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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT HIGHLIGHTS
December 2016: Users appear
In Q3-2016, IAL commenced demonstrations of Dashflow™ to major institutions in the London CRE scene. The two goals were to test the market and to find «Early Partners» capable of seeing and exploiting the potential in this revolutionary software. IAL can now announce that two global CRE firms, one a FTSE 100 investment management company and the other a global broker listed on Nasdaq, have provisionally agreed to test beta versions of Dashflow. January 2017: Business incorporates
Following the positive response from potential customers, Intellect Automation International Pty Limited (IAI) has incorporated in Sydney, Australia with the intention to build a business around Dashflow™. Intellect Automation Limited, remains a Dashflow consultancy firm, and will become a subsidiary of IAI. The IAI Board consists of Warren Kinston as Executive Chairman, Michael Molloy as Chief Technology Officer, and Graham Watman as Commercial/Finance Director. IAI P/L is issuing Convertible Securities for up to $100K to provide working capital and cover incorporation and raising expenses. February 2017: «Early Partners» sign
Intellect Automation Limited (IAL) has secured early users, including two major commercial real estate (CRE) operators on the NASDAQ and FTSE100. Users are beta testing IAI’s revolutionary app for CRE deal analysis with consultancy support from Michael Molloy of IAL. Executive Chairman Warren Kinston said: “Our innovative product Dashflow™ involves the first practical use of artificial intelligence in the field of CRE transactions. It provides institutional teams with profitability answers and discounted cash flows in minutes and seconds. Today's labour equivalent takes hours and days with far greater risk of errors. This must cost pension funds, institutional managers and private family firms hundreds of millions of dollars given that there are over $1 trillion of deal opportunities annually.” June 2017: Initial raising closes
At end-April, IAI organised its initial raising of £250,000 with a focus on London angels with CRE backgrounds. This round has now closed oversubscribed. Finance Director Graham Watman said: "I am pleased to announce this closing having had an over-subscription commitment by week 4. We thank everyone for their support to date and look forward to delivering value to the CRE world for the benefit of our investors.” October 2017: "Early Partners" become customers
M&G Real Estate, a FTSE 100 global investment manager, and Colliers International (UK), a global CRE broker-dealer, have been testing Dashflow on live deals in London as "Early Partners". With that 6-month test period now ending, they have decided to become the first purchasers of Dashflow. IAI P/L welcomes this vote of confidence. Their decision reveals the usefulness and professionalism of the app for institutional CRE transactions at the top end of the market. November-2017: Dashflow available for sale
Dashflow is released for general use on 6-November 2017. To maximise corporate security, the app is only available to firms. It must therefore be purchased from Apple's VPP Store and requires confirmation by the company. Firms of any size are encouraged to use Mobile Device Management (MDM) to further ensure device control. Executive Chairman Warren Kinston said: "The company promised its investors a launch in October. It is a tribute to our coders that we have released a stable version with many enhancements so close to that target. I am pleased to report that Delancey is first off the block as a customer." December 2017: Staffing the operations
Start-ups do not come any leaner than Intellect Automation International. Founders apart, all staff are part-time contractors. Over the past few months, the company has embedded professional coders, Alexey and Sunil; established a customer support service via Vanessa; brought in a social media coordinator, Tom; and strengthened its data entry and accounts services with Nada and Frances. Executive Chairman Warren Kinston said: "We are global in our ambitions and international in our staffing, finding talent in London, Moscow, Ahmedabad, Charlotte NC, Nashville TN, and Sydney. Soon, Dashflow itself will be available beyond UK shores." January 2018: Dashflow launches in UK
Dashflow's UK-optimised version had its official launch to the media on Tuesday, January 16th. As part of the launch, Dashflow’s CTO, Michael Molloy, was interviewed for a podcast by the leading UK real estate channel, Estates Gazette. Dashflow Executive Chairman Warren Kinston said: "This launch marks a new chapter in the Dashflow story. With great feedback from the our first customers and enthusiasm for free trials, initial sales are promising. So it is now time to take industry awareness of the app to the next level. “We’re responding to users’ suggestions regarding extra functionality and will have more news about this as Dashflow becomes increasingly deployed cross the commercial real estate investment market." March 2018: Dashflow wins Proptech Award
