Chris Rolls - Pielab

Chris Rolls, CEO of Australia’s first residential real estate venture capital fund is my guest in episode 7 of The Proptech Podcast. Chris has one of the best grasps on technology in the Australian real estate industry, and his VC fund has evaluated more than 480 startup businesses over the past three years in the space. In this interview, we discuss the future trends you can expect to see in real estate - which include a stronger embracing of the gig economy, and the disruption of ‘principals’ (that’s the people, not the ethics). He believes agencies are going to become bigger, putting smaller businesses under pressure. We talk about how even the Accelerator space is changing in real estate with the arrival of new funds such as NAR REach and a plethora of commercial real estate funds. And as he calls for the industry to ‘act’ to collaborate and fund innovation, I put a bit of heat on him about the lessons that the residential space could learn from the rise of the commercial real estate accelerators. Enjoy the show! See the shownotes here: