Bricks & More: Unlocking Real Estate Value

Deploy Tech & Fund the Operator to Supercharge Your Assets with Rebekah Tobias

• Adrian Strittmatter • Season 1 • Episode 9

Share episode

In this bold and forward-looking episode of Bricks & More, Adrian Strittmatter is joined by Rebekah Tobias – co-founder of Propela Ventures and a veteran of capital markets, venture capital, and operational real estate – to explore what makes a real estate platform investable in 2025 and beyond.

With institutional capital ready to deploy billions, the real question is: who’s building the scalable, tech-enabled, operations-first platforms that will attract it?

Rebekah shares lessons from the frontline – from self-storage to student housing – and explains why real estate’s next cycle of growth will be defined not by assets, but by operators bold enough to think differently.

Key talking points:

🚀 Why operational and tech-led models are essential to unlocking real estate value today

💡 What early-stage investors look for in founders – and why alignment beats experience

🏗️ How Propela Ventures backs new operators building platforms from the ground up

🌍 Where Europe's most investable real estate opportunities are emerging – and why

📈 Why scalability is the key to institutional funding (and how to achieve it)

🔥 Why now is the perfect moment to build – even in a market full of uncertainty


If you’re building (or backing) the next generation of real estate platforms – or wondering how to make your assets more investable – this conversation is full of insights you won’t want to miss.

Rebekah’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebekah-tobias-2187b66 

Propela Ventures: www.propelaventures.com 


Adrian’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianstrittmatter 

Saentys: https://saentys.com/ 

Adrian Strittmatter:

Real estate is evolving. Fast. Institutional capital is ready to deploy billions, but where's it all going and who's building platforms that can scale, perform, and meet the needs of a more operational, tech enabled asset. In this episode of Bricks More, we are asking the big questions. How do you spot the next breakout Opco or Propco before they hit scale? What makes real estate platforms investible in 2025 and beyond? And how do we unlock value not just for the asset, but for the people and platforms that bring it to life? Today's guest is Rebecca Tobias. Co-founder of Propela Ventures, a bold new investment platform backing early stage tech-enabled real estate operators in the living and hospitality sectors. With over 20 years of experience spanning capital markets, private equity, venture capital, and operational real estate, Rebecca brings a rare blend of institutional insight and entrepreneurial drive. From co-living, later living, BTR and service departments, she's helping shape the next cycle of growth in Europe's real estate landscape. Hi Rebecca. Welcome to the podcast.

Rebekah Tobias:

Adrian. Thanks for having me. Lovely to see you as always.

Adrian Strittmatter:

An honor and a joy. start off with quite a personal question. obviously you've got a, a long career sort of stranding real estate across different elements, different sectors and different ways of working within that ecosystem. But what attracted you to real estate at the beginning then? What was it that brought you here?

Rebekah Tobias:

To be honest, it was really a means to an end. I needed to earn some money to pay my way through college actually. So I moved from Pennsylvania to California when I was 18. I took a gap year and got my in-state residency in California to be able to go to a state

Adrian Strittmatter:

Okay.

Rebekah Tobias:

which was largely subsidized. So I, I paid very little, but I needed a job, obviously when I got out there and I worked in property management for rental business, holiday homes. Along the coast and from there, moved to work for a commercial real estate appraiser and I thought, this guy makes decent money. He's doing quite well for himself. He was an entrepreneur and got more involved in actually the appraisal process and thought. This isn't that difficult. It's quite interesting. So we were working on a lot of big commercial projects at the time. He allowed a flexible schedule so I could go do my university courses and come back and I was basically working full time, cash under the table, was making decent money and thought I. Hey, I might as well give this a go.

Adrian Strittmatter:

This is great.

Rebekah Tobias:

then I did a study abroad in, in the UK at Cambridge University and didn't go back to California because, uh, applying for jobs I wanted to be back on the East Coast near family. So that's when I applied to CBRE in New York and got a role in their valuation team, and then was properly trained and qualified. In New York. So that's what kicked it off. I didn't, I don't think anyone, well now they do actually real see real estate as a proper,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah, as a.

Rebekah Tobias:

and there's master's degrees and there was none

Adrian Strittmatter:

None of that really existed, so opportunistic five 30 years ago. Very opportunistic. So, well that, that leads me very nicely a great segue to my second question, which is obviously, you know, you spotted an opportunity you went after it with within that sector, within real estate. as you said, you're going through an entrepreneurial chapter, what's pushed you towards that? taking it up, going on your own, sort of moving forward on that side? Why, what's inspired you or motivated you to do that?

