Travis John (00:01.715) Welcome back to another episode of the Real World Asset Show. Today we have a special guest. We have Matthew Schneider from Building. And Building is an internationally compliant platform for the tokenization of real estate and other financial assets. Matthew started this way back in January of 2021 and founded this concept officially in May of 2024. I had the pleasure of meeting you Matthew in Miami at Tokenize This. Welcome to the podcast. Matthew Schneider (00:26.83) Thank you for having me. I'm glad to see you again. It was great being in Miami and seeing the diverse selection of projects from an institutional level down to little startups, whether people are working directly, let's create a new blockchain or let's create a new platform. There's so much activity that has resurfaced in this industry and it's thrilling to be a part of it. Travis John (00:29.683) Hehehe Matthew Schneider (00:55.694) and knowing that this re -emergence is the real deal this time. A couple years ago, if we were talking about this stuff, we weren't sure if it was gonna stick around. But now we all have this burning confidence in us that what we're building is here to stay. And we have reinforcements this time. The cavalry of institutional investments and developments are indeed, it's there. And it's off to the races. Travis John (01:22.835) Yeah, that is well said very eloquently. I mean, that's definitely where my passion lies and where my observation was from Tokenize This, from Consensus, from the social media feeds to conversations with builders like yourself. It's... You know, this time is different. People love using that quote, but in this case, this time is actually different and the real world. And again, the irony can't be any more obvious than the RWA acronym where it's literally just putting the stamp on this and saying like it's real world applications, real world assets. So you're right. I mean, and it is really, that's what keeps me driven about talking about this because... from meeting new builders in the space, meeting builders that have been Building behind the scenes like yourself for years, to the big institutions that are now bringing decades and decades old financial assets on chain and working with noble startups and noble tech. intermediaries to help them to make this possible. So with that said, yeah, I'd love to kind of dig into Matthew and what you've been doing the past couple years as you've been building, literally, the company Building. Matthew Schneider (02:43.054) Yes, I love the name Building. I might've mentioned when we were in Miami that sitting through all of those sessions and speaking panels that the second most common word after blockchain, that starts with a B, is Building. Everyone's always building something or they'll say, we want to invest in buildings or we need this building info. And I thought, it's such a simple word. I wonder if anyone has used it. And no one has just done like Building itself. It's always building something else. And so I had to secure. Building .inc quickly and get our website up and running. But prior to that, I had been working on E-States and that started in about January of 2021 after a conversation with my cousin talking about investment into real estate. And the tokenization realm in 2021 was very different than it was now. We weren't looking at infrastructure or longevity. Resistance to becoming obsolete or institutional investment. We were just talking about how do we get more people invested in real estate? Now I recognize that it is a little naive to the real struggles of the industry But we never would have known that at the time it was only because people went out and pioneered platforms to bring a Tokenized real estate to the masses that we learned. there's gonna be some illiquidity problems There's going to be some problems with price discovery and all these fancy terms that I'm throwing around now. But I set out because I liked the idea of democratizing real estate. I think we all do. We've all, we've all said at some point we can democratize access to investments through tokenization, through fact, fractionalization. And I was echoing those same talking points where I said, if we tokenize, then we can fractionalize and therefore retail investors can buy it. It's like, that's really great in theory. And after a few years of trying to apply that concept, we realized it was just a theory and that there was actually so much heavy lifting that had to go into it. Through many, many conversations though, this insight was revealed and it started with the real estate developers. We had to figure out what was stopping them from raising capital from smaller investors. Like why aren't you already fractionalizing? Why would you need tokenization? And the first key point came back to... Matthew Schneider (05:07.278) There's a lot of paperwork. All right. So maybe if we start to digitize and tokenize, we could automate tasks. And that pointed us in the right direction. Then it was distribution. Well, I don't know where to find new investors. So we thought if we have a marketplace, then we could have eyes on the deals and we can get people purchasing. And that's what we deducted from these real estate developers. Then we had to go to the investors and find out why aren't you investing in commercial real estate? I don't know the right people. I don't know how to go through these deals and understand what I'm investing into because there's all these fancy new terms that don't exist in the stock market. Cash on cash, internal rate of return. So we realized we needed something to break it down. They also needed a price point that was accessible to them. And then from both of those conversations, we also realized there's a huge regulatory issue where