59: Keith and Gelena Wasserman (CEOs of Gelt and Skya Ventures)

This week we dug into real estate - when I had JD Ross, Co-Founder of Opendoor on the podcast, we chatted about how massive of an opportunity real estate is - the global stock of institutional grade real estate is set to triple over the next 15 years with some estimates pegging values at $70 trillion. It’s why I was so excited this week to chat with Keith and Gelena Wasserman (CEOs of Gelt and Skya Ventures respectively). Keith and Gelena started in this industry from scratch at the peak of the recession in 2008. Fast forward a little over 10 years and they’ve amassed a portfolio with an asset value of over $1.3B.

In this episode we explored a couple different themes. We talked about the nuances of real estate - the fundamentals, how to value a property, characteristics of a good investment; we talked mentality (an immigrant’s mindset, an entrepreneur’s mindset and the philosophy of “making money on the buy). And we snuck in a little bit of tech - impact of tech on real estate, cloud kitchens and autonomous vehicles and the early stage venture fund Keith and Gelena started to get exposure to other industries.