Rebekah Tobias:

Good question. I think I've always had quite an innate entrepreneurial spirit mindset. I've always been driven, ambitious. I've always, you know, training in the corporate world was fantastic because it gives you such a broad range of skill sets.'cause I moved around quite a bit to different departments. Obviously moved country as well when they transferred me from New York to London. And that really laid the foundation for the rest of my career. And I spent almost 10 years with CBRE, learned a

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

had a broad network by the end of it, and then moved, you know, within agency to Cushman for a bit. And I thought after all the advisory years. What do I wanna do next? And worked for some relatively small to midsize companies after that, which were more entrepreneurial in the fact that the CEO founders were,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Actively involved within the business and yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

it was setting up new

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

alternatives and PropTech and back before it was even called PropTech and just doing

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

and real visionaries at for their time. And I was really inspired by that. So I thought eventually when I think that I have enough,

Adrian Strittmatter:

will be me experience. Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

Contacts, all of that. How do I bring all that together in my own business and what is gonna be the most lucrative opportunity further down the line as I go into the next stage of my

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

I'm not getting any younger, obviously. I gotta, um, I call it my midlife crisis fringe to co

Adrian Strittmatter:

Is that actually you've coined it. You've coined it, it's cheaper than Botox. Um, it's cheaper than Botox. Indeed. So yeah, I have a good, you know,

Rebekah Tobias:

10, 15, 20 years left and what do I wanna

Adrian Strittmatter:

yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

that remaining time? And also leveraging just all of these relationships. Mm-hmm. And that was across, moving into more of the

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

and doing a lot more, not just in real estate, but also private equity, venture capital, investing directly in tech businesses as well, or tech enabled businesses. And that just opens up. So many

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

worlds, and you're thinking, how do I really leverage all these different ecosystems that I've been tapping into in the right way? Because I don't think traditional real estate investing works anymore in the way big businesses approached it, where you buy an asset and then it doesn't perform as well as you think, and then you're trying to back solve for operations and tech and all the things that we know drive the underlying value of the real estate. And it's sort of an afterthought. Oh God, no, actually, what technology do we need? need to tech it. Yeah. What operational people do we need to bring in? If you approach it actually first by solving those two key things and everything's moving in an operational way, whether it's, how we live and work, obviously with co-working and co-living and all the different sub-sectors now of residential, which is the space that we decided to initially focus on. It's changing so much.

Adrian Strittmatter:

And would you say that pattern of, of sort of behavior of what you are putting first, the kind of process, is that real, the, the gap that you spotted in the market and the way of approaching it differently?

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah, I looked at, my last experience, you know, with the Markle business was great because again, they're very

Adrian Strittmatter:

Hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

made their money in real estate, but they did it in a very different way. They bought operating businesses. And they bought asset backed operating businesses, and they managed them in a private equity way. And scaled them in a private equity way. And that was a very different way, again, of accessing real estate. They would acquire the business that own the real estate and then help them expand. So I really enjoyed that process of understanding.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

know, that approach to it. And then just building, we've built operating businesses from scratch. Really difficult to do. That's why not many people are doing

Adrian Strittmatter:

I'm doing it. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Um, but I do think in the European landscape, there's gonna be more and more. Newer operators that take the tech approach from day one that are going to be building new brands, scaling new businesses, and all these sub-sectors of real estate that we're seeing emerge now that are still kind of considered alternative, but really will become more mainstream over time because that's what, you know, later stage private equity looks for. And in Europe you have obviously the nuances of. The difference in, languages and cultures and legal systems and regulatory frameworks. So you're gonna need new operators in each of those markets to really specialize in a particular, in a particular sector. So

Adrian Strittmatter:

for you, the, the value very much lies in those two, sort of, those two pillars that you've mentioned, the tech enabled and operationally led then? Absolutely. To be able to create new value.

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah. But also it's a way of building a real estate portfolio because operators unlock much better

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

the real estate side. they can dig out some interesting deals off market that. As a fund, you're not necessarily

Adrian Strittmatter:

A pure real estate fund, you mean? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

fund, you know, landowners like to deal with the end user. Mm-hmm. If they're selling their land to the operator, at the end of the day, actually they can negotiate better terms or maybe do it at a JB structure. Mm-hmm. Where the owner puts in the land and wants to help the operator develop it out. So they do unlock, we found, much more attractive opportunities on the real estate side from a pricing perspective, but also then you already have the operator in place when you're buying the real estate, rather than again, trying to back solve for the operations later.

Adrian Strittmatter:

And it's really interesting'cause you're talking about the operator. What are the things. That you'll be looking at, because obviously your, your goal here is obviously to scale them, to bring them to the next level, but as those early stage operators, what are the things that you'll be looking for that will say, yeah, these are, this is the right horse to back, if it were, or to bet on?

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah. So the criteria, I mean, in a very venture capital way, we're underwriting the team, the individuals, the track record that they bring, uh, to the team, or have they worked before,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

together as a team, or is it a new team? So we're, we're analyzing all of that. We're doing due diligence on the individuals, um, whether it's interviewing, previous colleagues or customers or, you know, in the same way you would do backing an early stage venture business. And so that's, that's the first tick. And obviously in operations we wanna see that they've had senior position in operating businesses in the past at least three years. Experience. we don't want to be too prescriptive in terms of how many years they've had,'cause there's some really young, really good operators. Mm-hmm. So we wanna be sure that we're backing the right talent. Mm-hmm. Regardless of age. But it's just, you know, also people with new ideas. I mean, there's so many kind of, new ideas in each space we're looking at. You know, we. Are looking at a senior housing operator that are doing things very differently, looking at active lifestyle communities, what amenities that they need. And so you want new, fresh ideas, it's not necessarily gonna come from a generation that has 20, 30 years experience.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Exactly. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

we're always looking at the right team, the right fit. The right alignment. Alignment. So important. I see so many private equity guys. I hate to say still getting that wrong in terms of how they incentivize management teams, the structure that they put in place once the business gets acquired and it very quickly goes wrong. If there's that misalignment.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Different approach to, yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Exactly. Whether the people aren't compensated the right way. I've seen many cases of that. still occurring. So I think it's really important to structure that.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Well, a true partnership in essence.