the... process of someone purchasing a security to get into a real estate assets, well the issuance of securities ties up in regulation really quickly and who you can sell to, when you can sell, what they have to do, what other parties get involved. At least we knew we were having the right conversations because people at the end of the day said, if we could invest though, if we could fundraise though, and we knew how to do it right, we would do it. And so we considered to pursue this, let's tokenize real estate for the hope of fractionalization. Then we talked to other platforms that had already tried it. What went wrong? If this is such a good idea and so many people want it, why has this not taken over the world? Well, People say they want to invest, but then they don't actually invest. Okay, that's interesting. I wonder what's stopping them. Or the institutions don't touch that at all, or they don't support us, or many issuers don't even want to get involved. All right, interesting, we need to start to uncover this. Or the SEC came after me and shut us down. All right, so we have to figure out how to prevent that. And what we unveiled after years of conversations, Matthew Schneider (07:16.974) was that we were looking at the tip of an iceberg. And we mentioned before that this is the best or a fantastic graphic, and I think it's one of the best analogies for how people perceive the tokenization of real world assets versus the actual infrastructure required to pull this off. And it's so easy to say, yeah, let's democratize real estate. And it's so easy to look or overlook price discovery, valuation, the... Travis John (07:21.583) Thank you. Matthew Schneider (07:46.318) institutional due diligence and reporting process, these items that fuel the democratization of real estate or even liquidity. Tokenization does not bring liquidity. I remember in the beginning, that was one of the things that we bragged about, we'll tokenize and people can trade. What are you trading? What's the value of what you're trading? How do you calculate this? Who's your matchmaker or your market maker? But they are a matchmaker. Who's the broker? How do you custodian this stuff? And If you really want to bring liquidity or democratization, you have to take a step back. And it was after a few years and talking to Jonathan Chambless that my eyes opened. So shout out to John. First and foremost, I'm so esteemed to be a partner of his. But we started talking about data and using data to inform... Travis John (08:29.203) Mm. Matthew Schneider (08:42.414) the investments, or I should say to qualify the investments that were being offered. And that's where the light bulb went off. Suddenly, institutions became interested in these offerings, whether it was let's perform a debt placement or let's invest $10 million into a project because all the information that they needed to make an informed decision was there. Same thing for the little investors. Couple pictures, that's a pretty property. Travis John (08:48.627) Good night. Matthew Schneider (09:11.758) But, ooh, $10 ,000, that's a lot. this is the same information that the institutions look at. and the institutions are now engaged in this property. I do have a little bit more confidence in this digital real estate, this crypto. Is this crypto? I get that question all the time. But they build up the confidence knowing, there's legitimate due diligence in these properties. There's regulatory guidance to this. I do have trust in it. Travis John (09:24.123) you Travis John (09:28.563) Yeah. Matthew Schneider (09:40.974) And thus, this is another analogy that I like to use, the soapbox car that was E-States, more like a passion project, turned into Building. And I launched a Building to bring enterprise tokenization that really leans into that infrastructure necessary for cross -jurisdictional, compliant, institutional -grade tokenization to create this foundation for the new, for the upcoming... tokenized economy. And we're super excited to bring Building into the light and show. that data -driven investments. Matthew Schneider (10:26.798) I have a quick question. Do you do any editing here? Like if I just lose my train of thought? Okay, cool, because I just lost my train of thought. Shit. I don't remember where I left off either. Travis John (10:28.291) Yeah. I can, yeah, go ahead. Travis John (10:43.123) Well, you were saying Building enterprise. Yeah, I mean, you were talking about the enterprise level data and yeah. Yeah. Matthew Schneider (10:45.87) We're excited to bring Building into the light. Matthew Schneider (10:51.822) Yeah, it was just the last line that like my mind blank on me. All the caffeine that was in my system just dissipated. Travis John (11:00.339) Well, I would start fresh at. wherever you want to start from there, but where you kind of left left was when both institutional and little investors have all the enterprise level data. And you started building, Building, think you started to, that's where you stopped. I don't know what you were going to say though, unfortunately. Matthew Schneider (11:23.278) or do I, unfortunately. Travis John (11:26.789) I mean, we can, I mean, where you might want to just transition is, you know, where Building is, you know, where the, what you learned, I mean, you were talking about how like the soapbox car and then, and then I'm just trying to. Matthew Schneider (11:40.462) Right. Right. Travis John (11:44.499) And that was where you were looking at real estate fractionalization and maybe a little bit of like the smart contract concept, but where Building is going much deeper at looking at compliance and secondary markets and those types of that. I mean, you already mentioned some of those things, but I mean, I can interject and even ask a question now and