GIC and British Land hosted an innovation day on 2nd March 2018 covering big data, cryptocurrency, fintech and proptech. Dashflow for CRE was a technology selected for a competitive showcase in front of an audience from both London and Singapore. In the event, Dashflow won the inaugural Broadgate Proptech Award 2018. June 2018: CRE Finance director joins as an Advisor
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Lesley Chen Davison as an Advisor. Ms Davison, Director of Banking and Treasury at Delancey, has 19 years’ experience in real estate finance and investment. Prior to joining Delancey in 2005, she began her career at Deutsche Bank in New York. Ms Davison has since worked on a wide range of property and corporate transactions across the UK, continental Europe, US and Latin American markets. Alongside being an early adopter of prop-tech, Lesley also advises businesses focused on teaching coding to children and providing software for primary school teachers. The company will receive Ms Davison’s practical advice in support of its drive to grow the business’ capabilities to support CRE equity and debt investors. Ms Davison commented: “I am excited to join the Dashflow team in my advisory role both strategically and operationally. Moving the prop-tech agenda forward is an area of great importance for the property industry in general. A product like Dashflow highlights how technology will impact the CRE industry, making the underwriting process of real estate investment more efficient and sound.” July 2018: Short-listing for EG Property Tech Award
Dashflow has been nominated for the 1st Annual Property Tech awards held by Estates Gazette in the UK. The Investment Category recognises the best use of technology to support an investment, raise funds, reduce risk, identify an opportunity or speed up transactions. Dashflow for CRE is the first intuitive and easily audited tech of its kind to help in all these areas. Being a mobile app, it is designed for a sociable property industry whose staff are always on the move. October 2018: Invitation to join GRI Tech Club
March 2019: Intention to raise funds
Awareness of Dashflow has developed in the UK market with good traction as evidenced by sales to leading CRE players. It is now necessary to enter the wider global market, especially the USA. To do this, the marketing capabilities of the company need to be significantly enhanced. This entails more than a re-direction of priorities. It involves more staffing, exhibiting at major events, and greater travel. The company intends to make a public announcement regarding funding in April. May 2019: Shortlisting for EG Tech Awards 2019
Proptech is relatively new and UK’s Estates Gazette only started publicizing tech contributions with an Annual Awards event in 2018. The evaluation of new tech is in terms of whether it provides “demonstrable tangible benefits”, something that Dashflow does in spades. It is therefore pleasing to know that Dashflow has just been shortlisted for the 2019 EG Tech Awards in two of the twelve categories: the "Investment Award" and the "Innovation Award". The decision of the judging panel will be announced in London at The Brewery EC1 on 10-July. June 2019: RealComm 2019 in Nashville TN, USA
The team launched Dashflow for CRE at the US premier event for CRE technology & innovation: the Realcomm 2019 conference held at the Nashville Music Center, TN. Over 2,500 delegates enjoyed a week of networking events including two days packed with topical sessions. The team hosted Dashflow demos in our booth in the main exhibition hall.
Michael Molloy spoke on 2 panel sessions alongside seasoned real estate operators such as Prologis ($79bn AUM) and Decron Properties (6,800 residential units); and engaged in a studio interview: August 2019: Release of DF Converter app
Analysts are frustrated by marketing brochures because extracting the tenancy schedule to properly appraise the property's cashflow is so time-consuming and error-prone. Simple cheap software tools to do this job on a mobile device have been unavailable. We are proud, therefore, to announce the release of DF Converter. With this iOS app, conversion of a page or two from its pdf format to an xlsx format is quick and easy, only requiring a few taps. This software tool has been specifically created as a support for users of Dashflow for CRE who wish to import tenancy schedules. It is now available free from the App Store for all Dashflow users. September 2019: Dashflow wins 6th Annual RETAS award
TBA
Events
EVENTS in 2019
EVENTS in 2018
•In October, Michael Molloy attended EXPO REAL in Munich: Europe's largest real estate and investment trade fair.
•Estates Gazette launched their new technology magazine called Tech, which features Dashflow as Launch of the Quarter in the New Products section.
