From Where I Sit: Season 2, Episode 8 With Raj Singh, Managing Partner, JLL Spark, Transcript

Tom McGee:

Welcome to From Where I Sit, the podcast where we explore the forces shaping America's built economy. I'm your host, Tom McGee, president and CEO of ICSC. In discussion with prominent leaders and innovators, we cut through the noise to explore the trends and innovations influencing the future of our communities.

Today, I'm pleased to welcome Raj Singh, managing partner of JLL Spark, the corporate venture capital arm of JLL. Raj leads JLL's global proptech investment strategy. In this role, he identifies and scales the tech that's reshaping how real estate is built, operated, financed and experienced. Raj has spent his career helping transform traditional industries by investing in the right digital solutions. Before joining JLL, he served as interim co-head and managing director of investments at JetBlue Technology Ventures, where he focused on emerging technologies and travel and aviation.

Raj is an entrepreneur himself, giving him firsthand insight into what it takes to build and scale early stage technology companies. And today at JLL Spark, he brings that experience to the real estate sector, guiding investments that range from smart building technology, to sustainability tools and construction innovation to the future of work. Raj is uniquely positioned to help us understand where the commercial real estate industry is headed and which technologies will matter most.

The conversation couldn't be more relevant as we prepare to launch our own technology focused event for CRE, the inaugural ICSC+PROPTECH event in May as part of ICSC LAS VEGAS.

Raj, welcome to the show.

Raj Singh:

Great to be here and thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure, Tom. Nice to see you.

Tom:

It's nice to see you. I had the opportunity to spend some time about a week ago in Palo Alto where he lives and his business is based. And so it's good to be with you again just a little more than a week later. Raj, in your introduction and even in the name of ICSC's upcoming show in May as part of ICSC LAS VEGAS, the terminology proptech has come up multiple times. And let's start at the very basic level. We have a large number of listeners. When you think of proptech, how do you define proptech? How should our listeners think of that terminology?

Raj:

There should be a very easy answer to that, but the reality is that it's somewhat more complicated. So I think the term proptech rose about 15 years ago when the first venture capitalists who decided to focus on this area of technology were looking around for a way to describe it. Other people have used real estate technology as an example as well. Proptech was catchy and became the default way of people talking about this thing. And essentially it's, one way of thinking about it is it's technology used by the real estate industry. I do think however, that it has a bit of a flaw, which is that technology used by the real estate industry is 90% the same technology used by everybody else. And so for example, if we think about financial services and the sorts of tools you might use when you're thinking about making an investment or managing some debt, seeing where your equity stands, these sorts of things. This would be used by many other industries. Likewise, if it's about organizing your workforce, if it's about working with marketing, if it's a sales process, none of these things are particularly unique to our industry.

So with the exception perhaps of construction technology, which is unique, it's something that we do that's very different from most everybody else, there's really not that much that I would describe as being unique to our world. And therefore, I think the concept of proptech isn't really a good one. So I've been searching for a way of describing what we do more eloquently and more correctly. I'm not sure about eloquent, but in terms of correctly, I've ended up with technology for the built world. So this is a way to describe the technology that we who are participants in either the creation or the maintenance or the use of the built world are involved with. And so I like that phrase. I'm still trying to find something that's a bit more pithy, but in essence, when we think about the proptech for the world, what we're really talking about is technology that helps us in the real estate industry do a better job.

Tom:

You know, it's interesting and instructive that this concept has only been around for a few years because it also speaks to the fact that we in the industry haven't really been early adopters of technology. And so that's why the term is new. And that's why I think there's still some questions around what it is exactly and how it might work. I actually think it's a fairly eloquent term myself, technology for the built world. When I came back to ICSC’s offices and I met with the team, I referenced our meeting and I said, I thought that was a brilliant phrase because it's very descriptive and it's easy to kind of get your head around what you mean. I suppose proptech came about because the terminology fintech and other things were in vogue.

Let's talk a little bit about technology for the built world. And that's what you spend your time on is investing and identifying, you know, new technologies for the built world at JLL Spark. So for our listeners, JLL is a large, very successful commercial real estate service provider with a lot of different verticals. They may not be as familiar with JLL Spark. So talk about that a little bit, Raj.

