Rafael Gonçalves 

Okay, everybody, hello. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening. I don’t know where you guys are watching this from on LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook. We had some technical issues. We had to go back and start over, but we are a little bit late. We’re very sorry. But here we are. My name is Rafael Gonçalves. This is the 15th edition of KoreTalks, our biweekly podcast on private capital markets. We always bring news innovations and corporate characters to talk about the verticals and the market itself. I’m very happy to be here today with Laura Pamatian , is that right? That’s right, I got it right. Laura Pamatian from HeightZero. It’s a great company on real estate, a great KorePartner and I’m very excited to be here to learn about to learn more about real estate business to learn more about tokenization and blockchain how this this whole market has evolved with time. So I’m very pleased to have you here Laura, please The stage is yours. Tell us a little bit about you about your background and how you started HeightZero and everything.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yes, thank you so much for having me, Rafael. I appreciate you and I appreciate KoreConX. You guys are amazing, always at the very forefront and always doing everything the right way. So I appreciate you and all that you guys are doing over there. I little background about me. I’ve been in real estate development for 20 years. I started my career on the beautiful island of Maui and I was in general brokerage at the time that I niched into luxury preconstruction hotel resort real estate so hotel branded resort real estate, which was like Ritz Carlton residences, Mandarin Oriental, a bearish Fairmont Grand Hyatt I ended up on the Caribbean on several projects there. And long story short 12 projects later ended up back here in South Florida. And with COVID hitting, I had some time on my hands and I found myself learning more and more and more about what was happening in the blockchain space. I was kind of, you know, lost in the weeds there for a minute and with crypto and defy and all these other things, but found my way back to real estate and how how blockchain is affecting the space and I decided to pivot my career into the space. And that’s what we’re doing now. I launched a company called height zero.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

That’s nice and COVID gave everybody a chance to reinvent themselves to learn something new, something new. I myself as a journalist during the pandemics I became a PhD. Had nothing I had I had a lot of time just time left. So let’s buy some books. Let’s write a thesis. And I decided to start in started a web developer course. So I’m about to become a software developer, just for fun.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Wish I was that smart.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Actually, I like I love reading and I love learning. So why not? Why not? No, but I wish I was that smart to understand a lot about the blockchain and stuff. But that’s what we’re here for. You know, that’s what we are here for today. But first of all, I would love to talk about something that we just picked up this morning. I just sent Laura this this morning, about a very impressive, very impressive number of how female led startups. They are way more successful than male led startups. And it’s difficult to see women, leading, women founding their own company. So I’d love for you, Laura, to talk a little bit about that. How do you see yourself as a, as a CEO, as a founder? How does it feel to be the only woman in the room? Hopefully, you’re not the only woman in the room anymore. And I mean, diversity is important KoreconX is proof of it because we are spread all over the world. We have people in Brazil, and in India and Canada and the USA. I mean, it’s important to have diversity. So. So I’d love to hear from you, Laura, this view on being a woman in this market that is dominated by, by white men normally.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. And I, you know, I don’t remember really view it that way. I guess from my perspective, I’m just out there trying to make a difference and work hard. And I’ve always had this, you know, entrepreneurial type of drive. So, yeah, I mean, as far as being the only woman in the room, I mean, I don’t normally, I don’t know, I think that’s, that’s fine, I guess, a little, I think there’s, there’s maybe an advantage sometimes to being a woman and with what we’re doing, I also think it’s really important to bring something to the table. And I’ve met some really incredible women in the space, women that have taught me some, you know, very important things about the space, and I am just thrilled to be contributing.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Nice, that’s nice. We always have to keep walking, right? It’s a step, then we have another step, then we have another step. And that’s how it goes. That’s that’s basically how it goes. It’s, that’s, that’s amazing. So let’s start a little bit about our, let’s dive into our, our topic here. Let’s talk about real estate and tokenization. And advisory, that’s the that all sounds very powerful. But first of all, when we say working with real estate, some people might have the idea that real estate is only about buying and selling houses or renting a place to live or an office. But I understand that real estate, if I say today, I work on the internet, and I work with real estate, we’re talking about broad things, right? So tell us more about this evolution in the real estate business, from when you started them to today with all this technology involved in your blockchain learning. And so tell us a little bit more how it is now.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, things were really different 20 years ago, you know, when I was 12? No, I’m just kidding. I really, I just have seen some really incredible things that are happening, right? Working in pre construction development. There’s a lot and anyone who’s in that space can tell you it’s a very, very niche space. And there’s a lot of antiquated processes in that in that process. Right now. preconstruction development is very due for some changes. I think that will happen with this technology, not only from, from our perspective, but the the logistical processes of a build out. And I don’t know, I think that with real estate, with blockchain and how it’s applying to the real estate space, we’re able to do things that we never could before, right? Traditionally, you know, there’s over $320 trillion of real estate out there and less than 1% of it is liquid. So tokenization and blockchain is solving for that issue. And that’s a major issue, right?

