Bringing Together Real Estate Leaders With Martin Kelly Of Blueprint

Scott Kelly takes a break from featuring venture capital firms to highlight the largest and most global gathering of leaders, investors, and startups in real estate and construction tech. He sits down with Martin Kelly, President of Blueprint, who shares how this event shakes up the worlds of proptech and Contech. He discusses how the massive, technology-slow real estate market is finally seeing successful unicorn companies emerge despite many market pressures. Martin also explains why startups should understand their unfair advantage and partner with the right investors to secure huge success and create a real market disruption.

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Bringing Together Real Estate Leaders With Martin Kelly Of Blueprint

Welcome back to the show. I really had a great opportunity to go to a great conference called Blueprint. I was so inspired by what I learned at this conference. I was compelled to interview Martin Kelly, no relation, the president of Blueprint, which is a conference that focuses on prop tech, construction tech, and other verticals in the real estate construction industry, from venture capital to innovation and everything else.

There were thousands of people at this conference. I was really inspired by an untapped part of the investment market that I didn’t know anything about. During this interview, you’ll see that Martin discusses the motivation towards launching Blueprint as a truly disruptive event appealing to the venture capital world as well as owners, operators, developers, general contractors, and others in the construction of the real estate business. During this conference and during this interview, there was a lot of discussion about the growth of this industry over the last several years.

It’s an industry that has been untapped in terms of innovation because these are huge markets that haven’t fully adopted these technologies. Though companies like EliseAI and Built Technology are showing great success. There are far more successes happening in this really innovative part of the construction, real estate, and prop tech industry. Finally, you’ll hear why Inman got involved and recently acquired the Blueprint conference. Take a look at this and give a listen to this great interview with Martin Kelly from Blueprint, and then I’ll come back with some key takeaways.

Everybody, this is going to be a little special edition, a little bit off topic to some extent, but I got an opportunity to go to the Blueprint Conference in Las Vegas. I’ll tell you, it was probably one of the more quality events I’ve been to in a really long time. Not only was the conference great, but it really opened my eyes to a part of the investment world that I knew little about.

Thirty-plus years investing in tech and working with tech entrepreneurs. I was really intrigued by the quality of the entrepreneurs that were in prop tech and construction tech, and real estate, and the investors there. After leaving, I felt compelled to talk to the president of Blueprint. Welcome to the show, Martin. Martin Kelly, the president of Blueprint. Thanks for coming.

Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate that. First of all, I’m very happy that you had a good time. That’s good to hear. It’d be worse if I were on here and you had a terrible time. That’d be a tough 30 minutes. Thank you for that. That’s great to hear.

It was a great event. Quality content, quality contacts. I even got to test out my karaoke skills, which were probably not so great.

What was the song that you went to?

I did a couple. I did a lot of old-school stuff, a little journey, a little rock and roll, a little hip hop. It was a good mix. I tell people I have a face for radio, but I have a voice for the deaf, I think.

Karaoke is a tricky one because sometimes you think, “I’ll just pick a song that I like or what have you.” You realize, actually, this is a lot harder.

Martin Kelly’s Life Story Before Blueprint

I learned the high notes. The high notes I could do as a kid are oblivious as an older adult. Martin, before we get into Blueprint, share a little bit about your background, before launching Blueprint and becoming its president.

Before I came to Blueprint, I studied law, fell into the world of events, went to work for the largest non-private equity backed events business in the world, and rose to run their US business before actually going into the world, which should be relevant for this conversation of matchmaking, family office and institutional money to alternatives, including VCs, real estate, private equity. That was in a SaaS platform, which also had events, and then came to Blueprint.

The Origin Story Of Blueprint

Tell me about Blueprint. What was the motivation behind launching this? Tell me about where you’ve come up to this point.

The blueprint came out of an event studio model, and I had a particular philosophy behind it, and that’s with certain large sectors like real estate or construction, in the same way like to insurance or logistics are these big areas that venture capital firms look across and look for investment opportunities. They want to see a broad range of different investment opportunities.

