20/20 Vision: the future of residential real estate Guy Westlake

Rob Moyle, CEO of Collegiate AC, shares his journey in hospitality and student accommodation with Guy Westlake, founder of Lavanda.

Paddy Allen is Head of Operational Capital Markets at Colliers. He shares his journey in real estate with Guy Westlake, founder of Lavanda.
Before joining Colliers in February 2021, Paddy was a Partner at Cushman & Wakefield working across the European student accommodation and residential build-to-rent teams, providing joint venture, disposal and acquisition advice to global platforms and investors. After spending the bulk of his early career in European fund management, he then joined Global Student Accommodation as an early employee where he led the acquisition of £1bn of student accommodation across the UK & Europe. In 2013 he co-founded fintech business Acasa, which provides financial services to tenants of residential accommodation.
Away from work Paddy is Chair of the Board of Pathways to Property and is a trustee to the Reading Real Estate Foundation.
 
About Colliers
Colliers (NASDAQ, TSX: CIGI) is a leading diversified professional services and investment management company. With operations in 63 countries, 17,000 Colliers professionals work collaboratively to provide expert real estate and investment advice to clients. With annual revenues of $4.5 billion and $81 billion of assets under management, Colliers maximises the potential of property and real assets to accelerate success for its clients, investors and team. To learn more visit www.colliers.com
 
In this episode Paddy shares:
How he started out in UK estate agency before jumping ship to join Halverton, a business that is today run by the team behind M7 Real Estate.
His early years moving around Amsterdam and Germany, cutting his teeth in commercial offices, industrial warehousing and retail before switching to residential following the GFC in 2008.
Being an early employee at Global Student Accommodation and over the course of 4 years building a multi-billion dollar student accommodation platform across 8 different countries.
Why his role is to challenge the notions of his clients, help them identify under-served customer groups, and support them in building breadth and depth in their business plans
Why data and insight, including demographic and psychographic profiling, is growing in importance when it comes to real estate decision making
How his professional ambition and career decision making has been shaped by multiple influencers including Nick Porter, Richard Croft and Jos Short.
Why personality and authenticity are two key traits of great leaders, but how ultimately the one that trumps all others is knowing how to get deals done.
Why smart building tech, customer experience tech and tokenisation/NFTs are key technologies shaping the future of the industry.

Vivi Cahyadi Himmel and Karolina Saviova, co-founders of AltoVita, share their journey in real estate and travel tech with Guy Westlake, founder of Lavanda.
Vivi Cahyadi Himmel is CEO and Co-Founder of AltoVita. Having started out working in Asset Management for Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers, and having had to relocate to multiple cities including New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London for work, she became acutely aware of the challenges around relocation.  In 2018 she launched AltoVita with co-founder Karolina Saviova in 2018 to disrupt legacy practices in corporate housing by bringing forward a technology-first solution paired with duty of care. Vivi is listed on the 2021 Global Mobility Top 100. Outside of AltoVita, she’s also an angel investor and a Limited Partner in several UK venture capital funds.
 
Karolina Saviova is COO and Co-Founder of AltoVita. Born in Prague, Karolina worked for a consultancy in Brussels and then went on to become a business journalist in the energy sector travelling across Turkey, Indonesia, India, and Gabon. It was as a journalist that Karolina became tired of the issues that came with corporate travel and felt inspired to change the sector for the better. Karolina is passionate about delivering dynamic hospitality and it was this that led her to co-found AltoVita alongside Vivi in 2018. Karolina was named a "Rising Star" in the 2021 Shortyz Awards. 
 
About AltoVita
AltoVita powers the corporate accommodation sector with enterprise software coupled with a human-centric approach that provides every business traveller with exactly what they need.
AltoVita’s award-winning technology creates a cloud-based bridge between the highly fragmented property distribution system and Global 2000 companies, SMEs, and business travellers. The fully customisable platform reduces the legacy 48-to-72-hour bidding process down to a few minutes, providing instant access to a diverse network of 1 million+ housing options worldwide – including serviced apartments, professionally managed homes, aparthotels, and co-living – with the ability to sort by desired amenities, pet friendliness, sustainability scores, and more. All properties are fully vetted and verified to provide duty of care and compliance, backed by an extensive Four-Tier Quality Control system.
AltoVita’s fast-growing global footprint currently spans 165 countries and 1,238 cities. They are headquartered in London, with regional offices in Singapore and Dallas, TX. For more information visit altovita.com
 