• Michael Molloy commenced monthly Breakfast demos and Q&A sessions in central London starting in May. These require advance registration via this website, and are held at The Clubhouse at St James, Bank and Holborn.
•Intellect Automation International was represented by Michael Molloy at MIPIM 2018 from March 13-16 in Cannes on the French Riviera.
•There was a demonstration of the Dashflow app by Michael Molloy at the GIC Real Estate In-House Innovation Day on March 2nd at Broadgate.
•Dashflow CRE team presented a demo of Dashfow and discussed its value at the Lunchtime Proptech Showcase in London on February 22nd, 2018. EVENTS in 2017
•Michael Molloy demonstrated Dashflow at the 2017 CREFC Europe Autumn Conference in London on 14-15 November as an example of app innovation in Proptech. Press Releases
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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT HIGHLIGHTS
December 2016: Dashflow is born
Dashflow™ is CRE transaction software for mobiles that expedites investment appraisals dramatically. It has been worked on conceptually for some years in an environment where little attention was given to prop tech In order to enlist a commercial partner, a prototype was completed around end-2015. Coding progressed through 2016, and the software has now reached a stage where it can be tested on live deals for office buildings and industrial estates. Michael Molloy is the creator-developer of this unique AI-based software. March 2017: Dashflow released for testing
Dashflow™ has been released for testing with most essential CRE investment appraisal capabilities live, including:
April 2017: Argus compatibility
IAI has successfully developed a major Argus* compatibility feature for CRE deals app Dashflow™. Chief Technology Officer Michael Molloy said: “We have created a new seamless import feature to work with Argus* files. This aligns with our goal to help commercial real estate professionals play with profitability scenarios in under 30 seconds. It’s a massive change compared to 1990s style of software, which investors and surveyors have learned to cope with. By simply importing rent rolls, our analyst users can say goodbye to tedious spreadsheet formulae labour and mistakes, and our senior decider-users can judge pricing without delay.” *Argus®, formerly Circle®, is the widely used industry CRE valuation and data asset management software distributed by Altus Group. May 2017: Redesign of dashboards
Dashflow revolves around two comprehensive dashboards which have now been redesigned for a cleaner look and easier access to what professionals want to see. The CASH FLOW dashboard is oriented to rapidly adjusting duration, pricing and gearing of gearing so as to instantaneously see effects on IRR and other profitability metrics; and to review all critical asset management events year by year. The ASSUMPTIONS & OUTCOMES dashboard allows for the precise and easy inputting and adjusting of all relevant estimates and information. It also provides for reviews of the entire project both in terms of the data e.g. export of an Excel workbook, and in terms of results e.g. showing debt ratios and equivalent yields. June 2017: Default values operational
Many features in office building appraisals are similar from deal to deal, or require only small changes. As well as obvious items like the country or currency, there are also many entry and exit assumptions, investment costs, leasing assumptions, growth patterns, and capex parameters which may not change much for different properties. Dashflow now provides for over 40 different values to be set in advance and changed at will with a couple of taps. Once again, Dashflow delivers on efficiency and ease of use. July 2017: Upgrade to saved deals
Feedback from early users has led to a variety of changes to the SAVED DEALS screen.
