Interviews

Zakee Ahmed, Founder of Buildable

 

1. Could you introduce yourself and share the journey that led you to found Buildable?

I spent 12 years in management consulting and real estate – running analysis, evaluating deals, and managing $1B+ residential portfolios. I would sit with my best analysts – people who could model complex deals in their heads – and watch them waste 70% of their time on copy-paste work. That's when I knew the industry was broken.

I previously founded a coliving and prop-tech marketplace in the UK, so I understood both the technical and operational challenges. But this time, I wanted to solve the core problem: our smartest people trapped in low-leverage work.

Buildable is the company I desperately needed then – digital team members that automate research and reporting so humans focus on strategy and relationships, not manual tasks. Today, we're actively transforming how strategy consultants, valuers, investors, developers, and brokers work every day.

2. What specific gaps did you see in how SMEs—and real-estate teams in particular—use AI that convinced you to launch Buildable?

I watched teams get excited about ChatGPT, play with it for a week, then go right back to manual work. Why? Because they were trying to force generic AI into specialised workflows, and it just didn't fit.

Here's what I saw happening everywhere: A valuer would spend 20 minutes crafting the perfect prompt, get a response about "considering market conditions and comparable properties," then spend another hour turning that into something actually useful. Meanwhile, they could've just done the work themselves in 30 minutes.

The brutal truth is that real estate runs on specific documents, specific data sources, and specific outputs. Your bank doesn't want an AI chat – they want that 50-page feasibility study in their exact format. Your board doesn't want insights – they want populated Excel models they can interrogate. Your client doesn't care about AI – they want accurate comps from DLD, not generic market observations.

What really convinced me to build Buildable was watching a senior analyst – someone billing $400 an hour – manually copying transaction data from RERA into Excel at 11 PM. She tried using ChatGPT to help, but it couldn't access RERA, didn't understand Dubai's districts, and suggested she compare Downtown prices to International City because "both are mixed-use developments."

That's when it clicked: Real estate doesn't need smarter chatbots. It needs digital agents that can actually use credible data sources, pull the right transactions, understand that service charges matter in Dubai Marina, know that EMAAR commands a premium, and export everything in the exact format your investment committee expects.

That's why we built AI agents specifically positioned to navigate real estate workflows – they're not learning on your time, they already know that Business Bay and DIFC are different markets, even if they're next to each other.

The gap wasn't technology – it was translation. Taking AI's raw power and turning it into something that actually replaces the 6 hours of manual work that real estate professionals do every day.

3. From your vantage point, where is AI adoption among small and mid-size real-estate firms (developers, asset managers, brokerages) today—and what’s holding teams back?

Most firms are playing with AI, rather than actually deploying it. They'll use ChatGPT for marketing copy while their analysts still manually update 200-row Excel trackers.

Here's what I see daily:

• Surface-level adoption: 80% have tried LLMs, but less than 5% have embedded AI into core workflows like underwriting or valuations
• The fear factor: One partner told me, "If AI makes one mistake in a $50M valuation, my career is over"
• Change paralysis: Analysts are already working overtime – asking them to become prompt engineers with AI tools is simple not feasible

While firms debate whether to adopt AI, their competitors using tools like Buildable are already winning with faster, deeper analysis. One of our pilot clients recovered 6 hours per analyst weekly – time now spent on client strategy rather than data entry. I really think we’re getting past the stage of whether firms are questioning whether or not to use AI – most firms don’t want to fall behind the curve and are exploring ways to tighten their processes.

4. Many firms still struggle with fragmented workflows across finance, ops, and marketing. Which of these pain points do you see as most solvable with near-term AI?

The fastest wins are high-frequency, template-driven tasks where the output is already a lender pack, board pack, listing, or ticket—so AI can fill it end-to-end without changing how the team works.

I think, ultimately, AI will be introduced across all teams. Marketing has been the first as generative AI is very good at, well, generating content. Firms can upload context about their business, style, and objectives, and AI returns very good outputs. Finance, legal, and real estate are all sectors that are prime for AI disruption – professionals in these teams tend to repeat the same processes and workflows daily, which can be automated.

5. Buildable also emphasizes data fine-tuning and analytics. What’s next on your roadmap to make underwriting, asset monitoring, and portfolio reporting even more autonomous?

Capabilities of AI are changing so fast, which makes our roadmap very exciting and real.

Buildable's roadmap is driven by a simple but transformative vision: creating digital workers that handle 50%+ of a real estate professional's workload, turning 4-week, $10,000 reports into minutes of work.

Our approach follows a strategic progression through the real estate value chain.

What we’ve achieved: Digital workflows to automate comparable selection, benchmarking analysis, and sub-market reports with supply and demand dynamics, anomaly detection, and much more. Our platform actually looks at sales data for an asset and tells you which transactions to exclude from your analysis.

What we’re working on right now:

• Development Feasibility Studies: Our agents will conduct complete site analysis, zoning assessments, highest-and-best-use evaluations, and generate detailed financial pro formas – transforming what typically takes weeks of consultant coordination into automated, data-driven insights
• Autonomous Underwriting: Our agents will handle complete financial modeling, sensitivity analysis, and risk assessment – not just pulling data, but actually evaluating deals with the nuance of an experienced analyst
• Real-time Portfolio Monitoring: Moving from static reporting to continuous asset surveillance, with AI agents flagging anomalies, market shifts, and opportunities as they emerge
• Multi-workflow Orchestration: Enabling our digital workers to chain complex tasks seamlessly – imagine an agent that can pull market data, run feasibility studies, generate valuations, and compile board-ready presentations in one fluid workflow

Geographic & Asset Expansion: Following our traction in Dubai, we're already planning to scale to Abu Dhabi and KSA, while expanding from residential/hospitality into commercial real estate.

