How Real Estate Syndicators Raise Millions Online Without Relying Only on Friends and Family

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (00:00)
I

will say one thing though about AI is it’s not here to replace humans, it’s just there to augment humans. As an example, when AI first came about, we’ve some competitors come about and we’ve tried this ourselves. We beat our heads against this wall for six months about maybe a ⁓ year or two ago where we said, well, AI is here. ⁓ It’s gonna write our emails, it’s gonna do all this, right? But what it…

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (00:26)
do our phone calls, right? But what ended up happening is that it just was not good and it was dropping really obvious ⁓ opportunities.

Quentin Edmonds (02:08)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host.

Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest and I’m pretty sure, listen, I’m gonna let him tell you everything that he wants to talk about and we’re gonna peek through his lens. You know, that’s what gets me excited is when I get to learn something new and sometimes we hear things that we have not heard. And even if we heard the same kind of category, just hearing from different people and how they do it, it’s always exciting. You know, that’s what gets me excited. But I’m pretty sure we’re probably gonna talk about some capital raising. I’m pretty sure that’s probably one of the things that we’re gonna

talk about today. And so I am so excited for you all to hear from Mr. Vitaliy Mr. Vitaliy , how you doing today,

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (02:51)
Doing fantastic, Q. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Pleasure to be here. Excited to share everything that I can.

Quentin Edmonds (02:55)
Absolutely.

I love it, man. Listen, so glad you’re here. And listen, I’m gonna type, I’m gonna dive right in.

I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to the place where you are now, I we love origin stories. And man, then tell them where you are in the world. People seem to love to know where people are geographically, especially, he’s like, this guy’s right around the corner. Maybe I can connect with him because he’s so local. And so what you’re doing, the origin story and where you are in the world. Miss Vitaliy , sir, you have the floor now.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (03:28)
Yeah.

I’ll start with the easy one. So I’m in Minnesota and ⁓ I actually moved here because I, my wife was originally from here. And when I moved to the States, I moved to Florida and then to California. And then I made that move back and forth a couple of times. And then ⁓ it wasn’t until I met my wife that I explored Minnesota and that’s where we landed and started a family and no further plans to move as of right now ⁓ until next winter, that is at least, right?

Quentin Edmonds (03:32)
Yeah.

Right,

right, right.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (03:59)
It’s springtime here. We’re on the other end of it now. So things are looking up. ⁓ But when I was in California, ⁓ I have a branding and kind of a user experience, design background. So worked in a lot of products with a lot of tech companies. And ⁓ I met a co-founder of mine, Chris Arias, ⁓ who introduced me to capital syndication. And he was doing it since the inception of the Jobs Act in 2012.

Quentin Edmonds (04:04)
Yeah, yeah.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (04:27)
And so him and I started our company and that was about seven years ago. And about five years ago, him and I had ⁓ focused our efforts on serving the capital syndication space, specifically in real estate. So that was five years ago, six, now 2020 and 2020. And ⁓ him and I had partnered with a couple of ⁓ really great, we got really lucky to have found these sponsors ⁓ that have really taken us under their wing and said, hey,

You you guys are very knowledgeable and experienced in all the areas that you guys do. So that’s advertising, branding, marketing. And we essentially got on the GP with these guys. And over the course of the next year, again, this is 2020, we helped these guys raise a little over $40 million across individual assets. And then we had helped one start a fund.

from scratch, that one alone raised a little over $17 million. Still going today. so around one year, Mark, into this whole thing, I said, you know, I’m interested in seeing what companies are doing ⁓ at scale. ⁓ I took a sabbatical from my company and I had joined CrowdStreet. And so at this point, CrowdStreet was ⁓ going through a very interesting

period where ⁓ there was a lot of growth in tech at this time. ⁓ And they had been in the process of shifting from the way they were doing business before to becoming a broker dealer.

And so I was instrumental on the product design team and kind of the investor experience ⁓ design team to help them reformat exactly how they’re presenting deals.

what their conversion funnels look like and help them transition into a compliant broker-dealer structure. ⁓ And so I did that for ⁓ a little over a year and then I had then rejoined ⁓ my company. We had rebranded into RaiseRating. We said, okay, we’re after all the things that we had learned in the years leading up to this moment, working with the GPs, working at Crowdstreet, having a ⁓ experience that my partner has.

