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Every Friday, join us as we dive into the latest in real estate multifamily with David Moghavem, Head of East Coast Acquisitions at Trion Properties. David invites top experts who know the ins, outs, and trends shaping the real estate multifamily market across the nation!
Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just curious about where the next big opportunity might be, Deal Flow Friday brings you the weekly inside scoop on what’s hot, what’s not, and what to watch for in today’s ever-evolving real estate scene.
Zihao Wang (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of Deal Flow Friday. I'm your host, David Mogavum. And today we got Zihao Wang. Zihao, how you doing? Good, good. Fresh from a flight from LA to Miami. Yeah. Fresh from a red eye. Yeah. I don't know how you have the energy to drop on a pod, but I really appreciate it. No, I really wanted to be here and do the pod in person. Yeah, no, it's way better in person. ⁓ And I think it's a little bit better in Miami than LA. I mean, the weather here.
this time of year, you can't beat it. for sure, you know? Yeah, the view, the weather, you came in at kind of at a cloudy time, but the vibrancy here. So it's good that we got you in the Miami office to talk shop. For those of you who don't know Zihao, Zihao is working on something extremely special. He's working on a company called Paris AI. What does it stand for again?
Palo Alto Real Estate Software. Yeah, and it's a AI co-pilot built specifically for commercial real estate brokers and investors to make their underwriting workflows more efficient. And we'll dive more into that. Ziao also has a really special story. MIT dropout. I mean, if you really want to get the story, you got to listen. Shout out to Taylor, Vakian's pod. That was a really good one. But MIT dropout.
built an incredible portfolio with your family ⁓ and knows a lot about the market, knows a lot about his hometown in LA, Pasadena, but also looking to expand. So I'd love to also get your market takes as well, which we'll dive into. But Zihao, amazing having you on. Thank you so much. I'm super excited. So what brought you to Miami, first of all? So the Florida Multi-Family Summit, right? ⁓ We're obviously trying to expand into the Southeast. So always...
exploring the area, but also talking to operators that are local here to get a gauge of what they're looking at and what their investment thesis is and see if we can align with them and, you know, do joint ventures and partner up. how was it overall? The conference was a good, takeaways. were like some key takeaways from the conference that that really resonated with you? Yeah, I think it's pretty much the same as the last two years where the market is still slow, right? Growth isn't evident yet. Right. And there's like,
Supply side pressure and then obviously affordability is kind of the demand driving factors, right? And more people are just in the, still in the play of, newer vintage trying to buy at really good basis and elongating their hold period and really going for the long game instead of like, you know, a two, three year flip, which was the play in like 2019, 2020. Yeah. Get in. was, it was hot potato. ⁓ pre, pre-rate hike. Get in, get out. Bridge that.
Now everyone's like, look at this basis relative to historical buying below replacement costs, back to the basics, cashflow. So are you kind of following the same trend or are you kind of zagging where everyone's zigging? Because I think what I'm finding is everyone wants the nineties and newer and it just gets way too competitive. Yeah. And I know you have some older vintage assets in your own portfolio. So how are you looking at that? Are you looking at it?
in a contrarian standpoint, or are you kind of agreeing or going with the tide in that regard? So we're more looking at it from a contrarian perspective. A few reasons for that. One is we're family office capital, right? So we have the optionality to be contrarian. Exactly. Also, newer vintage, know, when everybody is kind of flying towards quality, your rates get compressed, right? And so the, I guess the yields isn't as good as they were when the first people were flocking towards quality, right?
And then also we're very used to older vintage, right? California things don't age as much because you can't build as much. And so we're very used to, you know, budgeting out capex and, you know, having to do a lot of repairs on the plumbing and stuff like that. So we're, we feel more comfortable on the older vintage than most of feel like owners are a little spoiled here in the Southeast, right? They're a little snobby, not spoiled, like snobby where they see a seventies and there's so much supply that was built in the Southeast and in the Sanbaut markets.
where they're like, I don't want a seventies deal. There's like, you know, that's commodity product. And when you're from LA, you're from SoCal, it's a little bit more supply constrained. You're more comfortable. You have to kind of buy the sixties, the seventies if you want to be in a good area. Yeah. Also size. Yeah. Like in California, you will rarely find a 200 unit property, right? Most units are like under 50, right? And that's where a lot of the juice is honestly. Um, but over here, everybody is trying to go, you know, a hundred plus units and
trying to get that operational efficiency and trying to really go bigger, which I completely understand is just, I'm trying to replicate that and it doesn't really exist in California. it doesn't. Yeah, that's true. what are kind of the, the reasons, the key drivers that made you kind of diversify out of, you know, LA and Pasadena, and what markets in particular are you really focused on diving into? Yeah. So I'll answer that kind of backwards. We're going into.