They look at real estate, and they might invest in a multifamily sector, SFR sector, or office sector. They could invest across all of that. They’re often looking for a show that is disruptive and can cover all of those bases. When you look at the real estate sector as a whole, there are a lot of events there. There are some big events, you think about like developers, GCs. That’s really the concept behind Blueprint is to have a transformational event that would be valuable to both investors. Also, the people adopting, piloting, and trying new things in the space. We’re going into our sixth year for 2026. We just had our fifth year that you came to.

We are now probably in that phase where we’re becoming more known in the broader real estate construction communities. We’ve always had a very strong edge with the investment community and founders looking to change the world, basically. Blueprint’s always been a bit of a home for those who shoot from the hip, type founders, entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurial spirit.

How Tech And AI Are Shaping Real Estate And Construction

This is just finished year five. You’ve obviously had some great growth with the conference itself, but let’s talk about the industry and where it’s come in the last five years since you launched Blueprint. Where is real estate going that hasn’t been to yet? Where’s tech playing into this? There were a lot of investors at the conference. It seems like it’s like AI that AI has been around for a while, and it just became really popular. After five years, you’ve seen a lot of things happen. Talk to me about where technology, AI, and everything else are playing in the real estate construction industry.

The real estate construction industry it’s not a secret that that’s an incredibly huge market and that it hasn’t quite adopted the technologies in terms of it. Everybody can see that’s obvious. It’s had investment in it. In terms of investment in it, it has certainly been invested in, and certain companies look to take advantage of certain areas. Let’s look at the modular sector, for example, that maybe had some big examples of where you, for like a terror, what have you, that it might grow, and it didn’t quite live up to those expectations.

It’s interesting at this point, though, we’re starting to see that when you think of things that you mentioned, AI, that actually the built world has a couple of examples of true unicorns sprouting through. Blueprint is a showcase of the whole industry. If you just looked at the major speakers we had speaking, people like Minna Song, obviously from EliseAI, that’s been a stellar success and has worked very hard, basically, with multifamily owners and operators learning the business.

They’re having so much success. They’re now applying some of the technology that they’ve had in real estate to the world of healthcare. That’s really exciting. Marker for the industry as a whole. We had Ankur Jain. I hope you got to see him speak, but that’s a value that is over ten billion for Bilt Reward. That’s just rethinking that resident experience, loyalty, or packaging a ton of different stuff and things.

The makeup of a number of these companies in terms of where the investment in them has sometimes come from owners and operators themselves or from the VC community. That’s been great to see. With some of those companies that it was hard to raise in the very beginning, in terms of pitching this. Those later rounds have become a lot easier. That’s exciting.

I’m starting to see some real attraction in the area. You look at the likes of Crexi, and we also had Roman Padan from Kasa. Some of these models that are coming through are just thinking very differently about sectors, hospitality, or multi-family. They’re not thinking about it in a linear way. That’s really exciting for the industry as a whole. Blueprint is essentially a champion of progress and thinking about things differently.

We like where people are applying learnings from one area to another. We hope to spark ideas as we create this mix of people that maybe do not come together normally, but they do at Blueprint. I get approached all the time with people saying they met their co-founder at Blueprint, or they did this partnership they never thought about at Blueprint, or they opened their eyes to this new way of thinking because they went to a session they do not normally do. That’s always really exciting to hear.

Success Stories Formed At Blueprint

It’s funny you mention that because I brought two of our portfolio companies, one in construction tech and the other in property tech. Quite frankly, I learned about the conference a month before, and I really sent them an email saying, “You guys have to come.” Much like you said, they’ve established several great relationships from a business standpoint. They got to meet face-to-face with investors who actually understood the space and what they were doing. Kudos to you there. Obviously, you had some really good success stories. Talk to me about who’s yet to be noticed that that was possibly a blueprint, or that might be a blueprint of the future.

There’s a lot there that hasn’t been noticed yet. That’s where we get approached all the time by people. When we try and put a number of the smaller firms who are still trying to gain the traction to have their name up in lights on our innovation stage. We were very supportive of those. There are a number of different companies that I quite like. There’s an Irish startup called Mark, I say Irish, one of the founders is from Newcastle, one of the founders is from Dublin.