Raj:

Yeah, happy to. And I totally get why people might not be familiar. We're relatively new. whereas JLL itself has been around for more than 200 years, JLL Spark was started in 2017. And it really is, if you like, the brainchild of our current CEO, Christian Ulbrich, who became CEO in 2016 and was thinking about where we could build sources of differentiation vis-a-vis our competitors and help our clients be more successful.

And one of the areas that he alighted on was the use of technology. So as I referred to earlier, I think we're not the fastest adopters of technology out there. So there's a zero to one opportunity going from really not using that much at all in terms of technology to being fully technology enabled. That zero to one opportunity is on us right now. And so it recruited two folks, Yishai Lerner and Mihir Shah, to come to JLL and to start Spark, which essentially was the first step in our journey of being able to be technology enabled. So what Spark is essentially is a way of JLL investing in companies and building a relationship with them such that ultimately we can provide a go-to-market whereby we can develop a triple win. It's a triple win because we can go to our clients and offer them the services that JLL has always offered, but they can be supersized by the use of the technology solutions that we've invested in. So the first win is for our clients. We can bring them innovation in a way that they wouldn't have seen before. The second win is for the startups because a lot of them are relatively young and for them to work with those big clients in the real estate ecosystem would have been unlikely. But the combination of them working with JLL and then jointly going to clients is a much more attractive proposition. So we're de-risking the fact that it's a startup in early stage because you've got JLL around behind and around the services that they're providing. So it's a win for those startups. They access revenue streams they wouldn't have been able to get to otherwise. And then it's a win for JLL because we get to be innovative and differentiated in front of our clients and that should lead to us getting more business. We will take the innovative solutions that our startups have created and we will surround that with services and our own products. And so it's a way of us getting more visibility into what our clients need and being able to solve those issues. And so everybody's winning in that circle.

So the idea is we go invest in a company. We then build a relationship with them. Perhaps it's a reseller agreement or some form of partnership. And then jointly we identify the right clients to go after. And, you know, it's interesting because people in real estate seem to have always been in real estate. But what I mean by that is that people are very experienced generally in real estate. They've been around a long time. People in real estate startups are the opposite. Some of them had no real estate experience whatsoever. They had a great idea. They think it's relevant, but they really don't know how the industry works. And because this industry is an ancient one, honestly, it's been around for centuries, it has its quirks. And so if you're somebody coming new to the industry, you probably don't really understand those quirks. And so, you know, we often have a role, which is around education, explaining to the folks that are bringing technology solutions, how they might charge for it, what might be a business model that might work. Who are the right players that they should be talking to? Is this something that's focused on tenants? Is this something that's focused on an asset manager or an owner? Is it an architectural solution and so on? And the nuances of how the industry works are often lost on outsiders. And I know this firsthand because five years ago I was an outsider and it's taken me this time to sort of get to the point of more or less knowing what I'm talking about. So the role really of Spark then is to be able to differentiate JLL and find solutions for our clients we'll be able to derive value from and develop and build that ecosystem amongst the technology world such that people are thinking about the issues and challenges that we have and looking to solve them, whereas they might not have been if they didn't understand what actually happened in real estate. So lots of different purposes, but so far so good.

Tom:

It makes perfect sense though, the win, win, win scenarios that you're talking about, particularly for JLL’s clients and for JLL the entity, but that technology service provider, what a great opportunity for them to have access to a pipeline of customers as well. So I see the differentiating capex opportunity for JLL there. Raj, I would imagine that you get visibility in a lot of different technologies that are out there that are looking to serve the real estate industry.

By the way, I also loved when you pointed out that real estate is an industry that's been around for centuries. The concept of the built world has been around for a long, long time. And so through that, certainly a lot of unique aspects have been developed in the industry versus others. But as you evaluate, you know, different technology opportunities in companies that JLL Spark could invest in, how do you go about that process of evaluating new companies and whether it's something that you should or shouldn't invest in?