September 2017: Total deal sharing
"Total deal" sharing has now been developed to enable Dashflow's unique .dfd files to be despatched and received by another Dashflow user using the Apple uploader (sharer) popup and the app's import engine. Sharing has always been a design priority: initially sharing asset highlights, property locations, and Excel models. The present step now fully integrates the app with today's mobile communication habits. Many more sharing features are in the pipeline. Chief Technology Officer Michael Molloy said: "Any Dashflow user can now share their institutional underwriting assumptions in seconds. When opened in Dashflow by the recipient, the file can be immediately understood and adjusted by anyone from top to bottom of a CRE firm." Executive Chairman Warren Kinston added: "Dashflow is a disruptive technology. All ranks in a firm can get involved in analyses as appropriate to their position. We expect morale to be boosted as new team working methods evolve. This feature is a crucial step in Dashflow's transition to becoming a platform rather than another calculating tool.” October 2017: Separating private from public notes
Dashflow now provides users with the ability to make notes for personal use. These private memos are not shared when a deal is exported, but they are copied when you duplicate the deal for yourself. A facility for creating as many discrete public notes as you want is also now available in the same screen. These notes are fully editable and shareable e.g. to your own Notes or via email or to a printer. Warnings generated by importing an imperfect file can be saved here. Public notes are transferred automatically when you share a deal. November 2017: Aesthetics for the iPad
We have now created an iPad version where the screen aesthetics are just as good, if not better, than the iPhone. There is still just one version of Dashflow which will automatically determine the device being used and adapt the on-screen appearance accordingly. Public release is planned for mid-December. Dashflow was conceived and designed as an iPhone app that also worked on the iPad. It remains the more suitable device to use for Boardroom or investor presentations via HDTV. However, user feedback revealed that many preferred to use their iPads for everyday work. Some see iPads as their primary device due to ease of viewing; others prefer greater certainty when tapping and typing. Dashflowing will become especially comfortable and refined for this group of users. December 2017: Easy calculation for VAT or sales tax
All rotary wheels used for entering prices, percentages, and numbers of all sorts, will have a central disc which allows entry via a number pad. This is to be released in January. Wherever you might possibly want to enter a calculation e.g. for including VAT or sales tax, that number pad is a fully functioning calculator. In UK with 20% VAT, if the cost of a service is 0.8% of the price. then just enter "0.8 x 1.2 =" and then tap Apply: 0.96% is entered and the actual cost is automatically inserted. Easy peasy: like everything in Dashflow. January 2018: Escalation — the 4th type of lease event
UK leases often involve patterns of annual or other periodic increases. Until now users have needed to tap repeatedly on the Rent Review button so as to create multiple income events. Now users only need to tap just one button to create incremental income patterns that apply throughout the term of a lease. This new escalation functionality is to be released in mid-February. Running escalation patterns in each lease profile simply involves setting a percentage increase that takes place regularly, often annually. The app allows users to set any likely frequency: e.g. quarterly, biannually, and offers fixed percentage increments. February 2018: Sync your personal devices
Many users have just one subscription but two devices. Perhaps one at the office and another at home. Up to now, moving deal files between two personal devices was somewhat clunky e.g. it involved emailing the file to yourself. You can now transfer deals with a few simple taps because users can upload and store one, several or all deals in the cloud for access from a second device. Deals in the cloud may then be restored to another device owned by the user. When appropriate, deals in the cloud may be deleted. This facility can also serve as a back-up. Because cloud storage raises security issues. There is a device setting turning this facility ON or OFF, and this button can be independently controlled by the firm via MDM. March 2018: Lending analyses
ilRapid analyses of gearing were present in Dashflow from the start given that lending/borrowing is such a critical aspect of CRE deals. With debt strategies becoming increasingly popular. Dashflow will now start focusing on lending. A LENDING screen, accessed from the Master Dashboard, will act as a doorway to a variety of relevant analyses for lenders. Starting with the basics, like debt yields and coverage ratios, it will provide useful visualisations of topics like WALT/WAULT, top tenants, repayment schedules, space usage, and portfolio disposals. Coverage ratios, for example, can be be particularly laborious to check. But see how swiftly and easily a lending deal can be examined in this video clip. April 2018: International applicability
Dashflow is at last usable beyond UK shores. The app now provides for selection of the country in which the property is situated. This selection automatically chooses the currency symbol, the currency ticker, the use of an area metric (PSF or PSM) and the convention for numbering the floors (i.e. Ground may be G or L1). Any of these specific choices may be over-ridden in the SETTINGS screen, so providing maximum flexibility for users. The next step (due in May) is to provide Cap Rate as an alternative to Net Initial Yield for determining the price of the asset. May 2018: Export a .pptx snapshot of the deal