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

So huge number. Can you say that again? Just because I’m taking notes. I’m a journalist, and I’m old school. I take notes. I will listen, I know it’s recorded, but I like to take notes. 

 

Laura Pamatian 

$320 trillion of real estate out there in the world. Yeah.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

And only 1% is liquid. Yeah.

 

Laura Pamatian

Wow. With tokenization and with technology, we’re able to you know, we’re we’re solving for that. And that is you know, it’s just a game changer in the industry. And when when owners and developers and people in the space start to learn about it, it’s, you can always tell when it clicks, right? Because they’re just like, wow, this is brilliant. And we need this. And this is going to make a huge difference in the world for what we’re doing. 

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yes, every every time you have a market that is fat, large, like $320 trillion. Of course, there are opportunities, of course, of course, a market, a market that’s largest that can cannot be something dominated by a few people. So there’s obviously something new there. So okay, let’s let’s talk a little bit more about the about the tokenization advisory about the technology, the beautiful part, right, that sounds very hard to to understand. And probably you as a specialist, you could probably take two hours talking about it. But can we like explain it in like five minutes in a nutshell? How does it work?

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah. So you’re, you’re referring to, with our company, right with what we’re doing? Yes, yes. So. So with height zero, we are. We’re an advisory firm, right? We are specializing in tokenization. We specialize in project management, we’re helping real estate owners, developers, syndicators to create and launch a security token offering for raising capital. Right, that’s, that’s one way. We’re helping them to create a branded online marketplace for their offerings to present to their investors, right into source investors. We’re also helping to create liquidity for the investors in existing product through tokenization. So we aren’t the technology, we aren’t. We aren’t broker dealers, right? Attorneys, financial advisors, tax advisors, we are the solution that will help put all those pieces together. And we helped to plan out the strategy by bringing in the legal team, the tech partners, marketing, right working through liquidity strategies, how is that going to happen on on the secondary market, etc? And we do that through through education.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Wow, yeah, that was a chill. I really, really liked that. You really do understand that? That’s, yeah. That’s interesting. And I mean, a, you mentioned that you help structure offerings, right. You’re not the technical provider. You’re not the broker dealer. Of course, you are. You’re one of the piece of the, of the whole ecosystem. Right. And at KoreConX, we call that quarterbacking, because that’s very important. To keep the players moving, what whether you’re, you’re activating a wide receiver or tight end or running back, squat quarter. That’s literally quarterbacking, and you say you love Joe Montana, right? Yeah.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Montana is my all time favorite great quarterback. He’s amazing. Not that I was even born in that era yet. But I yeah, he’s he’s amazing.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yeah, I’m, I’m Dan Marino guy, and you’re in Florida. So yeah. We shouldn’t you should. Yeah, you should consider getting getting a new a new favorite. So when it talks about the real estate market that is constantly evolving, and right now is at a completely different level. What is the relevance that you see for this role for this quarterbacking role when we talk about blockchain and tokenization, and the private capital market?

