He doesn’t regret taking a $150,000 salary cut to become CEO

Three years ago, Alex Blackwood was working 100 hours a week as a real estate investment associate at Goldman Sachs and earning $250,000 a year.

Blackwood left that life behind to move on MongolianA fractional real estate investment startup he co-founded with fellow Goldman Sachs alum Joey Gumataotao in September 2022. Mogul allows users to buy shares in a home and receive the direct benefits of the underlying real estate, including dividends on a monthly basis. Users choose individual homes and buy shares in those homes, earning rental income. The minimum investment required to get started is $250.

Blackwood and his team choose Buy top properties, especially single-family homes, and fractionally divide ownership of the property so that investors can receive monthly dividends according to their level of ownership. There are over 13,000 investors on Mogul and $40 million of assets have been invested through the platform.

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As co-founder and CEO of Mogul, Blackwood, 29, earns about $100,000 a year — while still working 100 hours a week. Despite taking a $150,000 pay cut compared to his Goldman Sachs days, Blackwood says being a startup founder is more personally rewarding.

“It’s funny, at the time everyone thought I was the dumbest guy out of them,” Blackwood said. entrepreneur“To be honest, I didn’t think twice about it. I jumped into it. It’s exactly what I wanted to do.”

Blackwood and Gumataotao each invested $50,000 in the business in late 2022 and received an additional investment of $350,000 from Tim Draper in its pre-seed round. Draper AssociatesThey also raised about $3.6 million for their seed round, Led by AY VenturesAt the end of 2023. Earlier this year, Mogul raised a $4 million seed extension round, bringing its total funding to nearly $8 million.

Blackwood said that in an alternate universe, he would have continued to work for Goldman or a private equity firm. Even though he acknowledged that the Goldman path was “a recipe for almost certain success” and a comfortable position later in life, he also knew that he would regret not pursuing mogul when the opportunity arose. His long-term vision for Mogul is to make the company “bigger than Amazon.”

“We want to be the biggest platform out there and building this has been very beneficial in that direction,” Blackwood said. “I’d rather do it under a bridge than not do it and be comfortable.”

What sets Blackwood Mogul apart from competitors arrived And yieldstreet By claiming that Mogul offers high returns between 15% to 20% annually. arrived reports Annual returns range from 6% to 12% per year, while YieldStreet The net annual return is Of 6.6%.

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Blackwood started the company after first purchasing a property and realizing how much capital and time it took. At the end of the transaction, when he looked at the closing cost estimates, he saw countless fees he couldn’t avoid. He knew there had to be a better way to own real estate.

“I realized there was something to be done in the real estate sector,” he said.

Mogul is now on track to hit annual revenue of $3 million to $4 million by year-end, a four-fold revenue increase year-over-year. Next year, the startup is also expecting a three to four-fold increase in revenue.

startup makes money collect fees At various points in the investment process. For example, it charges a 5% onboarding fee when a property is added to the platform and earns a 2.5% fee on the rental income generated from the invested properties.

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As CEO of Mogul, Blackwood says he plays the roles of a lawyer, an accountant, an investor and a marketer. About a year ago, he signed and distributed 400 postcards with a brief description about the company to every tenant in his apartment building. The postcard explained that he had started a real estate investment company using his expertise at Goldman to allow anyone to invest in real estate and receive all the direct profits.

At the bottom of the postcard, they offered a promotion where recipients could scan a QR code to receive $50 for their first investment.

The strategy almost got Blackwood evicted from his building due to solicitations from fellow tenants – but it led to 200 people visiting the site and 50 signing up.

“This actually led to one of our highest-yield marketing campaigns,” Blackwood said. “It was a pretty crazy marketing strategy.”

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Blackwood says that at the end of the day, Mogul’s growth depends on its high-quality supply of properties, driving a retention rate of more than 90%. The startup is also constantly making improvements, such as testing different phrases on its website, and hiring new team members who are driving new growth.

“It’s the supplies, it’s the iteration on the product and then our team members,” he said. “We’re starting to hit our stride, and it’s really fun to do so.”

Three years ago, Alex Blackwood was working 100 hours a week as a real estate investment associate at Goldman Sachs and earning $250,000 a year.

Blackwood left that life behind to move on MongolianA fractional real estate investment startup he co-founded with fellow Goldman Sachs alum Joey Gumataotao in September 2022. Mogul allows users to buy shares in a home and receive the direct benefits of the underlying real estate, including dividends on a monthly basis. Users choose individual homes and buy shares in those homes, earning rental income. The minimum investment required to get started is $250.