We said, let’s structure a way that makes it as turnkey as possible for our clients to raise capital using social media advertising. And it’s a very specific type of investor, right? We’re starting a very specific space here, right? So if somebody comes in and says, hey, I’m looking to raise $50 million and I have 60 days to do it, right? Like, are you a good fit? We say, no, this is good luck with that. That’s not going to happen.

Quentin Edmonds (07:45)
Hmm.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (08:04)
And so, know, if you’re looking for check sizes in the 20 million range or whatever, like you’re going to want to go to family offices and private equity groups. But if you’re looking to fill that gap where you have tapped out of your friends and family, you’re maybe in that two to ten million dollar capital raise range. You need to simply expand your network and social media advertising, specifically Facebook and Instagram. ⁓

there is nothing that comes close to getting in front of investors who can satisfy that range. So if you’re looking for check sizes in that 100,000 to a million dollar range, there is simply no better avenue than to get in front of those investors. And that is exactly what we had refined over the years. ⁓

know, getting, helping our clients get exposure to those new investors and facilitating those meetings.

Quentin Edmonds (09:06)
I it. Man, thank you so much, Vitality. Thank you for taking us through the journey, ⁓ walking us through. I was writing some stuff down as you talk. Wife’s from Minnesota. And so he’s like, yes. And wife’s from Minnesota? Okay, we going to Minnesota. You you start. I love it. I love it. ⁓

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (09:22)
Yep. They call them late girls, I learned just the other day. Late girls, yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (09:32)
And you started a family there, man. I know you mentioned in 2020 that you and your partner, you you found a sponsor, got on a GP team, you helped them raise over 40 million, man. And just, you know, just just walk your way through, starting your company, learning how to use social media as a way to raise capital. And now you’re helping people get in front of investors. And so.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (09:46)
That’s right. That’s right.

Quentin Edmonds (09:59)
I kind of reiterated some of the things that you said, because I like to say at this particular point in the part, I say the statement that destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter what you’ve gone through in life, these moments have built you for the moment that you’re at right now. And you borrow different parts from the journey that creates your mindset, that creates like different parts of who you are. And so I would love to know, do your moments in destiny, Minnesota,

finding sponsors, coming back to your brand, rebuilding your brand. What has these moments taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline? Has it given you a new thought level on innovation? Like, what is these moments in this journey taught you about you?

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (10:49)
It’s everything. mean, entrepreneurship has been kind of the greatest teacher that you could ever ask for. And it has its challenges as well. It’s really hard to turn work off, as an example, because you carry it in the whole entire day. But it’s very rewarding in a way, because nothing teaches you more about yourself than taking your

destiny into your own hands as much as you can given the, you know, kind of…

you know, kind of the greater good, whichever, you know, whatever you believe in, right? You can only do so much, but you’re equipped in this life with the tool set and the skill sets that you have, and it’s up to you to use them. And entrepreneurship, teachers do that resourcefulness and resilience and innovation as well. You creativity is a big one too, because good design, in my perspective, good creativity doesn’t come from just having unlimited resources, knowing

how to use the resources that you have available to you in the most efficient and effective way. And that, you know, it taught me everything about that really.

Quentin Edmonds (12:35)
Yeah, yeah. So eloquently said, man. I mean, you literally talk, you talked about things that I always talk about on this part, like, and you specifically the word tools, like we all have out certain tools that we use that we’re proficient in. And those tools, like you talked about creativity can actually open up a lane in the space for us. And I say, you know, everybody’s tool different. Somebody’s great with a hammer. Somebody’s great with a screwdriver.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (12:53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (13:04)
But actually somebody’s great with a spatula. Somebody’s great with spices. Like we all have different tools that we can use to open up our lane. And so I love how you talked about, you know, that’s creative aspect that you can use. And so I always like to talk to people like yourself and actually try to get people to connect the dots

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (13:08)
Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Right.