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, I think it’s really important to educate, right? There’s, there’s so much information out there, I can’t tell you every day I talked to someone new, and they are trying to figure it out. And they want to be able to take advantage of the technology, they know it’s going to give them a competitive edge, but they don’t know where to start. And I think for us, it’s really education, teaching them like taking them through the steps of, here’s why this is going to benefit you, right? Here’s why it’s going to benefit the investors, here’s why it’s going to be successful when it’s a win win, right? When it’s a win for the investors. It’s a win for the developer, the issuer, there’s, there’s everyone’s winning, right, so how can this this this technology not be successful? So to be able to help the owners and developers someone having, you know, giving them someone on their team that understands the entire process, you know, typically they don’t have anyone on their team that’s a blockchain specialist, right? A real estate developer, they want to know how can we tokenize and then they start asking around and nobody else knows. So we become that person. So then we are out sourced we are there, you know, trusted advisor, we will come in and we will help them to figure it out very quickly and put them in the right hands right with those that are that are working compliantly in the space.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yeah, especially at KoreconX, we believe that education is key. Our blog. Currently, we have the largest library on Reg A and Reg CF. There are there are blog posts from when the Jobs Act was, was first launched. So we have the largest library. And that’s just like what you said, everyday, everyday, we run into new broker dealers or partners like such as yourself, our law firms or artificial intelligence firms or investor acquisition firms. And it’s all a learning process, right? It’s everything’s, we still have to the market is young, the breadth of capital market is still evolving, and it’s all a matter of a fitting the pieces together, right?

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah. And I think that that’s really important, right? To be able to explain that quickly. In that tokenization isn’t, you just, you know, call up a software company, and all of a sudden, you, you have a way to raise capital, right? There’s so many different pieces in that, that have to be put together. And you really need to figure out what the goal is for the owner. Right. And, and, and long term goal, and not just, you know, we do it this way today, and then tomorrow, we wish we had done a different way, was what ends up happening. 

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

So yes, that’s basically it. Education is education is, is the first thing we have to learn in this market. We have to keep learning things change everyday. Because today we are here we are on LinkedIn, then we can be on Spotify, then we have our blog. And our CEO, Oscar is every week on on the FinTech TV, the only constant, the only thing we are sure about is change, right? All the time. And everything else because that’s what’s going to happen. We know that. Yep. Okay. So this education role is very important to lead clients into the best result possible, if we can say that. So what kind of customer Do you potentially reach out to? Who can look to height zero for help? Who can who can go for you? What kind of client? Are you? Are you suitable to help?

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, I mean, you know, there’s a couple of different when we talk about tokenization. There’s so many different types of tokenization. And I don’t think people realize that, right. But, but for us, when we’re working with the owners, there’s the owner of the property that wants to create liquidity for their existing investors, right, there’s, they have product that they’ve owned for years and years, they have investors that have been invested for years and years, and they want to be able to create liquidity in that product. So we can use tokenization, we can talk to them and help them figure out how to get that done. Then then also on the other side, is we will work with the owner who wants to raise capital through a security token offering, right and that means creating attractive investment opportunities, products that are like commercial multifamily, right hospitality, hotels, resort properties, trophy assets, high profile, new development product, so those types of products are really ideal for raising capital. So because it’s a really great investment opportunity, right, it all comes down to the story, when you’re raising capital, and you’re going to do that, you know, pretty traditionally by, you know, telling that story and what and how it’s going to benefit the investor. And then we add the tech layer on top, and it just makes it even better.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

You just said something that is very important of telling a story. Right? Because you’re not selling stocks, right, selling stories, right. And being able to tell a good story is also a very important part of offerings, right?

