This Founder Raised $80 Million To Build A Crowdsourced Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Data Platform To Streamline The Real Estate Industry
Michael Mandel’s entrepreneurial path began inside one of the most relationship-driven and data-fragmented industries in the world: commercial real estate.
As a broker, Michael saw firsthand how valuable deal information was still being exchanged through phone calls, informal networks, and Monday morning meetings. Instead of accepting that inefficiency as “just how the industry works,” he recognized it as an opportunity.
That insight became the foundation for CompStak—a data platform built to bring transparency, structure, and scale to commercial real estate decision-making.
Early Roots: A Builder From Day One
Michael grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, just outside Philadelphia, in a household where building companies were part of the fabric. His father, a lawyer running his own practice, modeled independence. His grandfather was also an entrepreneur. But for Michael, the drive went deeper.
It wasn’t just about following a path—it was about building. From an early age, Michael knew two things. He wanted to create something meaningful, and he didn’t want to work for someone else. There was also a third motivation—one he openly admits: He wanted to be rich.
Inspired by figures like Bill Gates, Michael wasn’t chasing incremental success. He wanted to build something big.
Babson and the Reality Check of Entrepreneurship
After his schooling in Boston, Michael chose Babson College, one of the world's top entrepreneurship schools, with a clear plan: graduate and immediately start a company. He was determined to use his time at Babson to learn everything about starting a business. But reality didn’t cooperate.
At the time, building scalable tech startups as a student wasn’t nearly as feasible as it is today. This was pre-cloud infrastructure, before platforms like Amazon Web Services and Thiel Fellowship made it easy to launch and scale.
Just putting a website on the cloud and scaling was not straightforward, and servers were expensive. The kinds of things students could build were unlikely to make a huge difference in the world, unlike today, when building a tech company is certainly more viable for a student.
Michael didn’t want to build something small or a lifestyle business. In hindsight, he acknowledges a key lesson—ambition without exposure to real-world dynamics can lead to naïve execution. Instead of launching immediately, he chose to learn first.
Learning Before Leaping: From Music to Real Estate
Michael’s first role was in commercial music production, working closely with a founder—essentially acting as a right-hand operator. The goal wasn’t the industry itself; it was to help people with identity through sound—a unique proposition.
But within a year, Michael pivoted into commercial real estate brokerage—a move that would ultimately define his career. It would lead him to start CompStak. Interestingly, the path to becoming a commercial real estate broker was not as easy as taking a job.
The only way to get a job was to have contacts and be part of the industry network. Michael ended up working at Grub & Ellis by leveraging connections. At the time, the company was starting Grubhub to get junior brokers going.
Why Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Michael wanted to work in commercial real estate brokerage because he liked its tangible nature. From his perspective, buildings can be seen and touched. Buildings in Manhattan are large and valuable, which is appealing to him.
Further, as Michael says, “(commercial real estate brokerage) is as entrepreneurial a career as you can have without truly being an entrepreneur.” It is fully commissioned—you eat what you kill. The top successful commercial real estate brokers in New York City can earn a seven-figure revenue.
There are no limitations to their potential and growth opportunities—another factor that appealed to Michael. However, he did not intend to remain a broker forever; he intended to eventually start a business. At the same time, he had student loans to pay.
Further, Michael lived in New York City, where the rent is expensive. He wasn’t in a luxurious position like many of his friends, nor could he count on family support. Then, he started getting involved with data centers. That’s when he came across a problem that sparked CompStak.
The Insight That Sparked CompStak
Looking back, Michael underscores that he had always been looking for viable opportunities. He found that the commercial real estate brokerage and the commercial real estate industry are still incredibly antiquated.
Finding pathways to change and revolutionize in some capacity is always available. Michael compiled a list of innovative ideas to transform the industry, and one of them inspired CompStak.
As a broker, Michael participated in weekly meetings every Monday, where brokers exchanged deal data—known as “comps.” The process was inefficient. They spent hours discussing deals, and information was shared verbally. As a result, data was fragmented across networks.