Raj:

I would actually say that those two ideas are somewhat separate. So there's the evaluation of a company, which is a slightly separate process from whether we should or shouldn't invest in them. Let's take the second one first, whether we should or shouldn't invest in them. That's really predicated on what we believe to be JLL strategic direction. So, you know, JLL, as you pointed out, is a commercial real estate service provider. So straight off the bat, we're not going to be investing in companies that are residential focused because that's just not our business. My goal ultimately is to empower JLL to do more. So when we think about whether we want to look at investing into a company or not, we have four basic questions that we ask ourselves right at the start. The first question is, is this a technology service or product that JLL itself could use in order to be better? So could we take that technology and use it internally, improve our services in some way? The second question is the same question, but for our clients. Is this a technology service that our clients could profit from and that we could help them to deliver an improvement? The third question is, is this a technology which might expand our TAM? By which I mean, as you said, I think probably most of your viewers or listeners would know of JLL and you'll have a certain idea of what you think JLL might be able to do for you. And so if I come along to you and say, you know, I'm going to now provide you with incredible marketing abilities, you might look at me and say, well, why would I want to buy that from JLL? What bona fides does the JLL have in that space? On the other hand, if I came to you and said, Hey, I want to look after your building for you. want to be your facilities manager. You would probably totally understand that why we might say that and why it might be a good choice for you. And what I'd like to be able to do is say, if I'm already running your building, hey, I've got this great technology startup that will help you find great insurance for that building. So I have a right to talk to you about insurance because I'm already running the building for you. And there's a presumption there that I'll understand something about that building and maybe get you a better deal on insurance. You may take me up on it. You may not, but I have the right to have that conversation with you. So expanding the time is about me finding solutions that are slightly bigger in scope than the things that JLL does today. And then the fourth question, and this is the most contentious one, is I can invest in startups that disrupt what JLL does today. So I think we can all, modesty aside, agree that none of us is perfect. And we as a very large organization, you know, with offices in 80 plus countries and 115,000 people probably don't get it right every day on everything that we do. So there's room for improvement.

Now that what that means is if I see a startup out there that's doing something that's something that JLL already does, but doing it in some way that's differentiated that might in fact end up being the default way of doing it in the future, I have the right to invest in that. As you can imagine, that doesn't make me super popular with a lot of my colleagues who would question why I’m doing that. And the answer is that we don't always get it right. The future may be different from today and therefore we want to have an understanding of how that future might evolve and that there are certain communities and categories of clients where the product or service that we have isn't perhaps appropriate.

An obvious example would be international. Let's say we have a great product that works really well with our large customers in North America. That doesn't mean it's going to work well with small customers in Asia. And so there's an opportunity to do something with them using a startup in a way that frankly it might be just too expensive for us to do. Famously, there's a bunch of film stars who don't get out bed for less than $10 million. In the case of a large corporation, there are some small projects that frankly just don't make sense, and so you don't go after them. But a startup might enable you to do those, and from little acorns, large oak trees grow. So you're building a relationship early on, but not losing money by doing so. So those are the four criteria.

Tom:

I was just going to say on that fourth one, and you had mentioned that it's most contentious. Just strikes me as the challenge of operating a VC fund within a larger corporate entity is unique versus a classic VC fund. And then secondly, your point around disruption, the whole AI conversation around disruption of a number of industries, commercial real estate had its turn in kind of the news cycle around the potential disruptive capabilities of AI. It's quite fascinating. That fourth question, I could see how it would be contentious and thought provoking in a number of different ways, given the technology that's in front of us right now.

Raj:

I would say that that fourth category is the smallest of the categories we invest in. So it's not like we're investing in disruptive technology every day, but it's important that we do do that because as an incumbent, there is a tendency to just do the things that you're doing a little bit better every year. And if I'm the best buggy whip manufacturer out there and I come up with a slight improvement to my buggy whips, well, that's great. It just, unfortunately happens to be that nobody's making buggies or using buggies anymore. So I need to know how that changes. So yeah, so I think it's important we do it despite the fact that there's clearly friction in that process. And then once we've decided from those four questions that, yes, this is something we should do, then the question is, is this the right startup to work with? And so that ranges from, you know, all sorts of important questions, but probably the ones that are the most important are around the team and the opportunity. So do we believe that the team that has created this startup and is running this startup are people that we can work with? Are they very bright but humble? Do they have a very strong opinion about what should be done in the industry but listen to advice? Are they the sort of people that you'd want to have with you if there was a problem happening, if you were in the trenches, shall we say, would you want that person by your side?