Quentin Edmonds (13:23)
People have been refining their tools for years. They may not realize it, but they’re refining their tools. And when they get in certain spaces, they’re pulling on their tool set and not even realize it, because it’s so easy. Like when you have a superpower, it comes to you easy. And sometimes you don’t realize that’s your superpower until you think and like, whoa, well, how can I expand this? How can I monetize this? How can I value add this? And so you so eloquently said, man, I appreciate everything you said, Absolutely.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (13:44)
Yeah, right. Yeah. And Q,

I will add to this too, is that it’s not so much about the tool either. It’s about your ability to get good at any tool, right? It’s really your ability to learn any tool because tools change all the time, you know, as you know, like, and it happens incredibly quickly and people are like, what’s your five year plan? Like, dude, I can only see two year stops because look how quickly.

AI, for example, came about. Everybody’s five-year plan got crushed on execution because of that. You couldn’t have seen that coming. So your ability to actually execute is not dependent on getting good at a certain tool. It’s getting good at adapting any tool that comes through. And so to your point about DOTS, there’s a really famous Steve Jobs quote, and I think it was part of his

Stanford commencement speech and I just love this is he says I’m a paraphrase he says you can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking back and that to me just rings so true and I love that quote so much and so ⁓ yeah

Quentin Edmonds (14:59)
I’ve never heard that and I am writing it down because it makes so much sense.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (15:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you can only connect them back.

Quentin Edmonds (15:09)
I love it, I appreciate you, man, because sometimes, this is a podcast, so of course we want to reach as many people as possible. But I don’t want to reach it just selling stuff that don’t work. And that’s why I love talking to people like you and when you so eloquently said what you said, because I want people to realize that they really have something inside of them that

that is, that they can use at any given time. Like, I know sometimes we get stuck. I know sometimes we have to reevaluate. Sometimes you got to go back to the drawing board, but I always say Vitaliy , one of the most consistent thing in your business, especially as entrepreneurs, is you. It’s always going to be you. The money may go up, the money may go down. Strategies may change, but it’s always you. And I always just want to encourage people that you are more than enough. And I’m not trying to sound like a cliche or whatever, but if you was able to start it,

you can sustain it and you can grow it based on different skillsets that you have. Maybe you got to partner up with somebody. Yes, maybe you got to pay somebody to do something that you’re not strong at, but you’re still making that decision. You have to have self-awareness enough to do that. And so I love it, man. That Steve Jobs quote is exceptional. You you can’t look, you can’t connect the dots just looking forward. Did I say it right? Man, I love it,

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (16:29)
You got it. You can only connect them looking back. Yeah. Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (16:33)
I love that, man. I love that. Steve Jobs, mean, Steve Jobs, I guess he did a little bit while he was alive. I guess he, I guess he was innovative, I guess. I think, you know, think he did a little something, something, guess, you know? So man, let’s talk a little bit more about Raze Ready, man. I absolutely love the name. So two part question. Is there a story behind the name and what is the next real goal that you’re trying to do with Raze Ready?

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (16:41)
Yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, the name funny enough, was Chad GPT helped us come up with the name. ⁓ yeah, when, yeah, use the tool, right? Yeah, yeah. When I rejoined our company, we had a different name and it’s still, you know, the S Corp is under that name. yeah, the day after I left Kraus Street, the day of I left Kraus Street,

Quentin Edmonds (17:49)
Come on. Use the tool, people. Use the tool. I love it. Use the tool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (18:10)
I went to my business partner and I said, okay, let’s do it in this specific fashion. The day after we got straight to work and worked on the business and before we went out and marketed ourselves. yeah, so Chad GPT was instrumental in that. AI was obviously a big piece. So speaking of AI, you’re talking about what’s our vision kind of moving forward. ⁓ There’s a couple of things. One is we’re trying to find

⁓ incredible operators to work with. that’s really the number. Everything that we do is around finding more amazing operators who have experience, who are looking to scale their operation, who do right by their investors, who have an incredible offering, right? An incredible investment offering so that we can help them get, you know, and the market changes, right? So whatever worked in 2020 in as far as, you know, investment offerings,

