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The fastest-growing group of real estate investors? Theyre not hedge funds or institutional investors. Theyre nurses, teachers, NASA engineers, and first-time landlords with a smartphone. In recent years, 85% percent of investor-owned residential properties were purchased by small scale mom and pop landlords, rather than institutional players. Thanks to property technology, investors no longer need deep pockets, a finance degree, or a ton of spare time to start building a real estate business. Real estate has long been one of the most capital-intensive, time-consuming, and difficult asset classes to break into. But proptech is dismantling many of the long-standing barriers that once kept many people out, redefining who gets to invest, who gets to earn, and who gets to build wealth from real estate. Just as fintech became essential infrastructure for financial inclusion, proptech is democratizing real estate investing through smart, values-aligned innovation. Time is no longer the gatekeeper In the past, investing in real estate meant navigating a maze of manual taskscollecting paper checks, coordinating maintenance by phone (often in the middle of the night), and tracking expenses with pen, paper, and shoeboxes. The time commitment required wasnt feasible for most people. Today, modern software platforms automate and centralize nearly every step of the process. Automated five-pronged tenant screening tools deliver instant background and credit checks. Lease agreements can be generated digitally and signed online. Rent is collected automatically via mobile apps. And maintenance requests flow through clean, trackable dashboards that dispatch vetted local pros without bothering the owner at odd hours. That kind of automation has opened the doors to investors who once felt priced outnot financially, but in terms of time and attention. Ive seen it firsthand. One landlord and long-time RentRedi user, a NASA engineer named Dawid, manages his real estate business in the evenings and on weekends while continuing to work in aerospace. Proptech makes it possible to treat real estate like a side hustle, rather than a full-time obligation. Financial barriers are no longer the dealbreaker Theres no denying it: The financial hurdles to buying property have grown steeper. Home prices are high. Interest rates have increased. For many aspiring investors, the traditional path to ownership feels out of reach. But while the barrier itself has risen, proptech is helping people find strategic ways to overcome it. Digital tools are making creative income strategieslike renting out space or co-owning propertiesmore accessible and easier to manage than ever before. By generating income from day one, many of these strategies reduce the amount of personal capital needed to cover costs. That means investors can start smaller, take on less risk, and enter the market more affordably. The result? A new wave of homeowners and investors who are building wealth one step at a time. Creative property monetization: Turn space into income Even without renting to long-term tenants, homeowners can generate meaningful income from underutilized parts of their property. Proptech platforms make it easy to list, manage, and monetize these spaces, turning idle square footage into opportunity. One of the most rapidly growing real estate trends is accessory dwelling units (ADUs). These are separate, self-contained structures on a residential lot (often detached in backyards or converted from existing garages) that can be rented out for short- or long-term stays. Creative models can lower the financial strain of ownership and allow people to begin investing in real estate incrementally, without the need for multiple properties or large upfront capital. Scale without the traditional infrastructure For investors who start smallwhether through co-ownership, or a single rental unitscaling is traditionally the next big hurdle. Growing a real estate portfolio used to require hiring property managers, assembling in-house teams, or outsourcing to expensive service providers. The overhead alone made it difficult to expand without deep pockets or significant infrastructure. Thats no longer the case. Today, an individual with the right property management software can manage 1, 10, 50, even 100 units independently. Operations that once required a staff can now be handled from a mobile dashboard in minutes. Investors can grow their portfolios incrementally without sacrificing their full-time careers or quality of life. Another customer, Katherine, is a pediatric ICU nurse who wanted to create passive income for retirement. She started with three units and has since expanded her portfolio to eight units in just three years, managing it alongside her demanding healthcare schedule. These arent isolated success storiestheyre part of a growing trend. Proptech means real estate investing can become something people can build around their lives. The tools once reserved for big players are now in the hands of everyday investors. This shift lowers structural barriers for underrepresented groups. Young, minority, and female investors who have historically faced the steepest entry points are now scaling businesses with little more than a smartphone and a solid strategy. A new era of inclusive real estate investing What fintech did for Wall Street, proptech is doing for Main Street real estate. Its unlocking ownership, income, and long-term financial opportunity for more people in more places, with fewer of the barriers that once made real estate the domain of the already-wealthy. As more people access real estate as a means to build wealth, proptech helps reshape who owns housing in Americaand how that ownership affects communities, families, and futures. This is more than convenience. It’s a structural change and the beginning of a more inclusive, more entrepreneurial economy. Ryan Barone is cofounder and CEO of RentRedi.