And if those answers are yes, then this is a likely candidate for us to invest in. And then the other side of it is the opportunity. Is what they're doing material to the world, to JLL? Is it something that's big enough and different enough that it's worthwhile spending the time to be able to go do this thing? And if those answers are yes, then very likely we should be making an investment in that sort of company.

Tom:

Got it. Because you have such a broad visibility to things that are happening in technology, are there certain things that you're seeing or areas that you're seeing that excites you the most around commercial real estate applications today?

Raj:

I mean, there's a couple things going on, I think that probably everybody will recognize, I'll call out a couple. One is the evolution of the data center. So, you know, whereas there's been obviously a lot of turbulence in the office sector through the pandemic and afterwards, and that's been difficult for us as an industry to deal with, there's a very clear trend around industrial, where we've been, you know, we don't seem to go to get enough of warehouses and distribution centers and so on because of the growth in online retail, for example, which frankly, even though it's huge is, your members will know very well. It's going like crazy, though it's huge, but a small portion of the overall commerce space. And allied to that is the desire to have that physical infrastructure that enables that sort of tech, that sort of industry to work well. So that has just been going from strength to strength, and that level of excitement and interest has its own problems. So this has become very difficult to find the right places to put a distribution center or a data center. It's become very difficult to find the right resources that would be required to build those buildings and also to power them and look after them. And so that's an area that I think is very exciting right now.

We're going to have to do these things in a way that gives us long-term success, not short-term victories. In the world of technology itself, then the area that's very interesting for me right now is physical AI. And so we're all talking about AI and I think that the real estate industry is ideally suited to use AI successfully. But physical AI is taking that AI software and putting it into buildings themselves. So putting it into the cameras you have, your security cameras, putting it into the devices like your HVAC systems, even taking a robotic solution and putting AI into that. So all these areas are, they combine hardware that's mostly quite familiar to us. We have them in our buildings today, but they are adding on top of it a layer of “intelligence” that allows that hardware to do many more things than it would have done in the past. So you become multimodal. And so now if I have a camera that happens to be focused on reception, I can do a sentiment analysis of what's happening in reception. Who's in there? What sort of things are they doing? Does that look like a normal behavior pattern or is that an abnormal behavior pattern? They're going to do something about that. Or I can, as I have people who move around the building on daily basis, I can use computer vision to build a digital twin of that building. Kind of “for free” because they're going around doing whatever job they're doing. But as they do that, the camera is recording the position of each of my assets in the building. That area I think is really, really interesting because it doesn't necessarily require a lot of hardware or install dollars, but it does enable a lot of other use cases that I think will be very interesting. So those are a couple of areas that we're very keen on.

Along with that, think what hasn't gone away is the need to understand a building, its topography, how it's working, what maintenance looks like, how do I improve, how I do that. All that stuff is still there. Occupancy planning is still there. Workplace management is still there. So all those things continue, but there's even more things now that we think will be part of a future solution.

Tom:

I like that terminology of physical AI. We had Richard Leurig of Accruent on the podcast a few shows ago, and he talked about that aspect of integrating technology and the built world, building self-diagnosing themselves, the self-diagnosing an issue, scheduling maintenance on things like HVAC on their own. And that point around data centers, we had Luke Petherbridge of Link Logistics, which is Blackstone's vehicle to invest in industrial spaces. And Luke had a great phrase. It's we're really going through the re-industrialization of America. It's a 21st century version of it, but through the investment and data centers, we're really re-industrializing America. You've said in a couple of your comments, Raj, just about commercial real estate has not necessarily been a fast adopter of technology. And why do you think that is? And what's the impediment to commercial real estate investing in technology in a more robust way? And then I want to probe on that a little bit more.

