Tangent: Conversations with Real Estate & Tech Innovators

Edward Cohen & Zach Aarons

Details

A podcast community for real estate and tech leaders, investors, operators and innovators. A new era is upon us. Tangent💚Proptech unites Proptech founders💡, Real Estate investors and operators🏢, Venture Capital investors, urban leaders🏙 and passionate creators🌎 who are improving our communities and cities. Join us to learn how we can solve present day challenges with innovative technology and greater collaboration. Join VC investor Zach Aarons and Proptech entrepreneur Edward Cohen, to learn about housing innovation, the future of work and climate tech. We examine these themes through interviews and conversations with Proptech CEO's, real estate owners and operators, and venture investors, and how we can leverage tech and collaboration to help solve the housing crisis, figure out the future of work and how to decarbonize the built environment. If you would like to get your company’s or organization’s mission featured on Tangent, email us at [email protected]. Stay curious and always be learning! 🤓

Recent Episodes

OCT 6, 2026
Protecting Homes After the LA Fires: The Case for Fire Prevention Tech, with CitroTech's CEO Wes Bolsen
Wes Bolsen is the CEO and board member of CitroTech (NYSE AM: CITR), the company behind the only EPA Safer Choice recognized fire inhibitor in the United States. Before CitroTech, Wes co-founded LaderaTech, a wildfire prevention company built on patents from Stanford University and MIT, which he subsequently sold to Perimeter Solutions (NYSE: PRM) and joined their leadership team overseeing global wildfire prevention ahead of the company's $2 billion public listing. He also served as board member and CEO of Imidex, a medical device company focused on early-stage lung cancer detection. Earlier in his career, Wes held executive roles at Cool Planet Energy Systems, Codexis (NASDAQ: CDXS), Coskata, and ICM, and consulted at McKinsey from 2000 to 2006 across the Chicago and Palo Alto offices. Wes is based in Oceanside, California. (02:08) From LaderaTech to CitroTech: why Wes came back (03:21) The Palisades fire & what it changes for developers (05:09) Why community-wide protection beats home by home (06:55) Suppression vs. prevention: the 1-to-7 cost argument (08:38) What home builders are hearing from insurance (11:02) Fire resilience as a marketing differentiator (14:39) Cost of fire-resistant construction vs. traditional methods (16:31) The three layers of CitroTech's approach (22:27) The Hexion JV (26:01) Getting into Lennar, DR Horton, KB Homes, and national spec (27:22) Fire risk across California, Colorado, Montana & Idaho (29:03) Mass timber, CLT, and the fire retardancy case (31:43) What a REIT looks like after deploying CitroTech (33:34) Collaboration superpower: Jesus and Elon Musk 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit CitroTech -Wes Bolsen on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15 -Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19 -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn
34 MIN
SEP 29, 2026
Industrial Real Estate Leasing from 12 Weeks to 1 Day, with Warehub's Founder James Holbrook
James Holbrook is an industrial real estate entrepreneur and technology innovator, and the founder of Payson Smith Holbrook and Warehub, where he serves as Executive Chairman. Over the past 5+ years, he and his team have led more than $500 million in industrial leasing transactions, representing landlords and tenants across millions of square feet of short-term warehouse space nationwide. Seeing early that industrial real estate was overdue for modernization, he founded Warehub, an AI-enabled platform built to digitize and accelerate the way warehouse space is discovered, leased, and activated. Today, his work focuses on reducing friction in industrial transactions and helping the logistics economy operate more efficiently through smarter use of data and technology. (02:24) 2,500 transactions and one infrastructure gap (03:57) What industrial real estate covers (05:39) Why short-term leasing demand is surging (07:11) Tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty (08:42) The hidden cost of vacancy (10:11) What to standardize vs. negotiate (11:38) What Warehub is & who it serves (13:42) Transactions from 12 weeks to one day (15:50) Early pushback and first transaction reality (17:03) AI-enabled vs. AI-native (19:43) The most underestimated force: volatility (22:22) Columbus, Kansas City, and the inland shift (24:00) AI-powered supply chain optimization (25:49) Self-driving trucks & underwriting for optionality (27:20) Power as the new site selection constraint (28:11) How the broker's role shifts with AI (29:59) Collaboration superpower: Aristotle 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Warehub -James Holbrook on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15 -Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19 -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn
30 MIN
SEP 22, 2026
The CRE Finance Back Office Problem AI Is Finally Solving, with PredictAP's Founder & CEO David Stifter
