RG 198 – From Brazil, To Silicon Valley Start Up, To Real Estate Mogul w/ Steffany Boldrini
Steffany is the Principle at Monte Carlo investments in the Bay area, California. She is originally from Brazil and moved to the US when she was 18 to chase her dream. In her early career she set up a marketplace focussed on natural organic and non toxic products, and since then she has won multiple awards as a sales leader and worked for a multibillion dollar start up in the Bay Area. She has a background in raising money from venture capital and she’s pivoting to raise money from the techies for real estate investment, specifically self storage. Stephanie worked in sales for start ups and now raises money for commercial real estate.
When Steffany moved to the US she started her career in silicone valley, where she worked in sales. She had her own start up 10 years ago which was a humbling experience, it didn’t work out but it was a good experience because it taught her three key lessons:
1. Do your research – just because you like something doesn’t mean everyone will.
2. Focus your product category so that people remember you for something specific.
3. She was charging their sellers very little and should have charged more
After her start up failed she started looking for jobs and saw a tech company hiring. She got a lower level job and then after 8 months got raised to the job she actually wanted. This job taught her that the team is the most important thing. She was there for 3 years and then started to learn about angel investing but after talking to people she realised that the less risky option for money raising was real estate investment. As an angel investor it can be very difficult to make any money, you need to have the capital to reinvest when the company grows otherwise you can get diluted. If the company takes on VC funding then you get nothing at all.
Steffany decided to move on because she likes working for herself. Mobile home parks and self storage are recession resistant and she chose self storage because there are no people involved. She went partnering with people to go out and find deals which she found through MSA’s or that her mentor passed over to her. She’s currently loving the market in Dallas because it’s going through a period of population growth and differentiated industries.
Top tips
Most important habit – Google calendars and Hubspot
Most influential person – Mentor
Most important tool – Self development course called Landmark
Most important failure – Her startup
montecarlorei.com
Podcast – Commercial Real Estate Investing from A to Z