Relli co-founder and CEO Mor Milo joined host Scott Newcomb on Systems Are Sexy, the Zenvy AI podcast, to talk about why so many real estate sponsors struggle to turn investor leads into capital. They cover why sponsors are turning from institutions to individual investors, why most sponsors lack a CRM and a sales process, how Relli uses automation and ad data to reach accredited investors, and why fast follow-up matters. The episode, "Why 95% of Real Estate Sponsors Are Leaving Money on the Table," was released May 20, 2026 and runs 23 minutes.
Editor's note: first published May 2026, so some details have changed. Today Relli is a marketplace where investors review offerings from reviewed sponsors, express interest and talk to each sponsor directly, and each offering page shows its own minimum.
Watch on YouTube.
Key takeaways
- Institutions are distracted by attractive debt offerings, so many sponsors are turning to individual investors. Mor says individuals need some affinity with a sponsor before they write a $50,000 to $200,000 check.
- Mor estimates about 95% of sponsors, from first-time raisers to large public firms, lack a working CRM, a sales cycle, or consistent messaging and branding.
- Real estate's recent technology adoption has focused on property operations, not sales and marketing, because sponsors compete over quarter points of return.
- Every marketing channel can work. What matters is an intentional strategy and fast, persistent follow-up, because investors buy the operator first and the deal second.
- His top advice for sponsors: build a CRM, use it, and automate consistent messaging to the people you want to do business with.
Full transcript
Lightly edited for clarity, with a few short passages removed. Section times match the YouTube video.
Welcome (0:00)
Scott Newcomb: Hello, it's Scott with Zenvy AI, and welcome to the Systems Are Sexy podcast. Today I am joined by Relli co-founder Mor Milo. Relli is building a marketplace designed to modernize how sponsors connect with accredited investors, while also helping operators build scalable systems for investor outreach, lead generation and capital raising. We'll talk about how many real estate sponsors struggle with sales and marketing infrastructure, how AI and data are changing investor acquisition, what separates sponsors that scale from those that stall out, and what it's like building a startup in an industry that has traditionally been very relationship-driven. I know that's a lot. So, Mor, welcome to the show. How are we doing?
Mor Milo: I'm doing good. Thanks for inviting me on, Scott.
Why does real estate need modern systems? (0:45)
Scott Newcomb: I wanted to talk about that last point I mentioned: the real estate industry being relationship-driven and not really embracing technology. I know that's changing, and you guys are part of that. What made you think, "This industry is still stuck in the past, and I really need to modernize it"?
Mor Milo: We had a desire to passively invest in real estate. We were great at the stock market and enjoyed that experience, but we didn't have that type of experience investing in real estate, and we wanted to build it for ourselves. We discovered that you could basically bet, and I'm using that word very strategically, on just about anything in the market today: the color of the Gatorade they pour on the coach at the Super Bowl, what happens internationally with who we go to war with, all sorts of fun stuff. But for some reason, we couldn't invest $100 in a piece of property that would generate cash flow. And we decided to try to figure out how to make that work.
Because of that desire to diversify into passive real estate investments, we went on this journey of meeting lots of real estate sponsors who raise capital from high net worth individuals, and we discovered they were really missing a lot. There was a big gap in systems and technology across a lot of their business, but very significantly in their investor relations strategy: how they actually raise capital for their deals. We realized that with our background in sales and marketing, we could build some really great systems for these sponsors, who have a track record of success delivering for high net worth individuals, and slowly but surely push them toward delivering for the average Joe like me, so that anybody can invest as little as $100 in one of their deals.
What happens after a sponsor gets a lead? (2:29)
Scott Newcomb: Got it. As you started working with sponsors, I think they think their problem is, "I need more leads." But when we were chatting, it sounded like the real issue is what happens after the lead comes in. What are you seeing on your end?
Mor Milo: I'd definitely say they need help finding leads. That's for sure. But I don't think the expectations about what needs to be done with those leads have been properly set for most real estate sponsors. What do I mean by that? Most of the real estate game, especially the bigger deals, was funded by high net worth and institutional investors. When I bring the word institutional into this, we're talking about large seven-, eight-, sometimes nine-figure checks that end up with these sponsors to build or acquire property.
When an institution is delivering a million, 10 million, $100 million to a deal, it has a lot of leverage over how it deploys that capital. So it's going to be significantly more engaged in the process. It's going to actively find deals, actively work the deals with the GPs, and try to figure out a solution that works well for the investment firm. Then it'll make a decision quickly, based on whether it likes the deal or not.
Those institutions are now distracted by very attractive debt offerings. So sponsors who normally raised capital from institutions are no longer getting the same level of attention. They're turning to the retail individual to deploy capital into their investment opportunities, thinking that the same logical value they deliver to the institutional investor will be the reason a retail investor gives them money. There's an inherent flaw in that thought process.
