How Did You Get Your Start?

I studied engineering at UVA, but was interested in real estate. A Comm school friend of mine recommended I apply to Wells Fargo. I got a real estate lending internship there that turned into a full time job.

It let me see real estate from a broad view, but I felt like a fly on the wall – I wanted to be in the action.

I moved over to a traditional asset management firm, Jamestown, doing an adaptive reuse project where I got to see an old warehouse transform into new office and retail space.

This was around 2017 when real estate was behind the ball on tech as a whole. I saw an opportunity to partner with the tech real estate investing team at Jamestown, and loved it.

I thought I needed a degree to work in investing, so I was about to go to business school when a friend of mine connected me with ICONIQ Capital, just as they were starting a new real estate fund.

It’s a PropCo-OpCo fund, which means we invest in real estate properties (that’s the “PropCo”) and invest in and manage companies that operate the day-to-day of those properties (that’s the “OpCo”) built around one strategy of bringing hospitality operations to multifamily properties.

Sentral is the operating company, that executes this strategy, on over 45 assets and 11,000 units across the country. They do this in two main ways:

1. They furnish a portion of the units to be booked for as long as 1 night to 12 months, offering a professional managed hotel experience for residents and guests.

2. They offer a “full-service” model, an ultra-high-end experience, with in-room dining, private membership clubs, personalized fitness, and concierge services, driving above market rents.

I sit 50-50 between the asset investing side and Sentral, where I’m a board member.

Sometimes I’m deep in why hospitality bookings may be down; other times, I’m flying to Chicago for a board meeting discussing five-year strategies.

What’s interesting is unlike most real estate investment firms that focus on real estate, ICONIQ is traditionally a growth venture tech investor, and its real estate arm is a smaller, unique play. Because of that, we approach real estate with more innovation and a “lets try it” mentality.