In our latest Meet the Real Estate Tech Entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Nav Athwal of RealtyShares.

Here’s a bit more about him, from his own mouth…

1) What do you do?

RealtyShares is Crowdfunding for Real Estate. Through our online investment platform, we provide investors access to pre-vetted real estate investment properties or loans secured by real estate and the ability to invest as little as $5,000 directly into these investments. We focus on a range of asset types, including retail, office, residential and multifamily, in various geographic locations. All investments are passive so investors don’t have to worry about the usual headaches that go into owning and operating real estate.

2) Why do you do what you do?

Real estate should be a part of every investor’s investment portfolio. It provides a hedge against inflation, immediate cash flow, tax benefits and is important for diversification. Also, in the current financial landscape with the volatility of the stock market and money market accounts yielding a paltry .5% and the 30-Year Treasury bond yielding only about 3.3% per year, real estate is one of the only ways investors can earn steady returns. However, most investors still struggle to access a reliable source of quality deal flow and to invest passively like they would in a stock or bond. At the same time, high quality Investment Managers spend way too much time trying to raise capital for quality investment properties. With RealtyShares, we are bridging this gap and making investing in and raising capital for real estate simple, streamlined and efficient.

3) What are you most excited about right now?

We officially launched a live Beta version of our investment platform about two weeks ago and have already funded our first two investments (totaling close to $100,000 of invested funds through our platform). This is really exciting because it shows there is real demand among investors for a platform like RealtyShares.

We are also very excited about rolling out a new and improved investment platform in the next few weeks. Updates will include a complete site redesign and a fully integrated and streamlined investment portal and investor dashboard. Through the investment portal, investors will be able to execute all investor documents and transfer all investment funds directly from the platform so the process will be completely streamlined. Investors will also have access to a dashboard where they will be able to manage their investments, including cash distributions, returns and all paperwork, including K-1’s. It’ll be like a more well designed version of scottrade or etrade but for Real Estate.

4) What’s next for you?

Continuing to build RealtyShares as a disruptive marketplace for individual investors to invest in exclusive and pre-vetted real estate properties. We want to continue to expand the type of real estate investment properties on our platform as well as the ease with which individual investors can access and invest in these properties.

5) What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

Pro bono legal services for small businesses. Living in San Francisco/Silicon Valley and working in tech, we often take for granted the struggles that small businesses and small business owners go through in order to successfully run their business. As an attorney, I’ve counseled and assisted these entrepreneurs with legal needs such as entity formation and obtaining necessary business permits/licenses. I am now working with colleagues and friends to create a more comprehensive clinic where small business owners can drop in weekly for advice and consultation with respect to legal needs surrounding their business.

Thanks to Nav for sharing his motivations and current projects. If you’re interested in connecting with Nav further, you can find him on Oh Hey World and LinkedIn.

We’ll be featuring other real estate tech entrepreneurs in the coming weeks. If you are an entrepreneur in the real estate vertical (past or present), and want to be profiled, please sign up for an OHW account and add “real estate tech entrepreneurs” as an interest on your profile — then shoot me an email (drew at ohheyworld).