Rebekah Tobias:

A true partnership. Exactly. Yeah. But also it's the approach that things aren't always going to go well. Obviously you want a backer or an investor and a partnership that's really gonna be along that journey with you, especially early stage. A lot of things are gonna go wrong.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Are gonna go wrong. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

And when. Shit hits the fan, so to speak. You want a partner that's gonna say, right, let's buckle down.

Adrian Strittmatter:

How do we deal with this? Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

How do we get out ourselves out of this? But not, laying down the hammer and saying, you guys fucked up. Um, how are you gonna fix it?

Adrian Strittmatter:

It's all your fault. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

it's really Yeah. Meant to be.

Adrian Strittmatter:

There's a balance, and I know we discussed this on numerous occasions, between new fresh ideas and proof of concept. How do you get that balance, right? Obviously Europe in some instances, in some markets is quite advanced and in others is in its infancy. With regards to the concept, the operator concept? how do you balance that fresh idea with proof of concept?

Rebekah Tobias:

So the main investors behind early ideas and showing that proof of concept happen to be, you know, our investor base is largely family offices high net worth individuals that are willing to take more risk with earlier stage operators and businesses that will back an idea and a vision and believe in that team to deliver it. And that's really what it is. Can this. Team execute the business plan and do I buy into it. And so that's gonna be more private capital. A lot of operators aren't in the those friends and family networks where they're gonna be able to raise that early stage funding, which is why we wanted to do it in a more structured, professional, institutional kind of way. Even if it's a super early stage business, you wanna build that from scratch with more of an institutional mindset, because ultimately that's your exit.

Adrian Strittmatter:

That's your exit strategy? Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

That was our goal initially is to set up a platform to enable new operators to do that, but it'll take shape and I'm sure our business will also and morph and do other things. We're starting in living, but I'm sure we will broaden that scope quite quickly into more niche sector. I mean, I say niche now, but obviously these are growing sectors in their own right.

Adrian Strittmatter:

And have you seen, I I, was I gonna say exciting innovations you've seen in the space, but things that have, you know, maybe worked somewhere else and have had to be tweaked or adapted to work in a new market, or literally brand, brand new ideas? I mean, how...?

Rebekah Tobias:

I think it's just so interesting how technology is shaping everything that we do. I mean, look at how we structure our day or our use of AI in a personal sense and how we can then start applying that in a work sense, which we need to start doing more.'cause I use it, you know, almost every day now. I see there's a lot of really innovative ways of kind of managing these operating businesses, largely automated through the tech. And examples of that, I mean, in, in living it's still very much hands-on, certainly in hospitality, you need to provide a mix of providing a full tech enabled journey for those sophisticated enough to

Adrian Strittmatter:

To use it and to engage with it. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

still need to cater to perhaps an older generation that's not as tech savvy. So you need to provide both in terms of hospitality and that's also in the office. Market as well. Right. So it's similar things apply to both commercial and residential. The interesting niche ones are like self-storage and how you automate self-storage use now. There's you know, the carwash industry, for example, these really niche

Adrian Strittmatter:

That's still going. Oh yeah. The brushes?

Rebekah Tobias:

That's still going! Look, we are not in any way, any way close to a society that's not gonna

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah, that's true. You.

Rebekah Tobias:

know? Driving cars every day, we're certainly still gonna be needing this. there's marinas, there's, campsite, all these different business caravan parks. Look at the holiday parks model. I mean, all of these different sectors are going to be changed in such a big way through tech automation. And I think those operators that are getting that right will be the future.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Be the ones of the future. Out of all the asset classes that you've worked across, why have you chosen at this stage, in this new venture, new adventure? Why have you chosen to focus more on the kind of broad living sector?

Rebekah Tobias:

We've just looked at the opportunity in, you know, so-called beds.'cause obviously

Adrian Strittmatter:

Hmm

Rebekah Tobias:

talks about beds and sheds and we thought actually. You need a lot more operational knowhow and expertise than you needed 10, 15 years ago. And especially in residential, you have all the different sub-sectors of residential and senior living. We're doing a lot of work and student, not just PBSA, but aggregating HMOs, which is another strategy we like, um, which is a pure just aggregation, buildup to scale. Create an institutional product, which has been done in other sectors as well, industrial, et cetera. we thought there was more opportunity to focus on that segment. And also a lot of the inbound approaches we were getting were largely from residential operators, so we thought, let's start there. Also, when I was in my previous firm, we were a very early investor in a co-living business in London, long before co-living was even

Adrian Strittmatter:

Coined co-living. It's still an alternative.

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah, it's still a gray area, but again, that's now starting to really, become far more attractive from an institutional perspective. So it's getting in earlier into those sub-sectors of residential and then also just the economics. The demand is always gonna be there. We need housing. We have a housing shortage pretty much everywhere. The multifamily sector, as it's called in the US, which is massive, doesn't really exist still in Europe in a big way. Mm-hmm. And that will continue to evolve. Obviously we're, we're gonna see larger multifamily operators and investors coming into Europe because the opportunity is there.

Adrian Strittmatter:

And do you think it's more, one of the reasons maybe that some countries are lagging behind is the difference between the size of the rental sector versus the size of the sort of independent landlords that own their houses?