It’s a completely different game now. Back in the day, had probably 80 % of our business was multi-family value add. That was four or five years ago. multi-family value add is probably 20 % of our business. So the market changes to kind of a cash flow ⁓ preferred offering, right? So what investors want.

something that’s a little bit stable, that produces a return, something that never skips a return, something that has a monthly distribution, a short liquidity window. ⁓ But regardless, we do all kinds of stuff. ⁓ So finding ourselves in front of more ⁓ incredible operators is really kind of the goal in creating more of those long-term partnerships that are beneficial not only to the sponsor themselves, to us, but also the investor. It’s kind of a win-win-win type of deal. ⁓

Quentin Edmonds (20:00)
Yes.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (20:02)
Yeah, and so that’s number one. Number two is we’re obviously, everybody’s hearing about, well, maybe not, I don’t know. We’re really on the forefront of technology and marketing. ⁓ Our team has essentially ⁓ more or less doubled in the last two weeks than before. We have about 10 people on staff all over the world. ⁓ And yeah, our team doubles. You’re maybe asking how?

Right? And so really what we had done is we had identified all the key roles within our organizations, one that already have an employee there or a team member. And we had essentially given them an agent AI that has they named it themselves. They can interact with it in Slack. Anybody can talk to it. The agents themselves talk together. It’s absolutely insane what’s happening and how quickly all of that is is is becoming. So our.

The way that we’re reporting, way that we’re identifying opportunities, ⁓ bottlenecks and how we’re resolving those has been changed in just the last 30 days. So I can only try to imagine what that’s going to all look like in six months as an example, right? It’s absolutely crazy.

Quentin Edmonds (21:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Nah, man, you’re on it. And I love, Boot Up AI is an amazing tool for us to use right now that helps us refine the already tools that we already have, right? Because as amazing as AI is, we have to curate it. We got to feed it the information. And so you’ve been self-aware. Again, you being the master and the number one cog in your business.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (21:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (21:48)
and self-awareness about yourself will allow you to feed the tool the right way and allow that tool to really help take what you have to the next level. so AI is here, it’s advancing and it’s really, really helpful. It’s 10 time and 20 time and 50 time and people in their business. you know,

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (21:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (22:07)
it’s so exceptional.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (22:07)
Yeah, but Q, I

will say one thing though about AI is it’s not here to replace humans, it’s just there to augment humans. As an example, when AI first came about, we’ve some competitors come about and we’ve tried this ourselves. We beat our heads against this wall for six months about maybe a ⁓ year or two ago where we said, well, AI is here. ⁓ It’s gonna write our emails, it’s gonna do all this, right? But what it…

Quentin Edmonds (22:14)
Amoy!

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (22:34)
do our phone calls, right? But what ended up happening is that it just was not good and it was dropping really obvious ⁓ opportunities.

And it was like, how could you possibly make this mistake, right? That is still the case to an extent. It’s a little bit more accurate, it’s a little bit more sophisticated. But as an example, when our clients generate leads, right, we still pick up the phone and our appointment setter team

is picking up the phone and still calling the leads that we generate. Like AI is not here to take over that process just yet. And I’m sure it will eventually, but it’s not yet. So you have to really understand, you have to be careful about like, you your vision for the future and take, because look, $100,000 investor who’s gonna come through, you have to be careful about those opportunities because those opportunities aren’t cheap, ⁓ you know? And so, ⁓

I mean, they’re not expensive either, don’t get me wrong, you want as many opportunities at bat, and so you don’t want to mess that up. so ⁓ providing a high quality investor experience is still key. And the way to do that is through ⁓ human interaction and building a genuine relationship.

Quentin Edmonds (23:51)
Yes, sir.

Mm-mm-mm. You said it, man. You said it. You’re absolutely right. It’s not, A.I. is not here to replace aliens. That’s why I said, you know, you have to curate, like, you got to feed the information. It’s not replacing aliens. So you definitely have to make sure you are on that human level. So I say this sometimes about communication, right? Communication has a 55-38-7 rule.