Individuals don't have the leverage to decide what type of return they expect from a sponsor, or to choose the structure of the return in terms of equity and waterfalls and all that fun stuff. They have to take whatever the sponsor is offering and purchase it like a product: here's my $100,000 for my number of shares, based on the pro forma and offering memorandum you've given me. For an individual like me or you to feel confident enough to open their wallet to the tune of $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 at a time for a complete stranger, they need some form of affinity with the person they're giving capital to. That's the biggest difference between the institutional dollar and the retail dollar.
For a sponsor to build that relationship with someone, they need to be in front of them. They need to actually communicate with them and have experiences with that person. That person also needs to see that this is a legitimate operation delivering results for other people like them, and doing so consistently without them, before they're willing to say, "Okay, I want to join your investor community and share in that benefit."
I think that's what's really missing, and we see it across the board. We work with startups raising money for the first time, all the way up to publicly traded companies that are audited annually by one of the Big Four and raise billions of dollars. Across the board, we see that about 95% of these sponsors don't have a CRM, don't have a system, don't have a sales cycle, don't have consistent messaging, don't have consistent branding, and don't have systems to replicate a salesperson within their organization, so that they can bring a complete stranger into the business and make them effective at raising capital within a few months. On top of that, there's no real organization for all the outreach going out, because usually those workflows aren't built and those CRMs aren't used for outreach, even when the business has one.
Scott Newcomb: I think most people would be surprised by that. I know it's true, because I've seen it, but it is pretty wild to raise that kind of money without a system in place.
How is Relli using AI and automation? (6:27)
Scott Newcomb: I wanted to switch to AI and technology. I know you guys are heavily data-driven. How are you leveraging AI and automation inside your platform now?
Mor Milo: We have a lot of automations, and we're constantly looking for AI technologies to plug into our solutions. They're not as readily available as one would hope, if I'm completely honest with you, so we're building internally. We use some AI tools to actually build our code, which, as you can imagine, has been a massive benefit to just about everybody shipping code.
Where we see the most value we can drive immediately is in those automations. Any time a lead comes through the funnel, a certain number of triggers fire depending on conditions associated with that lead: where they came from, what their sentiment is. And there are AIs taking those conditions and making decisions based on replies, on how much time someone spends on a particular page, where their mouse moves, et cetera. We're trying to leverage as much as we possibly can from every direction. What we've noticed is that when we take control of some of that automation for our sponsors, they see faster and better results, because our automations and the AIs we plug in keep improving.
So we're seeing it across the board: in product development and shipping, and in our cadences and workflows within the actual sales process. We've built AI into the platform for chat and communication between investors and our database. And when we deliver leads, we do it through strategic programmatic ad buying on different platforms. We use our automations to send all the data we've generated back to those ad platforms, so we can improve the quality of the outcomes themselves.
Where are real estate firms behind on technology? (8:24)
Scott Newcomb: Okay. Where do you think most real estate firms are behind when it comes to technology adoption? You mentioned CRM, but are there certain areas where they're just not as quick to adopt new technology?
Mor Milo: What I've seen is that tech adoption over the last two or three years, and I think it's sped up quite a bit since we've been in the market, is mostly focused on operations. A lot of operational technologies are coming into play that enhance the way we manage property and secure income from those assets: managing tenants and all the supplies and utilities used on the properties. We don't see as much on the marketing, sales and internal systems side, which is quite interesting.
I think the reason is that real estate sponsors are fighting over quarter points. Anything that creates efficiency in the actual operation of the business and produces more return on investment gets pushed hard, because these are highly capitalized deals running on thin margins that service very structured debt. That's the unique thing about the real estate industry: you can lever a small amount of money into a very large amount of money that can produce a significant return, based on a product the bank recognizes is valuable in itself, which is why you get that debt.
The internal systems are usually the red-headed stepchild nobody wants to look at, because up until now it's worked. Jenny has figured out how to get our insurance dialed in and make sure all the stuff is handled. Johnny is really good at picking up the phone, and he has his relationships. He has his hundred investors, and for every deal we go to those hundred investors and 10 of them buy. It works, so we're not going to fix it.
Where you start seeing problems is when people want to scale beyond Johnny and Jenny, because those people were built into the business by a founder building the business around themselves. They brought in Jenny to manage the back of house and make sure the business runs while the CEO is out front finding opportunities. They brought in Johnny so that any time a new investor comes to the table, Johnny can handle that investor. Meanwhile, the CEO is still out front pushing forward, involved in all of those communications. They're usually the closer, doing all the heavy lifting to actually get things over the line.