 

Laura Pamatian

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And also just, you know, and you know, what is the story behind behind the investment and, you know, a big difference in what we’re doing is that this investment this this share is backed by real estate, right? So even though you have liquidity like you would like you just said like on the stock market, you you have this opportunity with private companies now to to have liquidity in that and the way that we’re able to create that with using tokenization. You know, that’s really the key.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

That’s nice and Let’s imagine that I want to be your customer, I want to go, I want to call you, I would just schedule a meeting, I want to become your customer. Let’s imagine I check all those boxes you just mentioned. How do you start? Where do you where do you start? Where does Height Zero start working? And what do you guys start doing with me? And how does it all start?

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, you know, we just have the conversation on what your goals are, right? What is the customer goal? What is the short term goal? What is the long term goal? We will assess that? And then we determine what path right is it? We’re going to use tokenization for asset management, and we’re going to create liquidity and existing asset and give the owners and their LPs option of liquidity, or is it are we raising capital through a security token offering, right? Two completely different types, like we just said, and with raising capital, we kind of go through and decide what type of offering that’s going to be, you know, we start with regulation, we are target investors, what do you qualify for from the regular, you know, regulatory perspective, and then we start working into building out the team. And we start to assemble that team and put together and create and launch the offering. And it’s a lot, it’s a lot of steps, you know, with with tokenization of an existing asset, that could take, you know, two to four weeks, right? They meet certain criteria that the asset qualifies, they meet certain criteria for compliance in their documents, and then we can onboard and we can create liquidity in their existing asset, right through tokenization. With a capital raise security token offering, they could take months, right, we could take three to four months, depending on the process, depending on the regulation that they qualified for that they’ve selected, putting together the team putting in marking legal, you know, secondary market trading all of those things. And we manage that whole process.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

That’s, that’s interesting to say, two to four weeks. I mean, it’s very, that’s really quick. I mean, it’s in the best case scenario, of course. 

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, and the best case scenario, and that’s was, you know, meeting need, if the, if the asset qualifies, right, then, then we can, it’ll take two to four weeks. And just going through that qualification is something that we assist with. Right, we will, we will talk about what that means. And in that, we’ll walk them through that process. And if tokenization looks like, right option for them, then they can make that decision. But that part of it doesn’t take very long, there is no, we’re not working to go through that entire process that you would with a capital race. Right. This is a closed offering. They’ve they’ve already raised, they have existing investors. So very different.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yes, okay, I got it. And there’s something else you mentioned that caught my eye here, caught my eye or caught my ear, I don’t know exactly if we should change that.expression now that we are all online. Always working online through microphones. But I think it would be helpful if we could differentiate two concepts here for our audience. Liquidity is one thing, and raising capital is another thing, capital raises another thing?

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, yeah, just very similar to what we just kind of talked through. And that if you have an existing asset, you, you have investors, it’s a closed offering, you already did your raise, you’ve stabilized the asset, there’s, you know, your investors are enjoying the benefits of being an investor. And we can assist in creating liquidity or the option of liquidity through tokenizing. That closed offering, right, turning those shares into tokens. With raising capital, we’re actually going to raise capital traditional way, right? There’s a very, very strict process and doing that working compliantly with the SEC, working with legal getting your ducks in order going through all of those steps, marketing compliantly. You know, in in, in that process, we ultimately, yes, we create tokens and liquidity for the investors as well, but it’s, you know, two different ways of getting there.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Okay, got it. Yes, it’s, it’s nice. It’s nice to know, because sometimes we’re very familiar with the terms, but the clients are, I don’t know exactly liquidity and raising money is the same because they need money. No, that’s not.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah. And we’re just talking really high level like, I just tried to keep it really, really high level, there’s obviously there’s more to it. And, you know, obviously there’s legal involved and all of those other important pieces.