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the next 24 months, your most valuable customer may never visit your site, click your ad, or read your email. Imagine this scenario: You have a lake holiday coming up in two weeks. Instead of manually researching a new set of water skis, scrolling through reviews, and comparing prices, your AI agent handles this task. It scans your calendar to confirm the trip dates, checks the destination and expected conditions, then pulls data from your smartwatch to understand your height, weight, and skill level. It knows your brand affinities, your budget, your shipping constraints, and your preferred colors. Within seconds, it selects the perfect skis, ensures theyll arrive in time, and purchases themno endless open tabs, no second-guessing, no friction. This isnt sci-fi. Its the next wave in digital commerce, and brands that dont adopt now will fall off the digital shelf. If your brand isnt optimized for AI agents, its already losing. Think of AI agents as hyper-loyal personal shoppers but with perfect recall and zero patience for friction. Agents dont care how beloved a brand is. They just care about the data. The primary shopper your brand must persuade into purchasing will no longer be a person, but an AI agent acting on that persons behalf. The traditional marketing funnel is irrelevant in a world where agents compress it into a single millisecond. These autonomous agentic AI systems ingest a customers preferences, constraints, and history, then compress the entire marketing funnel, from awareness to consideration to checkout, into a single, split-second decision. If AI agents are the future of digital commerce, then the checkout process becomes even more critical. Its one of the last, and sometimes only, moments where brands have permission to show up. That means relevance is what keeps you in the consideration set. Most brands market to people. Those days will soon be gone as reasoning-capable agents are beginning to transact, not just inform. A vacation that once required hours of research can now be booked end-to-end in moments, with flights, hotels, and dinner reservations stitched together by code, not clicks. To thrive in this agent-first landscape, brands must reengineer how they surface, price, and prove value, because the algorithms will do the selecting long before a human ever sees the options. AI agents are a new distribution channel SEO alone wont cut it in the agentic world. AI agents arent browsing like humans; theyre retrieving, evaluating, and transacting based on clean, structured data. With 42% of U.S. businesses already paying for AI tools, the infrastructure to support agentic interaction is rapidly being normalized across enterprise stacks. On top of that, the consumer mindset is catching up with the infrastructure as ChatGPT is one of the fastest growing platforms of all time, reaching 100 million users in just two months. To remain in the consideration set, brands must optimize not just for discoverability but for the entire purchasing journey. That means building for machine experience the same way brands once built for user experience. Agents will become distribution endpoints, not unlike marketplaces or search engines, except theyll be personalized and always-on. Product information, pricing, and availability must be structured and accessible via APIs or structured feeds, not buried in formats or siloed systems that cant be read by AI. Brands that view agent-friendly infrastructure as a key growth lever are poised to grab an outsize share of voice and revenue on whats quickly becoming the new algorithmic shelf. Loyalty from both humans and agents Loyalty must be earned on two fronts: emotional and algorithmic. In a world where AI agents can ruthlessly parse thousands of SKUs in mere milliseconds, emotional storytelling may no longer get the job done. Agents will weigh product attributes against shipping timelines, historical pricing data, and ratings volatility with surgical precision. Subpar signals can cause a product option to be filtered out, no questions asked. What does this mean for brands? More than anything, they must operationalize loyalty across two separate but equal fronts: one emotional, and one algorithmic. For human shoppers, loyalty is still earned through rich brand experiences and tailored-to-you storytelling. Agents, on the other hand, demand a very different kind of digital courtship: high-quality, structured data, consistently reliable fulfillment, competitive pricing, seamless checkout with relevant upsells, and gold-star customer satisfaction signals. Brands that win both the hearts and algorithms wont just lead; theyll lock out the competition. For shoppers with only a tenuous connection to your brand, AI agents are your best shot at winning them over, if your data can back it up. Advertising to agents Marketing to machines doesnt require charm, it demands cold structured truth. Unlike people, agents cant be charmed or cajoled by creativity, only swayed by real-time relevance and quantifiable value. That forces a rethink of how brands allocate their media dollars. Traditional ad strategies that have been optimized for human psychology will need a parallel track for performance-driven, machine-readable messaging. In this new paradigm, advertising becomes less about storytelling and more about signaling. These agents wont merely browse, theyll retrieve, rank, and decide. Thats why advertising must evolve to speak their language: real-time product availability, structured metadata, and machine-readable signals. The agent economy is no longer speculative, its investable. To stay in the consideration set, brands must act now to build a data-first infrastructure, prove performance integrity, and become fluent in the language of machines. Agent-based advertising isnt a futuristic niche; its the next frontier of performance marketing. It demands precision, agility, and real-time truth. Because in an agentic world, every brand is constantly reevaluated. Relevance isnt a campaign. Its a living negotiation with algorithms in the drivers seat. Elizabeth Buchanan is chief commercial officer of Rokt.