To prepare, Michael would call brokers on Sunday nights, manually trade information, and compile insights for Monday meetings. He was handling office deals in New York for creative firms, tech companies, and media companies, as well as data center work.
Monday morning meetings and conversations centered on traditional New York City office deals, law firms, banks, financial firms, hedge funds, and private equity in Midtown. However, this data wasn’t relevant to Michael. And then one day, the obvious question hit: “What are we doing?”
Why was an industry built on data relying on conversations instead of systems? Why not create an industrywide database so key players could quickly access the information they needed, rather than making phone calls? Essentially, move data from offline to online.
What CompStak Does
That moment led to the founding idea behind CompStak Exchange, which uses a credit system to turn an offline, relationship-driven data exchange into a scalable digital platform.
CompStak’s membership includes commercial real estate brokers, fee appraisers, and real estate brokerage research professionals. They share data on CompStak. Originally, they were sharing just lease comps.
But now, by leveraging CompStak, they can share lease comps (detailed records of commercial lease transactions), sales comps (detailed records of sales transactions), and property data.
They earn credits for sharing that data, which acts as a virtual currency. Then, they can use those credits to get other data.
The Business Model: A Data Flywheel
CompStak’s core innovation was simple—but powerful. It introduced a “give-to-get” model in which users contribute deal data (lease comps, sales comps, property data) — approximately two records for every one the user contributes.
They earn credits in return, which can be used to access other data. This created a self-reinforcing system—a free platform for contributors. As a result, more contributors → more data, more data → more value, and more value → more contributors.
Revenue comes from selling aggregated data via subscriptions to real estate investors, lenders, asset managers, consultants, accounting firms, law firms, and government agencies. As Michael explains, a huge breadth of companies can leverage this data.
However, it is primarily used for real estate investment decisions, lending decisions, asset management, tax assessment, tax avoidance, and more. It’s a classic marketplace dynamic—but applied to proprietary data.
Overcoming Resistance: Changing Behavior in a Legacy Industry
The biggest early challenge wasn’t technology; it was trust. Brokers were skeptical about sharing valuable information. They had concerns about the data being exposed publicly on the internet and about capitalizing on the returns.
Michael tackled this the hard way—one conversation at a time. He leaned on credibility because he was a broker himself, understood the incentives, and reframed the behavior. Instead of asking users to do something new, he showed them that they were already sharing data—just inefficiently.
CompStak simply improved the process by making the data available online in a structured, searchable, and more valuable way.
Raising $80M: From Storytelling to Metrics
CompStak went on to raise over $80M, but the journey wasn’t smooth. In the early days, venture capitalists and angel investors questioned the opportunity. They wanted to know if the commercial real estate is big enough and how it fits into social/mobile trends.
Michael explained that real estate is the second-largest asset class in the world. At the time, the tech world was obsessed with “SoLoMo” (Social, Local, Mobile), driven by companies like Foursquare. Investors wanted to evaluate assets according to what they considered viable.
Commercial real estate data wasn’t exactly trendy. Further, Michael was a first-time founder, and raising funding wasn’t easy, given the several challenges. His approach to fundraising was grounded in two principles.
Treat Fundraising Like Sales: Iterate on the pitch constantly, sort through practical and impractical feedback, tweak the pitch accordingly, and address objections systematically. Most importantly, refine messaging over time · Build Unshakable Conviction: Investors didn’t understand the market, so Michael had to become the authority. As he says, “If you don’t believe you’re the expert, no one else will.”
Storytelling is everything that Michael was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (<a href=" target="blank" rel="noopener">see it here</a>), where the most critical slides are highlighted.
Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.
The Evolution of Fundraising and the Long-Term Vision
Michael highlights a critical insight many founders miss. Fundraising changes dramatically by stage. At the early stage, it’s all about the story, vision, and team. However, at a later stage, it’s about metrics, traction, financial performance, and other measurable aspects.
Raising the first $500K is fundamentally different from raising a Series B or C. As the company matures, narrative matters less, and data matters more.
At full maturity, Michael envisions CompStak as the definitive data layer for commercial real estate. He would like to see it embedded across all workflows and trusted by all major stakeholders, including users and customers, brokers, appraisers, investors, lenders, and governments.
