Meet the RE Tech Entrepreneur: Jack FitzGerald from Disrupt Property

In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Jack FitzGerald from Disrupt Property.

Without further ado…

What do you do?

Disrupt Property is a global database of real estate tech start-ups organised according to asset class (residential, office and retail) and category. Start-ups are crowdsourced, then curated by a team in the real estate development industry. The site also includes research reports, resources and interviews with industry pioneers.

What problem does your product/service solve?

As developers, we are constantly thinking about the future of real estate while at the same time being approached by different technology vendors. It is challenging to sort through the options, understand what is important (versus what’s in fashion) and know who offers the best technology. Many of the categories are at a nascent stage of development (eg. IoT) so we wanted a way to track start-ups we feel are relevant, gaining the context to be able to critically assess them.

What are you most excited about right now?

The great thing about being a developer is that almost everything to do with real estate is relevant to us – construction, sales and marketing, asset and facilities management etc. That means we take a very wide view of PropTech and it is all at a very exciting stage. If I had to single something out, it would be the fact that large landlords are about to become owners of significant amounts of data (financial and physical) which will help to improve the way we operate buildings, but also open unknown possibilities when it comes to monetisation. The industry is grasping with the fundamentals required to collect and analyse this data, but once in place some very exciting things will start to happen.

What’s next for you?

Disrupt Property is 1.5 years old so we have barely learned to walk. Our priority is learning, while helping our visitors to quickly understand the start-up landscape in our industry. We are looking forward to whatever comes next, and have already been approached regarding some interesting opportunities such as helping start-ups to raise capital or to act in an advisory capacity.

What’s a cause you are passionate about and why?

There is one cause that I tend to come back to when thinking about where to devote time one day – it’s the Future of Work and how it will impact older people without technology based skillsets. The shift towards tech related jobs will accelerate quickly from here and it will leave a lot of people behind. I’d like to help these people in some capacity in the future.

Thanks to Jack for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, you may find him on Twitter.

We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).

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