A practical foundation for CRE information that deserves better than another spreadsheet.

I’m Tony Bobay. Before Space Connect, I spent more than a decade working in land and investment brokerage, economic development, urban planning, and municipal consulting. In these roles, I worked with a lot of developers, property owners, and local governments on complex questions that rarely had a simple answer. Even if we did have the data to answer the questions, it wasn’t ever organized, structured, queryable, or actionable.

Many of you who have worked with me, know that I’ve always liked analyzing problems, figuring out how things work, creatively solving problems, and building things myself. I’ve been interested in complex financial modelling, data science, and analysis. So much so that even back in 2016, well before I knew how to program or build software, I taught myself AI and neural networks by building a handwritten-digit recognition experiment in Excel because I hate not knowing how things worked. I felt compelled to understand upcoming AI revolution from the raw math up specifically because of that disdain for ignorance.

With that knowledge secured and seeing this change was on the horizon, I realized that the highest value that someone could bring to that world is in the form of organizing and making data easier to use, analyze, and manage. Where better to learn than in the messiest yet most potentially valuable data market in the world in Commercial Real Estate?

We’ve all experienced the deep frustrations of poorly organized, unstructured, and incomplete data when we’ve all got a treasure trove of old OMs, pitch decks, market studies, comps reports, Excel models, and old emails busting our inboxes and documents folders. Or the fact that there is so much useful information out there available for free on the public web that could be incredibly useful if it could be combined with the rest of the data that we had. The biggest problem being the complications in translating those various data sources into a single coherent framework because the poorly designed systems weren’t built for the flexibility and variability of real world data.

I also hated the way that the rest of the proptech industry approached this in the past, by essentially holding our own data ransom for a fee, and was hellbent on returning the control and ownership of that data to it’s rightful owners.

It’s because of those frustrations that we set out to solve this by building the SC.Community as the foundation of the Space Connect Intelligence Ecosystem. We built it to serve as the dynamic and flexible data foundation for this new world we are living in, and empower the users and owners of the data to be able to easily organize and utilize it in our daily lives and business.

In brokerage, I ran my business under the motto of “Add value always, and in all ways”.  I always tried my best to be the person who would shoot you straight, including when neither of us particularly wanted to hear the answer.

I run Space Connect the same way. We haven’t taken outside funding to ensure that our incentives are properly aligned with you, and solving your problems first and foremost. By staying lean and independent, it gives us room to offer free Early Access, listen to users, and build without being forced by investors to meet their goals, instead of yours.

Outside work, I’m an avid stormchaser and nature photographer, love road trips and exploration, and still play semi-pro football at 35. I cook, play piano, and draw, paint, and sculpt. I also co-founded YIMBY Denver, and I’m a diehard IU and Notre Dame fan.

Connect with Tony on LinkedIn or contact Space Connect Investments Company.