Alumni Spotlight: Harrison Neff, Changing Commercial Real Estate

Meet Harrison Neff, Head of Product and Co-Founder of BlueSuit, a company transforming the way brokers and owners collaborate in privately held commercial real estate. 

Harrison graduated from Leeds School of Business and with a degree in Finance and a certificate in Operations and Information Systems in 2012. While a student, he founded the Leeds Association for Information Systems, a club focused on exploring how data can be used in business. Harrison used his twenties to gain as many skills as he could, working several different positions in a plethora of fields. He’s now focused on building data products and providing value across the development chain.

Insights for commercial real estate

With his new skillset and an itch to build something, Harrison contacted his friend, Tanner McGraw, who has 20 years of experience in commercial real estate focusing both on the core brokerage business and building technology. Both were seeking a new project and sat down to see what problems they could solve together.

“We found a new source of data in transaction documents and use machine learning to extract it and combine it with other datasets, providing better insight for brokers.” 

The two discussed how decisions are made in commercial real estate and came to the conclusion the current methods in place rely on poor data and intuition. Tanner’s tech-savvy background in the industry matched with Harrison’s in data product management, led them to launch a new venture: BlueSuit. 

Techstars accelerator

BlueSuit just participated in the Colliers Proptech Accelerator Program powered by Techstars, which focuses on solving problems across the real estate industry. In the accelerator they learned about the Colliers organization, how their brokers work and what data was important to them. 

The experience helped BlueSuit discover how they can target their business to satisfy those needs. It also gave the opportunity to sign a strategic data sharing agreement with Colliers to support their growth.

Back home from Techstars, BlueSuit is now in a heavy growth and build stage. Currently, they are in the process of developing two new products, working with brokers and teams to build models and create datasets that provide valuable insights.

Advice to students
 

“Always be curious. Always be learning.”

Harrison stressed the importance of understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are as an entrepreneur. It is difficult to take risk in a field where there are no strict guidelines, but he believes the best way to learn is to fail. If you have an idea that you’re passionate about, pursue it as much as you can.

Click here to learn more about BlueSuit.