It's basically Sunbelt and Southeast. We're looking a little bit into the Midwest as well. I think it's right now. Exactly. We were kind of priced out a little bit. We looked into Columbus, but then it's the only place in the country that has rent growth. so Do you think we're too late there? If you wanted to dive in today, you think the boat, ship's already sailed? I wouldn't feel comfortable diving in today. Yeah. With where you're seeing yields at? Yeah. I think there's just better opportunity with with patient capital.
If you have patient capital, I think there's better opportunity in either the distress world or even the lending world, you know, buying notes, ⁓ in the Sunbelt and the Southeast. historically those have been like high growth markets, right? And even though we had supply pressures one day, hopefully it does come back, right? as to why we're trying to diversify out, it's like a few reasons. think one is obviously the local, regulations, right? California is very democratic. ⁓ it's not.
most landlord friendly. ⁓ not at all. Not at all. Yeah. But at the same time is we also have, in my opinion, too much in that one area, right? So like diversified geographically. We own about 40 buildings just kind of between say upwards of like Recita. like the San Fernando Valley towards like orange County and then empire area. so that's a lot of buildings kind of in that one concentrated area. And so, you know, from a strategic move for us, we also want to try to diversify out and
Not necessarily sell buildings because we really like our portfolio over there, but at least fresh capital coming out, we want to try to go to other markets. And by the way, that's exactly what we went through, right? Like trial properties, we cut our teeth buying rent control, multifamily building, 60s, 70s vintage in SoCal. Then we went up to NorCal to diversify different parts of California. Then we broke into the Pac Northwest in Portland.
We were one of the most prolific buyers at the time, like 2015 to 2018, 2019, in ⁓ terms of transaction volume. And then when there was all this chatter of repealing Costa Hawkins and there was rent control that passed in Oregon, like, man, we gotta diversify. We gotta get out of here. And it wasn't that we needed to just fire sale everything in SoCal, but we needed to diversify geographically. And I think...
Every market has their own risk, right? You got to pick your poison. Right. and I think in the Southeast, you're probably seeing with the supply, have different poison there, insurance, you have different poison, but you have a lot of demand drivers, a lot of benefits you see even in South Florida and Miami, you see the vibrancy here. You get it. Once you're here, you get it. The traffic shows the demand. Yes. Yes. For better or for
talking a little bit about your strategy. What are specific sub markets that you really like right now that you want to buy in Southeast and Sunbelt? So I like the Carolinas. ⁓ like Florida. I really like Texas still kind of Dallas Houston. ⁓ Obviously, the issue right now is that those markets have great fundamentals.
But deals aren't necessarily penciling. And the reason is because at least in my opinion, it's because rent growth isn't evident yet. And so I think rates is a factor, but it's not the major factor. think in order for a transaction ball to really increase, either there needs to be a pricing adjustment. So sellers need to meet the market or rent growth needs to be evident for buyers to build that conviction and then go really aggressive into the market. And so for us, think.
at those markets that are already institutionalized value add is really, really tough without rent growth, right? Because, you 30 years ago, washer and dryers were the single, you know, most popular amenity in a unit that you can get 150 bucks for sure. Right. And added a lot of value. then when the institutions came, that's gone. Right. Like
all buildings in the eighties, nineties, vintage, even seventies vintage have those wash and dryers. is the lowest ROI market I've ever seen in terms of renovations and sort of as adding washer dryers, like, man, the ROI's are not there. I haven't seen it like this since you like when I first joined. So just at the conference, people were talking about like tech packages. like a thermostat where you can like, you know, shut it off via like the phone and people were talking about those as amenities.