Dashflow continues its process of integration with Microsoft's Office suite. To exports in MS-Excel and MS-Word, we now add an export in MS-Powerpoint (.pptx format). This export invites you to zoom and rotate a 3-D photograph of the building in its setting before creating the file. The result is an attractive informative series of 8 slides including highlights, location, lease contracts, stacking plan, and financial analyses. With 90% of the work done, users can quickly elaborate, colour, and finalize their presentation on the office desktop—or even on the move by exporting directly to the Powerpoint app on their iPad. In response to feedback, additional and more complex slides will be created in the coming months. June 2018: Vacancies at Day-1 are properly handled
Unlike voids that occur at the end of a lease, much is usually known about a Vacancy occurring at the commencement of any property purchase. That means there is nothing standard about Day-1 vacancies, and Dashflow now provides for this. The app allows for varying lengths of the Day-1 vacancy, and for initial refurb capex as well. Data may be input either via the property plan (in LEASING DETAILS) or via the TENANCY LIFECYCLE screen. The Day-1 vacancy is automatically inserted into the model if a Tenancy (T) is entered into the stacking plan because its lease is known to start after Day-1. July 2018: Tenancy income from car park spaces
Car parking spaces are a common extra in office building leases and may generate important income. Until now this income was handled via work-arounds. Now, in response to customer requests, every tenancy leasing format will include the opportunity to specify a number of associated car spaces and either the rental per space or the total rental. August-2018: Editing property plans
It is now possible to wind the Stacking Plan wizard all the way back to Step-1 and alter the number of Floors. However, once the Plan is completed at Step-5, alterations are at present impossible. This frustrates most users from time to time. The ability to edit floors and units in the property plan from the LEASING DETAILS screen is currently being implemented for the next upgrade. Users will be able to add floors or delete floors, to add Units to a floor or delete Units from a floor. Leases with Floors/Units previously assigned will adjust automatically to these changes in a logical fashion. September 2018: More for lenders
«Lending» is being re-named as «Lending & Risk Management» as we add more analyses to this section of the app. WALT & WAULT are shown via a bar graph. At the end of each year of the holding period, the bar shows the percentage of Day-1 income at risk. «Top Tenants» are listed in another screen and may be sorted either by Day-1 income, by rental value per year, by market rent, or by area leased. The possibility of a break is also shown with a graphical representation as well. Lenders will be pleased to know that we are offering a 360-day option. The headline interest rate may be easily and automatically adjusted in calculations by the flick of a switch. October 2018: Editing completed leases
We know that underwriting starts before all the information is in and often with incorrect information. We also know that it is easy to make mistakes and assign a Unit to the wrong lease. Until now, a defined lease could have its Units deleted, but new Units could not be added. To add a Unit required deleting the existing lease and re-entering all values and Unit details, including now the additional Unit. Frustrating and time-consuming! From this month, users can easily move the graphic into a mode which permits the addition of one or more Units into any of the currently defined leases—just with a couple of taps. It's as simple as that. November 2018: Checking effects of tenure charges
Tenure refers to whether a property is owned outright in perpetuity i.e. "Freehold", or on a long renewable lease. Long leasehold is particularly common in London and customers have been asking for these payments to be part of the profitability calculations. Dashflow v1.7.1 provides for long leasehold that is handled via a fixed ground rent or via a percentage charge on the receivable rents. More than one tenure payment regimes may apply within a particular holding period, especially if lengthy. So Dashflow allows for this and enables users to switch easily between the two payment options. Users can see the effect of turning off long leasehold payments entirely without losing the tenure data already entered. December 2018: Multiple default systems
Dashflow comes with ~50 "factory" default values and customising this system of defaults is one of the first tasks for a new user. From the next release, users will be able to have multiple customised default systems e.g. for London's West End, for Canary Wharf, for Manhattan, for Madrid etc. Standardization is critical for quality. So, Dashflow enables, these default files to be stored centrally by the firm and provided to new users as appropriate. Use of standard default files not only saves time and money, it removes risks of errors during value entry and ensures that staff adhere to company policy in modelling. February 2019: Sketching footprints via a wizard
