Tyler Vinson
REtokens USA Inc.
Tyler Vinson built a $100M personal real estate business, then pivoted to become a FINRA-regulated broker-dealer and SEC-registered Alternative Trading System. REtokens USA Inc. has now facilitated roughly a quarter billion in tokenized real estate volume. His hiring philosophy just shifted hard: AI proficiency is now non-negotiable, but it will never replace the founder who understands what people actually buy.
Tyler spent 15+ years closing personal real estate deals. He owned a brokerage. He managed property. Then tokenization arrived, and he realized that tokenizing real estate assets without a regulated marketplace to trade them was a lie—liquidity requires a trading platform. That realization forced a complete reinvention. He went from managing cash flow and people in traditional real estate to building a FINRA-member broker-dealer with SEC-registered Alternative Trading System licensing across federal, state, and territorial jurisdictions. It’s not hyperbole to say he became an investment banker overnight.
That pivot broke the old hiring playbook. Real estate hiring had been traditional, predictable, and linear. REtokens required regulatory licenses that didn’t exist in his previous organizations: Series 24 principals, compliance officers holding Series 24 or 27 licenses, FinOps, cybersecurity specialists, SOC 2 compliance moderators. He had to hire people in roles he’d never managed before, in an industry he was learning in real time.
I go from real estate licensing in that traditional world to now real estate tokenization, which is the securities world. I’ve had to get securities licenses.
Tyler Vinson, REtokens USA Inc.
Tyler’s first instinct was to find a technical co-founder by searching for someone with crypto expertise. He found a cryptographer on paper. They almost became partners. Then information surfaced at the last moment that made him walk away. He calls it the near-miss that saved him.
That failure taught him something crucial: founder partnerships require as much diligence as marriage counseling. He got a questionnaire from a mentor—one designed for vetting business partnerships. He customized it. He learned that “go with your gut” sounds cliché but is actually non-negotiable. He also learned that red flags don’t disappear if you move fast.
Then he reconnected with someone he’d known for 30 years: a software engineer in Whitefish, Montana who had an actual interest in blockchain. No fancy recruiting process. No interviews in glass conference rooms. Just two people who’d known each other since elementary school, sitting in a room and deciding to build something together. That’s the co-founder model that actually worked.
Don’t be hasty about partnerships. It’s very much like a marriage. Really understand each other well. Don’t be afraid to ask hard questions.
Tyler Vinson, REtokens USA Inc.
When REtokens went through the initial SEC and FINRA licensing process, Tyler hired people referred to him by others already working in the space. They had the licenses. They filled the seats. They played the regulatory roles. Nothing stuck.
He fired them all. Then he rehired—but with one non-negotiable filter: passion for the mission. The second round of hires believed in the vision. They believed that tokenizing real estate would democratize access to institutional-grade investments. They believed the future economy is digital. They cared about breaking down barriers for everyday people—teachers, firefighters, servers—to own real estate.
The difference wasn’t credentials. It was culture. Once he aligned hiring around belief in the mission rather than just competency for the role, the friction disappeared. People rowed the same direction. When they disagreed, it was about sharpening the saw, not about competing visions.
We’ve literally parted ways with them and rehired. The difference was people who weren’t passionate about what we were building to now those roles are filled with people that actually believe in what we’re doing.
Tyler Vinson, REtokens USA Inc.
Early 2026 marked a turning point. Tyler went from treating AI as an accelerant to treating it as a requirement for every hire outside of pure admin. Systems builders, operations people, marketers, engineers—if they weren’t genuinely keen on AI and didn’t have actual proficiency, the role stayed unfilled.
Here’s the crucial distinction: AI proficiency on the back end is one thing. It makes engineers faster. It helps architects design systems more efficiently. But people are losing sight of the front-end reality. Sales don’t happen in code. Client education doesn’t happen in systems. People still buy from people. You can’t hold AI accountable when a deal falls through or a client has questions. The sales team at REtokens—Series 7 licensed professionals selling alternative assets and tokenized real estate securities—need to understand the business deeply. They need relationships. AI helps them manage workflow and research faster. It doesn’t replace their job.
The result: fewer total headcount, higher output per person. Over the last six months especially, as AI tools became mainstream and easier to use, one developer can do what used to require a middleman or multiple engineers. Tyler’s co-founder, who understands AI deeply, can leverage himself out of much of the low-level work. When REtokens hires the next operations person, the job isn’t to replace three people. It’s to take the baton on AI-augmented systems and keep building.
If you know AI really well, it’s going to be a full tool belt that you can go into that job with, and you’re probably going to be able to be as productive as maybe a few people by yourself.
Tyler Vinson, REtokens USA Inc.