I know for a fact that they can do things in twenty minutes that multifamily owner and operators have taken weeks to do. When you hear those types of examples of just true value, and that’s what the “binaries of technology” are looking for, is tangible ROI. If you can demonstrate that, then you will get traction. If you cannot, and it’s still a pipe dream, and you need all these things to come together, and you’re pitching like a glamorous, this is what it could be type of story.

In the current climate, that’s not really valued as highly. Maybe in the past, you did have some examples of those types of pitches resonating, and then much more or less so now. If I think about Crexi, who we also had at the event, they have become a unicorn, but they have been very methodical about how they’ve approached business, and they’re proud of that. They’ve come through and survived, and not only survived, but thrived. That’s very interesting for us.

There are a number of VCs who are investing in certain areas that are maybe more niche and have expertise in those. The likes of Chris Langford, Home Technology Ventures, or Groundbreak Ventures from Canada in the SFR home building space. You have, like, the Shadow Ventures in robotics or even Era Ventures with Clelia and Raja. They’re very interesting. They’ve got a philosophy around different pillars they feel are going to be really disruptive.

I would look at the portfolios of some of these companies to see who they’re betting on or, on a more niche level, as well. I like the VC model of Alon from RE VC, whose LPs are actually executives from major construction firms or major real estate firms, and you can get a direct line into them. That’s the question A lot of startups will face is “What is your edge? What’s your unfair advantage?” When picking your investors, it’s like who can propel you or provide help to you.

There are obviously like the fifth walls of the world that have a lot of capital and in a big brand name, amazing marketing presence. There are some who are trading on very specific knowledge in a certain sector where they have focused. In terms of the ones coming through, look at who the early-stage people are investing in, Jonathan Wasserstrum, those types of guys, who are they picking out? Who are the later-stage firms looking to take on?

Generalist Investors Versus CVC Investors

I got a chance to interview Alon, and he’ll be coming. His episode will be airing very soon. We got a couple of others, thanks to my attendance there. One thing I did notice at the conference was that there was a fair amount of CVC-type VCs. Obviously, the venture capital divisions of major brands and construction and real estate. That wasn’t it. Other people were leaning into the space that wasn’t just in the industry. Maybe mentioned several of the investors there, but where is the generalist investor versus the CVC type investor? How has that been playing into the conference over the course of this last year and even maybe going forward?

It’s very interesting. You could write a very detailed paper on the difference of investing styles between a generalist VC or a sector-specific VC, and a CVC. The interesting thing with the number of CVCs is that they are broadening their scope in terms of where they’re looking for opportunities. We work with Suffolk Technologies, which has its Boost program showcased at Blueprint. If you look at their investments, they are investing across regions, they’re very global in where they invest, they’ve done things in climate tech, versus your construction.

Their scope isn’t restricted, I feel, by just the fact that they’re tied to sub-construction. They obviously have that edge in that they are tied in with sub-construction. You can get pilots through that relationship. That’s been an interesting thing I’ve seen with the CVCs expanding their scope and trying very hard to make sure that their fund is investing in the benefits of the investment thesis.

There’s maybe been a shift away from just, “We can incorporate our investments into the main business. That’s why we need to treat this as a true separate entity.” You’ve seen that with most of those larger players trying to be more sophisticated about it, or DPR construction, Haskell with Dysruptek, and all of those CVCs are treating it in a more sophisticated manner.

When you flip it to the generalists, that’s where I feel like there’s different philosophies of how they invest in the sum that have the benefit of pooling a community and have spent time building that, whether you’re a modern or a fifth wall through or Camber Creek, where they have that edge of having investors from real estate owners. Operators to Era Ventures on the other side to actually try and take a take on the investment world, where they are purely looking for transformational businesses that can really disrupt the space.

They actually partner up with what we call true generalist VCs, outside of the space. They’re bringing the real estate technology and construction expertise. The generalist VC comes in with them to take a bet on who they think is going to be the next game changer. If you think about it like an open door, we had Eric Wu speak. That’s an example of a transformational company that tried to do something totally different.

It’s not just looking for pilots from people and that type of thing. It’s looking to change the game. That’s the difference in terms of your startup. Are you like a truck tool where your edge is in construction, that you’re working very closely with the superintendents of GCs, and you really understand them? You can make their lives easier.

