Acknowledgments
This book exists because of CEOs, capital partners and operators who let me into rooms where their firms were honest about what was working and what was breaking. Their willingness to be specific is under every page of the story.
Ernie Wittich was my first real boss and my mentor for a decade. He taught me real estate, and the foundation he gave me is the one I still work from; his yellow legal pad and HP 12C are in the first pages of this book. Patrick Council taught the commercial real estate course that was my first and started the career these pages come from. At Georgetown, Matt Cypher’s real estate program deepened what that first course started. Yuen Yung, my CEO at Casoro Group and a mentor and friend through the better part of my leadership journey, taught me what matters most: truly making the world a better place.
Joel Heikenfeld bet on a different kind of acquisitions professional at Aspen Heights; his foreword opens this book, and his guidance shaped it. My wife, Priyanka, read it, questioned it and made it better. Ashley Kelly’s organizational support and an early editing pass did the same. This edition was drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, as a research and writing partner; the judgments in it, and any errors, are mine.
A few writers and teachers shaped the thinking under these pages. On AI, Nate B. Jones, through Nate’s Newsletter and his podcast AI News & Strategy Daily, gave me my picture of where AI is heading and how agents should be given work, and my best friend Danoosh Kapadia, an AI coach, showed me that adoption is mostly about a person’s relationship with the tool. On systems and simplicity, Layla Pomper taught me to prove a process by hand before building it, and John Warrillow’s Built to Sell showed that a business becomes an asset when it can thrive without its owner. On revenue, Will Barron’s work on steady, recurring revenue and a loyal client base sits under the book’s case for what makes a firm valuable. Jim Collins, Peter Drucker, Michael Porter and Ronald Coase sit under all of it. Where I have applied their ideas to a real estate firm, any flattening of their arguments is mine.
To Dr. Rohan Thompson, Dean of the School of Business and Technology at Huston-Tillotson University, where this book’s proceeds are headed: your love for your students, your engagement with the advisory board and your vision of making the School one of the foremost in the country are a privilege to serve. To its students and faculty, thank you for letting me teach some of what these pages took me two decades to learn.
If you recognize an idea here that started with you and you do not see it credited, write to me through theplatformceo.com and I will correct it in the next printing.
To my cousin Deepak Hathiramani, whose kindness, energy and problem solving, across the companies he has built in several industries, have long been an inspiration to me.
On the spiritual path, I bow to Swami Chinmayananda, whose teachings continue to light the way, and to Swami Swaroopananda and Swami Advayananda, who have guided me with patience, clarity and grace. My gratitude extends to the many monks and sevaks who serve alongside them and have held my hand on this path. Salutations to them all.
To Priyanka Shingore, my wife and partner in business, the foundation and backbone of who I am, and to our daughter, Ananya, who brings out the best in me. And to my mother and father, and my sister, who formed the person who wrote this book: no acknowledgments page is sufficient.