Traditional real estate hiring is linear and internal: hire marketing, hire operations, hire compliance, build the org chart. REtokens’ scaling strategy is different. The tokenization ecosystem is fragmented. One company focuses on the asset pipeline. Another builds retail investor lists. Another handles the regulatory licensing. No single company owns the entire stack.
Instead of hiring 50 new people to cover the gaps, Tyler is looking at strategic partnerships and acquisitions. Bring in a company that specializes in one segment of the ecosystem. Evaluate whether the cultures and people align. If they do, integrate. If the field is new and sparse, even potential competitors can work together because there’s enough ground to cover.
This is new territory for a founder who built through organic growth in real estate. But in a category that didn’t exist three years ago, traditional hiring org-charts don’t apply. The fastest way to reach the scale needed for mainstream adoption is to stitch together complementary pieces of the ecosystem, not to rebuild them internally.
Tyler’s final word to founders building in spaces nobody understands yet: go with your gut. It’s cliché. It’s also non-negotiable. Business owners get excited and move fast. They overlook red flags that their intuition caught. They believe a résumé and miss what a reference check would reveal. They hire strictly for skill set and ignore whether the person actually wants to be there.
Wrong hires cost more than salary. They cost time. They cost team effort. They can erode culture for people who were already on the team. They can cause good employees to leave. Before you bring someone in, have them do the work in their skill set. Have them interview with other team members. Take your time. Make sure the cultural fit is the apex—not the consolation prize.
You can fill a seat and know AI. We’re still not going to hire you if you don’t believe in what we’re doing.
Tyler Vinson, REtokens USA Inc.
If you've got somebody that is part of your systems building and operations, even marketing, if they're not really keen on AI and have a passion for that, it's going to be difficult to reach a productivity levels that you need to. I would even make the argument that at the beginning of 2026, that became much more of a profound thing for us.
AI proficiency, it's absolutely paramount when we're hiring for clients as well now. And they don't want anybody that's not at least AI filled.
On the back end, AI is really crucial. However, it does not solve all the problems. On the front end, people are losing sight of that true interpersonal connection, that human being on the other end. While AI may help on the back end and help your proficiency in your system, it's not going to make sales for you. It's not going to educate your client.
People need to hold somebody accountable, right? You can't hold AI accountable. And people still buy from people.
If you had a tele-founder that's about to hire in the space that nobody really understands yet, what's one thing you would tell them about hiring?
Um, so
Really excited to have him here today talk about something he hasn't really talked on the other podcast about, which is building the teams behind real estate and health technology. Tyler, welcome.
I appreciate you having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Likewise. So, you know, I've got to listen about your background and correct me on the actual number, but in in the hundreds of millions of real estate transactions right?
Yes, personally, as a principal, I've done over a hundred million dollars of investment transactions. I own a brokerage, so you can add third-party transactions on top of that. And as a tokenization platform, we've done about a quarter billion in tokenized real estate volume.
Wow, so in the the past few years, the tokenized volume has surpassed all of the real estate volume in the past 15, 20 years?
It has as far as tokenized offerings being made. You know, as far as you know, transactions completed, that's not the same number. I would say the 100 million and personal transactions is uh more prominent than that, but they all kind of play under the same real estate investment umbrella, which is which is what I bleed.
So, real estate, it's known for for being traditional. You have real estate agents and mortgage brokers. You got really creative with it through creative financing deals to not now tokenization. But, traditionally it's been a very I don't want to say cookie-cutter, but uh well, they have processes and rules and and all all these regulations, but it seems like you're really playing into that and figuring out some creative ways to do it. But, now with technology, which brings me back to hiring. And how did you Is it really a a very different profile now that you're hiring for in this tech world verse 10, 15 years ago when you when you first started building teams?
Yeah, unquestionably. And I I think, you know, when you talk about uh real estate and as you're alluding to, it's very traditional, right? So, you're not not normally hiring innovative positions uh in that space, although AI is I think changing most industries and real estate included. But, yeah, real estate traditionally has been a bit of a dinosaur, you know? I mean, other than when you the MLS that everybody searches for a home went from a big thick book, you know, to the internet, there's been very few innovations there. So, I go from real estate licensing in that kind of traditional world to now real estate tokenization, which really is the securities world. So, now I've when we've had to get securities licenses. Wait, we own a FINRA member broker-dealer and digital ATS, alternative trading system. So, that's a marketplace and we have our own software platform that needs to be compliant because to where anybody could kind of be a buyer and seller in the traditional real estate world and the securities world, which is what we deal in when we're talking about tokenized real estate, they have to go through KYC, know your customer, AML, anti-money laundering, often accreditation built right into the platform, and broker-dealer due diligence for these these offerings. And the hiring had a lot more to do with folks that could help on uh building the technology and some of the operational systems. And so, it was a lot more vertically integrated as we moved into RE tokens compared to the traditional real estate model.
