Fernando De Leon

So I found the cash flows unpredictable.

I didn't like it.

But I liked –

But I said I want to find the opposite of it.

So it was kind of a sort of a mental game with myself and myself and a co-founder and a couple other people.

We thought about data as the best commodity to try to own in commercial real estate.

And today we have about 5 million people on the site.

We have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and we have a listing service where commercial real estate is listed, you know, a la Zillow.

And then also we harness data, we synthesize it, and then we sell it as lease comps, as sales comps and information that is really, really important to commercial real estate professionals in order to make decisions about

selling a property, buying a property, leasing a property, financing a property, things like that.

So we sell information and data to appraisal districts and city governments, brokerage, real estate brokerage companies, groups like that all over the country.

And it's become a huge company with about 600 employees, roughly.

based here in the L.A.

area.

And it's a fantastic business, but we saw it way earlier than many others.

And it took a lot of capital to stand it up and to fight through the competitive landscape.

And there were massive semi-monopolistic competitors that were tough to engage and fight through and still survive.

It takes a lot of stamina to fight through that.

So, yeah, that's one of the things that we saw and that I think we helped build, and it's a massive business, and I'm really proud of the work we've done there.

But I will say that I think part of the lesson too, for me at least, was