And you just compare that to like a washer and dryer and it's like day and night. of course. And so like the, you're not really getting the return on investment from your kind of value add and cap expense, right? Which is, which is an issue, right? Which is why like deals can't pencil. Right now the bet is you still do the work and you hope you can get that ROI when things rebound. Yeah. Right. Is buy a deal, capitalize for it. Hey, maybe the ROI isn't there today.
But if you're budgeting for it and the deal still makes sense without the ROI, then it will be gravy and it'll be upside when the market does rebound and you get ROI. Yeah. Yeah. I guess from our family's perspective, we're not necessarily trying to hit the home run, right? Trying to be the first in the, in the herd and like, you know, lead kind of the pack on buying the lowest price and timing the bottom. more like to feel, okay, rent growth is coming. We kind of feel it. And then, you know, we might hit a double or we might hit a triple.
Right. We don't want to be the first in to hit the home run. Yeah. Yeah. So let's start Carolinas for a little bit. What are like some specific markets in Carolinas that kind of piqued your interest? And by the way, have you, have you bought anything yet? Or you're just kind of, starting right now. Yeah. You're the first inning of kind of getting in. The first one's always the hardest, yeah, it's always the hardest. to under a thousand deals before you buy one. The name of the game. Yeah. Well, I think we got to do market discovery first. Right. Right. And so started looking in the primary markets, right.
like Charlotte, example, Raleigh, for example, right? And then realize those were institutionalized, right? Way too hard by a value add deal with a lot of supply and a lot of supply. And you're just like, okay, as a value add guy, how are you going to underwrite upside in rents when your rent pro forma is the same as a new construction building a mile down? It's tough. It's tough on those markets. Yeah, exactly. And so we started looking at a secondary markets, right? So
Wilmington Greensboro, Winston Salem, right? Even those areas, feel like it's still hard. Right. So then we started looking at a creative strategies, right? So we're right now looking into like affordable place, right? So like affordable place in the nonprofit partnerships, nonprofit partnerships, like Laura's for example, right. And, you know, getting those in those secondary or even tertiary markets, right? We're looking into, ⁓ Newport and then Lancaster as well. Right. So.
really trying to be creative. think in this tough market today, like if you don't have the conviction to go aggressive, you need to be creative. That's the only way you can get deals done. Yeah. And I think what's good, like the Greensboro's, Wilmingtons, things like that. You're getting good, you could get good vintage, and good yield at the same time. Right. And you just have to be super sharp on what the demand drivers are and know your micro pockets because
separate from those primary MSAs, the secondary ones, they can really boom or bust if one of those demand drivers doesn't work out. Exactly. So demographics is key. And really trying to understand, like you said, really trying to understand what is driving the demand in that market and what's the probability that demand is gone. then you were saying Texas. mean, know what the common thing with like Carolinas, Texas, Florida, some of the
Big strongest inbound migration during the Zurp era and then some of the highest supply markets because there's low barriers to entry on the building side. so how are you getting comfortable with supply today in some of these markets like a Texas and I'm assuming like Texas you're looking primary, you're talking like primary like Dallas Houston. It's hard, right? Because like you said, class A rents are getting closer and closer to B. are
at B and then B rents are like at C. so it's really hard to get things to pencil. Right. But then at the same time, there is distress in the market as well. Right. People went very aggressive into Dallas and Houston, more so in Houston. And then because of that, how aggressive they went, a lot of things are kind of in the lender's hands. Even though
No one really wants to admit it, Lenders don't want to let it go. People are underwater. It is what it is. Like it's impossible to not be underwater when you that aggressive. Right. And so we're kind of staying patient and just keeping our eyes on the lenders and on those specific properties that have a possibility of going back and then trying to kind of take advantage of those.