Raj:

I think the number one reason is a great reason, which is that the industry has been hugely successful. And there are a lot of people that have done a lot of great things and have made a lot of great money. And so when you're very successful, you don't necessarily feel like you need to then go do something very, very different from what you've done already. And I think that, you know, pre pandemic, you know, there was a feeling that, you know, it was a great place to be. We were all making money and long may it continue. I think the pandemic shook up some of our core beliefs about the right asset classes to be in, and that has opened the door for people to think about technology a little bit more broadly than they might have done before. I like to say that the number one adopted technology in our industry is Microsoft Excel. So pretty much everybody up and down the chain has Microsoft Excel and I've had exchanges with people who've told me that they will give up their Excel over their cold dead hands. So it's not like we don't adopt any sort of technology, we are, if you like, we are before the cotton gin in our understanding of how we use technology. So every building that we build is pretty much a snowflake at this point. And the fact that we find a site and then build the building on the site makes it so. And so people have been trying to do modularization for some time now where you can in advance prefabricate certain parts of the building, bring them to the site and assemble them on site as opposed to manufacturing them on site. And so if you were going to create a computer today, you wouldn't go out and start melting down gold and silver and metal in order to go to build the circuit, right? You would go to assemble the parts and you would build that on a chassis. It was all prefabricated and we aren't there yet. But if we want to be more efficient in the future, we're going to have to adopt those sorts of solutions to problems. So I think that's the first reason we've been very, very successful. And so there hasn't really been a need or desire to change.

And I think the second reason is that we largely don't understand technology. So as an industry, we understand our industry very well, but all this software and what it might or might not do, all this use of data and how accurate that is and where we store it and how we use it. We don't have people that are at the top of our industry that really know the answers to these questions. And I would say also because we aren't hiring data scientists by the bucket full within the industry, we don't have people in the middle of our businesses or even at the bottom of our businesses that understand these technologies. And what that leads to is first of all, a reluctance to engage with technology because if you don't understand it, you're not sure what to do with it. And then when we have engaged with technology, we've made mistakes and those mistakes have sometimes been quite costly. So we've invested in a piece of technology that for whatever reason we decided was a good thing. And then we found that later, it didn't quite work the way we hoped. We found that it doesn't really communicate well with other parts of our business. And we found out that taking it out was going to be almost as expensive as it had been to put it in. And so all of those factors, I would say sort of a technophobia or lack of technology understanding have led us to be very, very cautious.

So you referenced one of my previous jobs in aviation and aviation and real estate shares some common factors. And one is a high degree of risk averseness. You don't want your planes dropping out of the sky. You don't want your buildings falling down. And so we rightly have this very, very safety conscious way of thinking about things. What happens, however, in my view, is that that same idea pervades everything that we do, even the things that frankly have no impact on occupant safety or passenger safety. And so we're just reluctant to take risks where we should be taking risks because we know there are other places where we shouldn't. So I think that's what's going on here. However, think, you know, technology comes for us all. And in the same way as, you know, we talked about retail earlier, having had such an impact through e-commerce, financial services have been changed significantly by the fintech that's out there. Marketing, media, these places are all radically changed. It will come for us too. And the reason it will come for us is that there are, if you imagine what a real estate company does, there are some things that we do that are very lucrative and there are other things that we do in order to be able to do the lucrative things. And what will happen is that outsiders will start to pick off the lucrative things and that will change the dynamics of our economics for us as an industry. And we'll have to react. And the only way that we'll really be able to react is by employing that same technology. Instead of having somebody else eat your lunch, you need to eat your lunch yourself. And so technology is going to be way to do that. And so I think we need change. But up until now, it's been a slow moving juggernaut.

Tom:

Well, a little bit of that is back to your fourth question, evaluation criteria, looking at investments, is it going to disrupt your business? It's interesting that analogy or that comparison between aviation and commercial real estate too. They're also both super capital intensive. You're putting a lot of capital. I mean, the cost of a plane is significant. The cost of development of a new building is a significant bet as well.

Hey, I had to chuckle when you said cotton gin. I was trying to remember if it's Eli Whitney who created the cotton gin. So I looked it up real quick on Perplexity and it said you're basically safe. We're in 1794. That's where the cotton gin was introduced.

Raj:

It might be a slight exaggeration, but my point is there's a before standardization and after standardization and we haven't quite got there yet.