But more importantly, CompStak will not just be a vendor—but a partner, and that distinction matters. Users should feel they are getting full value for the money they pay for the platform.
Weathering Cycles: The Reality of Real Estate
CompStak has grown through major macro cycles, including financial volatility, COVID disruptions, and interest rate swings. But Michael’s perspective is clear—everything is cyclical. He refers to a piece of advice Larry Silverstein once gave—never sell real estate or commercial real estate.
The land resources on the planet are limited, and “there's never not going to be a good opportunity in real estate.” However, there will be cycles. History consistently proves that “dead” sectors come back. For instance, retail rebounded after e-commerce fears, and office survived post-9/11 predictions.
Similarly, real estate continues to evolve. His contrarian insight—when consensus says something is dead, that’s often when opportunity is greatest. You just have to have patience.
The Founder Mindset: Conviction + Curiosity
If there’s one thread running through Michael’s journey, it’s conviction, believing in the opportunity despite rejection, and staying the course through uncertainty. He attributes his success to making the best decision with whatever information he had on hand.
Michael also believes in intellectual curiosity, a commitment to constant learning, diving deep into the industries that interest him, and relentlessly questioning the status quo. When entering real estate, he subscribed to every industry publication, read everything daily, and built domain expertise quickly
On entering tech, Michael did the same. There were no shortcuts.
Final Advice: What He’d Tell His Younger Self
Michael doesn’t offer a single piece of advice—because there isn’t one. But the themes are clear. Maintain conviction, stay adaptable, be open to different paths, and immerse yourself deeply in whatever you pursue. And perhaps most importantly: Use rejection as fuel—not a signal to stop.
Spotting inefficiencies in legacy industries is often the fastest path to building category-defining companies. · Conviction matters most when investors and the market don’t yet understand your vision. · Fundraising is a sales process that improves through iteration, feedback, and persistence. · Early-stage success is driven by storytelling, while later-stage growth depends on metrics and traction. · Building trust—not technology—is often the hardest challenge in transforming traditional industries. · Markets are cyclical, and the best opportunities emerge when consensus believes a sector is “dead.” · Intellectual curiosity and deep immersion are critical to making better decisions as a founder.
Original Version
Alejandro Cremades: All righty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Dealmaker Show. So today we have ah an amazing founder, a founder that, you know, is building, scaling, financing. i mean, you name it, all the above. We're going to be talking about cycles, the ups, the downs, you know, quite incredible. You know, the the way that they've been weathering the storms coming their way. And again, you know, we're going talking to about an industry that they've been shaping quite a bit. Again,
Alejandro Cremades: Brace yourself for a very inspiring conversation. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Michael Mandel. Welcome to the show.
Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised there in the New Jersey a area in Cherry Hill. So give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?
Michael Mandel: Growing up was great. um i Cherry Hill's in the Philadelphia area, so big Philadelphia Eagles fan. um Great place to grow up. I'm the youngest of five kids, so never never a dull moment. And it's a good place to be.
Alejandro Cremades: So you went to school in Boston and you went there to Babson. And Babson, one of the top universities, actually, when it comes to to brewing founders. Man, there's so many founders coming out of there.
Alejandro Cremades: what do you what do you where Where did the whole entrepreneurial thing you know hit you? it was When did you develop that? Did you have anyone in the family? Obviously, you know from there, you went to to to work for somebody else before going at it on your own. But it sounds like you already had that seed planted.
Michael Mandel: Yeah, I pretty much always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I mean, maybe when I was a little kid for a minute, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. um My dad's a lawyer, but he's also he you know he was a sole practitioner. So he was also an entrepreneur in in that regard. And his father, you know, before that was was an entrepreneur. But um Yeah, I guess I just always kind of felt like I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I think when I was a little kid, part of it was that I wanted to build thing build things. Part of it was that I've always had a real problem with authority. So the idea of working for someone else just never really you know resonated with me. um
Michael Mandel: And you know i wanted to be rich. That was like when I was a little kid, I just was like, i want to be I want to be super rich. I originally, like Bill Gates was like my idol you know when i when i when i was a kid. So um but I would say the biggest thing has really just been a ah motivation to want to build something.