Let's go back to our hometown for a sec. Let's go back to LA. Would you still invest in LA today I would, depending on the type of asset. Right. ⁓
Um, RSO buildings, probably not. Um, but there are some like brand new construction that are vacant, right? So we're looking at a, I think it's like a 30 unit deal, brand new construction that is trying to trade for around 300 to 350 at all. And well, low replacement costs, right. And so the idea there is basically we know there's demand in LA, right. And so we can lease that up much faster than we can if it was in like,
Miami. Right. And so we're very happy to buy those kinds of buildings and then do a lease up and then either refinance afterwards. can do like probably a cash buy and then a refinance afterwards, or we hold, hold onto the bill. We refinance and hold onto the building. And so I think there's still unique opportunities in LA and kind of given our relationship and our like locality, I guess, in the market, we see like some of those opportunities pop up. ⁓ and so I wouldn't
necessarily just completely rule LA out. I think we just got to be cherry picking the deals. Yeah. And I feel like you're looking at it in a good lens where RSO is a type of risk that is hard to quantify. Right? You can't quantify the rules changing and the rug just getting swooped under you. So by buying something new where it's not rent controlled, you're removing that side of the equation that makes it tough for people to invest in LA.
and you're still getting the benefit of the demand. And yes, it's vacant today, but there's demand on the back end that eventually when supply is absorbed and you put the right management, you market it the right way, you'll lease it up and you'll get it to where it needs to be. 100%. Yeah. So I guess let's move on from some of these markets. love talking. I mean, we could talk about markets for a long time. really should. You're really deep into the markets. We run acquisitions and I'm...
trying to learn about the markets outside of California. it's ⁓ always really great talking to And I'll just kind of, we have exposure to West and East Coast, right? ⁓ Not as much LA, but we're chasing a lot in the Bay Area right now. And we are chasing RSO buildings in the city of San Francisco. We are chasing garden style product in the East Bay. ⁓ And we cut our teeth doing those renovations value adds.
There's something to be said about supply constrained markets. There's something to be said about supply constrained markets where you can rely on the demand and you can rely on that unit getting leased out and you don't have to be getting the life sucked out of you from concessions and ⁓ just sluggish operations. And then we're also in Colorado where it's almost like the worst of both worlds right now. You're getting the...
You know, the, liberal tenant activists like bullshit, you know? and then you also have a flooded supply. And so then you come into the Southeast and you see, there's a lot of growth, a lot of people moving here. Costs of living. look at rents in relation to incomes and the rents in relation to incomes here are incredible for most of these markets. Miami may be a little tighter, but.
there's a lot of runway for rent growth for that reason. One supply is absorbed. So I think quantifying risk is super important. And I think just being able to do that in markets like the Southeast go a long way. So which markets would you invest in right now? like in the Southeast, I like Atlanta.
a lot. I like out of favor market like Atlanta. It's been redlined and red taped by a lot of institutions because they got burned. They got burned because of the evictions. it? Yeah. So there was a lot of fraud, what you're finding is there's fraud everywhere now. Okay. It's not just Atlanta. Atlanta just got hit with it first. And what followed were a backlog of evictions in all these counties where
It wasn't that they were restricting evictions. didn't have enough people to process evictions, to process the writs, to have. Sheriff's perform set outs. But what I like about Atlanta, unlike some other States or other cities is they actually passed laws and Georgia passed laws in Atlanta followed and passed laws that gave landlords the tools to.
Process the evictions instead of having on-duty sheriffs perform set outs You can hire and pay a little extra for an off-duty sheriff to perform the set out So something that used to take months now can take weeks So they're actually helping you exactly and I think that's there's something to be said there of like investing in a market where yes, it went through a bloodbath on operations, but Now they've given the tools for operators to succeed
Some are taking advantage, some are still stuck in the mud. Thankfully, we're taking advantage of it. And so I like that. I like that market. also, we have a great team there. Shout out to our property management team in Atlanta. They're amazing. And I think that's an edge for us. that's one specific. ⁓ And then West Coast, we love the Bay Area right now. I mean, the tailwinds there are incredible. The AI growth, the return to office. The new mayor.
The new mayor, Daniel Laurie. Wow. Like he's, I'm, I'm one of, I'm like his number one fan. I always just retweet him, repost him. I love him. So I think it's just like an incredible growth trajectory that the city is going through the East Bay, which, you know, we, we bought a lot in the East Bay pre pandemic and we love that thesis. love that play and we're, we're returning back to that today. two different sides of the country.