And this is talking getting into the human interaction, right? Communication, you communicate 55 % with your body language, 38 % with your tone, and only 7 % is the words that you say. And so I say that to say that human interaction is so important because the human interaction is all of us communicating. Your whole body, your whole being is communicating something with someone in front of you. And so definitely don’t, AI can replace the human interaction.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (24:34)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Quentin Edmonds (24:51)
You know, we do a lot of this stuff over, you know, social media over, you know, Riverside. But still, you know, I’m communicating with my body language, the way I sit up. If you was talking the whole time and I’m sitting here like, you know, all of this stuff is being communicated. So the human interaction is so, important. Speaking of human interaction, yeah, yeah. So I’m going let you respond, but I want to put this question out. You can respond to where you want.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (25:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s critical.

Quentin Edmonds (25:16)
to what I just said, but answer this for me too. When you hear the word relationship, what do you think about? Relationship within business and stuff. What do you think about when you hear that word, Vitaliy ?

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (25:26)
Yeah, that’s a great question. ⁓ I think the biggest part of that is ⁓ hearing the other person out, hearing them out and not waiting to respond just to respond, but really tailoring your response based on ⁓ what their pain points might be. So like, let’s say, you know,

I’m thinking of investor relations right now as an example, because you mentioned body language and ⁓ things like that. And so how you communicate, and that’s so key. And all of these different nuances, like your body language or your tone and the small part of what you say, ⁓ it impacts how you make the investor feel, as an example. And all those little nuances are so key.

to the point where we had created a whole SOP and kind of a sales ⁓ process that we install for every single one of our clients that is ⁓ engineered to the word and the punctuation mark that you send in a text message, let’s say leading up to your first investor meeting.

that will dictate if they show up or respond to your text message and how that conversation is going to go, right? I mean, all of that matters is how you carry yourself, how you present yourself. And from the investor experience standpoint, the relationship building aspect, all of that is the relationship, right? Their ⁓ ability to convert is built on

whether you built a relationship with them or not. So we see so many people coming in and just kind of talking about their investment offering because, you know, and the investor comes in, it’s like, okay, I’ve been through three other of these calls, okay, tell me what you got. And then the guy will go, okay, time to do my song and dance, right? But that’s not how a relationship is built. That’s very transactional. So we instruct our clients to kind of stop time, so to speak, take the investor out of.

Quentin Edmonds (27:38)
Yeah.

Come on.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (27:50)
their comfort zone and say, okay, now, let me actually ask you a couple of questions first, right? And so that’s where the listening part comes in, because you just kinda seed some questions, you hear their response, and now you can tailor ⁓ your response based on ⁓ their answers. And that, think, is key. going back to relationships, listening and tailoring is everything, and that’s such a big part of sales.

I mean, that’s sales right there, aside from the different tactics and follow ups and stuff like that. Again, that’s sort of the 7 % versus the 93, which is kind of how you build the relationship and the impression that you leave.

Quentin Edmonds (28:33)
Sir, so well said, man. So well said. Man, listen, I feel like you and I just getting started. I feel like we can go easily another 20 minutes talking about stuff. I’m looking at the time. I’m like, man, this time is going fast. But, listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (28:41)
At least. Yep.

Yeah.

⁓ Our website is the best, raisereadysystems.com ⁓ Click any of the calls to action there, they’ll all take you to the same place and that’s to schedule a call with our team. ⁓ So that’d be a great place to do that and yeah, we can talk more one-on-one there.

Quentin Edmonds (29:15)
Listen, let me say three things to you sincerely. First, thank you for your time. You could have been doing anything else with your time, but you chose to give us your time. So thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for the gift, what I call the gift of your transparency, the gift of your authenticity. I believe stories have a way of planting seeds in the people that hear the story that can literally course correct what they was doing, that can literally spark ideas.

that they never thought of. So I believe that you planted some seeds today and I appreciate that. Lastly, thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I really appreciate you coming on today, sir.

Vitaliy Gnezdilov (29:58)
Thank very much for having me. This was a lot of fun and wish you do it again sometime.

Quentin Edmonds (30:02)
Absolutely, you got it, man. Well, listen, y’all heard him. Listen, look in his show notes, get in contact with him, connect with him. Definitely make sure you’re subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Vitaliy . So sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.