Rebekah Tobias:

Well yeah, if you take the UK as a prime example of that, where it was very much a buy model for a long time, and even you see that in retirement living, you know, I don't think that's still gonna be the case in the next 10, 15, 20 years. So you need to build product with that in mind, where you're seeing the change in trends from buying to renting and more flexible models. So it doesn't even need to be renting. But there are different models I'm seeing in the retirement space that are really interesting. And then you're thinking about, obviously that baby boomer generation, they're a bit more savvy, then, you know, it depends who you're appealing to, you know whether it's an 80 plus or a 60 plus. But these new models will obviously filter through the generations and you'll get to older demographics and they'll start to understand under understand it more.

Adrian Strittmatter:

So in, in the work that you do, sort of identifying these operators, obviously the the demographics and who it's appealing to are really important, super important. do you see real differences in, I know it, it seems obviously between I'd say, was it Gen Alpha I think now versus sort of seniors? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I Do you see real differences in the way that they occupy or live in space in terms of what they're looking for?

Rebekah Tobias:

Absolutely. Every generation has its own... and also that's, that's largely tech driven, right? Mm-hmm. It's how tech is really taking over how people just run their daily lives. Right. And how they want to occupy space is a huge part of that. you know, I've seen homes now that are virtually like fully automated. You walk in and you touch a few buttons and everything just starts working. That is absolutely gonna be happening. But across, you know, student housing mm-hmm. As well as senior living. Especially in senior, there's a huge tech play in senior because you think about, you know, you want people there. Active lifestyle initially, but with some access to care and there's gonna be, you know, elements of that that are again, gonna be automated in a lot of ways. So it is really gonna change the landscape for sure.

Adrian Strittmatter:

The landscape, I'm sure. Do you think within this kind of new, let's call it operated living space at whatever age you are, do you still think home ownership is still the ultimate goal? Or you can kind of, you've got this sort of serviced way of living and actually I'll start going elsewhere?

Rebekah Tobias:

That's very much an older generational thing that sort of will start to die out. I mean, as I get older, I think, how do I have less responsibility over, over assets and you know, owning things. I actually want less, again, if you can rent a car versus buy a car, which is a depreciating asset in most cases, and same with homes. I think people will be less attached to that family home also, as you live longer. And you're more active for a longer stage in life, you are gonna be living totally differently. You'll be traveling more, you'll be far more transient. You want more flexible living choices. But also, also having that care, element at the touch of a button or whatever it's gonna be in the future, that will also exist so that they can travel more comfortably knowing that there's services on the doorstep that you can utilize. But it's, it's, that's gonna look totally different.

Adrian Strittmatter:

It is, isn't it? You could kind of map out a kind of asset or sort of asset life cycle kind of in parallel with the way that people occupy residential space along the different periods of their life, which is now longer and probably, as you said, more transient and more varied and spot the opportunities in that way as well.

Rebekah Tobias:

absolutely. I mean the, in the next 20 years, a quarter of the UK's population is gonna be 65 and older. That's very much a trend in the rest of Europe also. and we do not have the housing stock. None of these people, I don't think, wanna live in their family home that entire time. One, it's too big, it's too cumbersome to maintain, and you wanna unlock actually those larger family homes for younger families moving in. Um, I think the planning system needs to change and public, private, you know, partnerships need to help move that along faster.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Is there support for those new, let's say you go in with a new idea and you are sort of potentially even looking to have the real estate component, so looking for planning, how are you normally received?

Rebekah Tobias:

well. It

Adrian Strittmatter:

Well, it really depends on the local, on the local council. Yeah. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

And especially in the uk, you know, whether that's

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

or conservative, it really varies so much. you have to have the right planning experts on the case mm-hmm. To get anything through. But when we were building self-storage in Germany, we were putting co-living in because no one understood what self-storage was. And we'd get consent easier. It still took as long because it was through COVID and Yeah,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Showing

Rebekah Tobias:

up to,

Adrian Strittmatter:

to the meetings. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Um, but it, you know, there's ways of getting it through and appealing to what the planners want to see in each location. so you have to, but you have to be a bit creative and clever about that.

Adrian Strittmatter:

How you get it through. and specifically about sort of value creation. Could you point us to a few or talk us through a few like case studies where you took a sort of, a real estate asset or an operator, got it tech enabled and really saw that value sort of grow over time and really saw all the kind of elements I would say that you saw to be value leavers to really come to, to the forefront. If you've got a couple of case studies you could share with us.

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah, I'll use, uh, a case study with the self storage business where we had. The benefit, and again, executing a business from scratch is tough in any market, but we were trying to do this through COVID in a really challenging market where construction costs were also skyrocketing and, you know, wars breaking out. it was just a really tough macroeconomic environment as well. But we were, we had at least the benefit of doing it with the tech already there from day one. And because it was a sort of developed build out strategy, were converting existing assets, but we could put the tech in place from day one, which not many operators have the benefit of doing when you have existing storage, you're not gonna go back and retrofit in many cases, especially with digital locks and access controls and all of that. hence the future of that will be fully an automated experience.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Completely automated. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

You probably won't need anyone on site, maybe one person in the future just to check in on things. So that's really changing the storage world.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

And you can apply that to probably logistics as well. You can apply that to different sub-sectors of storage, cold storage, open storage. It's all automated, uh, in student, interestingly, we are working with a fantastic operator in the uk and we're aggregating smaller HMOs and HMO portfolios. There's a few other players in this space now, and obviously that's very granular assets. So you're talking many properties, many units, many tenants per market. And you need to be able to operate that efficiently. And the only way to do that is have good tech products that speak to the students. And so you can have easy communication because these are also older properties, so things are gonna go wrong. You're gonna have more leaks, you're gonna have more maintenance issues. So you need to be in constant communication with your, with the students and your tenants to solve those issues quickly. And build a brand that's synonymous with, good, quick, easy communication, quality

Adrian Strittmatter:

of service.

