Elizabeth Braman’s journey into multifamily real estate data wasn’t part of a grand plan; it was the result of a winding, curiosity-driven path that merged legal expertise, startup grit, and a front-row seat to the operational chaos of legacy systems.
After earning a joint JD/MBA in Finance from George Washington University, Braman began her career in regulatory law, eventually co-founding and selling an edtech startup. But it was her legal work in real estate and later leadership roles at Ready Capital and RealtyMogul that exposed a persistent, industry-wide pain point: data was everywhere, but insight was nowhere. Managing over 100 investments and 50+ partners, Braman saw firsthand how fragmented systems and inconsistent reporting created inefficiencies too big to ignore.
Motivated to fix what others had accepted as the status quo, she reconnected with trusted former colleagues to launch Revolution RE, a company built to standardize, structure, and unlock the power of multifamily data. Today, Revolution RE is helping operators shift from reactive to predictive, powering smarter decisions across the real estate landscape.
We sat down with Founder and CEO, Elizabeth Braman, to hear more about her career pivot into real estate tech, the moment she knew the data problem needed solving, and how Revolution RE is shaping the future of the multifamily industry.
How did you become interested in data and business intelligence for multifamily real estate?
EB: I never would have guessed I’d end up running a data company for the multifamily industry. I graduated in 2000 with a joint JD/MBA in Finance from The George Washington University and started my career representing technology companies on regulatory and compliance matters. After a few years of practicing, I started to get the itch to build something.
At the time, Blackboard Learning System was one of the most prominent startups in the DC market. I joined some of the engineers who had been at Blackboard to start Learning Objects, an educational technology startup that we bootstrapped and eventually sold to a publicly traded company.
My entry into real estate came through legal work I did on the side early in my career to help pay off student loans, and that’s when I fell in love with the industry. I spent most of my time in real estate on the capital markets side and was part of the founding executive team at ReadyCap Commercial, now publicly traded as Ready Capital (NYSE: RC). Later, I joined the executive team at RealtyMogul.com, a platform for raising capital online for real estate.
The defining moment came during my time at RealtyMogul, where I saw firsthand how legacy technology created massive problems in real estate, from acquisitions to operations, underwriting to asset management. We had a significant budget to license data, but we could rarely get market data and our own property data to sync in a useful way. We had over 100 investments and more than 50 investment partners, each sending us financial and operational reports in different formats and from different systems. There was no easy way to group everything together for portfolio-wide, fund-level reporting.
At the same time, we were evaluating a large volume of deals and paying to license property data, but none of the datasets were usable together without manually manipulating various reports in spreadsheets.
I worked on a project that pulled in data from different sources and used a machine learning model to generate a net operating income (NOI) for property valuations. Working on that project, and hearing from the developers and data scientists about the challenges, was the first time I realized this was a widespread, unsolved problem.
I reached out to my former CTO from Learning Objects, Merlin Hughes, to get his thoughts. He suggested we follow the lead of other industries, like banking and healthcare, by building a standardized data model to automate aggregation and generate valuable data composites for benchmarking. Little did we know how valuable that technology would become with the AI revolution ahead.
I’ve spent my entire career building solutions, but Revolution RE represents something more: a mission-driven opportunity to solve a problem that affects millions of Americans and billions in real estate value.
What inspired you to become a founder?
EB: My inspiration as a founder comes from a core belief that exceptional problems require exceptional solutions, and sometimes you have to build what doesn’t exist yet.
I’ve spent my entire career building solutions, but Revolution RE represents something more: a mission-driven opportunity to solve a problem that affects millions of Americans and billions in real estate value.
The moment of clarity came when I realized that one-third of the U.S. population rents their housing, yet we know very little about what residents actually want or need. Property managers, asset managers, and owners were drowning in data but starving for insights. They couldn’t answer simple questions like, “How are my properties actually performing?” without weeks of manual work.
This is my fourth time as part of a founding team, and I’ve seen how the right solution at the right time can be transformative. This is the first time in my life that the timing has felt so serendipitous for a solution I was personally working on bringing to market.
