The Shift is a LeaseUp podcast hosted by our founder Kurt Chisholm, in conversation with brokers at the intersection of CRE and tech
✨ Article summary: In episode 4 of The Shift podcast, Marissa Limsiaco, President & Co-Founder of Otso, discusses the evolving tech culture in CRE. Marissa shares insights on the proptech landscape, tech fatigue, and building solid tech products in the industry.
The Shift is a LeaseUp podcast hosted by our founder Kurt Chisholm, in conversation with brokers at the intersection of CRE and tech. The guests come from different professional backgrounds, but all leverage technology to get more deals done.
For the fourth episode of The Shift, Kurt spoke with Marissa Limsiaco, president and co-founder of CRE risk management platform Otso.
As two tech startup founders in CRE, they go deep on the evolving proptech landscape, tech fatigue in the CRE industry, and how to cut through the noise by building solid tech products.
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Marissa pushes back against the “Uber model” of proptech startups led by people with no industry experience and no understanding of the “true symbiotic relationship” between brokers, landlords, and tenants.
“‘Disruption’ and ‘revolution’ have been trigger words in a bad way to the industry. You had so many companies coming out being like, ‘I'm gonna disrupt,’ and they get funded, and they're gone. So there's that loss of trust.”
Marissa also describes how her military background has informed her approach to entrepreneurship, and an ongoing generational change in CRE culture that embraces collaboration and technological solutions.
Marissa Limsiaco came to commercial real estate via a nontraditional route. She was a West Point cadet and U.S. Army commander who was deployed in Iraq during the 2007 surge, and led a 108-person unit supporting service members in the country. She left the Army after five years of active duty to pursue an interest in business and earn an MBA.
A position as Urban Planning and Development Consultant to Hillwood Properties (a Perot company) initiated Marissa’s long-term involvement in CRE. She’s not only a combat veteran, but a veteran of the business world as well. She co-founded her fourth company, Otso, just before the pandemic, and has grown it into a digital platform that helps landlords mitigate losses and offload risk — “one of my favorite products in commercial real estate technology and in proptech today,” Kurt says on the podcast.
A serial entrepreneur, Marissa derived key skills from her background that inform her work ethic today. “Two of the main pillars of skill sets that I brought from being at West Point and the military at the point of combat were, number one, grit, and [number two] problem solving… Especially as an entrepreneur, having that grit, and having the optimistic mindset to get to the mission and goal that you've set before you, that's very aligned with what we did in the military.”
Kurt Chisholm is the founder and CEO of LeaseUp. Kurt’s been in CRE for over a decade, as a tenant rep broker, landlord, and investor. He left brokerage to build LeaseUp after realizing the need for a CRE deal platform that lets brokers leverage tech to get more deals done.
Stay tuned: Future episodes of The Shift season one feature insightful, impactful, and thought-provoking discussions with guests including Sonia El-Sherif from JLL Spark, Ra'eesa Motala from Rokos Advisors, and many more.
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