then we can just keep going if you want to do that. So. Matthew Schneider (12:01.102) Yeah. All right. Well, I'll start somewhere and then we'll glue. Matthew Schneider (12:09.23) Yeah, or I can try to recap it and then we'll glue it together where it makes sense. I'll quickly wrap that up. We're really excited to bring Building to light because E-States was a soapbox car using gravity or the wave of tokenization to move forward. Now we have a legitimate engine and a chassis and a brand behind us. And that engine is compliance, its valuation services, price discovery in that chassis. Travis John (12:12.595) Yeah, I can find a way to do that. So, yeah. Matthew Schneider (12:38.702) is anything from edge hardware to AI models, international standards, ISO19650, information management. We have a lot of power behind us now. And I'm excited again to bring Building to the masses because I believe that we are the platinum standard globally, cross -jurisdictionally, for the tokenization of real world assets, commercial real estate specifically though. But... we're already looking at carbon credits too, which is a conversation of its own. We'll get to that soon. Travis John (13:13.459) Yeah, no, I love that. And as we discussed, I mean, the iceberg, the visual word, the visualization of iceberg, which I'll share when I share this out, of all the depths that go into from computing, all the computes and data feeds to, like you mentioned, edge hardware, all the price discovery, and getting that institutional grade reporting and data, so that there's a compliant on ramp, so to speak, for institutional investors, which let's be honest, that's where most of it is right now. And I think that's to your point of the soapbox and just moving forward as a company, I think that's many startups, the best startups that are out there obviously have done that. I mean, Amazon is a perfect example. I mean, they sell books and now they're selling everything. So... realistically and many examples that flow from that. So this is the same thing. I mean, everything was like the hammer and the nail. Everything was what you see above an iceberg. Everything you see above the water was the typical, like, here's the real property. Here's a way to fractionalize it. And although that is democratizing access, as we know, the distribution channels and the demand, frankly, even right now for fractional real estate is not super high. And I know with Building, you guys are focusing heavily on commercial and that even eliminates quite a bit more clearly of just the normal retail investors. So, and that's just where the commercial market is. So I think it's exciting that you're focusing in with obviously such an amazing brand and... obviously bringing that enterprise -grade type of solution into real estate and like I said, even expanding that as you reach your MVP within commercial real estate. Matthew Schneider (15:13.422) Right, and just to touch on that last bit, we want to focus on commercial real estate, that's what we know best. And it works really well with this full life cycle data model that we're striving to integrate into Building, where we can look at architectural engineering construction data. So if we look at this in phases, the pre -construction and construction, the developments, post -development, handover, all of those phases pulling information from that. So that's not just... qualifying investments, it's actually a tool for all stakeholders, for the lenders, for the next owner, for the contractors involved in this project. And so specializing commercial real estate, that's what we want to do. Commercial real estate is a huge market. That being said, we've seen areas that are so adjacent to commercial real estate. For example, mass timber developments make up a large portion of our pipeline. And I think it's exciting, but I think what attracts these types of developments to Building is that they are experimental and in order to prove themselves, they need data. Of course they need investment, but they also need data to show this is why we are applying or projecting a sustainability premium to the Building. If you can actually demonstrate energy efficiency or environmental impact or better health for your tenants, then it does imply that you could say raise rents or get a better cap rate or it could surge the valuation of the property. So carbon credits is interesting, but we've also had people talk about, could we put solar panels on the Building and then let people invest into those solar panels that end up powering the Building itself? And then actually this particular use case, the energy then went to servers within the Building that they wanted to finance and let people invest into. And those servers, really they're not so much servers, they would be computers or GPUs. They were being used to mine Bitcoin. And then the heat that came off of that was then used to heat the Building. And suddenly you have this smart Building concept where the real estate is there, but we could also have adjacent investment opportunities. Matthew Schneider (17:29.806) And likewise, we want all of those adjacent data points. What's the energy production of those solar panels? What is the energy efficiency of that Building? What's the profit being created by these computers mining Bitcoin? But just having all these data points creates unprecedented transparency into what you're investing into and connects dots. It fixes fragmentation between assets. that has never existed before. And we can look at this on a broader scale. All right, now we have all this information in a Building. We have a true smart Building that is so well -informed to all the stakeholders. What if we start doing that across all states, across countries, around the world? What if we start comparing that