Who Should Learn Real Estate Fundamentals?
Bridging the knowledge gap for the industry’s innovators and newcomers
This bonus letter explores Thesis Driven’s upcoming Fundamentals of Commercial Real Estate course. We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled subscriber email on Tuesday.
The commercial real estate ecosystem can be complex and opaque—especially for outsiders.
The past decade saw many people jumping into the real estate world with ambitious plans to innovate. But that is nearly impossible without fundamentally understanding how the ecosystem works: who are the stakeholders, how do they make money, what do their days look like, and how do they interact with one another.
So we launched our Fundamentals of Commercial Real Estate course to bridge the knowledge gap for the new industry innovators, especially for the following:
Emerging real estate entrepreneurs
Proptech employees and executives
Employees of real estate companies without real estate backgrounds
GMs of brick-and-mortar businesses
More on each group below. Our next course is in person on August 7-8th at 3 World Trade Center in New York City. Learn more and sign up here.
1. Emerging real estate entrepreneurs
Opportunities abound for entrepreneurs to innovate in commercial real estate. But too often we see new concepts—ideas that aim to solve a big, glaring problem—get stymied by the industry and its stakeholders because the entrepreneur didn’t have a strong enough understanding of the industry. Particularly incumbents, their incentives and decision-making processes.
So this course is designed to help entrepreneurs serving the real estate industry avoid expensive potholes and get to product-market fit faster. We do this by studying the profiles of the individuals actually involved in a real estate transaction: their backgrounds, their roles, their incentives, and their relationships with others on their team. We see how their pain points at each step of the real estate development journey offer opportunities—and challenges—for innovators.
Exploring the financials of a commercial real estate transaction will also help entrepreneurs not just how to price their product, but who in the ecosystem is the most likely to pay. Should they charge GPs directly? Go on building P&Ls? Hit construction budgets? These are critical questions for anyone building a product for the real estate industry.
2. Proptech employees and executives
Anyone building products for the real estate industry needs to fundamentally understand how real estate companies make money, as well as the key stakeholders and incentives of real estate developers, investors, and lenders.
If a proptech company is building products for the real estate industry, it’s not just the salespeople or “Head of Real Estate” that needs to understand the industry. It’s everyone—product management, UX, client success, and the entire executive team. We hear it from real estate developers and operators all the time: proptech employees with little real estate experience are building products for a market they don’t fully understand.
While nothing can quite replace a real estate development background, this course tackles the fundamentals of real estate head-on with actionable insights and real scenarios for proptech employees to connect the dots and outperform.
3. Employees of real estate companies without real estate backgrounds
While we build the course for proptech entrepreneurs and employees, we found enthusiastic students from one place we didn’t expect: employees of real estate companies without real estate backgrounds.
Increasingly, real estate companies seeking to innovate are hiring people with backgrounds in technology: data, software engineering, design, venture, and more. Similar to proptech employees, these students needed to understand the fundamentals of the real estate industry—not just to serve outside clients and build a better product, but to understand their colleagues’ day-to-day work experiences and pain points. If anything, real estate employees without industry backgrounds had a more acute pain point than proptech founders.
4. GMs of brick-and-mortar businesses
Understanding the commercial real estate industry unlocks a special power for people running brick-and-mortar businesses.
A basic understanding of the fundamentals of real estate will help operators of “real world” businesses navigate lease negotiations, plan expansion, and work with their landlords—who do this every day and design the system to give themselves the upper hand.
The course provides GM-level operators with the context they need to level the playing field, ask better questions, and avoid costly mistakes.
A final note: reviews from our first courses
We’re very proud to have a NPS of 74 from our first few cohorts, and are excited to continue working with the next industry leaders to grow their careers.
“The single most effective way to fast track your success in CRE.”—Tiana Z
“Excellent course that guides you through a fictional case study with detailed explanation of every single step/process involved for all personas at every stage of Real Estate deal. I highly recommend enrolling in this course to help you either invest in real estate or build products/product development.”—Darshana J
“Brad and Paul opened my eyes to how real estate deals get put together, where incentives lie, and how we might create business cases for proptech and climate tech into these transactions. Great stuff!”—Chris N
“A great way to get an inside look at the commercial real estate industry and learn directly from top-tier CRE insiders. The course is perfect for anyone who's working in and around the real estate industry - from a new founder who needs to understand how their product or service fits in the industry to an early-to-mid-career professional who's looking for an opportunity to tie it all together. Highly recommend.”—Clark P
Our next course is in person on August 7-8th at 3 World Trade Center in New York City. Learn more and sign up here.
—Brad and Paul
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