Rebekah Tobias:

of service. Safety, security, you know, all the things that, that you'd want.

Adrian Strittmatter:

And are you seeing the, specifically on that example then the, the stock, the living stock, are you seeing people coming to you or would be coming to you with portfolios of going, look, this is where we currently are at the moment, or you spot the opportunity and you invest it, say, look, we could really make this work with this new tech enabled operationally led business model. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

well, all, all new, I say new age operators, you know, new operating platforms that are spinning out of existing businesses or, you know, seeing the opportunity in the market now, are pretty tech savvy because if you think about, you know, PropTech has been around now 10 years in

Adrian Strittmatter:

Under the name. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

and those... all that tech exists, it's available off the shelf. What you need to be smart about is how you curate your, build your tech stack and curate those products in a way that is the most efficient from an operations perspective. And that's everything from your booking system, your CRM, your property management system, how that links to your backend accounting finance functions. That's still actually difficult because not all products, work well with others and plug into others. So you, you do need to have, you know, some,

Adrian Strittmatter:

It can't be a pick and mix, but you need to. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

in that process to help you get it right. but the tech exists. Whereas, you know, again, building it from scratch, which some operators did really well back in the day, M seven as an example, they built Coyote, their asset management system because nothing else

Adrian Strittmatter:

nothing else existed. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

really granular assets and, you know, thousands of tenants and all of that. But what I find really difficult is that we're the largest industry in real estate. We're the slowest to adopt new technology. Mm-hmm. Investing in the tech on its own doesn't really move the needle because in a lot of cases, the tech guys aren't speaking to the real estate guys.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah, we've talked about this a couple. Yeah. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

And so there is a total breakdown of communication really between the two. Also, when building the tech, you kind of wanna do it actually with a case study or an operator or, Hmm. A landlord in mind to really test that product and make sure that it works and you have product market fit immediately. Mm-hmm. And the difficulty in investing in PropTech is you're just not sure who's gonna win in that particular space. Mm-hmm. Because it has been so relatively new and a lot of these businesses are struggling to scale again because of the slow adoption rates, low sales cycles, as soon as the market turns. We've seen an immediate drop off, which we've seen also recently in investors making decisions. Right? And as soon as they put decision making on pause, the first that get cut really is marketing budgets, tech budgets, anything that's outside the main

Adrian Strittmatter:

The main. The main day to day. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

And they see all these things as like ancillary,

Adrian Strittmatter:

You know, plugins. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

that do add value over time, but we don't know how much value they create today. So do we really need them right now when you know, other things are a bit more pressing in the portfolio, which is understandable, but that is super tough for a tech business.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Looking at opportunities across Europe, where do you, is there any specific market or region where you feel in the space that you are looking at, in the asset class that you are looking at, there's an area where opportunity is right for the taking where there's really some lag.'cause obviously different markets have got different levels of maturity.

Rebekah Tobias:

Yes, very good point. I think the Nordics are super tech savvy and they're years ahead of the rest of Europe.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Why do you think that is?

Rebekah Tobias:

I think, the Nordics have a real entrepreneurial spirit as well, and they've just gone into it and kind of leaned into tech in a much bigger way. Mm-hmm. Um, with just a bit more motivation and conviction behind it, and so they're just doing things. in a more, just more

Adrian Strittmatter:

More advanced way. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

especially with climate, if you look at,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah. That's true.

Rebekah Tobias:

tech that, that, that's available there. So I know it's just something culturally as well that is there that they've taken advantage of perhaps earlier than the rest of Europe. I think Germany has a huge Needs to make, I should say, huge tech advancements and hasn't quite gotten there yet. I mean, they, there's very little digitalization across Germany, as I can tell in doing business there it's pretty archaic still in some ways. I mean, just in, you know, doing deals there and. they transact and, signing an SPA still requires a,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah, I mean a whole raft of, yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

uh, in the notary office. You know, it's really, uh, it's very cumbersome. It's, it's, they need to evolve quite a bit, I think, and really push tech in the right way. The UK is pretty tech sophisticated, I think, um, Netherlands,'cause I live between London and Amsterdam now is really advanced. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of great tech in Netherlands, Belgium as well. Benelux in general. Spain and Portugal are on fire. There's in the right ways. It's really hot market. but there's a lot of great things happening in Spain and Portugal now that have been evolving for some time.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Those markets were very difficult for a period of time. What do you think's changed? Yeah, that they've now become hot property again.

Rebekah Tobias:

Well, you've seen post Brexit, the entrepreneur kind of relief that the countries were offering, but also the golden passports.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

Driving internationals into those major cities. Also opening up for business as well. And a lot of businesses opening offices in Spain and Portugal, um, really driving, you know, commercial as well, as well as

Adrian Strittmatter:

As, as well as residential. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

I mean, those, those markets are booming right now. It's unbelievable. Whereas I remember when early investors were going into Spain and Portugal thinking, oh God.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm.