I don't think there are many people that that do that. How did they go from real estate investing to you're an investment banker now, essentially? That that's amazing. So, how did you learn to go and hire these engineers are going to go code in in blockchain and go and build the software side because you used to outsource it, all right? So, now you have these folks or or is it still that that's a good method is to go and find a good partner to build the software alongside your vision?
Yeah, both. I mean, fortunately for me, uh my co-founder on RE tokens is a software engineer. And so, he understands intimately how to, you know, build software and do that. So, it's been a little bit of combination of both where we've built some proprietary softwares like the hub of the platform, that kind of all the parts plug into, is something that we had to build on our own and like the uh marketplace or the exchange, the ATS, the secondary marketplace we're launching, we had to build the entire interface for that. Uh and at the same time, there's a lot of uh for the techies out there that understand API integrations and things like that that were done to plug into some of our vendors cuz it's really a robust settlement system and compliance system that has to be all connected. I mean, if you want we can kind of geek out on what those web rails look like, but bottom line is it was much more of a hybrid of even when you hired out vendors, it just wasn't a plug and play. There had to be development things like that done to make it work as one congruent system.
Yeah, I mean that the industry is exploding here. We have some clients in the blockchain space and they hire solidity developers and the smart contract developers to to go and and connect you think you're talking about. Well, you found a co-founder that understands this and this is a question a lot of our our listeners always ask as well as you know, do I need a technical co-founder? It sounds like in your case it was amazing. How how did you end up finding your co-founder?
You know, if you bear with me, I'll give a little bit of background and story of folks that are truly interested and if they're thinking about, you know, teaming up with somebody to build the team because in the real estate business it was just me. I was the only principal in that and you know, that was part of my desire in building something bigger is it's very difficult to do that on your own. Do you look at some of the largest companies out there? There's normally a team of you know, principals or founders. There's more than one and that's how I was looking at it. So, what I did originally was I listen to podcasts and things like that all the time and I had heard somebody talking about crypto and real estate. This is years ago and before, you know, tokenization was even a thing. It was more like the ICO initial coin offering buzzword world. But anyway, I had heard him. So, I picked up his book, read his book real quick and contacted him because I knew I know real estate. I know investment, but I knew that future digital economy required somebody that understand the technology deeply and in particular blockchain. I reached out to this individual, ended up making a connection, and we've got quite a bit down the line as far as about to do partnership. And then some information came to light at the very end which, you know, I just chose to not move forward with that.
I thought it was a happy happy like that's nuts.
So, that led to my relationship with my co-founder. I just want to kind of pause and give everybody this this lesson that I learned cuz it could be dangerous. I think we get excited to find somebody that on paper fits. And this person was a cryptographer. He fit on paper for sure. But, don't be hasty about moving into partnerships. It is very much like a marriage situation and you guys uh need to really have a no-holds-barred thing. I have a big questionnaire I went through and really understand each other well. I won't get into all the details, but don't be hasty about that. Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions. Be very open. Expect them to be very open and listen to red flags. So, that didn't work out and I happened to be talking to a friend of mine that I'd known since elementary school. And he had gone to Seattle and I was in Spokane. He did tech, I did real estate. He later moved to Whitefish. And we just keep in touch once in a while. I knew he was a software engineer. I knew he was doing that. So, I was explaining this uh you know, the situation I was in. I talked to him about the software company and blockchain. And he was one of the few people that had not only heard about it, but had an interest in it. So, he already had an interest in blockchain and potentially developing on the blockchain. And I'd known him for, you know, 30 years at that point. So, I ended up picking up my family, going to Whitefish for a week. We sat down in a broom. And that's how I formed, you know, the partnership. And the reason it's successful is because I do the front end, he does the back end. I'm you know, the the CEO, I'm kind of the sales side, the marketing side, the people connection side, and he's the tech side, the building side, the architecting side on the back end. And I think when you get complimentary pieces like that, they're able to work together really well. So, I know that was a lengthy thing on the co-founder, but hopefully there's beautiful
nuggets in there for you listeners, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. So, you said you said you have a a questionnaire. Did somebody share that with you? Did you develop that yourself? Did you go to a course for this? Like how did you learn to get that deep in in in this?
Yeah, so I had a mentor of mine, uh somebody that hired for coaching, and it's something that he used for his clients. So, he sent that to me as a Word document. So, I changed it around to custom fit what was important to me.
