What Are The Key Action Areas For Investors? With Jonathan Hannam & Joanna Marsh

May 11, 2022

Summary: 

On the the 3rd episode of Season
9 of The Propcast, Louisa is joined by
Jonathan
Hannam, Co-Founder and
Managing Partner, Taronga
Ventures and
Joanna Marsh, GM Innovation & Advanced Analytics at
Investa Property Group. They chat about their journeys towards a
built environment and innovation space, with a focus on what can be
done to bridge the gap between technologists and real estate
institutions and corporates. 

The discussion zeroes in on how
companies can improve diversity and ultimately speed up
transformation as well as ESG technologies in the industry. The key
understanding from this episode is that there is an incredible
opportunity to be in between the real estate world and the emerging
technology companies. 

Resources:

Companies Mentioned:

Shout Outs:

Key Insights From This Episode: 

• There is this incredible opportunity to be in
  between the real estate world and the emerging technology
  companies. – Jonathan
• There is a much greater focus on using ESG to
  actually deliver real outcomes. – Jonathan
• Historically in real estate, the industry has
  been extremely opaque. –
  Joanna
• For the last 12 months, every investor and
  every discussion has been about ESG. – Jonathan
• One of the trends in real estate has been the
  move from the point solutions to something that is more of a
  holistic ecosystem as well as the blending of the technologies
  together. – Joanna
• We build better products and better businesses
  with diverse thoughts. – Joanna
• Globally, the real estate sector isn’t greatly
  diverse especially at the senior leadership level. –
  Jonathan
• We tell founders that, “Your business will be
  more attractive to us from a capital perspective, if you can
  demonstrate that you’ve got diversity of leadership.” –
  Jonathan
• In 2019, 2.8% of funding went to women-led
  startups and in 2020, that fell to 2.3%. – Louisa 

Keywords: Technology, ESG, Diversity, Real Estate,
Proptech 

About Our Guests:

Jonathan Hannam, Co-Founder and
Managing Partner, Taronga
Ventures 

Jonathan is a global citizen,
having held senior executive and board roles across Asia and Europe
in real estate, venture capital, technology, and
infrastructure-related investments. In 2015, Jonathan jointly
founded Taronga Ventures, Asia’s leading technology and innovation
investor focused on the real estate sector and the wider built
environment. His vision is to bridge the gap between real estate
institutions and corporates, and the emerging technology companies
that are now targeting the real estate sector. Through Taronga
Ventures, Jonathan’s focus is on real estate technology (RealTech)
investments that drive real and measurable impact across ESG,
including carbon reduction, renewable energy, sustainability, and
health & safety. Prior to Taronga Ventures, Jonathan has also held
executive roles at Mirvac, as a Director at AREIM in Sweden and as
the Portfolio Manager Asia for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority
(ADIA) during a period when ADIA completed more than 40
transactions across Asia. 

In other roles, Jonathan has
lived and worked in China, the Philippines and Singapore with
Savills, and was also the Managing Director South East Asia based
in Singapore for ING Real Estate. Jonathan attended the INSEAD AMP
course in Singapore & Abu Dhabi in 2015-2016. He holds an MBA from
the University of South Australia, a Bachelor of Planning & Design
and a Bachelor of Town & Regional Planning from the University of
Melbourne. He also completed postgraduate studies at Tsinghua
University and is fluent in Mandarin and Swedish. 

About Taronga Ventures 

Taronga Ventures is Asia’s leading technology and innovation
investor focused on the real estate sector and the wider built
environment. The group consists of the RealTech Ventures Fund, the
RealTechX innovation program and Taronga Advisory and has offices
in Singapore and Australia. The Fund is backed by global
institutional investors and major real estate owners including APG,
Ivanhoé Cambridge, CBRE Inc., PGIM Real Estate, Mitsubishi
Corporation, Nomura Real Estate, Patrizia AG, Dexus, Vicinity
Centres, amongst others. The Fund invests into scalable technology
and innovation that enhances or challenges the traditional real
estate and infrastructure sectors. Taronga Ventures is focused on
investing in strategic opportunities and providing its
institutional partners first mover advantage, whilst maintaining a
focus on creating a better built environment, through sustainable
and responsible investment practices. Recognising that climate
change is the biggest global challenge we all face, Taronga
Ventures has been independently certified as being 100% carbon
neutral.

Joanna
Marsh, GM Innovation & Advanced Analytics
at Investa
Property Group

Joanna is a leader with 15+
years of Australian & International property experience, across
office, industrial and residential sectors. Currently, she is GM of
Innovation & Advanced Analytics at Investa and is disrupting the
property markets globally though data & AI/ML analytics.

Over her career, she has
transformed big property companies and small ones. Grown property
businesses through acquisitions, financing and leasing. Sold down
assets and restructured portfolios. Created property management &
tenant service businesses. Built technology platforms with
corresponding systems, processes and people.

Prior to Investa, she led
Transformation & Innovation in Property at Lendlease, and Strategy
& Strategic Operations at Dexus. 

Joanna studied Neuroscience at
Harvard University, Design Thinking at Stanford and has a variety
of AI/ML and data nanodegrees; as well as attending the
entrepreneurial school of hard knocks.

About Investa  

Investa is a commercial real
estate management and development service provider in the
Australian office sector. With more than $11 billion in assets
under management, we maximise the value of Australian workplaces
for our tenants, investors and the community through our office
management expertise and by consistently delivering a superior
customer experience, while remaining in industry leader in
sustainable building management and responsible property
investment.t.

