Are We Solving the Right Problems—or Just Adding More Tech?
"You can ask the CEO of a REIT and a startup founder the same question—and each will say the other isn’t listening."
— James Pellatt, Digital Trees
In the race to innovate, are we just automating dysfunction?
There’s no shortage of talk about real estate transformation. AI is here. Robotics is here. Startups are solving problems in record time, but underneath it all, there’s a quieter question we keep circling back to at Grow Places: what are we actually trying to fix—and who gets to define the problem?
This month, our podcast guests offered a stark reminder that real innovation isn’t just about speeding up old systems.
We sat down with James Pellatt, founder of Digital Trees, and Faisal Butt, founder of Pi Labs, the VC firm that helped coin the term PropTech. Both are helping push the built world forward—but from very different but related vantage points.
Their reflections brought us back to one essential challenge: technology can unlock immense value—but only if we’ve got the right lock in mind.
James Pellatt: Tech Won’t Save Us from Ourselves
"Innovation in real estate isn’t about tools. It’s about trust."
After leading innovation at GPE, James saw the same pattern repeating across the sector: powerful intent, but fragmented execution. With Digital Trees, he’s now helping real estate companies build meaningful digital strategies—starting with a brutally simple question: what’s the problem you’re trying to solve?
And the answer? Often, we don’t know.
James challenges the culture of our industry head-on. Distrust. Siloed thinking. Fear of failure. Legacy systems that hoard data in documents, not insights. It’s not that we lack innovation; we lack alignment.
At Grow Places, we hear this all the time:
Design teams deliver to outdated benchmarks.
Operation teams inherit problems with no feedback loop.
Sustainability goals are promised with no tools to measure progress.
What James is building is rare—a model that blends strategic clarity with cultural empathy.
“We don’t lack tech. We lack the stories that help people understand why it matters.” .
Faisal Butt: PropTech’s VC Returns to First Principles
“This isn’t just a wave—it’s a renaissance.”
Faisal Butt was investing in real estate tech before the industry even had a name for it. Through Pi Labs, he’s now three funds deep, backing hundreds of startups across AI, robotics, drones, and the built environment. His early bets on SaaS models gave way to deeptech solutions now reshaping how we design, build, and operate space.
Where Faisal really pulls the curtain back is on the LLM-native AI startups emerging post-GPT. These are tools that will:
Turn architectural drawings into structural plans in minutes.
Read a data room, flag red flags, and draft your investment memo.
Train drones to secure large industrial sites using computer vision.
The kicker? These companies are gaining traction faster than ever—because the technology is fundamentally different. It’s not just better software. It’s a leap in logic.
Faisal also names the bottleneck clearly:
“Everyone’s piloting. Nobody’s rolling out.”
The technology is ready, but the industry isn’t—because we haven’t built the infrastructure of trust and process to scale adoption.
Grow Places Reflections: Start with Why (as Simon Sinek would say)
These conversations have made us think hard about our own work at Grow Places. They’ve reminded us that progress isn’t just about tooling up—it’s about slowing down to ask the right questions:
Are we solving a real problem—or building a solution in search of one?
Are we designing for cost, compliance, or culture?
Are we chasing outputs—or shaping outcomes?
We’ve spent decades trying to digitise development. But maybe it’s time to humanise it and with that usher in a new wave of innovation built on an open and trusting industry culture.
Because what both James and Faisal make clear is this:
Technology can unlock speed and scale, but only leadership can unlock purpose.
May Takeaways
Don’t Chase Trends—Clarify Problems
Startups with sharp problem statements move faster. So should you.
Be Brave Enough to Ask “Why?”
If we’re still designing air-conditioned boxes for a climate that doesn’t exist—what else are we doing out of habit?
Innovation Demands Culture Change
Tech fails when trust is low. Build a culture where pilots become rollouts.
Start the Feedback Loop Now
If your commissioning process ends at handover, you’re not building—you’re abandoning.
Bandwidth Is the Prize
AI isn’t just about efficiency. It gives us back time. What we do with it is the real innovation.
A Note to the Industry
Real change isn’t faster spreadsheets. It’s deeper conversations. Let’s spend less time automating the old model—and more time imagining a better one.
Want to collaborate on more human-centred, problem-led, purpose-built places?
Let’s talk.