Tom:

It was a good analogy and good illustration. You are talking about the potential for disruption and that commercial real estate is at a point now because of the number of new technologies that are out there. Other than data centers and pockets in the commercial real estate industry, there's not a lot of new development that's taking place across the country. There's going to be an increased focus upon, you know, looking for efficiencies to drive NOI growth and technology is an opportunity to do that.

It seems like there's probably lessons that mature industries like commercial real estate experienced leaders could probably learn from some of those technology companies you're looking at, not necessarily just the technology itself, but actually how they view the world. What are some of the lessons you think that they, an industry like commercial real estate can learn from the tech space or from tech entrepreneurs?

Raj:

I think it goes both ways. I think there's a lot that we as an industry can teach the tech entrepreneurs as well about how to do things that work well and last a long time. In terms of us learning from them, I think what's been very interesting is the way that technology companies have essentially harnessed data to understand what they're doing and whether that is resonating. So when I look at a technology startup, let's say it's been going a couple of years, I will look at a cohort analysis. What that is saying, in March of 2024, I had this many clients sign up for my service. Now, all of the clients who signed up in that month, March 2024, how many of them are still with me? And how did that change over time? How did it decay? And that analysis tells you a lot about how the product is being received. Is it valuable initially? Some fast followers liked it. Is it valuable today? How has it changed? And then comparing that cohort of March ‘24 to the same one in 2025 and the same one in 2026 and seeing how those things are changing. So I don't think that we as an industry use a sophisticated level of data about what we're doing and how our clients are reacting to that in the same way. I think that's something that we could absolutely improve on based on how these technology companies are doing it. Even though our product is the ultimate in hard products, right? You literally have a building there. There are digital overlays that can be applied to those buildings to make them different. I can't change the location of a building, right? It is where it is. But can I change the way that it's being perceived, the way that it's being used, the way that the building itself impacts the people that are inside it and how they work and go about their business? I probably can. How do I build those things that are the overlays to the actual hard product itself? And as I think we all know, we humans are very much of perception. It's, yes, there's an underlying thing, but how we perceive that makes a huge difference to how we value the thing itself. And I think we could also learn from the tech startups, how to build those digital overlays and adjust them accordingly until we find the right mix that works for the right group of people that we want to attract to that particular building. So I think we can learn things like this about how to apply data and technology to our businesses more effectively, about how we can combine physical and digital properties in order to find the right solution.

And think there's also a sort of level of optimism and excitement when you're in a small startup, just getting going, you that you're going to change the world that we may, you we can profit from. Right. So every large real estate company out there today started off as a startup, right. It was a small company at some point with a few people with an idea. And over time we go from how do I create and grow market share to how do I protect what I already have. It’s the natural evolution of companies. So every now and again, it's probably good for us to go back and revisit that idea of how do I grow this? How do I change this? How do I build something new? And that we can learn from our interactions with those small companies.

Tom:

Thank you for that. You also mentioned the technology companies could learn something from us as well. Talk about that also.

Raj:

Yeah, I think we as an industry, we've become very good at thinking about what are the outcomes that we're looking to provide. So there's a lot of different things that I can put into a building. It's a lot of different services I could provide. What happens in technology is that people get excited by the technology itself. And actually that's not really what you should be excited about. What you should be excited about is the impact that technology has on your customers and on your bottom line. And I think that we as an industry are very focused on delivering that bottom line impact. And that's something that technology companies need to understand. I think we can also teach them about our business, right? And as I said, and I think you agreed, our business has been around a long, long time. We have a lot of interesting lessons that we can share with people about how to do well in this industry, given the constraints that we have. And I think that that's knowledge that's missing. It's very rare for us to find a startup entrepreneur who both understands the entrepreneurial world and the real estate world. Those people are quite unusual. And I'm going to put in a plug for myself here. I'm teaching a course at UC Berkeley around AI and real estate. And the reason I'm doing that is not because I'm a good teacher, far from it, but because what I recognize is that there aren't as many people in the industry who have tech experience as I would hope. And we talked about that earlier. So I'm going back to basics. Like if I can teach master's students in real estate the basics of what they should be thinking about, technology selection, those people eventually will be the leaders of the future and will have more people in the industry that have both the combination of understanding about real estate and about technology. People have said it before, but every business will be a technology business in the future. We are all in the technology business now. We all need to be able to harness technology as one essential component of our business and everyday lives. And the sooner that we as an industry get to that point, the better.