David Stifter has spent more than two decades at the intersection of real estate, technology, and finance. As Managing Director and functional CTO at Digital Bridge (formerly Colony Capital), he led data architecture, process improvement, and finance transformation initiatives across major acquisitions. In 2020, he co-founded PredictAP with a team of B2B SaaS and AI veterans from Blizzard, Apple, and HubSpot. Since then, the company has grown to serve more than 130 real estate firms and process more than 7 million invoices a year. David is based in Lincoln, MA. (02:20) From Colony Capital to founding PredictAP (05:11) When a $60B firm couldn't pay bills (07:23) Why invoice coding is harder than it looks (09:29) CAM pools, triple net leases, and the permutation problem (13:43) When institutional knowledge walks out the door (16:38) How to tell a real solution from a pretty demo (20:48) PredictAP: From inbox to Yardi in 30 seconds (24:47) Related Group, Cushman & Wakefield, and what 130 clients taught PredictAP (27:59) Why integration makes or breaks AP automation (30:17) Build vs. buy: what CFOs & COOs get wrong (33:51) Sheriff vs. shepherd: how to manage AI adoption internally (35:50) AP coding, audit risk, and financial misstatement (38:44) Collaboration superpower: Richard Feynman 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit PredictAP -David Stifter on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15 -Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19 -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn
41 MIN
SEP 15, 2026
The Risks CRE Investors Aren't Pricing In, with Moody's Analytics' Jeffrey Havsy
Jeffrey Havsy is the commercial real estate industry practice lead at Moody's Analytics, where he focuses on combining property fundamentals with economic, credit, climate, and alternative data to help lenders, investors, and operators make better decisions. He has spent his career at the intersection of economics and real estate, including roles at NCREIF and CBRE. Moody's Analytics covers more than 600 million public and private entities worldwide and generated over $7 billion in revenue in 2025. Jeffrey is based in Needham, Massachusetts. (02:46) From data scarcity to data curation (03:39) What lenders and investors miss beyond property fundamentals (05:34) Tenant credit, crime data, and truck traffic as signals (09:16) Moody's commercial location score explained (12:52) Cap rates: overrated, underrated, or misused (15:39) Moody's MCP launch and what it means for CRE decisions (18:32) Why Moody's stays AI platform-agnostic (20:44) Where the human stays in the loop (23:33) Physical risk vs. ESG (26:11) The hidden risks in industrial real estate (30:06) How robotics changes what a warehouse is worth (31:09) The one macro data point CRE ignores: productivity (33:10) Collaboration superpower: Abraham Lincoln 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Moody's Analytics / Moody's CRE -Jeffrey Havsy on LinkedIn 🏙️ In-person Events: -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15 -Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19 -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn
34 MIN
SEP 9, 2026
Multifamily | AI Fraud Is Breaking Rental Screening, with Docuverus' CEO Jamie Borodin
Jamie Borodin is the founder and CEO of Docuverus, a document verification and fraud detection platform purpose-built for multifamily housing providers. With over 30 years in resident screening, Jamie founded Docuverus in 2017 to address a gap no existing tool was solving: authenticating income documents at the metadata level while simultaneously reading and calculating their contents. Docuverus is one of the only platforms with a direct connection to the Social Security Administration for synthetic identity detection. Jamie is based in southern New Jersey. (02:16) Why standard screening misses income fraud (05:03) How fraud evolved from COVID to AI-generated documents (07:13) What a sophisticated fake pay stub looks like today (09:09) What bad debt files actually reveal (13:10) Operators don't know how much bad debt is fraud (14:12) False security: when your PMS fraud tool isn't enough (18:27) Why bank account linking isn't fraud detection (19:11) Fraud hotspots: Houston, Atlanta, and why NYC is different (24:27) Social Security fraud and synthetic identity detection (25:36) What a CPN is and how it fabricates a credit file (27:58) Florida's felony law and the limits of regulation (29:29) Screening compliance: why the liability falls on the operator (33:27) Where fraud prevention goes as AI lowers the barrier (35:42) Collaboration superpower: Albert Einstein 🏙️ Learn more: -Visit Docuverus -Jamie Borodin on LinkedIn -Sales line -Multifamily Applicant Fraud Trends Report: Q2 2026 🏙️ In-person Events: -South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15 -Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19 -Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3 -State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4 -All upcoming Commercial Observer events 🏙️ Virtual Events: -Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8 -AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18 🏙️ Connect with Tangent: -Edward Cohen on LinkedIn -Zach Aarons on LinkedIn -Tangent on LinkedIn
36 MIN