Michael Mandel: You know, that's I'm always ah it's always really what's been what's what's driven me.
Alejandro Cremades: So why finishing Babson and not going at it? Why why did you go and work for somebody else?
Michael Mandel: Well, I don't think I ever really considered that, you know, not going to college. That seemed like a no-brainer and never felt like an option not to, you know. And i think now it's become maybe slightly more common for entrepreneurs to try to start things and not not do that. And, you know, like the Teal Fellows and things like that, that didn't exist when I when I went to college. But, you know, I went to Babson because Babson was was known as number one in the country for entrepreneurship. So I went in fully with the intention of starting a business and I thought, you know, I'm going to use my time at Babson to learn everything I need to learn to start a business. In fact,
Michael Mandel: you know never thought I was going to have a job after college, period. I thought I was going to come up with the idea while I was at Babson and I was going to start it before I left or when I left and I would be an entrepreneur from day one, which wasn't ultimately the case.
Michael Mandel: I think that was a little bit naive. But it was not at the time it was not at the time very easy to start the kind of business while you were a student that could ultimately really be a big company.
Michael Mandel: um Now things are different. Like now it's a lot, you know, that was like pre AWS, you know, even and, and where you know even just putting a website on the cloud, for instance, was not a straightforward thing and scaling was not straightforward and the cost of server space was high and all the and everything was just was harder.
Michael Mandel: So like now when it comes to like building a technology company, it's certainly more viable to try to start something like that while you're in school. But at the time, like the kind of things that you could start as a student were not likely to be be the kind of things that were going to make a huge difference in the world.
Michael Mandel: And I didn't want to build something small. I didn't want to build a lifestyle business. I wanted to build something big. So and don't know If I had to do it over again, i would be i would probably be more focused on getting a job and getting or and getting internships while I was in college and getting some more real world experience, still having the intention of starting a business, but maybe not been, you know, quite as, you know, Pollyanna about just thinking, oh, yeah, I'm just going to start something the bat.
Alejandro Cremades: But even even even after university, even after Babson, you know you you still waited a little bit longer. you know i was saying you you You went into more like the um the the commercial music production you know side of things and helping people with identity through sound, which sounds quite remarkable, you know quite quite unique.
Alejandro Cremades: But why? you It sounds like you kept delaying it for a while. What was going on?
Michael Mandel: Well, know, so with that, I that was an opportunity where I had met the founder of that company and I wanted to learn from a founder. So I got to kind of be like the right hand man of a founder.
Michael Mandel: And I thought it was just a super interesting business. um Didn't didn't end up loving that industry only did that for a year and then got into commercial real estate brokerage. And and
Alejandro Cremades: And how how how did you get into commercial real estate? Because obviously that played a pivotal role in your your career, especially leading you to to starting Comstax. So how did that land you know across your desk?
Michael Mandel: Yeah, it's a good question, actually, because at the time you could not apply for a job to be a commercial real estate broker. There were no jobs to be a commercial real estate broker. It was 100% an industry. the only way you could um get a job as a broker was to know somebody.
Michael Mandel: You had to network into it. That was part of part of sort of the the the trick in getting those jobs. So I ended up getting into it through my My brother-in-law's brother who worked at CBRE, who then introduced me to his cousin who worked at Grub & Ellis.
Michael Mandel: And I ended up working at Grub & Ellis. They were starting something called the Grub Hub for like you know to get junior brokers going. But I wanted to do commercial real estate brokerage because, first of all, I liked the tangibility of real estate.
Michael Mandel: like You can see and touch the buildings that you're seeing every day. And they were big and it was Manhattan and they're valuable. And I was like, this is cool. And that was appealing. And two,
Michael Mandel: It is as entrepreneurial of a career as you can have without truly being an entrepreneur. It's a commission-based job. It's fully commissioned. You eat what you kill. And the most in the more successful commercial real estate brokers you know in New York City routinely can bring in seven figures every year. you know that that You can do that and no one's stopping your your potential there and your growth opportunity. And so that was appealing to me. But I never intended to be a broker forever. I always intended to start a business. you know But also the reality for me was you know I had a bunch of student loans.