But, two different strategies, but both good in their own reason. was at ULI in early November in San Francisco and you just feel the vibe shift. You know, all the developers were really on board, right? And a few years ago, that was not the case. Right. Everybody was like, San Francisco is going to be a dead zone and all of that. now everybody is on board and developers were really excited, right. And retail people were really excited. And so you can just see the shift.
And I think, you know, with or without AI kind of that, like that market is going to grow. It's one of the best markets in the country. So, yeah. And it's crazy to see the shift change so quickly. Right. And that's why I asked you like about LA and you still have conviction in LA and you're approaching in the right way with looking at new buildings and trying to take, you know, de-risk at least some part of the equation. ⁓
But I see LA kind of having its own Renaissance at some point too. Yeah. For us, it's probably tough right now, but maybe if it's a deal like that, it makes sense. We just need 2028 Olympics to make some magic. Everyone's banking on 2028 Olympics. It's hilarious. Everyone is just praying to God. 2028 Olympics is when everything's just going to change. Well, I think there's got to be some improvements in terms of the quality of living in the area.
But at the same time, it's already, I guess, almost 2026. We'll see how far we can stretch that. I want to shift gears a little bit. So Pariz AI, I want you to tell us a little bit about it. It's an exciting project You were kind enough to give me a little bit of a pilot on and waiting for the full launch to come. So stay tuned, everyone.
tell us a little bit about Paris AI? so Paris AI is an AI enabled multifamily underwriting software. So if you think about traditional workflows of underwriting, you get the rent roll, the T12, the OM from the broker. And it could be literally any format. It could be the yardy kind of rent roll where all the lease charges are in a column.
or it could be like a PDF, right? And acquisition people have to go through the process of parsing that. And then they have to go through finding rent and sale comps. And then depending on whether you're institutional or smaller, you have to find like demographics data, know, news data, and then you have to put everything into your model and then adjust assumptions and go from there. So Perry streamlines the entire process in under 10 minutes. And so you put the rent roll, the T12, the OM into the software.
And we automatically do the parsing. We find demographics data. We find news data. We find rent comps, sale comps. And then we also screen them as pass fail based on preset criteria. And so what we're really doing is taking a process that might take like 30 minutes and shrinking that down to, I would consider it under 10 because when you put it in, it takes 10 minutes, but you can actually go do something else. And so that's really the beauty of it.
You're really buying back your time in that regard. Exactly. I would say it's more than just time. It's also like an emotional aspect, which is how I actually, you know, wanted to build this. Yeah. What do mean by that? So when I was underwriting deals, have inherently like this excitement whenever I close a deal that I underwrote. Right. And then when the market turned, I wasn't closing anything. Right. And so I was underwriting so much and not closing much. And so there was inherently this deal fatigue and emotional barrier. Right.
And so I just for a while didn't really want to underwrite anymore. Right. Cause I just knew that it wasn't going to work. Right. It's not just you. think everyone's kind of felt that too. Yeah. think I just seen the assets, seeing the location, seeing who's marketing it. And then basically tells me that this may or may not work. Right. And so I just feel like I don't want to go through the process of preparing my entire Excel model. Right. Cause that takes some time. Yeah. And just after doing that, realizing that this deal isn't going to work out.
Right. And then doing that over and over and over again. And at one point we were doing like, we're doing that process like five times a day, right. Cause we were underwriting five deals a day. Right. And so I didn't want to do that. And so I built this thing where I can basically wake up every morning. Right. And then I put my stuff into Perry's, put the five deals into Perry's and then I go like, take a lap around the tennis court or do something else and then come back and then it'll basically tell me whether it passed or not. And then I'm almost, I only look at the deals that passed. Right.
And the good thing is, depending on how much you trust the AI and stuff, you can set loose or tight criteria. And so we can do it just based on basis, or we can do it just based on demographics data, or we can go even deeper and try to have it analyzed like cap rates and certain return on cost and stuff like that. And so it's really flexible. It's customizable. People use their own Excel models. So they're not f****g
forced into a specific cell model. Everything is customizable to the user. And I think it saves a lot of time, but also it just motivates me to actually do work now. Yeah. And now that you're explaining it, and I was asking you, like, talk to me a little about the emotional aspect. I also feel like sometimes you're underwriting a deal, and depending on how you feel about the market or that day, you might want to lean in or be more conservative. And by having a systemized process where it kind of does the first screen for you,
It takes that out and it's apples to apples as apples as apples as again, even if you think you're underwriting is apples to apples, you may put, you know, an assumption that's a little more conservative one day and a little more aggressive another day because you looked at your own PNL of your own portfolio and you're like, shit, maybe I need to be more conservative or, wow, I can definitely start leaning in. So this kind of makes it a level playing field. actually have.
