Wes Bolsen is the CEO and board member of CitroTech (NYSE AM: CITR), the company behind the only EPA Safer Choice recognized fire inhibitor in the United States. Before CitroTech, Wes co-founded LaderaTech, a wildfire prevention company built on patents from Stanford University and MIT, which he subsequently sold to Perimeter Solutions (NYSE: PRM) and joined their leadership team overseeing global wildfire prevention ahead of the company's $2 billion public listing. He also served as board member and CEO of Imidex, a medical device company focused on early-stage lung cancer detection. Earlier in his career, Wes held executive roles at Cool Planet Energy Systems, Codexis (NASDAQ: CDXS), Coskata, and ICM, and consulted at McKinsey from 2000 to 2006 across the Chicago and Palo Alto offices. Wes is based in Oceanside, California.

(02:08) From LaderaTech to CitroTech: why Wes came back
(03:21) The Palisades fire & what it changes for developers
(05:09) Why community-wide protection beats home by home
(06:55) Suppression vs. prevention: the 1-to-7 cost argument
(08:38) What home builders are hearing from insurance
(11:02) Fire resilience as a marketing differentiator
(14:39) Cost of fire-resistant construction vs. traditional methods
(16:31) The three layers of CitroTech's approach
(22:27) The Hexion JV
(26:01) Getting into Lennar, DR Horton, KB Homes, and national spec
(27:22) Fire risk across California, Colorado, Montana & Idaho
(29:03) Mass timber, CLT, and the fire retardancy case
(31:43) What a REIT looks like after deploying CitroTech
(33:34) Collaboration superpower: Jesus and Elon Musk

🏙️ Learn more:
-Visit CitroTech
-Wes Bolsen on LinkedIn

🏙️ In-person Events:
-South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15
-Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19
-Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3
-State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4
-All upcoming Commercial Observer events

🏙️ Virtual Events:

-Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8
-AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18

🏙️ Connect with Tangent:
-Edward Cohen on LinkedIn
-Zach Aarons on LinkedIn
-Tangent on LinkedIn

James Holbrook is an industrial real estate entrepreneur and technology innovator, and the founder of Payson Smith Holbrook and Warehub, where he serves as Executive Chairman. Over the past 5+ years, he and his team have led more than $500 million in industrial leasing transactions, representing landlords and tenants across millions of square feet of short-term warehouse space nationwide. Seeing early that industrial real estate was overdue for modernization, he founded Warehub, an AI-enabled platform built to digitize and accelerate the way warehouse space is discovered, leased, and activated. Today, his work focuses on reducing friction in industrial transactions and helping the logistics economy operate more efficiently through smarter use of data and technology.

(02:24) 2,500 transactions and one infrastructure gap
(03:57) What industrial real estate covers
(05:39) Why short-term leasing demand is surging
(07:11) Tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty
(08:42) The hidden cost of vacancy
(10:11) What to standardize vs. negotiate
(11:38) What Warehub is & who it serves
(13:42) Transactions from 12 weeks to one day
(15:50) Early pushback and first transaction reality
(17:03) AI-enabled vs. AI-native
(19:43) The most underestimated force: volatility
(22:22) Columbus, Kansas City, and the inland shift
(24:00) AI-powered supply chain optimization
(25:49) Self-driving trucks & underwriting for optionality
(27:20) Power as the new site selection constraint
(28:11) How the broker's role shifts with AI
(29:59) Collaboration superpower: Aristotle

🏙️ Learn more:
-Visit Warehub
-James Holbrook on LinkedIn

🏙️ In-person Events:
-South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15
-Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19
-Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3
-State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4
-All upcoming Commercial Observer events

🏙️ Virtual Events:

-Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8
-AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18

🏙️ Connect with Tangent:
-Edward Cohen on LinkedIn
-Zach Aarons on LinkedIn
-Tangent on LinkedIn

David Stifter has spent more than two decades at the intersection of real estate, technology, and finance. As Managing Director and functional CTO at Digital Bridge (formerly Colony Capital), he led data architecture, process improvement, and finance transformation initiatives across major acquisitions. In 2020, he co-founded PredictAP with a team of B2B SaaS and AI veterans from Blizzard, Apple, and HubSpot. Since then, the company has grown to serve more than 130 real estate firms and process more than 7 million invoices a year. David is based in Lincoln, MA.

(02:20) From Colony Capital to founding PredictAP
(05:11) When a $60B firm couldn't pay bills
(07:23) Why invoice coding is harder than it looks
(09:29) CAM pools, triple net leases, and the permutation problem
(13:43) When institutional knowledge walks out the door
(16:38) How to tell a real solution from a pretty demo
(20:48) PredictAP: From inbox to Yardi in 30 seconds
(24:47) Related Group, Cushman & Wakefield, and what 130 clients taught PredictAP
(27:59) Why integration makes or breaks AP automation
(30:17) Build vs. buy: what CFOs & COOs get wrong
(33:51) Sheriff vs. shepherd: how to manage AI adoption internally
(35:50) AP coding, audit risk, and financial misstatement
(38:44) Collaboration superpower: Richard Feynman

🏙️ Learn more:
-Visit PredictAP
-David Stifter on LinkedIn

🏙️ In-person Events:
-South Florida Capital & Development Forum: Miami | 10/15
-Power Tech and AI Forum & Reception: NYC | 10/19
-Finance Forum: NYC | 11/3
-State of Office Forum: NYC | 11/4
-All upcoming Commercial Observer events

🏙️ Virtual Events:

-Spotlight Case Study: Inside the AI Transformation at Cushman & Wakefield: 10/8
-AI & Innovation Forum: 11/18

🏙️ Connect with Tangent:
-Edward Cohen on LinkedIn
-Zach Aarons on LinkedIn
-Tangent on LinkedIn