data? Now you have an explosion in capital markets. You have... transparency into assets that were opaque and most mysterious. You have the opportunity for secondaries and derivatives, the actual driver for liquidity. You have new tools to run comps, comparing properties to one another. It's super exciting what we're able to open up with this data -driven tokenization approach and... the way that we actually get down and dirty into these properties in creative ways, whether it's solar panels or hardware. Travis John (18:54.035) Yeah, I like how you say down and dirty. And I agree, like, that's the irony and also the beauty of how this really fits into the real estate market. Like you mentioned, there's a lot of fragmentation in the real estate market. It's, you know, people think of the physical buildings, but from owning real estate businesses in the past and being well aware of appraisals and, you know, obviously disclosures and all the things that have to happen, not all of that is... is very well done and there's a lot of fragmentation there. And what I mentioned was so interesting and ironic is that you started in the very obvious, like this physical building and how do you fractionalize ownership to realizing that, and the AI revolution has made it really clear how that you're onto something because at the end of the day, the reason why there's so much demand for GPUs and why Nvidia is through the roof for chips and why AI is eating the world, is it's data. Everything is data. So as much as, and again, this just ties back to the real world assets part is a lot of real world assets is not always just stuff you can touch and feel. It doesn't have to be always physical real estate. It's anything that can be represented on chain in a better way where you're converting that trust to truth. where you're providing a truthful rendering of said information. And like you mentioned on a building envelope, whether that's what's physically going on inside, like it's a whole new concept of smart Building, like people think of smart buildings as like, you know, like energy efficient buildings. But this is now like a different definition, even a new 2 .0 definition of a smart building where you literally have so much more data that's there to make informed decisions. And as you mentioned, even whether it's even for refinancing, maybe it's, you know, there's so many applications that more data can actually provide a lot more leverage. And like you mentioned, there could be derivatives, you know, all kinds of other things. Once you start scratching the surface, you know, once you start, you know, really focusing on that, that, that property. So yeah, it's exciting. Matthew Schneider (21:05.966) Well, since you mentioned that, we should dive into some of the value propositions that are opening up. And this was revealed to me as I transitioned away from a marketplace model to just tokenization. Previously, in order to get real estate developers interested in tokenization, we had to tell them that it could be used to raise capital and that they would put up their property and folks would buy into it. But now what we're seeing is that... Because tokenization can provide data provenance and then combined with compute, we can present preferential accounting treatment, for example, to real estate developers. So what does that mean in this context? The auditing process or the appraisal or just going through all the nitty gritty paperwork and the data points to support a project and to make sure that it receives Well, really the due diligence process, right? That would precede any sort of financing or any sort of investment or just your reporting. If we can compress that, because we know the origin of all the data points that we're about to reference, we know when they've been updated, so recency, we know who took care of that. There's not too much deeper that we have to go in sourcing all that. Next, when it's organized, collected, and structured properly, it actually becomes actionable. It can be delivered to the proper stakeholder super easily. Anything from something complex like building information modeling to just net operating income. Having that in the same place in an understandable manner is really powerful. So we can compress the timelines, therefore the costs of something like accounting or bookkeeping practices, the ledger using instead the blockchain as a ledger for this information. That's really powerful because there's dollar signs attached to that. And if you are a real estate developer, all of a sudden you see cost savings. You know, how much would you pay to save $5 ,000 a month? What if you can fire your accountant, not saying that you should, or maybe let one of them go because... Matthew Schneider (23:31.598) You don't need someone combing through all the details telling you, hey, this is missing. The software already indicates that. Now, how do we take it a step further? It's not just saving costs, it's potential value add. We saw that Building information modeling can actually add a premium to the value of the property. The same thing if you have data structuring. From inception to handover during that deal lifecycle, there's actual value added to the property. when data is attested and structured properly. And there's even potential liquidity premiums. Now you don't get the liquidity unless you have all the data. So assuming these two are joined together, you could have a 15 to 25 % premium on this property because the data has been digitized and structured and the ownership has been tokenized and is qualified by that data. Those are real numbers that you can talk about where you could say, By the time you go to sell this property, it's worth a million dollars more. If that's on a five -year cycle or on a deal span, how