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attention and not screw it up along the way.”
It was 2012 when he stepped back from his day-to-day involvement with the firm, admitting that he “just kind of hit the wall, personally, and was looking for the next blank canvas.” He asked himself: “What else is next? What else can I do where I could start from the beginning, build something, learn along the way and get my ass kicked, of course, every day?”
He landed on technology, which provided a challenge personally
and to an industry that had largely endured without innovation. In 2012, he launched The News Funnel, an aggregator of commercial real estate news that is still used by hundreds
of thousands of readers. At the suggestion of CBRE broker Jeremy Neuer, a longtime friend and fellow tech enthusiast, Beckerman in 2017 purchased what was known as CRE/ Tech Intersect, a networking group that both belonged to and had around 2,000 subscribers at the time.
The company, which Beckerman rebranded as CREtech.com, laid the foundation for what would become a fast-growing conference and content business focused on the role of technology in real estate. The use and awareness of so-called proptech was noticeably on the rise at the time, he said, as the industry was attracting venture capital funding and a growing list of startups.
He pointed, for example, to the launch of Fifth Wall, which was co-founded in 2016 by Wallace. The space also drew investment from a host of other institutional sources and attention from brokerage giants such as JLL and CBRE.
That partly explains the growth of
CREtech under Beckerman, from an initial event in San Francisco that he estimates drew around a hundred people, to multiple conferences and thousands of attendees annually. That includes flagship programs in New York and London that last year had some 3,000 attendees, from entrepreneurs and real estate service providers to some of the world’s top investment bankers and investors.
“They all have heads of innovation,” Beckerman said. “A lot of them
are investing in venture — and it’s not just the big ones. It’s the super regionals. A lot of players in Jersey have heads of innovation (and) are adopting a lot of these tools that are in the marketplace.”
The pandemic accelerated real estate’s adoption of technology,
as with most industries, which ultimately led to continued growth for CREtech’s audience. And, ironically, the crisis only reinforced the importance and the demand
for in-person shows. The company successfully pivoted to virtual programs during widespread lockdowns in 2020, he said, but “then you just watch the numbers on webinars and virtual conferences — they keep going down because there’s too many of them and everybody discovered this fun toy at once.”
“And so I just made the decision: Virtual conferences is not a business for me.”
The decision was validated last
fall, when the company’s in-person conferences “just came back roaring” with thousands of attendees at the New York and London events.
It was also in the early months of COVID-19 that Beckerman
CREtech has grown from a small event in San Francisco to multiple conferences with thousands of attendees annually, including flagship programs in New York and London.
latched onto climate as the focus
of CREtech’s new offshoot. As
he prepares for his first CREtech Climate conference, he believes
the audience could ultimately be exponentially bigger than that of the pure technology platform.
He also expects the mission to be immensely more difficult, citing industry estimates that it would take 100 years and at least $18 trillion
to decarbonize the built world. By comparison, he said, the internet is a trillion-dollar industry, “so now you’re talking 20 internets that has to be invested in just the built world to get it to net zero. Think about the scale of that problem.”
Yet Beckerman is buoyed by the growing attention paid by young people, governments and the fast- growing list of global companies and institutions with ESG requirements.
What’s more, he said, “technology gives me hope.” Commercial real estate, for instance, has embraced innovation in building materials such as concrete, steel and mass timber,
and in areas such as prefabrication and 3D-printed homes, all of which help create healthier working and living spaces.
That makes it all the more likely
that his new initiative will be a true extension of the original CREtech, highlighting the types of tools “that are available for the industry to adopt so that they can achieve whatever their objectives are” with respect to net zero emissions or greening their portfolios.
“It is all through the tech lens,” he said, later adding: “The technology will get us there, I do believe, but the problem remains adoption. And this has been the whole arc of my career. I have those relationships,
I know this industry, so I’m just focused every day on the adoption side ... to get the industry to pay attention, to understand the risk and then understand there are solutions, there are tools, so let’s go. Let’s create greater, healthier work and living places and let’s save the planet for the next generation that’s coming up.” RE
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Courtesy: CREtech