The Exchanges

Q a few years. And, and, and presumably, I mean, I have to imagine that That early experience, you know, that was that certainly first campaign. There was a lot of energy idealism. It was a lot of people who were committed to social justice work when many of them eventually started social enterprises. Um, do you think that's where your energy for what you do now in part came from?

A For sure. I would never trade in that opportunity that I had to work on the Obama campaign for anything. It, it really did Ground me both in understanding the power of having Clear set of values that you operate from as an organization and making sure that that's known and felt across entire operation. In that case, in the Obama campaign, it was all about respect and power include, you know, no matter what, there's a way in which you can honor what people, what their talents and the resources, what they are and what they can bring to the table. And you could find a way to line those up to achieve a greater outcome. If you would just, just empower them. Right. I also learned personally what I'm passionate about, what I'm good at, and what I'm good at is enrolling people. My dad always said if I had been announced more religious, I definitely would have been a pastor. Um, but given that that wasn't my, my path that, you know, getting people excited, telling a story, having people see themselves in that story, and getting them motivated to be a part of it, uh, was what my job was. Uh, but I, I didn't, you know, this is in hindsight. At the time, I was just doing it because I thought, Man, this is, this is the next thing that needs to happen, and I also never thought a guy that looked like me would ever have a chance of running for president.

AI assessment note: “For sure. I would never trade in that opportunity that I had”

Q can often meet other super motivated people who want to start business. Um, and, and that's what you did. You met some friends there who you ended up co-founding, landed with. Before we get to, to landed, what was the problem that you Landed on, so to speak. What was the problem that you discovered or thought about that you wanted to try and figure out how you could solve?

A I remember sitting in, this is, I think I'm the only person in the world that was inspired in an intro to finance class. And in this class there, we talked a lot about the concept of diversification and the power of diversifying where your money is so that if one investment goes up, Another one can go down, and you still could be in a good, good place. And that was key to how rich people stayed rich. And I just remember sitting there being struck by the fact that no one in my social circles thinks that way. Like, people don't have enough stuff, enough money, enough capital to even think about diversifying. Most people were just thinking about How the heck am I going to save enough to ever get a down payment on a home, right? That's really about the pinnacle of investing is having your own home. And I thought, man, it would be really, first of all, crazy. I'm an overeducated person. And just now thinking about this, why, why haven't I been forced to really learn this earlier on? And, and, and number two is what if, what if we could bring the tools of high finance and tools of the wealthy To more people. Democratize who has access to build, build wealth in the first place.

AI assessment note: “what if we could bring the tools of high finance and tools of the wealthy”

Q And, and just to clarify for a sec, I mean, when, when you, when you're hearing this idea about wealth diversification, you start thinking, how can we democratize access to tools that enable people to, to, you know, to build wealth? You're not thinking like, oh, let's do a, you know, uh, an easy trading platform or an easy, like index fund or something. You're thinking property.

A That's where my head went, because that's what I knew really well. And honestly, I'm a millennial. A millennial who lived in San Francisco Bay Area. I was like, how the heck am I going to be able to afford to buy a home at some point? You know, it was a selfish motivation, too. Just like, I need a tool that moves me from being a renter to being an owner. The zero or one, you know, kind of Dilemma. What's the gradient in between? I will say, though, that's where, you know, partnering up, meeting other people who have come from a different background was super important, something I also believe in. And you got, if you're going to build something great, you got to diversify your team. And my co-founder, Jonathan, um, came at it from a slightly different angle, but, but awakened me to another thing that was going on, uh, in our, in our economy, in our society, which is given how expensive land is and, and, and becoming, um, This is one area that had yet to really leverage technology to disaggregate or disintermediate, um, investing in something like real estate, that there were a lot of people who would want to invest in real estate, but just can't because of the cost of entry is too big. So what, what if you made it easier to access, um, investment in one of the biggest asset classes in the world and do so in a more cooperative way with the people who want to live in it? So it wa…

AI assessment note: “That's where my head went, because that's what I knew really well.”

Q so the goal, of course, is to build homeownership, because that is the most common way to wealth. And so, from what I've read about Landed, many of the people who are working with you are coming from lower income backgrounds, also Minority communities as well, right? I mean, a lot of Black, Latino, first-time homeowners who don't have that home that was passed them by their parent or grandparent.

A Yeah, you're right on the nose there. I mean, it's the federal government for generations made it illegal to basically build wealth and pass it along to your next generation or Set it up so that you got a chance for ownership, but then lost it. That happened in 2008. You know, it most impacted black families. And so, um, the idea that, you know, if you have a tool that actually can act as the bank of mom and dad that a lot of people don't have, you could help people get into this game, this game of home ownership, this game of ownership period that helps build wealth. Uh, and that's, so what we're, what we found is that while Even though you don't have to explicitly say, or, or focus it on being a tool for BIPOC home buyers, let's say, that you do have people disproportionately who don't come from intergenerational wealth using a tool like this.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, you're right on the nose there.”

Q What sort of age ranges are you, are you seeing in people approaching you?

A You got everybody. I mean, I mean, obviously first time home buyers, this is very attractive too, because they don't have another asset to sell and, you know, you have some down payment for. So that means a lot of people who are in their maybe late twenties, early thirties, a A lot of people, right, you know, making big life decisions, getting married, maybe going to have kids. Um, but you also have people who are retired or near retirement age and haven't ever owned a home and want to own their home now. Or, you know, uh, there's one, one home buyer I remember who shared that she needed help from, from Landon because she needed to buy a bigger home because her kids were moving back in. You know, that's just, that's the world we live in now. And, you know, now she was going to have her kids and her grandkids under one roof. And so she was going to need a little bit of support to get there. So you really had people to coming up this from all sorts of angles.

AI assessment note: “a lot of people who are in their maybe late twenties, early thirties”

Q for 20 years if, if, or 30 years if they take a 30 year mortgage. I mean, how do we keep the cash coming in? Because we've got this pool of, let's say we would have two hundred million dollars in this pool. You know, it's gonna, it's gonna dwindle over time if we don't have money coming in quickly enough. So how do you get it coming back faster?

A Great question. Well, that, that's why having a strong relationship with the consumer and keeping them top of mind on how their home is not only a roof over their head and, A place where the kids grow up, but actually an investment, and keeping them informed with what might be in their interests, what kind of actions might be in their interests to take to make sure they're getting the most out of that investment, including getting out of this partnership. And in talking to investors, part of the reason people got comfortable with the time horizon is that, you know, the pattern of how people refinance even without Landed is something, data that you can look at. If you're, typically people are refinancing anywhere from five to eight years to drive down their interest rate or for, for some other reason. And so- If that's already happening, then you can expect that to happen with this product as well. And there are, like I said, there are a lot of different experiments with shared appreciation all over this country. Um, and actually all over the world. I mean, the UK has had one of the biggest shared appreciation down payment programs ever done. And, and, and, you know, the data shows that people tend to, uh, get out much sooner than 30 years. 30 years matches the mortgage. It makes, um, makes the government comfortable. We partner with Fannie Mae to make sure we follow, you know, …

AI assessment note: “typically people are refinancing anywhere from five to eight years”