Love it. And in terms of of coaching, so is that something you're a big believer in? Is is hiring coaches to level you up, level your team up in in certain areas? How how have you leveraged coaches in in the past?
Yeah, I very much believe in hiring coaches or mentors or going to get that educational aspect. I've done that my entire life. The one thing that I'll warn about coaching, cuz I very much am a fan of coaching. I've hired multiple coaches, and I get great value every time because I take it very seriously, and I hire serious coaches. My warning on that is take action. You've got to do some things, right? You can't just take information or coaching and think it's a magic pill where things are going to happen. So, you know, it may be it may be good advice, you'll have to decide on your own to get some initial coaching, you know, directionally, game plan-wise, set it up right, and and then just go do your thing. Go do your thing, and don't look over your shoulder for your coach to save you or anything else. It's going to get messy, you're going to break things, you're going to make mistakes. Go after it and once you have some of that experience, whether that's a year, two years, or whatever, it's probably another good time to to bring a coach in and look at all your blind spots and and help you. But I am a fan of coaching, yes.
Love it. Love it. So, when you mentioned a lot of terms that you give I you were going to know, right? KYB, KYC. I I know because of our our clients in this space have been hiring for these roles. How have you stayed up-to-date on everything that you need to hire for now? And how has that changed where, you know, we were talking about real estate being very traditional. Now you have all these different roles that you that I frankly, you know, maybe didn't even exist um 3 years ago. At least it was faced in uh So, so talk to me more about that.
Yeah, I think some of it has been learn as you go. Like I said, you get in, you start doing the thing and you realize, okay, I need, you know, this type of operations or system building or I'm, you know, wearing too many hats. And so, there's kind of two sides of the token, pun intended. One side being AI, right? I mean, it's just undeniable now. I wish I had, you know, different answers there uh you know, other than than the AI, but it's true. If you've got somebody that is part of your systems building and operations, even marketing and all of that, if they're not really keen on AI and have a passion for that, it's going to be difficult to reach the productivity levels that you need to. And I don't think that's always been the case. I would even make the argument that the beginning of 2026, that became much more of a profound thing for us. So, on the back end, you know, AI's really crucial. However, it does not solve all the problems. On the front end, people are losing sight of that true interpersonal connection, that human being on the other end, other end, that experience of somebody talking to you about, you know, your business and the product and what changes. So, for the sales side of us, not real estate brokers in the in the securities world, but like Series 7 sales people, and these aren't your traditional stock brokers, right? That's what a Series 7 often is. This is what are called alternative assets or RWAs or tokenized real estate securities, any of those things, but it's a different, you know, it's a different look, and these people this is about relationships, this is about understanding business, and while AI may help on the back end and help your proficiency in your systems, it's not going to make sales for you. It's not going to educate your clients. It's not going to allow you to educate, you know, who you're talking to. So, I'm glad to have both skill sets. It would mean a lot.
100% that certain people need to hold somebody accountable, right? You can't hold AI accountable. The And and and people still buy from people. What what we have been seeing is what you said on the on the back end where when hiring engineers now the expectation is they're at least 3x, often times 10x. Are you seeing that now that your game has adopted it in the back end and programming? Are are you seeing agents do more work, one developer do the work of 10? Has it been replacing roles that would have existed by human before? Have have you all been able to do that or is it mostly the same people, but they're just using more tokens at the same cost of an engineer?
No, it's less people. We are able to gain a lot of ground with fewer people and you know, keep a lighter overhead. And again, it it's undeniable, and I will say that it's really been the last let's call it the last 6 months, even even 4 or 5 months especially when we've seen some of these, you know, work co-work and work spaces with the agents and things like that, um, not only come to mainstream, but be a lot easier to use. So, in circumstances where we would need uh kind of a middleman to help do some of the software engineering, we're able to have that built in a fraction of the the time. And so, it's something even my co-founder, who knows AI very well, he can leverage himself out, you know, quite a bit. And so, as we look to hire our next operations position, which is, you know, coming up, it's really going to be about taking that, you know, baton and continuing the development and then the management of those systems. And I think that's a lot of companies are looking at I what what I hear out there a lot is it's they're not necessarily, you know, firing people or laying people off, although that's happening, it's just if if the position turns over, they're not refilling it. They're using, you know, AI resources to do that. So, I think people that are looking for jobs and hiring, it doesn't almost doesn't matter what department and it you're in. If you know AI really well, it's going to be a full tool belt that you can go into that uh job with and you are probably going to be able to be as productive as maybe a few people by yourself with that AI proficiency.
I love it. It AI proficiency, it's absolutely paramount when we're hiring for clients as well now. It they don't want anybody that's not at least AI filled. This is what they want to they're calling it. So, you you mentioned you hit FINRA licensing. Congrats. That That's recent though right?