The Human-AI Partnership: Critically, we're not replacing professionals – we're amplifying them. Our platform ensures humans remain the strategic decision-makers, managing teams of digital workers rather than drowning in manual tasks. The future isn't AI or humans; it's humans directing AI to achieve what neither could alone.

6. In a crowded AI market, what’s Buildable’s “earned secret”—stack choices, orchestration, or go-to-market—that competitors underestimate?

Traditionally, we’ve only been offered point solutions and dashboards in real estate. The majority of our work happens offline. Our secret is simple – we are embedding ourselves deeply into the actual work that real estate professionals do every day.

Claiming AI will predict the next property to buy, or scan the market twenty-four hours a day to find unique deals sounds really exciting, but it doesn’t solve the real problems that our industry faces.

We’re building the architecture for future hybrid teams, with humans and AI agents work seamlessly together to enable us to make faster, more informed decisions.

7. Which integrations (property management systems, CRMs, data vendors, CAD/BIM tools) are most requested by real-estate customers, and how do you prioritize them?

Our integration priorities are driven entirely by customer pain points and the frequency of their workflows. We've learned that real estate professionals don't want another standalone tool – they need something that fits seamlessly into their existing tech stack.

Most Requested Integrations (in order):

Data & Market Intelligence:

• Government portals (DLD, RERA, municipal databases) – our top priority since this is where ground-truth transaction data lives
• Research providers (e.g. JLL, CBRE, Knight Frank reports) – professionals constantly reference these but struggle to extract and compare insights
• Alternative data sources – critical for benchmarking and market depth

Workflow Systems:

• Excel/Google Sheets – sounds basic, but 90% of our users still live in spreadsheets, so bi-directional sync is essential
• Property Management Systems – especially for portfolio monitoring and operational metrics
• CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, custom solutions) – to automate report generation triggered by deal pipeline stages

Technical/Design Tools:

• GIS platforms – for location intelligence and site analysis

We prioritise them based on:

• Usage frequency: Daily workflows before occasional ones
• Data criticality: Source-of-truth systems before secondary databases
• Customer segment: We prioritise based on our power users – currently valuers and consultants who need rapid access to official data

The reality is that every firm has a slightly different stack, so we've built our integration architecture to be modular. We’re a small, lean team, and so we very quickly facilitate requests from our users.

8. Where do you see the biggest white spaces for co-building with data providers, lenders, or facilities service networks?

The biggest white spaces aren't in more data – it's in making existing data actually work together. We see three massive opportunities where partnerships could transform the industry:

1. The "Data Translation Layer" with Providers:

Data providers and regional players have incredible datasets but they're trapped in PDFs and dashboards. The white space is co-building AI interpretation layers that can read their reports, understand context, and automatically integrate findings into live workflows. Imagine if every consultant report ever published became instantly queryable and comparable – that's the opportunity. We're actively exploring partnerships where we become the intelligence layer on top of their data, making their subscriptions 10x more valuable to end users.

2. The "Underwriting-to-Close Loop" with Lenders:

Banks and debt funds spend weeks in due diligence, requesting the same documents, asking the same questions, running the same analyses. The white space is creating a shared infrastructure where our AI agents prepare lender-ready packages that adapt to each institution's specific requirements. We could pre-underwrite deals to bank standards, flag issues before formal submission, and compress 6-week processes into days. Lenders get better-prepared deals; developers get faster decisions.

3. The "Operational Intelligence Network" with Facilities Services:

FM companies, utilities providers, and maintenance networks generate enormous amounts of operational data that never makes it into investment decisions. The white space is building bi-directional data flows where operational performance directly feeds into valuations and feasibility studies. Imagine if every building's actual maintenance costs, energy consumption, and tenant satisfaction scores were automatically factored into comparable analysis – not just the headline rents.

What excites us most is that these aren't separate opportunities – they compound. When you connect these datasets and workflows together with “digital workers”, you essentially create a whole new team with no restrictions on output.

9. Five-year vision: What would success look like if Buildable became the default “AI ops layer” for SMBs and mid-market real-estate shops?

Success means we've fundamentally changed what a real estate professional's day looks like. In five years, the question won't be "do you use AI?" but "how many digital workers do you manage?"

Picture a 10-person valuation firm operating with the capacity of a 50-person team. Their analysts aren't analysing transaction data at midnight – they're managing digital workers that handle entire portfolios. A development consultant in Dubai can evaluate 20 sites in the time it used to take for one, because their AI team is running feasibility studies around the clock. The solo broker competes with institutional players because they have the same analytical firepower at their fingertips.

I predict that we will see a new role of “Digital Worker Manager’ become standard – where real estate teams need humans to solely focus on managing their digital side.

The fascinating aspect however is the effect this will have on the roles we have today. Junior analysts learn strategy instead of Excel shortcuts. Senior partners spend time with clients instead of reviewing reports. We'll have eliminated the grunt work that burns people out and keeps talented minds from reaching their potential.

We'll know we've succeeded when "I'll have my team run that analysis" means assigning it to digital workers, and when a firm's capacity is measured not by headcount but by how well they orchestrate human-AI teams.

10. How can platforms like RISE 2026 accelerate Buildable’s visibility among institutional investors and large developers?

RISE concentrates the right triad - capital, developers, and public authorities - in one venue, with explicit focus on PropTech, AI risk/ops, BIM, and smart-city infrastructure. For a company like ours, that means curated intros, stage-time to show real workflows (not demos in a vacuum), and exploring partnerships with data providers and lenders on-site. We’ll come with live use cases, integration briefs, and a clear partner roadmap - so meetings at RISE turn into real relationships.

Learn more about buildable solutions at https://www.runbuildable.com/ 

Don't have your pass for RISE 2026 yet?