1. What’s the next big innovation or development in the built environment that you’re most looking forward to?
The end of software as we know it. That is not a provocation, it is what we are living every day at Quanthome.
What excites me most is not a single technology but a structural shift: when data is properly structured behind the scenes, AI can generate interfaces, dashboards, and analyses on demand. The traditional software model, where you pay for a fixed application, train your team to use it, and adapt your workflow to its limitations, is collapsing. In its place, something far more powerful is emerging: ask a question, get exactly the analysis you need, in the format you want, in seconds.
We see it concretely. Our engineers have not written a single line of traditional code in three months. Everything is built through AI-assisted development, prompt engineering, and structured data pipelines. The software industry itself is being reinvented by AI. For the built environment, this means that institutional investors, fund managers, and asset owners will soon access real estate intelligence the way they access financial data today. Instantly, conversationally, without intermediaries. The firms that structure their data now will shape the industry. Those that do not will keep paying premium prices for tools that are rapidly becoming obsolete.
And here is what I find most exciting: the digitalisation of the real estate industry has been promised since the early 2000s. Two decades of pilot projects, proof of concepts, and incremental progress. It may finally happen, not through traditional software adoption, but through AI systems that remove the friction entirely. This could reshape everything. The processes, the analysis, the construction workflows, BIM, facility management, investment decision-making, portfolio monitoring. The entire value chain of the built environment is about to be transformed, and this time it is not a promise. The technology is here.
2. What have younger team members pushed you to rethink?
Everyone is young at Quanthome, especially the founders. I will be honest: younger team members are not always the most creative. They often come formatted by what school taught them. Structured thinking, established frameworks, conventional approaches. And that is fine. But what they have truly pushed me to rethink is motivation itself.
For a generation entering the workforce today, salary is not the primary driver. They want to understand the purpose behind the work. Why does this matter? What is the impact? What financial transformation are we enabling? There is also something specific to real estate that resonates with them: it is a concrete asset class. At the age of crypto and structured products, younger generations are genuinely interested in connecting to reality. Buildings exist. People live in them, work in them. That tangibility matters to a generation looking for meaning beyond abstract financial instruments.
At Quanthome, we are making real estate, the world’s largest asset class, more transparent, more measurable, and more accountable. That narrative, when it is genuine, is what motivates a young engineer or analyst to push harder, far more than a bonus ever could.
So the real lesson from younger teammates is not about technology or innovation. It is about leadership. You have to lead with meaning. You have to articulate why your company’s work has impact. If you cannot, no compensation package will retain the talent you need.
3. What would need to change for more women to reach partner level in the built environment industry?
Everything. Recruitment has become a networking process, not a hiring process. Building the right team is the hardest and most important job of any founder, especially in the early years. Jeff Bezos once said that if you are happy with one out of every two people you hire, you are already among the best. I deeply believe that.
Today, I recruit from my network. Friends, former colleagues, people I deeply trust and who have demonstrated loyalty and integrity over time. And critically, I look for people more intelligent than me. Intelligence matters enormously, but so does communication. In the age of AI, the ability to articulate ideas clearly, to express opinions with precision, is what actually develops the product. Your engineers no longer just write code; they write prompts, they challenge AI outputs, they structure thinking. The people who communicate best are the ones who build the best products.
Five years ago, recruiting was about CVs and technical tests. Today, it is about trust, shared conviction, and the ability to think and communicate at the speed the market demands.
4. Which part of your business process do you think AI will struggle to replace?
Deciding to build a data company rather than a software company. When we started Quanthome, everyone expected us to build dashboards and features, the classic SaaS playbook. Instead, we invested everything into structuring data: unifying building-level information with fund analytics, ESG metrics, and financial performance across the entire Swiss market. People told us it was invisible work, that clients would not pay for infrastructure they could not see.
But I was convinced that in a world moving toward AI, the only lasting competitive advantage would be the quality and depth of your data. Software would become a commodity; data would become the moat. That bet now defines everything we do, and it is proving right faster than I expected.