Yeah, as a company, uh we became a FINRA member, well, we own a subsidiary, there's parent company AREI Tokens USA Inc., and we own our subsidiary company AREI Tokens Capital LLC, which is a FINRA member broker-dealer with an SEC registered ATS and what that means is we went out and got the federal licensing for not just a broker-dealer but a digital asset broker-dealer and on top of that we got the licensing to run what's called an alternative trading system or ATS and it's kind of like a NASDAQ or a stock exchange except for private assets but very well you know an exchange like that. So that's a pretty heavy heavy federal lift and then we had to go get all the state licensing including Puerto Rico and the British Islands and and Guam and a bunch of those. So it's a a very very long intense licensing process and that's because these are securities and there's the security laws and compliance and investor protection is of the utmost importance. There's still a lot of those old systems we talked about that that they're still operating on but it's been encouraging to see some of the legislation pushed and to being able to fully utilize some of the technology like blockchain that's out there.
That's incredible. And that also enabled you to sell to non-accredited investors, correct?
Yeah, so here's the way that works. So I that was the company in the federal licensing. I myself had to go get the you know licensing and sales people do as well but the way the securities world works and and investment works is when you raise capital for people or you're going to invest in somebody else's efforts, that's typically going to be a security. And when you have a security, you're going to either have to register it with the SEC like a like a public company does or you need to find an exemption to registration. But there's an initial offering initial sell of this investment. We call it the primary offering and you need an exemption to that to legally do it and it tells you who can invest in that. There are things like a Reg A plus tier two that allows non-accredited to invest in these exemptions. But, let's get to the exciting part. The exciting part is when you resell these cuz it's a pretty limited world to get into these. Even the Reg A pluses is a little bit who you know world. Very very limited. Most investors are boxed out of that. But, what I get excited about is the ATS or the secondary trading. And that's where non-accredited investors can really participate cuz in a ATS or a secondary sale, there's an exemption for resale called Rule 144. And under Rule 144, a security There's a few rules, but it as part of that a security that's sold on a SEC registered ATS can be sold to non-accredited investors. That means that your average person can now have access and invest in these institutional-grade and high-quality real estate investments that they've typically been locked out of. So, amazing. So, did you like when you built this company, did you know you were going to need to go and work with the SEC? Were you hiring specifically for that or were you saying, "Hey, this is you know, as as we go, this is what's needed and this is what we're going to going to build towards" or was it very clear that this is where we were headed? It's a great question because it was quite the opposite. We said, "We don't want to, you know, be an SEC registered platform. We don't want the regulation. We don't want to become a broker-dealer cuz Blift and is very difficult and you know, just the compliance it's is absolutely enormous." But, so no, we just originally were secondary market ready and we wanted to teach people about tokenization and really hired much more around that educational aspect and the tokenization aspect. But, as an industry, as well as a company, they promise liquidity through tokenization. And quite frankly, that's a lie because just tokenizing does not create liquidity. You have to have trading, you have to have a marketplace, or really even a robust marketplace to make that a truth. So, long story short, we looked at potentially teaming up with some and then buying some. And then once we realized for what we wanted to do, uh specialize in real estate security tokens to make, you know, let Main Street invest in real estate the right way. And even use crypto to do it if they wanted to, there really wasn't that type of thing out there. So, that's where last June we well, it was before that, but that's when we got our federal licensing. So, early 2025 anyway, we bit the bullet and decided to become a digital asset broker-dealer and ATS ourselves. And yeah, that absolutely required a whole different amount of hiring. You've now had to have two companies because there's a lot of rules for the broker-dealer. So, immediately, even through the application process, in addition to legal, we had to bring on a fractional CEO, a chief compliance officer, a fin op, a cybersecurity, all these type of team members that all actually had these regulatory licenses before we even got to, you know, start building out the rest of the company.
Wow, and is that part of uh like SAC just playbook? Like, "Hey, you need need all these to get approved?"
Yeah, it it really is for a broker-dealer and then a an ATS. You got to have uh what's called two series 24 licensees, which that's why I had to get mine so I could unseat the former CEO and step into the CEO role of the broker-dealer as well. So, I'm a series 24, it's called a principal. And then there's a chief compliance officer that needs to be a series 24. And then you have to have a fin op that needs a series 27 and then you need particular sock two compliance and and somebody to moderate all of the cybersecurity and in fact there's ATS matching engine and and they need to be compliant. So all of those pieces for the licensing need to be that. So in the in the broker dealer ATS almost everybody other than admin and and some tech support are all actually licensed
answers or what they call registered. And then at the parent company where we do more education and consulting and the actual tokenization, those folks don't have to have the actual licensing.