The second they want to replicate themselves and say, "Oh my God, I'm tired. How do I keep doing this? I need to bring in another Johnny who can take my position and actually close business," there are no systems to replace Johnny, and no systems to replace the CEO in closing business. Until they feel that pain of "We're hitting a glass ceiling. We can't do bigger deals. We don't have more investors. It's really hard for us to find new people and turn strangers into relationships," they don't focus their energy on it. They focus on the operations that drive more return on the money they already have deployed. So I think anything to do with internal systems is usually put on the back burner in favor of revenue optimization on the actual assets they invest in.
Which marketing channels attract accredited investors? (11:45)
Scott Newcomb: Got it. That's a good explanation. As far as revenue optimization, you mentioned marketing. What are you seeing on your end as far as which marketing channels are working right now to attract accredited investors?
Mor Milo: We're rather unique in that we've kind of gamed the system with our data. We're heavily focused on Meta and LinkedIn: mostly Meta on the paid side, and mostly LinkedIn on the organic side. We're building both concurrently, so we're also bolstering paid on LinkedIn and organic on Meta. Because of the flywheel we've built for data, where we collect data through our platform and through our advertising, then combine that data and send it back to the ad platforms to tell them, "We want more of these types of people," we have outcomes that are pretty incredible.
For example, our newest customer, a $5 billion firm that got on our platform about a month ago, is generating leads at about $60 a lead, and 100% of those leads have come through as accredited. Now, of course, people can lie to us or tell us something different. But with the barriers we've put in place to get information from an investor before they give us their contact information, so we can qualify them, our quality is very high, and we're getting it from Meta.
The reason that works for us is that Meta has the most data tools available for sending those signals. From what we've heard in the market from more novice advertisers buying their own ads internally, as opposed to going to a professional and using data tools, the quality is not what they wanted when they set out to advertise. And it has dropped over the last two to three years because of the number of advertisers and all the fun AI stuff happening with Andromeda and so on. Where we see most of our sponsors going is doubling down on organic LinkedIn.
Personally, I think our platform is probably the best place to generate accredited investors, because it's our number one focus. We're very good at one thing, so we have the ability to drive those people through the funnel. But that's not to say advertising on Meta isn't incredibly effective, or advertising on Google, or doing organic work on LinkedIn, or partnering with podcasters like yourself or someone with a unique audience.
What I'd tell someone who wants to advertise is that it all works. Everything works. I have yet to come across a strategy that hasn't worked for somebody. The question is: who are you, and what strategy is going to work best for you? Some people have a great, powerful personal network on LinkedIn. We have one sponsor in the retail space who gets an immense amount of investment capital from LinkedIn. He's an ex-hockey player with thousands and thousands of followers. He's very young and very active, he speaks to an audience, and it does really well. On the other hand, we have groups that only do advertising. All they do is drive those ads, because they've built a really sophisticated CRM that does consistent outreach, and then they work the phones, and that's really effective for them. I think the most important thing is to build the strategy intentionally, and not underestimate the amount of work that goes into reaching out to these people, getting them on a call, building a relationship and driving them through the funnel.
Why does speed of follow-up matter? (15:05)
Scott Newcomb: Yep. You'd mentioned before, when we spoke, that sponsors make one or two phone calls and move on.
Mor Milo: Yes. "I called them. I called them." "What do you mean?" "I called them." "How many times did you call them?" "Twice." "How long did it take you to make the first call?" "Two and a half days." "And now you're complaining to me that you're not getting leads?"
I had a great example. I was talking to another gentleman who runs a marketplace like mine. It's called GPLP Match; many people have heard of it. A guy named Alexi, a wonderful human being. We were both griping about our GPs, as much as we love them. Sometimes they live in their own world. He asked me, "Mor, how do I get these guys to close? I get them amazing leads: institutional leads, real people, real money, big money. And then they complain to me that things don't close." And I said, "Okay, well, how quickly do they respond?" "Dude, I sent a lead to this guy who wanted to invest $25 million in a deal, and he didn't respond for three days."
If he doesn't respond in three days to an institutional investor who wants to deploy $25 million, do you blame the investor for not showing up to a meeting? No, I don't blame him. Not at all. Because if I'm going to give you $25 million, and I show up in your inbox and you haven't responded to me in three days... There had better be some sort of system to make sure that someone with a $25 million check gets a response immediately.
What people forget is this. "Okay, but my deal is great." That's cool. But they're not necessarily buying the deal. They're buying the operator. The deal is secondary. If you as an operator don't show up and prove you're the most professional person worth giving $25 million to, guess what? There are a lot of other people who will happily take that $25 million. They'll respond immediately, and they'll be there for anything that investor needs.