much would you pay per year to have an extra million when all is said is done? And suddenly, regardless of going out and impressing investors or using this for collateral or taking it to a bank, you just know that tokenization can increase the value of... Travis John (24:43.667) Yeah. Matthew Schneider (24:58.318) your project or it can cut costs for your firm or save you time and headache. Travis John (25:00.723) All right. Travis John (25:04.915) Yeah, and I'm more and more convinced that again, these are just from having conversations with a lot of bright builders like yourself. The best businesses are, it starts off with, real estate started off with like the mansion with the Lambo in front. It's like, we're going to tokenize this and fractionalize this. And the most sexy businesses are the ones that are... the ones that are focusing on the efficiencies, the cost savings, because that's really what's solving the problems right now, and that's really where the demand is. Like you mentioned about the accounting side, and I'm working on a content piece now where... some blockchains have real asset, real -time asset values, like on the ledger. So as an accountant, to your point, if they tokenize this on some of the blockchains that have real time, like for example, provenance blockchain, because it's built specifically for financial assets, it has real -time asset value on chain. So from a CFO or CPA standpoint, if they're having to look at books, they have a literally verified, truth point on the ledger that shows them that data. And like you mentioned, whether you need three accountants now, you maybe only need one or two. But the point is, is you do have a ledger that's now a source of truth that you did not have before that usually was a cobbled together... system that had a combination of paper and SaaS products that tried to figure things out and filing cabinets and you name it, where if you're able to pull this data together, you're really truly able to not only just save and cut out some intermediaries, but then, like you mentioned, there's all kinds of other things you can unlock. Because I think the unlock, it always tends to be the reverse. It's like everyone's thinking about the mansions with lambos and... Travis John (27:00.467) tokenizing and fractionalizing it, but what ultimately happens when you do the data in your intermediaries, you can then, on the backend, like you mentioned, it could be a collateral play, but also the maturity and the maturation of the market and the maturation of retail investors and secondary markets, by the point of that five -year cycle, they might actually be able to go out and fractionalize investments into the property, raise more capital for another investment or whatever. So it really is just, you gotta follow... the demand, you got to follow where the interest is, and I'm just a firm believer in that. And you know, it's the least sexy businesses are the ones that are doing the best right now in tokenization and blockchain. I mean, let's face it, tokenizing Treasury Bills isn't sexy. but it's massive, money market funds, et cetera. So the same thing with real estate. There is definitely demand for fractionalization and tokenization from a retail investor standpoint. Clearly, I mean, I've had people on my podcast that are doing it well, but it is definitely not the biggest demand or the only demand. Like you mentioned, the first thing people go to is the obvious ones. But clearly, this is a use case that there's... really a wide open runway for you guys, I think. Matthew Schneider (28:18.51) I agree as well, because it secures a more, well, not just trustworthy, but trustless future for private capital markets. the opportunities are endless. I'm thinking about the real -time data, because you made a good point on that. And not only do the immediate stakeholders of a property have real -time data, but I was talking to a bank that lends to other banks that lend to commercial properties. And that real -time data, which is offered in perpetuity, is passed on no matter where you go. And... I mean, there's a multiplier effect. It's not just the time from the sponsor, for example, to their investors, but from one institution to another. Suddenly, the underwriting process between each of these, because they usually don't just take someone's word for it, like, okay, even though this bank signed off on it, they might have a different risk tolerance than us. Or, you know, they approach risk management different, and it's just not a good fit for us. We know that banks have actually been struggling with this a lot recently. There's all these issues there. So they're very careful in underwriting. And they're careful, they look over the same information that has already been looked over because there's really no way to verify if it's legitimate. Now suddenly, no matter how many times it's exchanged hands, if we know, hey, it's still real time. In fact, it's real time by the time that it got to you still. It's not, because currently, Someone can perform due diligence and then those documents are out of date one month later, especially in a super competitive market. So things stay up to date. They're still being updated if necessary. And they're not being manipulated between parties. That's a real risk where it moves from one hand to another. Something might get left out. Something might get changed. Well, if we just make an adjustment here, then this deal works out and we'll just kind of pass it on. We won't. Matthew Schneider (30:27.534) We won't tell anyone. That's a house of cards, right? So this is a great compression of the underwriting process between these institutions that allows deals, it will allow deal flow and the flow of capital to a level that we have not quite seen yet. And then on top