a kind of a preliminary due diligence feature as well, where we diligence the rent roll and the T12 and then compare it to kind of other assets you've underwritten in the past. Right. And so, you know, repairs and maintenance for properties in this specific area with Vintages, you know, plus minus 10 years, like this is the deals that you have underwritten in the past. And this is how you should be underwriting today. And so it's trying to, you know, make an art like underwriting the art.
as much of a science as possible. then at the same time, think organization is really, really important. Our system, it's kind of like a CR, it's like a steel CRM, right? So it tracks the different stages of deals that you've underwritten, right? And so by going through that, it forces you to be more organized and which ultimately benefits you in the long run, right? As you underwrite more deals, but then also as you do like a year.
year in review, right? At the end of the year and you look back at what you looked at and how the market is, it's not just a gut feeling, right? It's a data-backed kind of investment thesis or assumption. Yeah, and I feel like in an era with AI where there's an abundance of knowledge out there, you almost have to, as an operator, create your own data and synthesize your own data to have a real edge. Right. You can't just
buy an off the shelf data from CoStar, rely on that and say, I'm going to have an edge in this market. And so by doing, know, Parise AI, having Parise AI, synthesize all your data, all your underwritings and be able to make key investment decisions by having all of that all in one platform is super powerful. 100%. We're trying to enable acquisition teams to be more efficient.
but at the same time be smarter, right? And that's really the key difference, right? Efficiency is just kind of automating workflows, but really how can I make an acquisition person think better or think smarter about a certain deal? That's what we're really trying to go for. And I think that's really the power of AI today. where do you see this application getting grown to, down the line? Where do you see Paris AI being, 10 years from now?
I think it's going to get more and more powerful. Right now we're doing the underwriting automation and then a little bit of the preliminary due diligence. And so we're doing like rent roll audits. We're doing T12 trends and outliers, lease trade-outs, searching through the OM against a series of due diligence questions. But I think as models get better and better, we would be able to go deeper and deeper into the due diligence. ⁓
cycle, right? So we're looking into potentially like utility audits, right? We're looking into reading, ⁓ like lease agreements to see if it matches the rent rule and doing that in a time efficient And so eventually the goal is basically to automate underwriting and due diligence, right? Right now it's kind of underwriting and preliminary due diligence, right? You can definitely learn a lot more about the property on the first pass than you would without Perry's. Right. ⁓ but
really the goal is to go full cycle and full stack. Yeah. think having automation for some of these like intense due diligence, iron items, much needed, much needed the lease audits, the utility audits. You can't just do that by, by hand anymore. Yeah. It's, it's even if you like, it's also a good double check, right? It's, like you throw in the leases and you know, you obviously you want to read it yourself. If it's, know, really important deal.
But having a double check, right? And knowing that you're either right or wrong, right? It's really just, it makes you feel better knowing that you did the due diligence with an AI helper. Yeah. Amazing. So how much of this do you attribute to your experience in real estate? And how much do you attribute for dropping out of MIT and saying, all right, this is the MIT in me that's starting this up? I real estate really was the root like spark.
I the idea, right? Like without RealSD, don't think I would do like a PropTech startup. Drop me out of MIT. It's just, I got too excited, right? It's just like, feel like, you know, in school, I have a, I can spend time better than sitting in classes and like doing PSEDs and stuff like that. Right. And so that excitement was kind of what made me do the, like make the move. Right. But at the same time, think RealSD is really key.