 

Rafael Gonçalves

Yeah, it’s not like we’re seeing a contract here or two to four weeks. No, but Right. There’s a whole process behind it of documents and, and preparation. And that’s, that’s the best case scenario. Again, we’re not closing a deal here. Right? So

 

Laura Pamatian 

Same thing and same thing, right, with a with an sto, with security token offering, right? If we’re gonna raise capital, it could take, you know, depending on a many, many factors, you know, but once you launch, which could take three months to create, and then you’re going to launch, it could take, you know, months after that, right, because you’re raising capital and how we go about that. And what that strategy looks like, could be a couple of months, it could be months and months.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yes, yes. There’s the period that the offering is live. And then there are a whole lot of other variables that are involved. I don’t know if that happens in your business then happens to height zero, like, do you ever get customers in? Oh, can I use reg? A reg? CF reg? D? What should I do? Do get this kind of questions from clients. Oh, yeah.

 

Laura Pamatian 

All the time, all the time? And I don’t think it’s necessarily they don’t think they’re actually saying, Should I use Reg A? Should I use reg D? Right? Because there I’m not sure they really know or what? CF, right. Because when I use those terms, they’re like, What do you mean, but they know what I mean? Just not in those terms. Right? So it’s just a matter of who you want to who you want to target? Who’s your target audience. And if you qualify for a Reg A plus, and, you know, there’s certain criteria that we, you know, we have the boxes, and we check them off? Is this the right type of offering for Reg A plus, and, you know, that’s truly democratizing real estate, right? You’re truly democratizing real estate when you’re able to offer the product to everyone. Right? Every investor over the age of 18, whether it’s here in the US, or, or overseas, and and obviously we do that with the help of legal we have an incredible legal team, you work your legal team, right? There’s, there’s a lot of pieces to that puzzle. But yeah, it’s it really just kind of depends on it starts with regulation. I mean, everyone’s like, well, it’s tokenize.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yeah, yeah. It’s funny, in a sense,

 

Laura Pamatian 

you should want to tokenize, right, everyone should go digital, all this product that’s out there, I see it as it’s all going to be digital, at some point, right. And eventually, when these investors are educated, these investors are going to start asking the owners of the deal, right of their offerings. Are you tokenizing, this offering, right? Am I going to have liquidity? And those are the things that are going to start to happen as education gets out there. And those, you know, those owners of that product, they want to be ready for that. Now, there’s some that already are there’s some that are out there, and they’re already they’re already doing this. 

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yeah, I think this is a fun aspect of that, when I asked the question about the reg, a reg CF for what kind of client comes to you. People are starting to see the information out there and they want to know more, right? Of course, they’re not they’re not becoming specialists because they have a business to run. Right? So that’s why we exist. That’s why you are there. That’s why broker dealers are there. That’s why the ecosystem is there. Because nobody has to be a specialist in everything. But it’s fun to see that people are getting out there and the message is getting across and the markets are evolving. And we’re, we’re growing, it’s the ideas are getting more mature, if you could, if you could say that, right, because the messages are getting across. That’s, that’s interesting to see. That’s we work with education. I work with communication. So for me, it’s wonderful to to hear from you, oh clients do get to me asking about Reg A. RACF. Good. So our messages are going out there. Yeah, we’re getting heard and getting read and it’s good. It’s good. So we talked about tokenization. About going digital. Can we talk about the secondary markets a little bit about ATS? How does it work? How does it work? How does the secondary market work with this tokenization aspect? How can we work on that?

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah, I mean with secondary market, they it just depends on obviously how the primary was was issued, right if you have a restricted resale period or not, and you can list that offering on an ATS and alternative trading system and the investors will then be able to have the option of liquid Ready, right, they will be able to delay dilute or exit a portion or all of their, of their shares if they wanted to do that. And they can do that on the secondary market through an ATS. And there’s some other ways too, but that’s really, that’s really high level.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yeah, that’s for now, right. It’s not for now.

