Ely Razin started CrediFi with venture capital firm Battery Ventures in 2014. Since CrediFi’s start, the data platform and its 50 employees provide users with information on $2.4 trillion in debt across 1.5 million properties in the U.S., ranging from securitized to unsecuritized loans. With his abundant access to information, Mr. Razin told Commercial Observer about the trends the commercial real estate finance market has seen in 2015, who some of the biggest players have been and what asset classes and markets have been getting the most action.
Commercial Observer: What’s the story behind CrediFi and how the site got started?
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Mr. Razin: Battery Ventures approached me—at the time I was an executive at Thomson Reuters—with this idea, and funding, for a central financial data hub for commercial real estate finance. The premise? CRE finance has trillions of loans and bonds in the U.S. alone and is populated by banks, hedge funds and passive asset managers. Yet, it doesn’t have a central data hub like Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters or others. Battery Ventures did a lot of research with partners to scope the opportunity and came to the conclusion that the opportunity was great: there was a real need, especially post-recession, and no one had a one-stop shop where CRE financial data was available and actionable. We immediately went into action and started to build CrediFi.
Read the full story at Commercial Observer, by Danielle Balbi