of that, we could talk about settlements, instant settlements, and the atomic swaps, and all these fancy stuff that are happening on the... banking side of things, but Pat O'Meara mentioned something which was there's a common denominator in a deal that's going to be the slowest point. And in this case, I believe that to be the underwriting. People have to pen through every single line, every single data point. And deals could go so much faster, project management could go so much faster if the information is prevalent and it's trustless. Travis John (31:28.083) Yeah. Yeah. I, there's a saying that I always, I always liked it. I've heard in the past is like, aside from like improving that deal flow, like being that, that the solution provider in the last hundred feet of a deal, like you're saying like that real clunky fragmented part where there's like maybe so much work goes into that last hundred feet of, of a theoretic deal, especially these big ones. And this also has to do with, like you mentioned, like the... just looking at asset values on chain, whether that be appraisals, whether that be other data points that the Building's gonna be looking at and collecting, those are ways where through trusted intermediaries, they have a source of truth on the ledger that will allow one bank and another bank, because maybe that's not in the risk tolerance right now. Like they did all this work and then another bank's like, man, this makes perfect sense for our current... risk tolerance, and they don't have to go through a month of fact finding to do that. So yeah, I mean, that alone is worth tens of thousands, but maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on some of these commercial deals. So, you know, because time is everything. You know, a lot of times they have a very tight window and they have things that they're trying to execute and they have to perform. Yeah. Matthew Schneider (32:54.382) Absolutely. And we could just talk about the capital raising timeline as well if we want to transition into investors because we still have a vision for bringing these deals of this tokenized real estate to investors. We just want to make sure that we have our ducks in a row before doing that. But this streamlines the due diligence process for anyone, whether that's a retail investor or an institutional investor. And that does mean that in a potentially trustless marketplace. Deals could be funded much faster. And usually that's a very, very slow portion because you have to get an investor relations team. They're going to hop on calls and they're going to explain, well, this is how we came up with the cap rate, or this is what JLL told us. This is why we believe people in the market, in the sub market are going to pay this for rent. And so this is how we've projected our rent rolls and our pro forma and all these moving parts and explaining everything and justifying it. and saying, well, you know, we worked really hard and we got some details, we uncovered some details from four other similar properties and if they did it, then we can do it. And you can expedite all of that. One's showing the origin, the recency and the trustworthiness of this information. But two, it goes back to the compute portion, which is calculating this, not just an analyst crunching numbers. but tried and tested computation models, AI models, and doing that at scale as well. Whether it's a portfolio rebalance or someone overlooking many, many properties or just running 100 comps at once to perform these tasks. at scale because as you do things at scale, you have even more data and then it comes to the point where the margin of error is just so minimal. If I just have one, and this is true for any statistics, you look at the sample size. If I say, well, there's one other property and they got away with it, you know, marking up rents this much, it doesn't offer a lot of confidence. But I can say we've run, we've stress tested our projections a hundred times. Matthew Schneider (35:11.79) We have all the data. We've done this at scale. We have 100 comps. We've done this at scale. Right now, you can't quite do that. You have 10 -finger automation. You have people who have to do that on your behalf. But doing it at scale is really powerful. And then again, doing that continuously, perpetuously, real time, this is always happening. And then because it's always happening, it's always pricing the real estate or the financial asset or the instrument in general, which means no matter where it is down the road, 10 years from now, people are still trading it and doing it with utmost confidence. From the very beginning, 10 years. Thousands of transactions and we haven't lost trust in it. We've kept track of it. We've kept track of the data. Travis John (35:54.163) Yeah, like you said, smarter buildings and smarter data to have a smarter portfolio and a more balanced portfolio. You're in the know. I'm curious from a case study standpoint or just kind of getting started, as in what's your first property or what's your first... aspect that you're focusing on right now is I know that you're just getting started, but I'm curious to to know like what maybe walk us through some of that. Matthew Schneider (36:27.95) Yes, so we're proving the concept on three continents, which is really cool, knowing that tokenization is taking off all over the world and that's its own conversation. I actually believe us in the US, we're laggards because it's southeastern Asia and Europe and whatnot, but we have projects, real estate projects, individual properties, and then some funds on three different continents that we're going to be working with. We're kind of trying to shove it all in the funnel at once and... demonstrate that there's value in the tokenization itself. I think that's