 

Laura Pamatian 

I think the bottom line is that you’re giving them the option, right? 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yes, in the secondary market is definitely going to be there. There’s no need to be afraid to go digital. Right. Because, yeah, everything is becoming digital. I have I had a professor once at college, like two years ago. And he said, You don’t own your money. Somebody tells you that you can use the amount of money because yeah, we don’t see money anymore, right? We just see the numbers and bank accounts and or credit cards or whatever. You don’t own your money. Someone gives you permission to use that quantity. And it’s a it’s a nice way of looking at digitalization, right.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Yeah. Numbers in a ledger, right?

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yeah, they are all zeros and ones inside a computer somewhere. Yeah. When you talk about blockchain is not somewhere, it’s literally everywhere, right. So yeah, so basically, that’s it. Well, Laura, I think we pretty much covered everything that we expected to talk about real estate and just talk about height zero, it’s it’s been a great opportunity to learn a little bit more about this business and about height zero. In KoreconX, we are organizing course summit for November on real estate. We are today’s October 21. And next week, we’re having our KoreSummit on cannabis. And November is always real is our real estate month. So we are starting to pave our way into real estate. So we’re gonna start talking about that. And I hope to have you here more often really. Oh, we had we had a question here. I had a question here. If blockchain underlies the tokenization, does blockchain underlie tokenization? And also are the tokens nfts?

 

Laura Pamatian 

That’s a great question. It’s a great question. Right? So the difference, I think, in really high level, right, like we’re seeing is NF T’s or non fungible tokens. And NFT’s we are seeing in real estate to transfer the asset and its entirety, right, so if I want to sell a home or property, I can create an NFT. And we can transfer the property that way, right. There’s a lot of other steps and there’s, it’s going to be a while before we get there, where this can mainstream because of legislation, etc. But we’re seeing NFT’s in that type of situation. With security tokens. We’re seeing that more in the in the interest in the property right the shares the investor interest so that we can create tokens on the blockchain. So with a non fungible token, it’s unique, it represents the entire property, that type of that property cannot be duplicated, etc. With security tokens. They are fungible, they are. They’re not like they’re not like, crypto, right. If you lose it, it’s gone forever with security tokens. We can we can burn them, reissue them, and you get your you know, you’re not losing your shares. So very different. But we are seeing use case with NFT’s in real estate. And, you know, we hope that that’s where the industry goes. Just it’s just going to take some education of of everyone. Right, because it’s it is very secure way to transact.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Yes, definitely. So soon, it’s probably going to be the only way to do so. Yeah. Yes. So thanks for the question. Thanks a lot for the question was a very good one. I believe the cover that we’ve covered it all.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Laurie, if for some reason I didn’t answer that question. Just feel free to reach out. I’m happy to have an offline conversation with anyone that has.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

We’re all tagged here into LinkedIn and post on YouTube. So it’s pretty much easy to find, to find those little car contacts or to find Laura to find height, zero. We’re here. Right? So if you want to see her final goodbyes, and please, Laura, the stage is yours. Let’s wrap it up.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Thank you so much. I just want to say thanks for all that you guys are doing. We are grateful to be part of the ecosystem we are doing everything that we can to, to bring in solve for you know, basically solve problems for the owners and developers and and investors. So there’s anything that we can do to help feel free to reach out

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

That’s very nice. That’s very good, Laura. It was a pleasure having you here. I still got a lot to learn on blockchain. We’re gonna get there, hopefully by November.

 

Laura Pamatian 

Let’s do it again soon for sure.

 

Rafael Gonçalves 

Sure, sure. We need to we need to have more each have more content and need to have more education. And if you have been watching us so far, thank you very much. We are on LinkedIn live. We are on YouTube. We are on Spotify as well. Amazon music, Apple, Apple podcasts, you can find us on iTunes. So stay tuned. Next week we’re having the cannabis KoreSummit on the KoreconX.. Follow us on LinkedIn and on Spotify as well. Thanks for your August. Thanks for your company and have a great week and you all thank you Laura. Bye bye