity after the market was displaced by rising interest rates over the past two years. The evolution of AI has contributed significantly to time and Henry's abilities.
“Before the advent of big language models it was not possible to create custom decks with extensive details around financial modelling, market summaries and comps generation. [like ChatGPT]” Greenwall said. “That's why we think now is an exciting time.”
Henry's pilot program has so far involved three brokerages — which cannot be named for confidentiality reasons.
“I started this business on May 7, so we've seen this traction within 45 days,” Greenwall said. ”
Every CRE firm, team and deal is different, and so Henry has to end up developing bespoke decks to meet all of his clients' needs. “The first thing is to understand all the different types of deals that a brokerage works on, the different types of decks that they have for each specific use case, and the different financial models that they use,” Greenwall said. are,” Greenwall said.
Once the Henry team understands the above factors, they map this information to Henry who then builds the deck based on the deliverables.
“Effectively, at this point, they only need to upload the T12 report. [trailing 12 months of income and expenses]rent roll, and photographs if they want.
Daily time to compile decks is the main motivation behind Henry's launch. “It takes so much time to gather that information,” Greenwall said. “Your operating costs are high, because you have to hire a marketing team, you have to have an analyst, and It takes away from your top line. The speed at which you can churn out these decks with Henry will actually allow you to generate more income.
In case you were wondering, the platform is named after a person.
“The best real estate analyst I ever knew in the business was named Henry,” Greenwall said, declining to give his full name. “He didn't make any mistakes, he completed the OMs very quickly, and he had excellent underwriting models.”
And, in a way, the Henry platform is designed to act like that high-performing person on your team.
“Before, it was very clear 'I'm a person, and this is software,' but now with generative AI, and how far we've come, that's changed,” Greenwall said. said “This software should feel like you have an assistant that's available 24 hours a day. They know how you talk, they know how you speak, they know how you do things. want to present, and they know how you edit things. They know what kind of work you need to do and how to prioritize.”
The platform may be launching today, but Greenwall has a long-term vision for Henry. “It's not just an OM provider, it's an end-to-end workflow solution for commercial real estate brokers and professionals,” he said. “We want to own the whole stack, full stop.
“I want to be very clear, I don't think brokers are going anywhere,” Greenwall reiterated. “Brokers are here to stay, and I feel very strongly about that. That's why I'm building software. of the them.”
Greenwall grew up with Henry's other co-founder and chief technology officer, Adam Pratt. In 2018, while in college, Pratt sold his company. Halligan To Vector solution for $3.2 million. Most recently, he managed a 27-person engineering team. ZocDoc.
The team is off to the races after being recently accepted. Y Combinator, A startup accelerator and venture capital firm that has launched several companies including Airbnb, Doordash, Instacart And Dropbox. Greenwall and Pratt were invited by their lead investor to interview with Y Combinator. David Leibwho is also its creator. Google Photos And bump into App
“It's the most prestigious accelerator in the world, so we're very excited about it,” Greenwall said. “We're actually going to San Francisco next week to participate in a combinator. The idea is, you go through the program for about three months, and at the end of the program you score your badge.”
The platform has also raised millions from angel investors and founders outside of Y Combinator.
“It's only been 45 days, and we've done a lot,” Greenwall said. “Setting up a team, joining Y Combinator and raising almost $1 million already shows that there's real demand for this, and I'm really excited about it.”
Kathy Cunningham can be reached at ccunningham@commercialobserver.com