What still depends on the founders? (16:50)
Scott Newcomb: Yeah, absolutely. I want to ask you about starting and scaling a business, because that's a big part of what we talk about on the show. When you started out, you were wearing a lot of hats. What part of the business still depends on you and your co-founder today that you'd like to automate or take off your plate?
Mor Milo: Right now I'd say the vast majority of our business. Mind you, we're in a very interesting spot. We're an early-stage technology company, so we're resource-constrained, debt-constrained, all-the-things-constrained. We don't get access to a lot of the things a company with assets could take advantage of. So for us, it's all about running as lean as possible and focusing on the things that really drive the business. Right now, between me and my business partner, I'd say about 90% of the administrative work and the actual production of the business is the two of us. We have put four operators in specific spots to handle very specific things, and that's how we delegate work. Slowly but surely we'll release those hats as we continue to grow.
Thankfully for us, sales and marketing is our bread and butter. This is what we know. This is all we've done. This is what we're good at. So we've been able to build systems in a very effective way, and we use AI pretty well to build product. Especially when shipping code, we've essentially been able to replace what someone would consider a CTO with Claude Code, which is pretty amazing.
To speak completely vulnerably about where we're at in our business: we have now solidified our first commercially viable product. We have the ability to deliver accredited investor leads on demand. We do one thing, and we do it really, really well. What that allows us to do now is systematize how we deliver that product, because up until now we've had to iterate and iterate to figure out the right combination of deliverables: what makes the customer happy, what the customer needs to understand about what's expected of them, and an option where we take on all the heavy lifting they don't want to do.
So we've figured out how to do that. Thankfully, I'm now in a position where I have two gentlemen picking up the phone for us. Originally they were calling investor leads. Now I've shifted them to calling GPs, to find opportunities with new investment firms. Slowly but surely, we'll move them through the process. First, top of funnel: they find the opportunity and get a meeting on the calendar, and I take care of the rest. Then top of funnel plus mid-funnel, where they add the discovery call and show the customer what we offer, and I come in for the close. Eventually they'll own the entire sales process from start to finish: schedule the meeting, do the discovery call, close the business. Then I can focus on underwriting deals and growing the business.
It's taken a long time to get there. We finally have the resources in place, and a product strategically built enough that a completely green college student can be successful selling it. Once I release that hat, I can keep building the business, bring on new partnerships, bring new capital into the business, and get resources to take my business partner off some of the active day-to-day work he does: building the tech, building the product, managing the marketing, dealing with all the ads, et cetera. Slowly but surely, the goal is to release as many of those hats as possible. It takes time, and it's been kind of painful, but we're here.
So now it's my turn to start delegating, and it's a wonderful place to be. But you can't really get there until you have a product you've been able to put in front of customers and really stress test, to know whether it can deliver the value. The last thing you want is people selling a product that isn't good, and then you're putting out fires all day. So that's where we're at. We feel pretty confident our product is about 98% there, and now I know I can put any operator I train in a position to win, because the product will justify the sales process.
What should sponsors start doing today? (20:48)
Scott Newcomb: Great. Thanks for sharing that. Maybe one or two more questions. What's one thing real estate sponsors should be doing today that they're probably ignoring? I know it's kind of a wide-ranging question, but maybe something you've seen.
Mor Milo: I'm going to keep harping on it: build a CRM and use it. It's not hard. A lot of them actually have a CRM; they just don't use it. I think the biggest hesitation most sponsors have is that they don't want to bother people. They don't want to look like that spammer online who sends a million emails and so on. But what's really important is to look at what your competition is doing. If you look at some of the best competitors in the marketplace, you'll realize that when you send them a lead, they put an immense amount of content in front of you. That in itself is why they're eating your lunch.
So the number one thing I'd tell every sponsor getting serious about raising capital, and about building their business in general, because real estate is a very capital-intensive business that requires a significant flow of investors: spend the time to build the automations to be successful, and use them to put a consistent amount of messaging in front of the people you actually want to do business with.
How to find Relli (21:59)
Scott Newcomb: Absolutely. If people want to learn more about Relli, where should they go?
Mor Milo: Come check out our platform for sure. We're at relli.co, R-E-L-L-I dot C-O. You can create an account, be part of our community and check out our deals. You can also let us know if you're a sponsor and you want to raise capital. If you want to follow our content, we're on just about every social platform at @InvestWithRelli. We do daily content, videos, overviews, all that fun stuff. And if you want to connect with me personally, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so LinkedIn is the best place to find me. First name Mor, M-O-R, last name Milo, M-I-L-O.
Scott Newcomb: Awesome. Well, thank you, Mor. We appreciate the time today. Good chatting with you.
Mor Milo: My pleasure, Scott.
Listen to the full episode
Systems Are Sexy is hosted by Scott Newcomb of Zenvy AI. Learn more about how Relli works or review current offerings.
