What is Blockchain, how does Blockchain integration help in security?

Blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, and immutable digital ledger technology that enables the secure and transparent recording of transactions across a network of computers. It is often associated with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but has many other potentially much more important use cases like data storage, supply chain management, and in our case real estate. Providing investor security with smart contracts and storing immutable transaction data.

How do you help your investors with commercial real estate management?

EXtrance helps private real estate investment funds and their investors by providing a platform focused on liquidity, big data through utilizing blockchain and AI & ML analysis and neural networks. We are all about lowering expenses, increasing profits and empowering fund managers (or leadership). We’re the only ones utilizing that technology to enable automated waterfall calculations, distributions, equity swaps, redemption requests with integrated treasury and patent operations.

What EXtrance does:

·        Real-time investment analytics allow fund managers, portfolio managers, asset managers, and analysts to manage investments more effectively by reducing timely and personnel-intensive ad hoc analyses.

·        Ultra-secure blockchain technology integration seamlessly creates infallible records for governance and adherence to all aspects of partnership agreements, mitigating legal and financial risk while reducing electronic storage expense.

·        AI-enabled systems provide automatically generated investment analytics with customizable KPIs such as XIRR, multiples, estimated returns, cash yield, cap rates, and more.

·        Intuitive user-interfaces and user-experience gives the various stakeholders seamless access to historical and current performance, trends, and returns with flexible permission-based controls that govern access internally at the manager and externally at the investor or vendor.

·        First-of-its-kind QMS (Qualified Matching Service) system is an invite-only and cutting-edge liquidity and fund expansion tool.

Brief us about your journey, and what inspired you to start the company?

During his time at DCI Capital, William was approached with opportunities to invest in commercial real estate limited partnerships and saw the inherent problems and risks associated with limited partnerships vs. REITS and other types of alternative investments. Some of those pain points include a lack of transparency in these investments as well as limited liquidity options. He saw that many investors seeking liquidity were required to sell their investments at heavy discounts of 20 to 50 percent. At the time, DCI Capital was investing in such innovative technologies, leaving William surprised that some of these advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning, data modelling, and blockchain weren’t being applied to the real estate industry yet. This is when the inspiration for EXtrance began for William. He started the company to address all of the inefficiencies and inadequacies he found in CRE investment management after doing more exploration, mostly due to outdated, archaic practices that lend themselves to human error, unnecessary costs, and long latency times. Manual processes like using “snail mail” to send out notices, dividend payments, etc. opened up opportunities for automations like automatically calculated waterfall distributions. And bringing offline processes online/on-platform creates more efficiencies – for example, by offering secure payment support for online capital call fulfilment and dividends paid out to investors via the EXtrance platform.

What were the initial challenges you faced, and what is the mantra behind your long-standing success?

Our biggest challenges in the early years of the company were around product development. Developing the EXtrance platform involved working with three different leading software development teams. After spending time laying the foundation of the platform and its technical stack with one company based out of New York, we realized we would need to do more advanced and more specialized work in data modelling and AI/machine learning if we wanted to deliver the innovative solution we were envisioning. At the time, having to engage with new teams to really elevate our product felt like a setback to our timeline and presented new and unexpected challenges. The motivating factor that kept us moving forward despite all of this was our confidence in our vision for EXtrance. We firmly believe that we can offer an industry-leading solution that goes beyond what’s currently on the market. Although we remain flexible in our approach, we were uncompromising in achieving our overall vision for a technologically innovative product. We ended up working with two more software development teams simultaneously – one specializing in data modelling and UI/UX design and the other specializing in AI and machine learning, advancing our technology to new heights and allowing us to position ourselves competitively in the market upon launch.

What are the products and services provided by your company? How does your service differ from that of other competitors?

EXtrance’s QMS (Qualified Matching Service) serves as a unique liquidity solution and value proposition” “Our unique selling proposition of EXtrance is changing the way the world partners by employing innovative technologies along with dedicated human capital to provide a holistic solution that solves the various problems faced by private real estate funds and their investors. EXtrance is an effort to make investing in commercial real estate more manageable and attractive for the largest or smallest of managers and investors. We’re changing what’s possible for these funds and allowing them to reach their full potential by leveraging innovative technologies like machine learning and blockchain to streamline processes and make things more efficient. Bringing their processes onto the EXtrance platform allows general partners to grow their funds without adding FTEs/fund personnel. The EXtrance QMS (Qualified Matching Service) serves as a unique liquidity solution and value proposition. One of the lesser discussed aspects of Limited Partnership investing is what occurs when you “need to get out” of the investment or cannot fund capital calls. LP agreements will have dilution clauses, yet typically do not have buy/sell provisions. Monetizing a position can be cumbersome given regulatory issues and the small pool of replacement investors from which to solicit. This means that investors are usually forced to exit them positions at high discounts, often times of thirty to forty percent. William saw the potential for a technology-based solution to the problem of illiquidity within this space.

How have you decided EXtrance to step further?

To step further into the exploding AI industry, choose our systems of focus, learn the necessary skills, network with professionals, and stay current with the latest developments.

What are the key achievements of your company?

Going from an extremely complex idea to breaking through every barrier that stood in our way. Creating our systems from scratch proved to be extremely difficult and time consuming but by continuing our push without doubt and never giving up on our vision we were able to build a world changing product.

What is the vision of your company?

We envision EXtrance as becoming the premier investment management solution on the market. EXtrance is to be positioned as an amplifier of best practices in fund management, allowing users to achieve more and set higher standards in the industry. In other words, we see the unique benefits and competitive advantages we provide becoming industry standards. The pain points we aim to solve aren’t exclusive to commercial real estate investment, and we plan to apply our solutions and innovations to venture capital and private equity firms as the company grows and evolves. In the future, the EXtrance platform and investor ecosystem will expand to serve more alternative investment strategies (venture capital, private equity, hedge funds, etc.) and their investors facing illiquidity, costly management, and a lack of transparency and security.

“EXtrance’s QMS (Qualified Matching Service) serves as a unique liquidity solution and value proposition”

“We firmly believe that we can offer an industry-leading solution that goes beyond what’s currently on the market”