Right? Like understanding the actual workflows of an analyst or an associate or an acquisitions person is really, really important in the building a product. Because if you don't understand that workflow, you don't truly understand the pain points, right? Somebody can explain it to you in like a customer interview. ⁓ but without going through it, you don't know how painful a certain pain point is and whether to prioritize a certain feature over another or not.
we're entering a time in real estate where you're either an adopter or you're just going to get left in the dust and left behind. And I think trying to embrace these types of tools and being able to adapt accordingly and not be stuck in the mud working on a long PowerPoint presentation or not being stuck in the mud.
underwriting a portfolio of 50 buildings. ⁓ Being able to automize these items is really what's going to get you the edge and have the time and have the discipline to get in, be competitive in the next cycle. A hundred percent. think if you don't use the tools that you're given, right. And these are very advanced tools, right? If you don't take advantage, you're going to be too late. I think eventually people will realize that, right. And they will take advantage of it.
But then that's already maybe two years behind everybody else who took advantage of it before. Yep. So are you coding these yourself or? Yeah. Wow. Amazing. Is it, has it gotten easier though with AI? know everyone, you know, I'm not in the coding field, but I hear, you know, a coder can get replaced pretty soon. So, know, I think AI can be good at like a demo or like an MVP, ⁓ like a mockup kind of thing. ⁓ but truly like, you know, enterprise grade software.
it's still, you need like a human to do it. think end to end, still need human end to end. Right. Yeah. think, ⁓ you know, building something that, you know, can have a lot of users on it, can have users trust it, right. Without, you know, a lot of bugs, you know, really considered like a usable product. think humans have to be in the loop. Right. think AI is really good at planning for you, right. If you
have an issue and you want to talk to AI about it, right? And then AI give you a plan on how to implement it. That's great, right? That's amazing. AI is great at doing that. But the foundational models are inherently probabilistic models, right? So they, if you just tell it to do certain stuff, takes the path of least resistance and the path of like highest probability, right? Which sometimes when it just codes you a page, right? You don't really go through the entire page, right? You just kind of...
yeah, it kind of works. Right. And then you just kind of leave it there, which can actually be very harmful later on when you need to compounding mix. Yeah. Compounding. Yeah. I think, you know, technical debt isn't something I'm like too worried about the early stage, but I think very severe technical debt will affect user experience. And that ultimately is, it will kill a startup. Yeah. So how does it feel shifting from traditional real estate to now more entrepreneurial starting this, you know, Paris AI.
It's, it's a hundred percent different. and startup is about experimenting and trying to find out, really discover what products and what features have product market fit, right. Or is willing like the market's willing to accept, right. Acquisitions and real estate in general is about doing standardized and repeatable processes and trying to hit like, you know, doubles and triples. And, and so it's a
totally different. De-risking for, you know, asymmetric return by de-risking the property and getting that mid-scenes return. And then in entrepreneurship and startup, you're trying to hit the home run. You're trying to experiment. You're trying to be bold. It's very different. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when I first started Perry's AI and to now, like I actually had a mindset shift on, on startup landscape. Right. And
When I first started, I was more in the idea of like, you know, we should go do something that clearly has demand. Right. And so, and the result of that is high competition, right. Basically in a blood bath and you don't know if you're going to win everybody's product looks very, very, very, very similar. ⁓ and so that was kind of the mindset starting out. Right. And, then now I'm kind of shifting, right. I want to do something that's like different, right. That's that.
It's, it's kind of still in underwriting, but taking it from a different angle and a different approach. Right. And it's basically taking a bet on whether that approach is correct or not. Right. And if it's correct and obviously takes off, if it's wrong, then obviously we have to pivot. Right. But this approach at least makes me feel that I'm not in a blood bath, right. I'm in more of a blue ocean situation. Right. And it's more taking a bed and seeing if it's a home run or we just have to pivot. Yeah. Well, that's, it's exciting. ⁓
Love the demo, love seeing what you're creating. I'm excited to see the full launch and love seeing what Paris AI is going to grow into. And, ⁓ see how it's great having you on. know you have a flight to catch, right? Yeah. I got to, you know, head, head up to New York and then, and then go to, ⁓ back to LA next week. wow. So you're cute. You're, you're not going back. You're going, you're going to keep the trip going. I try to bundle New York and Florida together. ⁓ but then I.
you know, try to be as efficient as possible. They're not as close as you think. Three hours of flight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. both on this side of the country. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, it was great having you on. Thanks again for coming in and ⁓ looking forward to make some deals happen. Thank you so much. It was really fun.