About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly
become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and
search consultancy with operations across North America, United
Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is
so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast

‘The Propcast’ where she
hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join
her in conversation about innovation.

About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in
Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was
to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to
the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart
Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed
at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and
clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking
exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK,
Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Timestamps:

[02:20] Jonathan: Talk us
through your career and tell us how you ended up at Taronga
Ventures?

• My career started in China, I did my post-grad
  at a Chinese University and I started doing Urban Planning and from
  there I stumbled into real estate working for a Singaporean firm in
  China (one the first VC funds in that markert). 
• After working in VC, I started at Savills and I
  have now been in real estate for the last 25
  years. 
• I then worked for Abu Dhabi Investment
  Authority before moving on to ING Real Estate Finance and most
  recently Mirvac.

[04:30] Joanna: Can you tell us
about your 15 years in real estate? 

• I started at Harvard studying neuroscience.
  Investment banks, consulting companies and banks love Ivy league
  kids with science degrees so I went to work at KeyBank Real Estate
  Capital where we did the structural and financial side of real
  estate.  
• I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur and
  started a small fund where we bought multifamily assets,
  refurbished them and started a property management company to do
  that. 
• I arrived in Australia at 30, with a failed
  business and a banking career so I started working on strategy at
  DEXUS Property Group.  I was more interested in the cutting
  edge and at Lendlease I was doing transformation and innovation,
  moving further up the R and D curve.

[07:20] Joanna: What are
investors honing in on when it comes to
innovation? 

• We have a broad innovation strategy. Advanced
  analytics and data underpins all of it. 
• One of the ways of innovating is to take on
  startups and scaleups and integrate new
  technologies. 
• Data and analytics sit under everything that we
  do. 

[09:20] Jonathan: You are
currently running an ESG impact program, can you talk us through
the program and the mission of it? 

• We needed to have both the fund and a growth
  program. 
• The ESG program is for select high calibre
  quality companies
• We needed to move up to the scalable businesses
  who already had customers and they had some level of traction
  because the real estate world actually couldn’t deal with
  startups. 
• It is an ecosystem builder. 

[13:00] Joanna: With ESG, it is
difficult to get good data from it as well as finding technology to
support it. What is your take on this? 

• Historically in real estate, the industry has
  been extremely opaque. There’s been huge information asymmetry and
  that’s resulted in a massive lack of
  transparency. 
• The information asymmetries are breaking down
  and what’s happening is we’re starting to be able to abstract data
  from other industries and from other data sets in order to back
  solve and fill in data that the real estate industry either doesn’t
  have or is not sharing. 
• The pressure from the investors and the capital
  regarding ESG is forcing a level of transparency and scrutiny that
  is going to become akin to financial
  reporting.  

[15:35] On the topic of
investment going into the real estate space and ESG, are there any
technologies which you guys can share? 

• For the last 12 months, every investor and
  every discussion has been about ESG.  
• In the building management, energy efficiency
  space, there are a lot of Companies that are targeting that as an
  area, but we are looking for a more complete
  solution. 
• It often isn’t a cost, it’s actually a benefit
  and an upside for the corporates that start using this
  technique

[18:30] Joanna: Are there any
major trends that you have seen in the real estate
space? 

• The move from the point solutions to something
  that is more of a holistic ecosystem as well as the blending of the
  technologies together.
• Some technologies simplify a part of something
  but causes so much extra exhaustion.

[21:25] How do we attract and
retain more people into the real estate and data
world? 

• The first thing is to know that it is
  possible. 
• In terms of diversity, I think it is about
  honouring diversity of thought and innovation. 

[24:40] Jonathan: What are your
thoughts on this, knowing that you are in the hiring
process? 

• What we’ve tried to do from within our advisory
  board and from our hiring policy, is to have the most diverse
  approach hiring that we can have. 
• When we’ve looked through the businesses that
  we are investing in, we often see that it is male
  founded.  
• We’re doing a lot of work to try to positively
  fund female founded enterprises.  

[29:35] Have you seen any change
happening when it comes down to education and exploring technology
as a career path?

• Jonathan: I moved from Australia from Sweden,
  and in Sweden there is just a different approach. We have
  systematic issues in Australia when it comes to
  childcare. 
• Joanna: I think there is a lack of how to even
  do this and things like how to raise capital.

[32:30] Jonathan: What is next
for Taronga? 

• In the next three months we will be churning
  through hundreds of deals to work out the partners for the ESG
  program.

[33:25] Joanna: What is exciting
that is coming up? 

• The data, analytics and advanced analytics of
  ESG and the ecosystem around that. 
• Giving the power back to the people  where
  you no longer have to big IT for innovation. 

[35:50] The ‘LMRE’ part, Louisa
asks the guests to talk about; 

L – Touch on
the main lessons you have learnt throughout your
career.

Jonathan: Decision-making in the
corporate real estate world takes longer and you need to build your
business to be able to withstand that challenge.

Joanna: Be really resourceful
and find a way.

M – Please give
a mention to anyone / product / service.

Jonathan: SPACECUBE

Joanna: William Cosby – Ex Omina  

R – What has
been the most rewarding aspect of working in PropTech?

Jonathan: The people

Joanna: Partnering

E – What are
you excited about in the future of PropTech?

Joanna: Distilling down to the
fundamental set of data points.

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