Rebekah Tobias:

but

Adrian Strittmatter:

That's been a quick transformation then, hasn't it really? Yeah. You think about it.

Rebekah Tobias:

It has been. quite quick, but they're really beneficiaries of a lot of, well, also the other thing that drove that was COVID and being able to work from anywhere. Mm-hmm. So a lot of people moved to Spain and Portugal during COVID to have a better lifestyle, better weather, and would go back and forth. I have a good friend who bought a place in Portugal during COVID and was going back and forth and still able to. You know, manage work quite well. So it's that flexibility in working from anywhere that's going to increase

Adrian Strittmatter:

Increase. Yeah, exactly.

Rebekah Tobias:

for the first time ever, when I go back to the states in the summer in New York, no one is in the city in the summer. Whereas you'd go in July and August, previous years, everyone would still be

Adrian Strittmatter:

Still be in the city. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

take Fridays off and they'd go to their beach house on the weekends. But now everyone just clears out of the city. Mm. So you're seeing this happen,

Adrian Strittmatter:

in patterns

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah. Change in patterns everywhere.

Adrian Strittmatter:

ultimately you want to obviously identify those sort of, operators, tech enabled operators, and take them on a journey of scalability to be able to bring them to the next stage. So you are really sort of. In that middle gap. Are there not that many other operators who are interested in that or taking the risks in that? And also, what is your journey of scalability? What's your, your formula? We were talking about taking the partners on the journey with you.

Rebekah Tobias:

Scalability is a big one because that's how you attract your

Adrian Strittmatter:

institutional investor, you know?

Rebekah Tobias:

the first thing they're gonna look at, is how scalable is this? How much capital can I deploy into these businesses in a meaningful way? Because, you know, we've tracked the top 25 institutional funds in Europe and there's about 300 billion that needs to be deployed over the next five years. So they can't sit on the sidelines for too long. They're gonna have to start doing things, and they wanna find platforms, it's really moved to platform scaling, building, exiting in a much larger sense, whether that's a public or private exit. But they want to own and operate those businesses largely, and they wanna be able to deploy at least a hundred million, if not more, into these

Adrian Strittmatter:

so that would be the sort of the entry point when..

Rebekah Tobias:

I mean, they'll go down to maybe 50 million depending on what it is. But you know, with the storage business it was really hard to get to a hundred million. It, it is really hard to get to a hundred million today. It's a lot of, with a lot of these niche strategies, it's very difficult when you're just doing organic roll up site by site.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah, if you didn't have the help of the scalable, the scalability partner.

Rebekah Tobias:

And so I think it's easier to build the pipeline and if you do that through a combination of M&A and deal by deal, asset by asset, which I've, which a lot of operators are doing. Mm-hmm. Also on the m and a side, there's so many businesses that will be consolidating. Especially in, in this sort of niche sector space, there're, highly fragmented sectors that need some consolidation m and a. So there's a huge opportunity there

Adrian Strittmatter:

Kind of roll up as well then? Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Scenario and then just organic growth deal by deal. But then that's also largely based on access to capital. And not many of the early stage investors have that access to the right strategic partner from a capital point of view, that's going to, again, take the risk on a team and a pipeline. Mm-hmm. They're gonna wanna already see, cash flowing Yeah. businesses. Which again, are hard to get to at scale.

Adrian Strittmatter:

So what would be your timeframe then, really to get it? I mean, obviously it's a bit of a, you know, sort of open-ended question. Yeah. Chicken and egg. But would you say sort of, if you had to write a kind of, kind of case study, what, what are we talking about? 5, 7, 3?

Rebekah Tobias:

I think it is from where we are

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

five years I see a huge potential for growth. Mm-hmm. Because you're also starting at a much lower entry price today. Yeah, and I've, you know, I speak to a lot of people day in and day out about the market. They're still quite negative on it. If you're a new business, you know, look at the last crash. We were here in 2009, 10.

Adrian Strittmatter:

were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were together. We were trying to survive. Exactly. Yeah. But I mean, yeah. Yes.

Rebekah Tobias:

It's difficult. It's difficult in any market. Mm-hmm. But now is the best time to set up your own business and take that risk because you're starting off on a way lower basis. Mm-hmm. A

Adrian Strittmatter:

lower basis,

Rebekah Tobias:

in any other market. Now we're not calling the bottom of the market.

Adrian Strittmatter:

no.

Rebekah Tobias:

when, we've seen prices come down significantly in the last few years, you know? Well, we don't know exactly what the trajectory looks like, but we know starting off today, you're gonna be in a better position in five years and even more so in 10.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

Mm-hmm. Um, we also like to look at not anti-cyclical plays, but you know, it's structural changes

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah,

Rebekah Tobias:

making a real difference to these sectors that really has not a lot to do with the wider economic circumstance and macro environment. If you're tracking the right trends that are sustainable for the long term, which is really the technology, that's what's that's what's driving it. So that's not gonna change, technology's moving at a pace that none of us can really keep up with.

Adrian Strittmatter:

I wanna circle back to obviously you, we were talking about sort of family offices as an example of people that would want to invest. What defines them? What are they looking for? Why are they open to new ideas. Getting in at that entry point, what is it that really defines them as a, as a really interesting investor set?