If five years ago you would say hey I'm going to I'm going to have all these these series
but
I can't imagine that you were saying hey yeah I'm going to go and now and now be essentially an investment banker. That's incredible. So you've been managing cash flow for decades, right? You have property management companies, brokerages. Now you're you just mentioned a bunch of roles that unlikely you've hired before. Are you and correct me if I'm wrong, are these the first time hiring these type of roles? Are you really looking for somebody that's going to fit in culturally? Is it going to be that they are excited about real estate or that's something that you're going to teach them and you just want them to be domain experts in cybersecurity and then you know you can get them excited about your culture and the rest or what? How are you finding those folks?
You know that's a great question because when we first went through the process and got licensed we were just referred people in the space to help us do that and we've literally turned all of those positions. We we've you know parted ways with them and rehired and the difference was people that were just you know playing a role with their license and you know weren't really passionate about what we were building in the industry to now those roles are filled with people that actually believe in what we're doing. They care about what we're doing. They They believe that first of all that the future economy is digital and secondly that doing something like creating an opportunity of access, whether that's access to liquidity for those that own the assets or access to invest in these assets to those folks that haven't been able to uh they believe in what we're doing and they believe that um it's it's the right thing in the the right time and so they get excited to get on board and then it becomes a cultural piece, you know, because of that. You know, you start to row the same direction with how you see the future of the space and I think that excitement is uh net positive and when you get that, even if you butt heads a little bit, which is hopeful, you don't want everything to just go the go the right way. You want to sharpen the saw, but everybody feels like they're on a mission to bring this to the world and when that happens, you have the right fit. So, if you interview those folks now and they don't have that same passion, we're not going to hire you cuz you can fill a seat and you know AI. You have to be interested in what we're doing and and believe in it because then we think that you'll be in it to do what it takes to make it happen.
it. So, the vision that your you're selling them is democratize real estate investment or or or what specifically?
Yeah, I think on the employee and so so there's always kind of two sides of this. Like do you already have the assets and or you're you're wanting to be a syndicator and and do all of that, but the majority of people aren't that. The for the majority of people and the majority of our employees, it's more much more like you know, my personal mantra is to uh help people achieve uh freedom through cash flow or help people build wealth through real estate and achieve freedom through cash flow. And I think that when people understand that they'll be able to get behind their computer with whatever they have, be that, you know, a few thousand dollars to a few hundred thousand dollars, million, whatever, anything in between, and they'll actually have the power to look at different deals without being told or invited in or whatever, look at these deals and make a educated decision on what they want to invest in to kind of take the power. Do they want cash flow? Do they want, you know, equity upside? And have the opportunity, even if they, you know, only have a certain amount allotted for that or they only can dollar cost average. That's something you really couldn't do into real estate before. So So, yeah, it it is very much about that. I think that's what people love is the idea that, you know, as easy as I can go buy a stock, I can go buy a real interest in real estate. Yeah, crypto has even crept into the space where people understand that there's some lack of trust in some of the traditional systems. And when you have blockchain and digital ownership, it brings a whole new layer of transparency and people see that as more fair. And I just think it's a win-win situation across the board because the other side, whether it's bank loans that are due, you know, or unfavorable market environments, but they're still good assets, they have trouble and they're illiquid assets, for example. Then you have, you know, the whole rest of the group of people that would love an opportunity, you know, to invest those. So, we just break down the traditional barriers and get them in one spot where they can can play ball. And I think, you know, when you talk about tenants being able to own real ownership in the apartment building that they live in, school teachers, firefighters, the server at your favorite restaurant actually being able to invest in a real piece of real estate investment, that can change the world.
Absolutely. I I'm a big believer in dollar cost averaging and to be able to do that through through real estate is phenomenal and I mean you literally wrote the books on on wealth through real estate cash flow. It's that's your framework. Now you're building and scaling it what's different on like what that team looks like when when you're building and scaling verse building a property management company other than the roles and you know I I think you mentioned your your co-founder is fantastic and does the back end. So maybe on the marketing side and then the sales side you know how is that significantly different now that you're building this billion plus dollar company what how are you thinking about who who you're bringing on and then how intentional are you being with that?