Michael Mandel: I was living in New York City, you know paying rent in New York City. and i needed i wasn't in the luxurious position that maybe some of my friends were, where I could go start something and my parents were going to bankroll me. I was i was bankrolling myself and and paying my student loans and my rent and whatnot. And so I needed to figure out a way to you know sustain my life while I tried to figure out what I was going to build.
Alejandro Cremades: So then let's talk about that because eventually when you're now in the commercial real estate day segment, you start getting involved with data centers and and you start to also get exposed to a problem.
Alejandro Cremades: And that is the problem that ended up you know really giving birth to ComStack. So walk us through what were the sequence of events that needed to happen for you two to really be exposed to that problem, for you to be like, I got to take action.
Michael Mandel: Yeah, well, I would say that, you know, my mentality was always such that I was constantly looking for opportunities to start something. And interestingly enough, you know, commercial real estate brokerage and commercial cry the commercial real estate industry was and in many ways still is just incredibly antiquated.
Michael Mandel: And so finding opportunities of ways to change and kind of revolutionize in some capacity the industry was almost easy. There was like everywhere you look, if you were just if you were actively looking, there were opportunities. It was just such an old school relationship driven you know industry that if you wanted to apply novel ways to to change things, you could. And so I actually I kept a list of different ideas of ways to change the industry and um decided to pursue, you know, Comstack and this particular idea because it felt like the best one. But ultimately, what it came down to was as a broker, I was trading data with other brokers all the time.
Michael Mandel: So we had in our office a Monday morning meeting, which all the major brokerage firms would do. where all the brokers sit around a giant boardroom table for like, you know, i don't know, two or three hours on a Monday morning just talking about deals happening in the market.
Michael Mandel: And I was expected to bring comps, you know deal information to the table every Monday morning. So I'd be frantically calling up other brokers that I knew from other firms on Sunday night to get comps. And I would be, and I'd share comps with them that, that you know, I had for deals I knew about so that I could bring those to the Monday morning meeting.
Michael Mandel: But, you know, as you mentioned, like I was doing office deals in New York, but mostly like for like creative firms and tech companies and media companies and things like that. And I also did did data center work.
Michael Mandel: And the deals most people were talking about in the Monday morning meeting were the traditional New York City office deals, law firms, banks, financial firms, hedge funds, private equity, and you know, and most of them in Midtown. And I was mostly doing deals in Midtown South.
Michael Mandel: you know, it mostly wasn't relevant to me. And the idea for ComStack just came from like, what the hell are we doing? Like we're sitting around wasting hours every week talking about random deals.
Michael Mandel: When it comes to education and growing at the pace of CompStak, what did you put around yourself to make better decisions?
Michael Mandel: Intellectual curiosity is critical. It’s one of the key things we screen for in employees.
Michael Mandel: You need to constantly learn and question what’s going on around you.
Michael Mandel: When I wanted to get into commercial real estate, I subscribed to every trade publication and read everything daily so I knew what was happening.
Michael Mandel: When I got into tech, I read books like Venture Deals and all the relevant blogs about fundraising and building in tech.
Michael Mandel: You have to immerse yourself in the industry. There are no shortcuts.
Michael Mandel: Even now, with AI creating shortcuts, you still need the foundational understanding to think critically about those shortcuts.
Michael Mandel: So it’s about defining your goal and identifying the resources that will help you learn what you need to achieve it.
Alejandro Cremades: For people listening who want to reach out or learn more about CompStak, what’s the best way?
Michael Mandel: Sure. You can email me at michael@compstak.com. My X handle is Michael A. Mandel, and I’m M Mandel on LinkedIn. CompStak is just CompStak everywhere—C-O-M-P-S-T-A-K.
Michael Mandel: You can find us at CompStak.com or on X. It’s not hard to find us.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Michael, it’s been a true honor to have you with us on the DealMaker Show. Thank you so much for your time.
