CONTACT

Alex Markson, Founder, Property Capsule

THE SCOOP

Alex Markson is a Technologist and a Creative. Talk about starting young! He launched his first successful startup when he was 12 and it was the top game of it’s type on the Internet, before the Web had even come out.  He’s had a lot of successful firsts like building social networks and blogs before people even knew what they were and he began teaching at University when he was 18. At that same time, he became intensely focused on helping to build many different companies and products including mobile, drones, education, advertising, social, automotive, medical, video/tv, advertising tech, non-profits, fundraising, social causes, enterprise, marketing, legacy systems, search engines, GIS, financial, internationalization, CRM, VR/AR/3D, computer vision, machine learning/AI, etc. etc. and obviously real estate. He may not look that old but he’s been honing his craft for 30 years!

Property Capsule is putting the industry online. They help people manage their dataand provide tools to automate marketing, assist dealmaking, provide insightful asset management, and their map is the best “daily driver” for ANY retail professional. When you look at the top players in retail, you can see that Property Capsule has quickly become the industry standard. Alex and his team have some big plans for the future including “Connecting all the dots.”

When I asked Alex what his most rewarding part of the journey to date is he said, “I dropped everything I was doing to make the trek back home to California so we could “hang a shingle” and pursue a dream to connect and transform a whole industry. A big one at that - one that builds and transforms communities.” Alex added, “Also, I really love the people I work with; the loyalty and diversity have been astounding at times. If you are familiar with the expression - “ride or die” - well, that applies :)  And it’s been needed.”

When asked what one piece of advice he would share, Alex said, “Find your wedge. Find that way in and dig. Hard. Listen to customers. Talk to them. Build relationships. Become their partner, not just a vendor charging through your roadmap with numb laser focus. Relationships are your most valuable currency, particularly in CRE. Together with your customers on your team you can change an industry. You can’t go at it alone even if you are being clever, efficient and fast… no matter how much capital you raise. People want to work with people they like, so don’t be a jerk :) Also, there is no ‘Field of Dreams.’ If you build it, a bunch of dead famous baseball players are not going to show up and and just start playing baseball. You need to figure out how to build things in stages and hit a critical mass to create an inflection point. Oops, I guess that wasn’t just one piece of advice. Sorry. :) I’ll summarize with one word: relationships.” And I couldn’t agree more!