Rafael Weiss is the co-founder of Sytes, a marketplace platform that connects commercial real estate landlords, developers, and brokers with tenants actively looking for space in real time. Rafael came to the problem as a developer who lost a deal because tenant demand was invisible until it was too late, and built Sytes to fix the information asymmetry at the core of retail leasing. The platform serves nearly 350 tenants and over 35,000 active site listings across all 50 states, with clients including Kimco, InvenTrust, Church's Chicken, and Dutch Bros. Rafael is based in Boca Raton, Florida.

(01:04) Retail's Demand Visibility Problem
(02:44) Why Sytes
(04:04) A Filtration System for Tenant Demand
(06:24) Getting First Customers to Pay Upfront
(07:24) Why Tenant Demand Data Was Opaque
(08:34) Anonymous Tenant Expansion
(10:14) How a Deal Happens on Sytes
(11:24) Church's Chicken Case Study
(14:54) Kimco & MyEyeDoctor Portfolio Review
(16:34) REITs & Strip Centers
(18:04) The Subscription Model
(19:24) Retail Is Back
(22:44) AI Leasing Agents & the Broker's Future
(24:04) Tenant Demand Index for Developers
(27:24) Bootstrapping vs. Venture Capital Backing
(28:24) Collaboration Superpower: Travis Kalanick

🏙️ Learn more:
-Visit Sytes
-Rafael Weiss on LinkedIn

🏙️ Virtual Events:
-AI & Innovation Forum: Multifamily: on 9/29

-SFR / BTR Forum: on 10/22

🏙️ In-person Events:
-Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16
-South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15
-Finance Forum: in NYC on 11/3
-All upcoming Commercial Observer events

🏙️ Connect with Tangent:
-Edward Cohen on LinkedIn
-Zach Aarons on LinkedIn
-Tangent on LinkedIn

Rowland Hobbs is CEO and co-founder of Stake, a fintech platform that rewards renters with cash back, working to make renting financially rewarding. Before Stake, he led design and innovation at Teneo and served as head of product design for Accenture North America, and he founded Post+Beam, an innovation design firm, and Linea, a computer vision driven photo sharing app. Rowland is based in Dallas, TX.

(04:10) - Why Rent Was Left Out of Loyalty
(06:00) - Loyalty Programs Go Multifamily
(08:30) - Financial Amenities vs. Flashy Perks
(12:20) - Cash back for Delinquency, Retention & Vacancy
(14:40) - Rewarding Renters Instead of Punishing Them
(15:50) - Bilt Rewards
(24:50) - Stake's Cash back Business Model
(27:10) - Cash back by Property Type
(28:50) - UMoveFree Acquisition in Texas
(31:10) - Vertical Integration in Multifamily
(32:20) - Rising Housing Costs & Renter Churn
(36:50) - Renter Loyalty's Next 25 Years
(38:50) - Collaboration Superpower: Barack Obama & Loyalty Program's Inventor

🏙️ Learn more:
-Visit Stake
-Rowland Hobbs on LinkedIn

🏙️ Virtual Events coming up:
-AI & Innovation Forum: Multifamily: on 9/29

-SFR / BTR Forum: on 10/22

🏙️ In-person Events coming up:
-Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16
-South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15
-Finance Forum: in NYC on 11/3
-All upcoming events

🏙️ Connect with Tangent:
-Edward Cohen on LinkedIn
-Zach Aarons on LinkedIn
-Tangent on LinkedIn

Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds.

Clayton Callander is the founder of FTL (Field Technologies), a diagnostic platform built to give commercial buildings something like a check-engine light, closing the service gap for the roughly 95% of properties that enterprise vendors like Honeywell and Siemens can't economically reach. Before founding FTL, Clayton spent seven years maintaining nuclear systems aboard a US Navy submarine, worked at SpaceX, and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He built FTL for the people fixing America's commercial buildings because he used to be one of them, and the tool he needed didn't exist yet. Clayton is based in San Francisco, CA.

(00:00) - Intro: Why Six Million Commercial Buildings Have No Real-Time Data
(01:10) - Meet Clayton Callander, Founder of Field Technologies
(02:40) - The Telephone Game: What Happens When an HVAC Unit Breaks
(05:50) - Zach's Take: Preventative Maintenance's 20-Year Elusive Goal
(07:10) - It's an Access Problem, Not a Technology Problem
(09:40) - Why Building Controls Stay Complicated and Expensive
(13:10) - What FTL Does
(16:50) - Pricing FTL at a Fraction of Traditional Controls
(20:20) - Why It's Called Facilities Triage
(22:20) - Which Asset Classes Are Ready for FTL
(25:00) - What 60 Site Deployments Taught FTL
(26:30) - Unlocking the Other Six Million Buildings
(29:30) - LoRaWAN Explained: Why Not Wi-Fi
(32:30) - Proprietary vs. Open Systems: A VC's View
(36:00) - Collaboration Superpower: Immanuel Kant (Wikipedia) and Ding Huan (Wikipedia)

🏙️ Learn more:
-Visit FTL
-Clayton Callander on LinkedIn

🏙️ NYC Real Estate Week:
-CTO Exchange & Hackathon: 3-in-1 event on Oct. 19 featuring C-suite roundtables, a hackathon and the Power AI & Tech Awards reception (invite-only). Email ecohen@commercialobserver.com for info.

🏙️ CRE Events coming up:

-Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16
-South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15
-All upcoming events

🏙️ Connect with Tangent:
-Edward Cohen on LinkedIn
-Zach Aarons on LinkedIn
-Tangent on LinkedIn

Disclaimer: Commercial Observer Tangent podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained on our program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Tangent, Commercial Observer, MetaProp, or any third party guest to buy or sell any securities, public or private, other financial instruments or funds.

🏙️ Virtual Events:
-AI & Innovation Forum: Multifamily: on 9/29

-SFR / BTR Forum: on 10/22

🏙️ In-person Events:
-Institutional Investors & PE Forum: in NYC on 9/16
-South Florida Capital & Development Forum: in Miami on 10/15
-Finance Forum: in NYC on 11/3
-All upcoming Commercial Observer events

🏙️ Connect with Tangent:
-Edward Cohen on LinkedIn
-Zach Aarons on LinkedIn
-Tangent on LinkedIn