what really needs to be proven right now, that if we can sell tokenization without the string attached, which will also give you capital, if there's just value in tokenization, then we're set. People will be paying for tokenization for the next 10 years and we'll just move all the assets on chain. We have a mix of properties. We have some mass timber. We have some historical zones or opportunity zones. And in that case, those are really interesting because the government says that you have to hold for a certain period of time. But do you really have to if there's securities and you can stake that or collateralize against that? And then on different continents as well. And we have some partners, other platforms that are looking to work with us to distribute investment products. And they meet our infrastructure requirements. And in terms of here's the data that we need, this is the compliance that we're abiding by, we're all playing by the same rules here. So we have several case studies, or you could say use cases, that are going to be written out and actually put on our site to show here's how we apply tokenization, here's the value that it added, actual tangible dollar signs to see that increase, whether it's premiums or cost savings. And once that is completely ready, tokenization is going to accelerate so rapidly right now. I think we're all fighting to accumulate that data to show you can make an extra million bucks on a property, which is a lot of money. And then suddenly there's a huge rush, like a gold rush to tokenize properties. But again, we're trying to do that with a variety of asset types, asset classes. Matthew Schneider (38:51.95) and in different locations as well. So we're working diligently on that. We do have some cool, but also high quality commercial real estate properties. And mass timber, I think that's a really great use of tokenization if it means counteracting yield on cost, which is a big concern, or demonstrating... like smart building concepts where, actually it is healthier or there is an environmental impact. So I think working with like experimental, cause we're innovators, mass timbers innovators, so working with an experimental development type like that is great. And they need us just as much as we need their assets on chain. Travis John (39:41.011) Yeah, partnerships are going to be the way. And like you said, innovators that are kind of in their own industry working together for this, where it intersects is perfect. And I love how it's three continents and different types of properties as well, because as you mentioned, you're proving the concept. This is your MVP. You're bringing in different ones. You learn from this, the data discovery, all of the things, price discovery, all those things are a bit different, I'm sure, as they're... gathered. So I think that's also something that you'll be able to adjust and see how that's all working. And obviously see what the appetite is for the end user, for the individual investor, for the institutional investors, and obviously for the issuers, the real estate owners, developers, et cetera. So yeah, it's exciting. Matthew Schneider (40:34.062) Yeah, there's a lot to learn. I don't think the industry knows yet which direction it really has to go, what the major value propositions are going to be, who's going to be buying it most. But that's sort of our job as a trailblazer to get out there and work on that brand and figure out what data points people are most interested in, where the new bottlenecks are, because it's going to happen. We might be compressing... Travis John (40:49.843) All right. Matthew Schneider (41:03.598) the time for a project to complete, but are there new areas, new problems that have to be solved? Is it going to be technical, technology related? And that's another thing. We could be talking all day about the dollar signs attached to tokenization, but then when it actually goes to integrating with the current technology stacks, we hit brick walls. And I've kind of recognized that from institutions, financial institutions, who say, this is great, we want to be tokenizing. But just so you know, it might take us like three to four years before it's in here, because we have to reconstruct everything that we currently use for our processes. So figuring out the challenges and opportunities of tokenization in the new tokenized economy. Travis John (41:50.547) Yeah, like you said, being a trailblazer, there's that bat like right now because of the fact that you're doing the data collection and you're focusing heavily on a lot of factors, a lot of those touch points. It's not easy. I mean, definitely, like you mentioned, it's not easy to explain. It's not easy to... And even your core team, you're constantly taking in new information and learning from this as you're bringing in new deals. And... learning what's working, what the demand looks like, etc. So I'm having my lights going out here. It'll come back on here in a minute. So as we're wrapping up here, I guess maybe the studio wants to give me the dark effect, but as we're wrapping up here, what else? Anything I missed here talking about Building? I know we talked a lot about some really exciting aspects here. What's... What's next? Matthew Schneider (42:52.207) Well, one thing that I want to touch on, this isn't what's next. I think it's just a really important point to make as we strive towards becoming a household name for eventually real estate investment. All this tokenization jargon and infrastructure, it's under the water for a reason. Like I'm having the conversation with you about price discovery and computation and whatnot because... We are drivers in the industry. But at the end of the day, this all has to become ubiquitous. And that's what we're really working towards, where