Houston-based start-up TheSquareFoot is working to make the commercial real estate industry easier to understand. The company’s commercial property search engine, which lets users customize and save their searches, is designed to improve both the search process (for prospective lessees) and the listing process (for property owners). TheSquareFoot’s goal is to modernize commercial real estate by migrating lessor-lessee interaction to the web.
TheSquareFoot’s three founders have been networking across the country to promote their newly launched business (which formally debuted in June 2012). In addition, the company has a footprint in two cities other than Houston: Austin, Tex. and New York.
With the founders and their CTO constantly on the move, co-founder Aron Susman says, keeping on top of TheSquareFoot’s operations can be a challenge. What’s especially tough is managing the different areas of TheSquareFoot’s business. The company works with a number of parties in the commercial real estate space — including property owners, brokers, lessees and product vendor — and its founders have to stay in constant contact with all of them. At the same time, of course, they’re working hard to grow their business – running retargeter campaigns with Google, collaborating with local chambers of commerce and scheduling educational workshops.
One of Aron and his colleagues’ primary goals is to move the commercial leasing process onto the internet. So it comes as little surprise that the company relies on cloud technology to stay plugged in, using Amazon S3 for file storage, Google Docs for collaboration – and RingCentral for office communications.
RingCentral is an essential piece of how TheSquareFoot operates, Susman notes. (Watch the video above to learn how TheSquareFoot uses RingCentral.) “Having the ability to know what’s going on with landlords, property managers and vendors – to track their calls as they come in – is a big plus,” he says.
And RingCentral makes it easy for the company’s founders to adjust their call forwarding settings when they’re on the road. “We try to spend as much time networking, as much time in the field, as possible,” Susman states. “RingCentral keeps us connected.”
At its launch, TheSquareFoot’s search engine only covers properties in Houston and New York. But Susman and his partners expect the firm to expand greatly in the coming months and years – and that means cloud services will remain a part of TheSquareFoot’s arsenal. Now and in the future, Susman says, RingCentral has what he and his colleagues need from a phone system.
“RingCentral,” he reports, “has been great for us as a start-up.”
Keep your eyes peeled for more Superfan features on the RingCentral blog – we’ve got some good ones in the pipeline!
Originally published Aug 03, 2012, updated Aug 07, 2020