Michael Mandel, founder of CompStak, discusses his journey of raising $80M for his crowdsourced commercial real estate data platform.
Michael Mandel, founder of CompStak, discusses his journey of raising $80M for his crowdsourced commercial real estate data platform. He shares insights on overcoming investor doubts and convincing them of his vision for revolutionizing the real estate industry, especially in a niche market and transforming it into a cutting edge business.
Absolutely. Maintaining conviction was the right move and I would encourage myself to maintain conviction. All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the Dealmaker Show. So today we have a 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. Uh, and again, you know, we're going to be talking to about an industry that they've been shaping quite a bit. Again, brace yourself for a very inspiring conversation. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Michael Mandel. Welcome to the show. >> Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. >> So, originally born and raised there in the New Jersey area in Cherry Hill. So, give us a walk through memory
lane. How was life growing up for you? >> Uh, growing up was great. I'm I um Cherry Hills in the Philadelphia area. So, um big Philadelphia Eagles fan. Um great place to grow up. I'm the youngest of five kids, so um never never a dull moment. Uh and um it was a good place to be. So you went to school in Boston uh and you went there to Babson and Babson one of the top universities actually when it comes to to brewing founders and there's so many founders coming out of there. What do you what do you where did the whole entrepreneurial thing you know hit you? 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. >> 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. Um, 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, um 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 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 a motivation to want to build
something, you know, that's I'm always it's always really what's been what's what's driven me. >> So, why finishing Babson and and not going at it? Why why did you go and work for somebody else? >> Well, I I don't think I ever really considered that, you know, not going to college. That seemed like a no-brainer. And I and and um it 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. Um and you know, like the 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, you know, I never thought I was going to have a job after college, period. Like, 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. I think that was a little bit naive. um you know but um you know it was 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. 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 and everything was so just was harder. So like now when it comes to like building a technology company,
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. 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, I don't know if I had to do it over again, I would be um 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, polyiana about just thinking, oh yeah, I'm just going to go start something. >> But even even after university, even after Babson, you know, you you still waited a little bit longer. you know, it
was a you you you went into more like the um 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. Um but but why why you it sounds like you kept delaying it for a while. What's going on? >> 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 and 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. Um, >> and how how did you get into commercial real estate because obviously that played a pivotal you know role in your in your career especially leading you to to starting Comack. So, so how did that land you know
across your desk? 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 by which the only way you could um get a job as a broker was to know somebody. Uh you had to network into it. That was part of part of sort of the 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 and Ellis. Um, and I ended up working at Grub and Ellis. Um, they were starting something called the GrubHub 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. Like, you can see in the buildings 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 like it is as entrepreneurial of a career as you can have without truly being an entrepreneur. It's a commissionbased job. It's fully commission. 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's 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. I was living in New York City, you know, paying rent in New York City, and I needed I I 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. >> So then let's talk about that because eventually when you're now in the commercial real estate segment, you start getting involved with data centers and and you start to also get exposed to a problem 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 to to really be exposed to that program and for you to be like I got to take action. I want to start this thing now. >> Yeah. Well, I would say that you know my mentality was always such that I was constantly
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