Tom:

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Good for you teaching the class at Berkeley on AI and real estate.

I know that JLL Falcon is an AI tool. Talk about that as well and its applications and what you've learned through its adoption.

Raj:

Yeah. So strictly speaking, JLL Falcon is not a tool, it's a platform. So, you know, if we think about what JLL's advantages might be in this world, one of our advantages is that we, being so large, have a huge amount of data. And a lot of that data is proprietary to us. And so in the last few years, we have been building an enterprise data lake, putting all the data that we had into an easily accessible format that can be constantly updated. That platform you would call it, EDP, Enterprise Data Platform, is at the point now where it works quite well. And so when AI and generative AI, to be precise, started to become a thing two years ago now, I guess, it turns out that in order for your AI to work very well beyond the, know, how do I make a marketing pitch or write a nice email, if you want to do something substantive, you need to have data. And most of the data that you'll get from third parties specifically precludes you from using that in AI. So you need to have your own data. So it just so happened that we have been building this enterprise data platform. And what we did was we put a layer of AI on top of that, which is what we call Falcon. So that, if you like, is the interface between the data that we have and the types of applications that we might want to create using that data. So Falcon is the platform upon which we can build AI applications that people can use. And so the first example that is JLL Azara, which is essentially a sort of a pretty sophisticated dashboard that allows you to manage and control the way that you would run a particular building. And the interesting thing about the way that this works is that, you know, because it's an AI solution, it's much more flexible. It's not me having to make a choice about the 20 parameters that you think are important. It's me enabling you to decide which of those 20 parameters and track those without any change or installation to the software. And so Falcon is our way of being able to say, we have this advantage, which is all this data. How do we now expose that advantage to build better applications that our clients can not only use now, but adapt to their future needs as well.

Tom:

Yeah. It makes perfect sense. An organization that's had 200 years of success has a lot of data that it can leverage to help make future decisions that are helpful to their clients. Raj, let's talk about you. I read somewhere that your aspiration at some point in your life was to be a train driver, but developed a passion for technology, went into computer science, consulting, ultimately venture capital, which is what you're doing now. Talk about your journey, but what the common thread throughout that journey was moving from back, I'm going to assume when you were a young child, you liked trains, which many young boys do and have built a fabulous career. What's the common thread throughout your career that's kind of navigating you through three kind of distinct different areas, computer science, consulting, and now VC?

Raj:

I mean, I guess there's a whole heap of post-rationalization here, right? To try and decide what the common thread might be, And you're right. I was relatively young when I was aspiring to be a train driver. I guess, you know, the common thread probably is the actual technology itself. So I have always been a geek. I have always been somebody who will, you I just like love the application of technology and what you can do with it. And a good example would be when I was, I want to say I was like 13, one of my fellow students' father donated a whole bunch of PCs to our school. His company had upgraded their PCs to the next versions, a whole bunch of PCs that they didn't need, and he very generously donated to the school. And it was the first time that I got to interact with computers. Now, because I'm ancient, these were very, very basic computers. But there was a, for me, it was like a virtual world that you could manipulate in a way that was not possible in the real world. It was just fascinating, the things you could do. You could change the laws of physics. You could build something that had gravity that was half as much as the Earth or twice as much. You could do all sorts of interesting things you couldn't do in the real world. And you could bring those things to life. And I think that's probably been my fascination. So my initial fascination was this technology is so cool, just in of itself. Amazing that we could do these incredible things. And then over time, as I sort of started getting into consulting, my fascination shifted from the technology is so cool and awesome, like I'm still a huge geek, but it shifted from that to what can we do with this technology? Why would a person buy this? Why would they make that financial decision to install this piece of technology, what's the value that it brings to you? And so moving from just being the technology so cool to, okay, now what can I do with that technology? How will that change our world? And I kind of, you know, I believe that AI is going to, for better or for worse, you know, hugely change our world. And the common thread for me has been that technology is cool. What can we do with it now? And then, you know, what does the future hold in an environment where I think that we as humans are, evolving is not the right word, but the behavior patterns are changing because of the technology that we all have. And if I look at people in younger generations, the way that they interact with each other, the way that they think is different. And that's always true for every generation. But in these generations, it's very much wedded to the use of technology. And so I think my fascination continues with the technology, continues with how we use it, but now it's also how does the technology change us? It's not a one-way street, right? So there's a constant feedback loop between people changing behavior and then the technologies that arise to capitalize on that change. And I don't think that's going to get old for me anytime soon. So that's probably the strategy theory's one.