we can just go back to talking about fractionalized real estate and say, invest in this office building. Well, maybe not office, not right now. But invest in this mixed -use Building that used to be office. It had a turnaround, and it's profitable. Don't worry. Travis John (43:42.051) Yeah. Matthew Schneider (43:50.83) compliance at that point, it should be inherent that it's compliant. Like we shouldn't have to say that nowadays. But yet so many platforms fell short on that where they were not compliant or there was not proper due diligence. Institutions wouldn't touch it with a 30 -foot pole. All these types of things. So we hope to become the platinum standard. Travis John (44:11.923) Right. Matthew Schneider (44:16.398) by making a strong push in the beginning for infrastructure and compliance and data. And if you go to our site, that's what we talk about so much. People say, well, this is sort of confusing. But in the beginning, that's how you set yourselves apart. The funniest analogy that I used for this was if every ice cream in the store right now is full of toxic chemicals, and I had to say ice cream does not kill you when you eat it, like it seems. Travis John (44:28.915) Ahem. Matthew Schneider (44:46.19) Like, why do you have to say that? But if that's really what the market is looking for right now, then that's what you're going to, how you're going to set yourself apart. And that's what we're going for. We're saying, all right, we're we're to tokenize real estate. We can talk about the marketplace down the road. I use building Building invest in buildings. But before we get there, why we've set ourselves apart, the moat that we have, the cross is made up with the cross jurisdictional compliance. that we have, the institutional due diligence and reporting, the data driven approach, the edge hardware, the integration with the full life cycle, real estate software and data points and aggregating that and structuring that, the use of data rooms and federated data rooms, the best token standards around. We'll brag about that for now because that's what's leading and we hope that the rest of the tokenization industry picks up or else it's going to be a cycle for a while of properties and deals falling through, investors getting screwed over, platforms going under, the SEC getting upset. Travis John (45:52.643) Yeah, no, that's well said. It's a good way to kind of recap all your value propositions and like you said, where we are in the cycle because ultimately like we talked about a few times in this session is it's baby steps. You know, like at first you've got to, I mean, we won't be talking about compliance and blockchain. because it's not going to be, it's going to be behind the scenes. Like you're going to just know it's compliant and you're going to know it's maybe you don't even know or care it's on the blockchain, but you're just able to participate. So that's ultimately, you know, what it is. And it's like, we know how the dot com boom started. It was like the internet and it's like, the internet, everything was dot com, dot com, dot com, because it was the literal version of the internet was all these websites that... only a few survived. So I think that was really just a perfect way to kind of look look the current infancy of this market and where we are is you do have to be a little more deliberate, a little more front and center about the tech and what you're doing in some cases, particularly when it's in a data -driven aspect like building. Building. other cases, maybe you can build an app where you don't have to make it very obvious, but... You're right. It's a good way to recap the value prop and what Building is doing and why your messaging is the way it is and why that should resonate in the current market. Matthew Schneider (47:19.694) Yes, well said. Eloquent recap. Thank you for that. Travis John (47:21.299) Nice. Yeah, well this has been a pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation and I'm really grateful that we were able to chat more about this and excited about the announcement because I know this is something you've been working on a while but just really not only been a few weeks since you announced this so I know it's early so this conversation wasn't all about exactly what's happened yet because you really just hit the ground running and... Matthew Schneider (47:26.254) Yeah, for sure. Travis John (47:50.291) We'll certainly keep chatting, I know, offline as well, but once there's a good point that we want to chat again, we can jump back on the podcast and talk more and update everybody. Matthew Schneider (48:00.526) Right, right. And to clarify on that point, a lot of the software is there because we have the partnerships. We are able to have a mixture of proprietary and licensed software. So billions of dollars have already been handled. Now it's this specializing it for commercial real estate and looking at what the end user wants, whether that's the developer or the investor, curtailing a product towards them and then getting as many assets on chain as possible. So. We're early, but it is also a few years in the works and many decades of experience from fantastic people. I'm excited and honored that Building is backed by such great companies and is leading the charge forward in tokenized commercial real estate. Travis John (48:33.491) Nice. Travis John (48:49.491) Yeah, yeah, you definitely have a who's who and team of backgrounds in commercial real estate and data and building envelope. So you have all the right people in place. Definitely wish you the best. Look forward to chatting with you more about this. And really excited about the next steps here. Awesome. We'll see you soon. Matthew Schneider (49:07.342) Thank you. Looking forward to speaking again. Take care.