Ten years ago, we set out to change how commercial real estate professionals accessed opportunity. Today, we’re celebrating a milestone that represents millions of deals—and the start of our next chapter.
My team and I are excited to celebrate 10 years of democratizing CRE. By empowering professionals to research, market, transact, and auction properties in one streamlined platform, we’ve facilitated unprecedented access and accelerated dealmaking.
Here’s how it all began, how our offerings have evolved and expanded, and what you can expect from Crexi moving forward.
From Humble Beginnings, a Problem Solved
Ten years ago, despite technology’s many advances, commercial real estate was still transacted in inefficient ways.
Deals that should have closed in weeks dragged on for months, brokers burned hours on tasks that should have taken minutes, and information was locked behind gatekeepers. Many entrants to the market following the Global Financial Crisis struggled to access new deals despite sellers, landlords, and brokers wanting to reach new audiences.
We started with a simple but radical idea: create a platform where brokers control how they sell, data flows freely, and professionals outside a broker’s network can participate.
In the summer of 2015, a handful of us worked out of a rental house in Venice, California. No customers. No revenue. Just pure conviction that we were solving something that mattered. We launched our open sales marketplace that year with four listings. We took turns answering broker calls at all hours of the day, writing product specs, closing partnerships, and assembling office furniture.
One of my earliest and most important decisions was bringing on great engineers I trusted. I wanted teammates who embodied the traits that would define us: high integrity, grit, creative thinking, and a desire to work for something meaningful while having some fun along the way. The three legs of our hiring stool were: hungry, humble, and smart.
The Evolution of Access
We raised our Series A in 2017, which enabled the 2018 launch of PRO, a premium service facilitating targeted property marketing and seamless deal management. That was our first monetization stream, and brokers embraced it because we had earned their trust by solving real problems first. We launched our open lease marketplace that same year.
By 2019, we had introduced Crexi Intelligence to deliver real-time market data and comps and our Transactions platform, allowing sellers to conduct online auctions or best-and-final bidding. Watching $80 million of real estate move in a single day proved that speed and liquidity could transform this industry like the internet had revolutionized stock trading years earlier.
Then 2020 hit, and face-to-face deals stopped overnight. Some investors flinched at the uncertainty, but virtual solutions were needed more than ever. In 2021, we scaled from 100 to 200 employees.
In 2022, we hit over 1 million registered users. Meanwhile, broker number one is still active and using every product we’ve built.
This year, we passed 420 employees. I’ve focused on finding the right people to empower and trust, establishing strategic direction, and protecting the DNA that got us here.
Every new feature we launched came back to the same idea: removing barriers so more professionals could participate, compete, and win.
Reflecting on our growth, investor Fernando De Leon said, “You’re seeing the rewards from a commercial real estate community that values what you’ve given them as a tool to make better decisions.”
Shaping the Future of CRE
The numbers create a vivid picture of where Crexi stands today:
- Over $1 trillion in transactions facilitated across more than 3 million listings
- 8.6 billion square feet leased and over 100 million leads generated for brokers
- A growing community of more than 2 million active monthly users
But what keeps me hungry is knowing we’ve only scratched the surface of a $20 trillion industry.
The energy in our office is electric. We are at the precipice of big change, empowering our customers to do more with less. Our every move is guided by one purpose: to shape the future of commercial real estate by creating more access.
Introducing Crexi Vault: AI-Powered Access for the Next Decade
As part of our mission to expand access and empower more professionals to move faster with fewer barriers, we’re excited to introduce our next evolution.
Manual document review slows deals, increases risk, and disproportionately affects those without large back-office teams. That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest offering: Crexi Vault, an AI-powered data extraction platform designed for commercial real estate documents.
Vault lets users search, compare, and analyze data fast—eliminating tedious manual work and reducing errors.
Vault is our first major step into AI-powered transaction intelligence—and it won’t be our last.
Thank You
Reaching this milestone proves that you can reshape resistant industries by solving real problems. It proves that those who believed in this mission didn’t misplace their faith. And it proves the dedication and grit of everyone who has built Crexi through every late night, every setback, and every moment of doubt.
More than anything, I’m proud of the hundreds of employees who have helped us grow, and of the millions of professionals whose businesses have scaled alongside ours.
The first decade proved that access can change an industry.
The next will prove how far we can go with it.