We’re seeing the convergence of three massive trends: a $57.5 billion global real estate data and AI market, over 2,000% growth in big data over the last decade, and exponential AI adoption in real estate. Together, these trends have created an incredible opportunity to bring real value to the industry.
Our mission is simple: “Do good with good data.” That’s why we founded Revolution RE—to create better outcomes for all stakeholders through the power of standardized, actionable data intelligence.
Tell us about your team: Who’s on it?
EB: Again, timing worked in our favor. Our core leadership team includes me as CEO, Hal Herzog as Head of Product, and Merlin Hughes as CTO. We all worked together at our first startup, and the timing was right to “get the band back together,” so to speak. That shared history gave us built-in trust, complementary skills, and experience building and scaling software companies.
Merlin brings over 20 years of experience in computer security and cryptography, while Hal serves as our domain expert on enterprise installations.
Recently, we’ve been lucky to bring on Jenny Jorgensen, a 20+ year multifamily industry veteran, to lead our sales and revenue efforts. Her background in apartment advertising and flooring sales brings invaluable industry connections and partnership opportunities.
What makes our team unique is that we built it on successful prior relationships, added deep industry expertise, and created global talent capabilities across four countries. Our cross-functional foundation spans technical excellence, domain knowledge, and automation expertise.
Our team chemistry reflects a shared commitment to revolutionizing an industry that impacts millions of renters while building the data infrastructure to support it.
Where do you see the multifamily real estate industry headed?
EB: The multifamily industry is at a major inflection point. According to McKinsey, real estate is the world’s largest asset class but fails to capture 10–20% of its potential value, largely due to poor data quality and underutilization of AI.
We’re moving from reactive to predictive operations. Gone are the days of simple dashboards. We’re entering an era of AI-powered insights that support real-time decision-making—but only if the data is clean and standardized. That’s why generic BI tools often fall short while purpose-built solutions thrive.
A few forces are driving this shift. AI is no longer theoretical—it’s essential. Use cases like predictive maintenance, automated lease pricing, and resident lifetime value optimization are becoming real possibilities.
More operators are realizing that data is becoming their competitive moat. Those who build or leverage a unified data infrastructure will outperform competitors stuck in manual processes and silos.
Looking ahead, I see a future where multifamily operations are powered by integrated, intelligent platforms, where property management systems, accounting software, and point solutions work together seamlessly.
The opportunity isn’t just in efficiency gains. It’s about unlocking entirely new categories of intelligence: real-time performance analytics, portfolio-wide benchmarking, and AI-driven insights that fundamentally change how decisions are made.
What does success look like for Revolution RE in both short and long term?
EB: Short-term success, over the next 6–12 months, means solidifying our position as the industry standard for multifamily data standardization. A major milestone will be launching our data licensing platform, which expands our offering beyond BI and standardization. We want clients to be able to view their own properties, comparative properties, and market composites all in one place.
Long-term success, over the next 2–5 years, positions Revolution RE as the central data infrastructure powering the digital transformation of the multifamily industry. While we started with BI, we’ve always seen ourselves as a data company—BI just happens to be one way we deliver insights to clients.
Our proprietary datasets, built through deep integrations with property management systems, are the most comprehensive and unique in the market—completely unavailable anywhere else.
Our ultimate success metric is industry-wide impact: when multifamily professionals can’t imagine operating without standardized, real-time data; when AI applications become the norm; and when the $180 billion in unrealized value we’ve identified is captured through better decision-making enabled by our platform.
We aim to move beyond being a solution for operators to becoming the essential infrastructure that enables the entire PropTech ecosystem: innovation, investment, and operational excellence.
Success for us isn’t just about growth—it’s about raising the capabilities of the entire multifamily sector and creating better outcomes for the millions of Americans who call multifamily properties home.
Find out more about Revolution RE at revolutionre.com. Are you a startup based in or looking to relocate to Kentucky? Keyhorse’s current quarterly investment cycle is open! Apply now.
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