Category:
E-Commerce
Effective mentorship will be the secret recipe to grow the next generation of leaders. Ill be the first to admit that this isnt a new concept, but its extremely hard to get mentorship right. Ive seen organizations toss mentorship into internal and external communications content as a vague component of professional development, with no real structure. Similarly, I know too many wildly talented, well-intentioned executives who are fully on board with the concept of mentorship but stop short of adopting it as a core element of their lives. The same goes for those just starting out in their careers: Being or finding a mentor is an afterthought, a nice to have, something to consider when their to-do list gets shorter. Spoiler alert to those starting a career: Your to-do list never gets shorter. Mentorship is a foundation The word mentor is a noun, describing a person who mentors, but its also a verban action you to do. Im passionate about this because I wholeheartedly believe that mentorship is the key to breaking down self-imposed artificial barriers and unlocking our true potential as professionals, and as people. Before I go any further, heres a critical point: Mentorship is traditionally characterized as benefitting the mentee, as altruism on the part of the mentor whos doing a favor for the person who is less advanced in their career. Please, if you take nothing else from reading this, hear me on this one: Mentorship doesnt just break through barriers for the mentees. Done right, mentors too, will find themselves reimagining whats possible. This may sound like Pollyanna-style thinking, but I am speaking from my own experience and from observing countless other mutually beneficial mentor/mentee relationships. Break self-imposed ceilings Heres why mentorship matters so much. Most of us construct invisible barriers that limit our potential. That applies even to those who areor believe they areat the so-called top of their careers. These self-imposed ceilings manifest in surprising ways, not just in career aspirations but in how we approach work itself. Ive placed limitations on myself, too. And I had every reason not tomy mother was an executive, picking me up from gymnastics practice in a suit, typically the last one to arrive. Ive seen what climbing the corporate ladder looks like. But theres a difference between seeing it and immersing yourself in whats possible, because the latter requires confronting your real goals. Consider how many talented departmental leaders hesitate to pursue paths beyond the head of their department. How often do we see a CMO who wants to become CEO? Theres nothing inherently wrong with topping out at anycareer level, but it should be because thats where you want to be, not because thats where you think your path is supposed to end. In so many cases, the stopping point isn’t due to capability gaps but because of internalized assumptions about where your career should plateau based on your background or expertise. Rethink whats possible This is where mentorship comes in. Effective mentorship creates space to examine and challenge these self-constructed limitations. When someone asks the right questions and provides consistent support, seemingly fixed boundaries suddenly become permeable. Clearly, this is important for mentees who are rising through the ranks in their careers. Ive found that serving as a mentor forces you to confront your own path, assumptions, and limitations. You might never dream of telling a mentee, This is where your path should end; dont explore any lateral moves to a different area of expertise, and dont pursue a role that most people with your background would consider too advanced. And yet, wesubconsciously or blatantlytell that to ourselves all the time. Cross-functional experiences build leaders Many of the limitations we place on ourselves are constructed from a traditional perception of career paths. And yet, my own path taught me that leadership excellence requires perspective from multiple angles. My first job involved fulfilling collateral packages for inside sales. And while my career has been centered around marketing, Ive branched out the last few years by embracing customer success and renewals. This diversity of experience has done more than build my resumeit completely changed how I understand business. Each role offered a different vantage point on the same organizational challenges, creating a comprehensive picture impossible to see from a single department. When mentoring emerging professionals, I encourage similar exploration beyond their comfort zones. Breaking down silos between departments improves organizational efficiency and develops leaders with a fuller understanding of how businesses function. Win-win! You dont have to stay in your lane to advance. The most effective leaders combine deep expertise with broader business acumen gained through varied experiences. Making membership work Its a misconception that mentor/mentee relationships must be someone from an older generation mentoring someone from a younger generation, or that they must be at opposite ends of a traditionally linear career path. An effective mentor/mentee relationship encourages people with different experiences and perspectives to share and grow together. Find someone with whom you click, who challenges you, who holds you accountable, and who has a similar level of commitment to the relationship. For the mentees, show up with something to offer, whether thats a useful perspective or even just a high level of preparation so youre making the best use of your mentors time. I encourage my mentees to come prepared with clear agendas for our discussionsensuring we address priorities efficiently whether we have five minutes or 30. From mentorship to legacy I have benefited tremendously from mentors throughout my career. And my commitment to developing the next generation of diverse business professionals has become central to my leadership philosophy. I measure success not only by my achievements but by the growth of those I’ve mentored and the ripple effects their advancement creates. Again, mentoring isn’t about doing favorsit’s about building something larger than individual careers. It’s about creating pathways for others to follow while simultaneously expanding your own vision of what’s possible. Mentors, this is how you turn a career into a true legacy. Sounds good, doesnt it? Melissa Puls is chief marketing officer and senior vice president of customer success at Ivanti.
Category:
E-Commerce
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