JLL Spark’s boss on why US tech entrepreneurs are ‘not smarter’
Real estate tech entrepreneurs in the US are “not smarter” than those elsewhere in the world – they just have access to more opportunities, according to Raj Singh, managing partner of JLL’s global ventures fund JLL Spark.
Speaking at the CREtech conference in London this week, Singh said the “unrivalled weight” of the US real estate market has resulted in a lot of innovation coming to fruition in the region.
But he added that this does not mean US-based innovations and solutions are any more valuable than others across the globe. In some areas, the US market even trails behind, according to Singh.
Real estate tech entrepreneurs in the US are “not smarter” than those elsewhere in the world – they just have access to more opportunities, according to Raj Singh, managing partner of JLL’s global ventures fund JLL Spark.
Speaking at the CREtech conference in London this week, Singh said the “unrivalled weight” of the US real estate market has resulted in a lot of innovation coming to fruition in the region.
But he added that this does not mean US-based innovations and solutions are any more valuable than others across the globe. In some areas, the US market even trails behind, according to Singh.
“Most of the environmental and ESG innovation we see is coming out of Europe,” said Singh. “Specifically, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, where legislation is coming in to support this.
“There are a lot of small, niche ideas coming out of India that work well for the local market, but not so much beyond that, and we are seeing a lot of technology around the process of construction coming out of Latin America.”
When asked to reveal his biggest investment mistakes, Singh spoke about the danger of being drawn in by “a great idea and a seductive pitch for any product that can’t be transitioned from a lab to the real world”.
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