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah, they're all so different. Everyone asks me this question. There's no one size fits all with family offices. They're all so different. Depends on what generation you're on. if it's first, second, third, fourth gen, the, the longer they've been around, the more sophisticated and professional they are as far as a sort of business and how they run it, and the number of people involved. but the general theme is just pure opportunistic investors. So they're looking for the best opportunity in the best market that's gonna give them the best return. So it's hard to even, I mean, generally speaking, they want to double their money in, three to five years,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Three to five years, double the money. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

You know that's on a real estate play.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm.

Rebekah Tobias:

if you're looking at venture and private equity, that's a different risk profile, but you know, there it's, it's difficult to tap into that world for sure. Mm-hmm. Once you're in with a few, it's obviously much easier'cause they open the doors to all their

Adrian Strittmatter:

It's word of mouth and yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

it's word of mouth, but you kind of need to go to them with a strategy because they don't necessarily sit there and think, what's my strategy? Unless again, there are more professional, multi-generational outfit that has, you know, in-house teams covering these different aspects of private markets. But generally speaking, the smaller ones, and by the way, we're gonna see tons of family offices emerging through this next cycle. Because if you look at the big tech exits and, and the generational wealth transfer that's happening now from baby Boomer to next gen is huge. I mean, I can't even, I don't even know the numbers behind it, but it's enormous. So that will become a much bigger play in the real estate space, I think is, is that sort of private capital coming into it? Which is not, which is not tracked really.

Adrian Strittmatter:

That's the thing. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

That's the thing, you only really look at because it's more transparent what the institutional funds have raised. You're not looking at what the family, what amount of capital the family offices are gonna be controlling,

Adrian Strittmatter:

controlling and deploying future,

Rebekah Tobias:

and how much of that will be allocated to real estate. It'll be about, I mean, whatever it is. tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, and roughly 10 to 15% of that will be real estate.

Adrian Strittmatter:

So jumping to the operator, Assume I'm an operator. I'm coming to pitch to you. What are the things that, you know, we talked about the founder, are there any things, any tips that you could give to really bring them along that value journey of creating that value for the operating platform? What is it that you would, you'd be looking at apart from the energy and the drive? Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

I mean, just you're, you know, you're backing good entrepreneurs, right? That have a vision, that can articulate their vision and then they're giving you conviction in their ability to execute that

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah. Ultimately is why you're investing in them. And there's so many great real estate entrepreneurs. I think a lot of them probably are still stuck in bigger businesses and have high living costs and high school fees and,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

there's barriers.

Adrian Strittmatter:

to exit or entry? I dunno which one it is. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

barriers, for them taking more entrepreneurial risks. But I think, you know, there's, there's so much good talent out there that, you know, we're gonna see more and more people hopefully taking that level of risk. I mean, we've, my family has taken,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

my husband and I, he was also an entrepreneur taking a lot of risks, but we've also made huge sacrifices, lifestyle wise,

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm.

Rebekah Tobias:

lowered school fees. You know, not many people are, are

Adrian Strittmatter:

Willing or willing,

Rebekah Tobias:

Willing or able to take those level of sacrifices. So I understand, and I wish more women generally were also taking that level of risk because it's, there's such a huge opportunity. For women, not that people are largely focused anymore on sort of the diversity play, but we also need to be building our own track records and just, earning that respect as principles, as deal makers, as investors, ourselves. Because I've had more recently, you know, that 60 plus generation that, still perceive women in, in a different way, obviously, and who actually said, oh, well, you guys are great at capital raising and investor relations, but who's gonna do the deals? the deals.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah,

Rebekah Tobias:

think if you look at our..

Adrian Strittmatter:

Our track record. We'll be doing it. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

In large part, it's transactional, but we're doing it on behalf of other people really, and so you don't get the credit necessarily.

Adrian Strittmatter:

So taking, picking that apart just slightly, I'll just start sort of, you've got the tech element, you've got the real estate element, and you've got the operational element. Do you find those barriers in all three at the same level or different levels depending on those kind of like three sub-sectors?

Rebekah Tobias:

No, I think, I mean, there's obviously more competition in a pure real estate play. So when you're building a new business, the questions I'll get is, what is your USP? Mm-hmm. What, how do you differentiate yourself from everyone else trying to do

Adrian Strittmatter:

Do what you're doing. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

do the same thing? And I think the answer to that is how are you approaching investing in assets because we approach it through operators and the tech is part of that. and generally you know, looking at obviously where the biggest growth is gonna come from in the future from a sector point of view and putting the two together, but also it's again, tapping into those different ecosystems. The tech world's very different from the real estate world, which is very different from the venture private equity world. And so, the diverse networks that I've been tapping into in and out of for the last, you know, 10, 15 years... really, that's what's kind of driven me to set up my own thing at some point is how can I bring all that together? Because not many people have access to

Adrian Strittmatter:

To all that network. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Um, they're very much, you know, operating in silos as you did historically Um, and so even in bigger businesses, I mean, I see so many opportunities for cross-selling and there's a lot of low hanging fruit with the technology aspects and bringing in other skilled people into different businesses to give them an edge. And I think more and more of that will start happening.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Do you think real estate is, I think going back to that silo or that asset class subdivision is becoming more and more hybrid, which means that there are more opportunities, new, new players coming in, ability to innovate a little bit more than, and is the, that's a very long question, and then is the planning, planning departments, are they following that? Because if it's not categorized strictly, how do you innovate if the, if the market or the planning department's not following?