In this episode Vivi and Karolina share:
How they both met and came up with the idea for AltoVita.
Where AltoVita sits as an OTA vis-à-vis Airbnb, Booking.com and VRBO
The problems faced by corporate travel buyers when booking accommodation, and how AltoVita solves them.
The various challenges AltoVita has encountered in aggregating the business accommodation supply chain.
Why extended stays are a different market segment to short-term rentals.
How smart, proactive vetting of the accommodation has led incident rates to drop to 0.5%.
Why sustainability is becoming a key factor for travel buyers when selecting accommodation - and how AltoVita is embracing this.
The role of technology within AltoVita, and their technology vision.
How co-creation with their target audience of travel buyers has been a key factor in finding product market fit.
How they are taking steps to set a new benchmark with regards to equality, diversity and inclusion in tech.

Cem Savas is Co-Founder and CEO of Plentific, the award-winning digital property management platform backed by Highland Europe, Brookfield, Mubadala, RXR Digital Ventures, A/O Proptech and Target Global. Plentific empowers housing providers to streamline operations and improve the resident experience, unlocking operational cost savings with an end-to-end work order management solution powered by a marketplace of vetted trade professionals.
 
Cem came to proptech having harboured a family passion for real estate from a young age. After embarking on a promising career in corporate finance, he and Co-founder Emry Kazan eventually decided to follow their hearts and set up their own property development business. As they struggled with the challenges of scaling their new venture, they came up with the idea of Plentific, founding the company back in 2012.
 
About Plentific
Plentific is an all-in-one delivery platform for property maintenance, trusted by companies like L&Q, Peabody, and Notting Hill Genesis to manage around 700,000 properties across the UK, Germany and USA. The platform streamlines repairs, compliance, resident and voids management, providing instant insight into the health of a property portfolio. For more information please visit www.plentific.com
 
In this episode Cem shares:
How he came up with the idea for Plentific with co-founder Emry Kazan.
How the company pivoted from servicing smaller landlords to focusing on large enterprise clients.
How he manages his family and work-life balance whilst running a global scale-up.
The challenges of hiring 100+ people a year, and the learnings that come from having done it.
His experience of raising $100m in growth capital at the height of the pandemic.
The importance of company vision and culture, and how he handles the growing challenge of employee retention.
Why startup CEOs have to evolve to meet the changing needs of their business and team.
The overwhelming importance of hiring people who are better than you.
How he approaches KPIs, forecasting and performance management as the business scales.
How Plentific is approaching inorganic growth via M&A.
Why proptech entrepreneurs benefit from operational industry experience, and why the size of their addressable market is all important.
Why companies should pivot as much and as often as necessary.

Jon Slavet is CEO at Sentral, the proptech innovator building the world’s largest flexible living community, backed by Iconiq Capital. Jon leads a team of top-flight executives from across the hospitality, multifamily and tech industries, and together they are working to redefine how people live, travel, and work. Jon has spent his career operating at the intersection of technology, real estate and consumer lifestyle - from start-up to scale-up. Prior to Sentral, Jon co-led the US business at WeWork, and previously held executive positions spanning media, direct to consumer and technology. Jon is a trusted advisor to several start-ups, father of three, and a graduate of Dartmouth College.
 
About Sentral
Sentral is redefining home by building a more flexible and connected way to live, travel and work. Sentral invites individuals to LIVE and STAY for any length of time in amenity-rich buildings within many of the most vibrant neighbourhoods across the USA. Sentral is creating a global community of modern adventurers with the freedom to monetize their homes, explore their passion for travel, and live life on their own terms. For more information visit www.sentral.com or follow @SentralLife.
 
In this episode Jon shares:
Sentral’s vision to “redefine home” by building the world’s largest network of flexible and connected communities.
Why living, travel and work will never be the same - and why flexible living is the future.
What he learnt working alongside Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork.
Hos experience launching and building a business backed by Iconiq Capital, Highgate Hotels, Ascendant Capital and Bozzuto.
Why he wants nothing to do with master leasing
How he’s optimizing Sentral for direct and corporate bookings.
How he structures a geographically distributed, remote leadership team and how he brings people together to collaborate.
Who he sees as potential competitors within the flexible living ecosystem
Sentral’s global growth plans.
The technology gaps that entrepreneurs who are passionate about flexible living should tackle.

Brad Hargreaves, Founder & CEO of Common, shares his journey in real estate and proptech.