Part 1 of this interview introduced Popularise and Fundrise, which came directly out of Ben Miller’s and his partners’ experience as real estate developers.

• Popularise, came out of a debate about what tenant should go into a building, so Ben and his partners created Popularise to ask the customers, local residents, and other stakeholders to help figure out how best to develop the property.
• Fundrise came out of researching traditional sources of capital to raise money and questioning, “Why couldn’t our friends and neighbors — the local community – be the ones who could invest in local real estate?” With this notion, they began to develop Fundrise to democratize who invests and how people invest in local real estate.