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah, that's a really good point. It's going back to just having the best team possible. Mm-hmm. With the right connections.'cause ultimately, at the end of the

Adrian Strittmatter:

Hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

it's a relationship business. It's still all about relationship. To bring new innovative models to new markets. You need people on the ground that know people that know the planners. Mm-hmm. That can convince them that it's the right thing

Adrian Strittmatter:

That's the right thing to do and it's gonna solve the problems that they have in that locality or municipality.

Rebekah Tobias:

but, you know, public sector, they aren't thinking very commercially. Right. So you gotta approach it in a way that appeals to them,

Adrian Strittmatter:

It's gonna solve their problem that they have in their, yeah, in their, for their constituents or, exactly, yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Especially with the senior, we're like, we're not, we're trying to keep residents in your local area, just move them to better quality facilities. They almost view it as, oh, you're gonna take, you know, we're gonna lose residents as a result. Which is, you know, it's, it's all in the way that you position it and Really make your case and really get the community involved. By the way, there's um. A, a fantastic senior living site that's been bought by a family office and that I toured the other day and it's absolutely unbelievable. But what they had to do to get that through planning was, I mean, years in the making, but really getting the community

Adrian Strittmatter:

And now they're part of the community. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. In a big way. And have a wait list of people in that community that are, that want to move in.

Adrian Strittmatter:

They want to go there. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Which hasn't even broken ground yet, but it just, you know, it's just, it's a, you know, obviously a lot of work to put all things together.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Couple of final questions. Yeah. The podcast is all about the Bricks More, and I think we've gone into the more around the operational side and the, and the tech enabled side, but on the journey that you are going to be taking these entrepreneurs to that glorious exit. What is it? How we hope. We hope. Oh, that's the plan. At least that's the plan. How, how would you define unlocking value? What is it to you? What does it mean to you personally and professionally?

Rebekah Tobias:

I think true value in alpha creation today is very much thinking outside the box, thinking differently, not following the herd, which is such a common thing we see in real estate. Soon as someone goes into a sector in a big way, we see everyone else piling in. It's how do you, how do you create value by being the first mover in the market. And sort of build on that and bring other people along with you. And again, that a lot of that is bringing different worlds together, different ecosystems different skillsets, and, and moving things along faster. The rate of change is so slow at the moment when everything else seems to be

Adrian Strittmatter:

Moving super quickly. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

You're like, how are we gonna catch up? I don't know. I feel that urge to move faster and, build businesses, just doing things differently. Mm-hmm. You know, bringing different skill sets and thinking about things in a different way. I mean, the bricks and mortar is your underlying

Adrian Strittmatter:

Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Value really,

Adrian Strittmatter:

your frame or your canvas on which you to, to express yourself. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

businesses, the large, you know, a large part of the value is the underlying real estate. But there are so many other factors driving the value of that real estate today. It's not just having a good asset and property manager. Mm-hmm. It's, you know, the whole, you know, life cycle. It's the whole tech stack. It's, especially from now an environmental

Adrian Strittmatter:

Mm-hmm.

Rebekah Tobias:

what we need to do to ensure that we're building future proof sustainable assets, and that requires a lot more skill than it did 10, 15 years ago. So it's gotta evolve quicker. And I'm hoping that a lot of these entrepreneurs are going to make that happen faster. So that's kind of what you're buying into.

Adrian Strittmatter:

And come and see you and, uh, and scale up. Definitely. Yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

Come and see us!

Adrian Strittmatter:

Come and see us. The door's open.

Rebekah Tobias:

Um, I'm not saying we can work miracles.

Adrian Strittmatter:

No, no. I mean, you still need a good business to be able to Yeah, no, no, exactly. Um, but I mean, Rebecca, this has been an absolutely, you know, a joy to have you on the, on the, on the podcast.

Rebekah Tobias:

Adrian. Well, I love speaking to you. We've known each other so long.

Adrian Strittmatter:

We have, and we, we talk often. Yes. We talk often.

Rebekah Tobias:

we have so much to do as well in our portfolio companies with marketing and branding and communications, and how important that is. I mean, if we look at, you know, Adam Newman's new thing with Flow. It's really just, we live, he just rebranded it. It's the same exact sales pitch, but how important that that brand

Adrian Strittmatter:

That brand value is, yeah.

Rebekah Tobias:

It's huge in real estate.

Adrian Strittmatter:

Especially if you, I mean, we've seen, and especially with the, even in our own way with the agency, we've seen how brand and marketing can add value to Opco, propco situations where the brand is recognized. People before you go and pitch, have heard about the name, heard about the operator, heard about the brand, and it is part of the the purchase price. You're also buying that brand. You're buying a ip. The IP and everything. So it's, um, I'm, I'm glad that you see the importance of, uh, brand and marketing.

Rebekah Tobias:

I absolutely do, exactly. It's a big part of it.

Adrian Strittmatter:

It's not always the case. It's not always the case. It's not the case. But again, thanks ever so much for, thank you so much for having, coming on the podcast and then, you know, in this cozy environment as always, I love it. It's great. Awesome. Thanks Rebecca. Ciao. Bye.

Rebekah Tobias:

Bye. Bye.