The property plan graphics to date have generated a Stacking Plan relevant to a typical multi-level office building. To support users who are dealing with industrial estates, retail parks and similar, Dashflow is now creating a Footprint wizard with the same 5 steps as the Stacking Plan wizard. Footprints can be easily drawn, given an approximate relative size and orientation, and assigned units with any orientation. The buildings can have their total area, rent and market rents independently specified before reaching the LEASING DETAILS screen. Full editing of the Footprint graphic will be made available soon after. March 2019: Non-lease income can be specified
The app will provide a new OTHER INCOME screen to handle the easy itemization and inclusion of non-rental income or top-ups. Any income that is not linked to a specific tenancy can be handled, whether these are regular streams of income or single or multiple lumps of income. The screen will allow labelling by selection of a category like ‘Advertising:’ and then the addition by users of descriptive text like ‘Billboards’. DashModel will provide a new worksheet for Income (and soon Expenses), and key values will be provided in the Executive Summary. May 2019: Adjusting Day-1 & version re-calculaton
Sometimes a deal is likely to close sooner than expected or the deal gets postponed and then picked up again. In such cases, Day-1 needs to be adjusted. Until now, this was only possible in the DashModel, because Day-1 was fixed in the app. This meant a complete new data entry was required. Now the date of Day-1 can be moved either forward or backward, and a new file is created with all relevant data and nothing changed but the date of Day-1. This feature has an additional benefit. If a deal was created using an older version of Dashflow, by re-setting Day-1 (to the same day) all data is re-calculated and the benefits of the new version can be obtained. Minor display corruptions can also often be fixed using version re-calculation. June-2019: Improving importing
Importing is by far the quickest and safest way to get rent roll data into Dashflow. Most new versions have had some small improvement. This time, we have done a major re-vamp of error messages: removing everything that has no implication for users, grouping similar messages, referencing rows in the rent roll file to avoid confusion, and ordering messages better. We have also removed the requirement for a particular header row position. Now any rent roll in the first worksheet of an XLSX file will be read. August-2019: Export in XLSX format
Dashflow has always enabled the export of DashModel: a fully-fledged live Excel workbook tailored to the specific deal. This permits both instant auditing and tweaking or additional development. The exported file is in XML format but opens with MS-Excel on a desktop/laptop. Exporting DashModel is now possible in XLSX format. These files are much lighter and they can be opened, checked and edited on the iPad using MS-Excel for iOS. This feature is SaaS and requires a cloud service with unavoidable security issues. So it has been designed to allow a firm using MDM to switch it ON or OFF. October-2019: Comments for tenancies and vacancies
The Comments column as found in most tenancy schedules can now be imported by Dashflow. Comments may also be created de novo and exported as part of a Raw Tenancy Schedule or as part of a much larger Review of Tenancy Assumptions. These Comments about tenancies or about vacant units are immediately visible and easily editable. They are positioned to facilitate easy checking and adjustment of specific leasing details. November-2019: Annual rent increases
Rent escalation as a yearly percentage increase in rent is now available in re-leasing and auditable via the DashModel. It operates independently of the growth in market rent which sets the initial rent in a hypothetical new lease. The conventional annual increase usual in any particular CRE market can be set as a default in SETTINGS, and then adjusted as required for any particular Unit. December-2019: Property expenses
Property expenses can now be handled in more detail in a new dedicated screen. Users can specify any expense, whether regular payments with growth patterns applied, or one or more lump sums. In all cases, given categories can have names added. Tax, Insurance and Common Area Maintenance will soon be provided as special cases in that a specified percentage of costs may be recoverable in each of these. January-2020: Folders in SAVED DEALS
As Dashflow gets more and more used, the number of deals saved requires organisation. So a folder feature has been provided. A folder can be created with a tap or deleted with a swipe. Deal files can be dragged and dropped into any folder or removed with a tap. As part of this change, SAVED DEALS has had a face-lift to make it easier to use in other ways. The additional options include immediate visibility of a long deal name (via a swipe) and the ability to export a deal (with a tap) without having to open it. There is also a Guide overlay that offers tips for working in the screen. February-2020: Building graphic improvements.
The building graphic is going to have a series of improvements to make it more representative of reality. One of the first such changes is in Footprints where buildings can be positioned and labeled to create a quasi-stacking plan e.g. a two-level building can formed via two footprints labeled: AG, A1. Another enhancement is the provision for non-rentable units e.g. to show a reception, store room, or machinery area. Dashflow will soon enable such units to be incorporated into the lettable area via major capex during the holding period.
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