Landed

One autumn evening at graduate school, Jonathan, the formally trained engineer turned management consultant, met Alex, the political campaign organizer turned start-up executive. Shaking hands, they immediately debated the impact of driverless cars on urban places and how companies like Airbnb and Lyft forced cities to think bigger. Fast forward a year and a half later, all the while growing together both in- and outside of the classroom, they shook hands again, this time committing to live their values by building saner and safer ways for people to build wealth in cities.

They had witnessed and studied the traumatic impact of the ‘09 real estate crisis – the largest wealth transfer from poor to rich in history – and vowed never again; building wealth meant more opportunity for individuals, and more people with more opportunity meant a strong society. Over a cup of coffee before class one day, Jonathan and Alex realized they had idea symmetry: co-ownership is a more dynamic but underutilized way to move from renting to owning your first home. Upon graduation, Landed was born; they set-out to make ownership smarter and more accessible to more people.

Jonathan and Alex are 2015 graduates of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before business school, Alex was an early employee on the 2008 Obama campaign before moving to San Francisco to help companies in the ‘Sharing Economy’ navigate growth challenges. Jonathan was a management consultant while working on a number of urban policy issues including immigration settlement, affordable housing and transit policy.