Tom:

Well, that's cool. And you said you're ancient. I think the cool thing about being ancient is that, you know, we were born into an analog world and we actually have experienced this, the birth of the technology industry, the application of consumer technology and its impact upon the world and the business community. We've lived at a very exciting time in a major transition that's taken place. We're almost at the end of our time, but before we end our great conversation, I know, you are very committed and focused upon developing the next generation, developing people, folks. And we obviously have a lot of people earlier in their career listening to this podcast, just words of wisdom for them as they look for their similar passions or, you know, developing their career.

Raj:

The number one thing for me is don't decide too early what it is that you should do. So I think that the types of things that one can do in the world can be split into activities that have immediate feedback and activities that do not. And the number of activities that have immediate feedback is extremely small. So if you hit a golf ball, I use this example, Tom, because I know that you're a fan of the game. You can see what happened immediately. It slices, it hooks, it goes straight down the fairway, wherever it might be. And by continually repeating and refining your stroke, you can improve that. Most activities in the world are not like that. You do something and it may take a long time before you get any feedback on the successful failure of what you did. And it will be very hard to untangle the particular mechanism that produced that successful failure because there are so many different variables. So I see people who at a very young age are determined to do a certain thing, X, Y, or Z. And my advice to people is do not push yourself into being a specialist in something too early. The best example I can think of in this area is Roger Federer, who became one of the best tennis players of all time but barely played tennis as a teenager. He was into lot of other sports, into a lot of other activities. He settled on tennis later, having tried other things and realizing what his strengths and weaknesses were and then focused on it. You know, if you're a 25 year old and you haven't quite worked out what it is you want to do the rest of your life, that is absolutely fine, in my opinion. So I would like to see people who are very much T shaped so they can have an intelligent conversation with people around a wide range of different subjects and a specialism or two that they can go very deep in. So that's my advice for my children, you know, is that, you know, it's too early to decide, try lots of different things, see what you like and what you don't like and be aware that those things will change over time. And then once you've tried enough things, then think about what it is you want to specialize in, go down that path. Having the T bar means that you can communicate with other people.

A lot of people that are in the technology field feel that the technology itself should sell itself. That this is such a great product that of course everybody will buy it. That is not how this works. You need to be able to communicate value to other people and convince them, sell them if you like, that they should use this. So you need to have at least an understanding of the other skill sets around the core of what you do in order to communicate that to other people and eventually persuade them that they should go along with your idea.

So take your time, try a of different things, settle later, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter, as children, whether you start walking at one, two or three really doesn't matter. When you start talking, whatever age, again, really doesn't matter. You know, we see people all over the world can do these same things. And when they, if they come to it one or two years later, not a problem. And actually sometimes a benefit.

Tom:

That's great advice. And if you think about just how quickly things change in the world today, being adaptable and open-minded and your passions and interests and being a lifelong learner is critical. I did not know that about Roger Federer, by the way. And you know, to see arguably the best tennis player in the world that picked up the game late in life. didn't know that. Thanks for sharing that. Raj, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I really, really enjoyed our conversation. We could talk for a lot longer, but unfortunately I know you have a job to do and I could keep you here for a lot longer, but I really enjoyed our conversation. look forward to being together at ICSC+PROPTECH, May 18th to 20th in Las Vegas. I know you'll be there and some of your portfolio companies will be there and we look forward to that. But thank you for the conversation today.

Raj:

Thank you, Tom. Thank you to your team as well. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for indulging me. And yeah, absolutely looking forward to ICSC in Vegas and I will see you there.

Tom:

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