That’s what you’ve got to understand as a startup is who is the right investor for you? Is it the ones that have relationships with certain owner operators that you want to get into? Is it that you are trying to do something totally different that’s going to be like Amazon did too? Bookstores and commerce in general really changed the game. That’s a question for the founders.

Why Family Office Owners Are Coming To Blueprint

We mentioned two of the legs, and you touched on the third leg. Obviously, you’ve got the startups that are trying to get in front of investors and partners. You’ve got the office, the investors, CVCs, or generalists. There are a lot of other people at the show that were adjacent to those two groups. Talk to me about who those third-leg people are. Who are these other people attending Blueprint?

In terms of other people attending, I’m also going to make sure family officers are there in abundance. Family officers are very interesting because they’re coming to Blueprint for multiple reasons. They might be executives in companies, their main business may have been a construction firm or a real estate firm, brokerage firm, and they might wear multiple hats. They often do. We also have a lot of people who come from YPO, and they’re there.

That’s the thing about Blueprint that I feel like we have a better, maybe understanding, than a number of other organizations in our spaces. The ways that people are tied are complicated, and we take a lot of time to understand that. A family office is a really good example of that, and they might be investing in real estate, might be investing in VCs, or in funds. They might be going directly to startups, and they wear many different hats.

That’s the whole contingent of Blueprint that comes into our show. We’re very proud of that. We have good relationships with Tiger 21 and other organizations. In terms of the other people coming through, you have really the CTOs, CIOs, Chief Operating Officers, or people doing the analytics, the data. They’re rolling out marketing strategies within real estate owners, operators, and these are people that might have large portfolios across many different sectors, from life sciences to data centers to retail.

How A Recent Acquisition Has Impacted Blueprint

Martin, you were recently acquired by Inman, and maybe share how that’s impacted the conference since then. Where do you see the conference going forward?

Let’s say they have a publishing background, and they have an incredible following on social media and a subscriber base of people paying every week to get the up-to-date news in the brokerage space. That’s their sweet spot is subscription. In terms of working with them, that’s been really helpful in that we are actually launching our own product called Insights by Blueprint, which is focused on that pillar of owners, operators, developers, and GCs for operational intelligence.

What I mean by that is them looking at their tech stack, looking at how to use AI, looking at security, looking at parking, and the details behind all of those decisions that they have to make. We’ve actually launched that with the help of Brad Hargreaves, who many people might know as the founder of Thesis Driven. That’s been really exciting. That’s one of the components. Inman’s comfortable. Their comfort zone is publishing. Opening that door up for us is great because we’ve launched the event and focused on the event, but this is a whole component that we think can provide a ton of value because we’re already getting a lot of insights ourselves.

That community is who we want to bring in more so into the event going forward. The reason for that is we’ve done a fantastic job bringing this amazing community of founders of investors who are trying new things. It’s important for the wider owner operator base, developer-based, GC-based to know of these things and to be trying these things and to know exist if we’re truly going to have transformational change in this area.

We really feel that focus and that publication will help our efforts there. I have been inspired to do more on LinkedIn and approach marketing. Many times, we’re talking to firms in terms of how they’re building their brand. We’re having to do the same. We’re a startup as well. We’ve been acquired, but we are still very scrappy in nature and trying to get something off the ground. When you get acquired, it doesn’t stop the new ideas in any way. It actually starts them. That’s one of the clearest examples of how that relationship has.

What’s Next For Blueprint For 2026 And Beyond

Where do you see what’s next? What’s 2026 and beyond look like from Blueprint?

2026 looks like with the show, we want to focus on some sectors in particular. We’ve already made a lot of traction with construction, with multifamily, and SFR, and we want to go deeper into those and bring those communities in more. We are very proud of the way we connect people within our community, but we’re going to double down on that.

There’s going to be a lot of that that is still focused on our event in Vegas. The other component is Insights by Blueprints, which will be a year-round exercise that provides us more touch points, particularly with the people piloting, adopting technology, and reviewing their tech stacks. Those insights will require a lot of effort from us on a year-round basis to be close to that. That’s going to take up a lot of our time.

We’re going to work very hard on that. We’ve already hired journalists in the space who are doing 3,000-word deep dives on things like security or mass timber, and these types of topics where people are looking at how they build or how they manage their portfolios. That 2026 is going to be a busy one for us. That’s really going to be our key focus.