Yeah, we're very intentional and in fact the space is moving quickly. So something that's new for me where we always kind of built from the ground up in the traditional real estate and brought you know everybody kind of inside. There's a lot of consolidation in this space. So I think you see a lot of companies that are scaling instead of hiring this position that position and you know kind of doing some organic ground up growth there. They're doing M&A merger and acquisition with other companies that bring something else to the space. So it's it's such a new area that there's so many segments that have been focusing and working on different things. And when you can bring those together in a ecosystem, it's powerful and even you know some that are kind of potential competitors right when the space is is new the the field is a bit sparse, but if you can kind of bring those things together. So when we're looking at scale right now, we're looking at some of those opportunities to team up with other folks that might specialize in one segment of the ecosystem and what we're doing in in scaling and then looking how those cultures and those people fit together. So, that's new for me, but it's really in the crosshairs of how we see growth over the next few years.
Wow, that's fascinating. So, what and anything come to mind and like who would be an ideal partner for you now to get to that next level?
You know, I I think when we get into serious conversations like that, I'm always under NDAs. You know, so I can't name any names or or do things like that, but here's what I will say is the ecosystem has a lot of different parts. You have, you know, the the front end that's kind of out there and educating people and letting them know. You have the tokenization space. You have the asset pipeline itself, right? Cuz a marketplace, which is what our ultimate focus is, is this marketplace, right? A NASDAQ for private real estate securities. So, you know, you have companies that just focus on that asset pipeline. That's what they're focusing on it is that aspect of maybe they don't have, you know, the regulatory licenses. And at the other end, you've had companies that are just focus on building those retail investor lists, right? Then you of course have the broker-dealer and the and the marketplace. So, that's an example companies that have those different focuses that as you can bring them together, now you can actually scale because I do think it's going to take massive scale to truly hit the adoption curve and bring what this final product is, you know, to the world in an everyday use basis.
So, now you're building in a category that didn't exist 3 years ago and if you had a tell a founder that's about to hire in the space that nobody really understands yet, what's one thing you would tell them about hiring?
It's cliche, but you got to go with your gut. And I think as business owners, we get excited and we want to move quickly and so we tend to, you know, maybe overlook some things that our intuition tells us could be an issue or some red flag. You got to believe people are who they are when they tell you. So, hiring the wrong person, and I've done it several times, is is detrimental potentially. I mean, it's not just the money, right? At all. It's the time, the effort, the cultural issues, who what other employees do potentially lose because you made, you know, the wrong hire. So, I would just be patient and take your time and have them, if you can, kind of have them, you know, do the job. If they say they've got a skill set, have them, you know, produce in that skill set. Have them interview with other some of your other, you know, team members and and things like that and you know, really take your time in that process to make sure that the cultural fit is the app of the best aspect and don't just hire strictly for skill set.
Yeah, that's what we heard that a lot. Some people call it the gut check, a vibe check. Something that I think most guests on this this show have said that has really resonated with all of us is hire somebody you're going to enjoy working with, right? You're going to be You're going to be with this person all the time. Like it that is also very important. Even if you're digital, you're not in office. So, we're actually like going to enjoy spending time with them. And I it doesn't go understated. The So, as you're, you know, growing this business, what working folks go and find you and RETokens? How can somebody like me go and dollar cost average and and start investing in in real estate and what what am I actually investing in?
Yeah. So, a couple of areas to kind of dive into this further. Of course, the website RETokens.com is a great way to go. We've got some downloads available to check that out. We also have a really good YouTube channel, so it's going to be at RE tokens and we've got lots of kind of explainer type videos and we talk about the different facets of of what we're doing. You know, right now we have we've got some things we've shifted around, we've done some reorganization on some offerings and we've kind of hit the reset button on how we're approaching that. So, to answer your question on on, you know, investing or dollar cost averaging, we've got a primary offering that we purposely pulled down our offerings and are reintroducing them one at a time on this primary side. So, these are going to be accredited investor deals only and we just actually launched a exciting new debt fund that's on market and available right now on RE tokens. You can go up to marketplace and you can kind of go through and check that out if you're interested. We're excited about that. As far as the ATS and the dollar cost averaging and and all of that, everything's, you know, done, built and we're screening this it will be, by the way, the very first ATS or or digital asset marketplace exclusive for real estate in the United States.
Wow.