Get In Touch With Martin And Blueprint

How do people learn more about the Blueprint next year in Las Vegas, sign up for insights, and get in contact with you?

In this show, it’d be great if we could put a link to both our events, which are going to be from September 22nd to 24th in the Venetian. Hopefully, you’ll come back, Scott, as well. We could put a link to that. That’s BlueprintVegas.com. We also have a separate website, Insights by Blueprint, which you can find as well. We’ll provide a link to that. In terms of that, we will produce some articles out there which may even be free to have, and then there’ll be a subscription if you really are interested in going deeper, and we’d love it if you do.

Converting Real Estate Pressure Into Positivity

Any final thoughts or anything you want to share with our audience? Your view on PropTech, Construction Tech, or anything in the industry at all?

It hasn’t been an easy ride for the real estate or construction industry over the last few years as a whole. That’s just obvious to everybody. That also makes it challenging in terms of mindset around trying new things. When the core businesses are facing pressures from whether that’s interest rates whether that’s building materials, pricing of those. There are lots of macro factors that have caused pressure.

Pressure in some of those examples is not always conducive to trying new things and being creative, and playing. I would encourage everybody to try and carve out time and resources to play, and really, the mindset to do it. One conversation strikes me from one I had with Groundbreak Ventures in Canada. Their house prices are second only to Australia. What that has created is pressure. They’re going to use that pressure because there’s pressure from this whole community that cannot get on the housing ladder.

What are they going to do? It means the government might need to spur investment. It means you might need to have a startup ecosystem that’s ready to try new things. It means that you’ve got politicians and people, as well as users, more open to modular technologies or different materials, or creative ways of coming together to solve these problems. In a world where we are looking, striving for connection, we’re very disconnected. It’s really exciting to see concepts like, live with friends at the post river on LinkedIn.

Where people are creating these communities and building in different ways. The wonderful thing about modern technology is that we can be much more customized, much more creative. I’m excited for the next few years as I feel like if we can just convert this pressure into a positive thing as opposed to a restrictive thing, we can really unleash the true potential of the built world. That’s what I’m excited about.

For everyone, I encourage you to obviously sign up for Blueprint next year in Vegas. You will see me there again. Obviously, sign up for insights. It’s got some great articles I’ve already read. Make sure you like, comment, follow, and share this show. Again, Martin, thank you for being on the show.

Thank you very much, Scott. Appreciate it

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Welcome back. There were some really great takeaways that I was able to get from my interview with Martin Kelly over at Blueprint, the conference in Las Vegas that I attended. A couple of key things he mentioned are the thesis of investing in different styles. There are generalist VCs that are investing in really just to generate a return in a number of different industries. You got specific sector VCs.

Those are in home building or real estate and real estate construction, and architectural design. The goal is to expand these corporate VCs on the financial side and get them to work together with these industry-specific venture capital firms. The important thing is you have to consider their expertise. A lot of the LPs of these real estate and construction, and PropTech venture capital funds are executives in these major corporations.

Many of them have set up their own corporate venture capital firms to not only lend capital to these innovative technology companies, but also lend their expertise. There are some really big game changers out there in the space, which we learned from the interview. You’ve got Aero Ventures is partnering with generalist VCs to back transformational businesses that aim to radically disrupt the space. Similar to an open-door model.

He has some great insight for founders. Founders should understand their unfair advantage, understand their edge that they have over their competitors, and what can propel them beyond those competitors, and work with investors who have capital and access to key strategic partners. It was really interesting. I got to go to this conference, and then I really learned about what’s really happening in an untapped market in terms of technology and innovation.

We’re just on the surface of it. If you get a chance, make sure you go out to the next Blueprint Conference in Las Vegas. It’s got a great selection of prop tech and construction tech investors, as well as entrepreneurs developing innovative tech in these industries. I encourage you to like, follow, and share this blog post, and everything else that we have to offer.

Important Links

• Martin Kelly on LinkedIn
• Blueprint
• EliseAI
• Insights by Blueprint
• Alon Gorbonos on LinkedIn
• Aero Ventures