There are other digital ATSs out there. I could name a couple of the bigger names like T-Zero and Securitize and and some of those. So, we have the same type of licensing, but we are for real estate investments to where they're more generalist platforms and and kind of deal in all sorts of different companies and things like that and much more like stocks. This is actual real estate. So, you can go and as we screen these deals, we're working with some issuers, we plan to launch the marketplace in Q4 where people can do exactly that, dollar cost average, the non-accredited investor has access, all of of things. We're done, we're just like screening the deals and we're excited about that. And what you're investing in, to answer that question, is the the real estate. So, you know, I don't want to get too technical on this, but I'll kind of just, you know, lay it out. When we tokenize real estate, we're tokenizing an entity that has sole ownership. And the entity mirrors that exact ownership. I'm happy to explain why it's done this way, but that's that's the way it's done. So, when you invest in a real estate syndication or a real estate offering like this, you're getting one of those, you could call them shares, you could call them LLC membership units, we call them tokens because it's digital ownership that's recorded on the blockchain and held in your own personal custody account or wallet is the web 3 terminology for that. And now that gives you all sorts of control and mobility over your assets, but it is a security. The security is that mirror of the real estate ownership. So, unlike a REIT, which is just a fund-type investment in whatever they're investing in, you don't get any tax benefits, for example. The the real estate token and what you're investing in is that mirror. So, whatever that net cash flow is, you get your pro rata share of that. Whatever that equity upside is, you get your pro rata share of that. Whatever that, you know, tax pass-through is from that entity, right? Maybe a depreciation schedule, which is a beautiful thing about real estate, you get your pro rata share of that. And depending on the deal, maybe they've got some excellent financing on it and you would enjoy the benefit of, you know, that pro rata share. It's There's all sorts of different structures, but you're you're investing in that mirror image representation of the real estate itself. It's really the the most pure form of tokenized real estate investment there is. And just I I was kind of debating whether to do this or not. Just a real quick side step like, well, what do you mean? Why wouldn't you just tokenize the real estate, the deed itself? So, let me just speak to that real fast. Twofold. One, because the county, which records real estate ownership, is not on the blockchain. So, there are some counties that are doing that, but that's
So, what it would take is Yeah, and that will be the future. Deeds will be, you know tokenized.
I don't see that happening in Puerto Rico.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
for my house. So, I I we we need some tokenization here.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, but that's that's one reason is that And number two is you can only kind of fit so many people and so much liability and so much active ownership into a deed. Like, you have all the liability here to where if it's a security and how I described with the entity, you're what's called a limited partnership, limited liability. Like, you're not the tenant slips and breaks their neck, you're not going to, you know, be sued. That type of thing. There's all the the proper reporting. So, that's why it's done that way for real estate tokenization. I just want to clear that up.
Yeah, that thing Thanks for clearing that up. And I I didn't realize how much better this was than a REIT, than a real estate investment trust. What with just the tax benefits alone, accelerated depreciation, like you're going to There's so much that you miss out on on if you don't have the like that in your name. So, it it makes complete sense. This is This is incredible. Tyler, I know we're we're going over time. Really excited to to have you on and share more about RETokens. And excited for the Q4 launch. If we want to sign up for that like launch, we can go to retokens.com and sign up and then we'll we'll alerted?
Yeah, 100%. I would go to retoken.com. There's a marketplace button so you can go. It will take you to the broker dealer side of things. Remember we have you know, got to have a little bit of separation there. You can also go to you know, retoken capital.com. But the easiest way is go to retoken.com, click the marketplace and create an investor profile. It only takes about a minute. You may want to do your KYC and stuff like that then so you can invest. But once you create a profile on our web website, you'll be ready to invest in any of the opportunities that come up. And also on retoken.com, you can sign up for our newsletter. We're on LinkedIn. We've got a great LinkedIn page if you want to stay up to speed on the announcements that we make. That's a good place to do it. And you can connect with me there as well.
Fantastic. And if you're an accredited investor, what's the minimum investment needed to to be made?
Some of ours is are are as low as a thousand dollars. That's one interesting difference with the tokenization piece is it is far more automated and allows, you know, for those smaller investments. I think the the debt fund that we just put out uh I want to say is a twenty-five thousand dollar minimum, but I could be wrong. You have to check that out. And by the way, just just to cover my bases, the intent here is to not sell securities. I'm not selling securities at the moment. I'm just giving general education about everything going on.
Fantastic. And as we're on education topic, let's leave the leave with this so I could I could selfishly learn. What is a debt fund specifically and and how is it different than that what what else you're doing?
Than like an equity. Yeah, so so often when we think about real estate investing in the equity, we own that pro rata share of it, you know, good, bad, and otherwise. A debt fund is like owning the the mortgage on it. So it's a locked-in cash flow type thing. Just like a bank makes a mortgage on a property, a debt fund, what what they're doing is they're taking a first position like a bank would lien against the real property. The The property and property ownership pays this lien, this loan, this fund just like a mortgage, and then that cash flow is what's distributed on a pro rata basis to those investors that that invest in the debt fund.
debt fund buys the mortgages.
That's right. The debt fund Yeah, what In this case, they are doing exactly that, and they kind of become that mortgage piece in what we call the capital stack.
Love it. Tyler, thank you so much for being on Who We Hire, sharing your stories. Thanks for for listening, folks. This has been a lot of fun.
Thanks for having me, Louis. It's been a pleasure.
