Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Elias Giannakopoulos. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Elias, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Real estate was the biggest risk my business partner/sister and I decided to take on so early in our lives. I am only 21 and my sister is 20 years old we decided to buy an investment property during COVID-19 while the lockdowns were happening. We thought that was the craziest life decision we have ever made, and now we own a real estate software company. The reason why this is so crazy to both of us is that we had no clue how to code and how to build a company such as this one. The only thing we knew was that we are small-scale real estate investors and we needed a solution…FAST! My background is that I am currently studying Finance and Marketing with experiences in Wealth Management, Investments, and Consulting. My sister’s background is studying Business Law and has experience in Real Estate Law. We decided to become the solution for small-scale real estate investors in the property management aspect to curb the 95% failure for first-time small-scale real estate investors. This venture has completely changed our lives so far and we continue to learn new concepts each and every day from coding to how to build a strong team culture. We are currently inching towards our launch date in April. We are excited to see how this big gamble of our time and energy will turn out however we are very optimistic!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I come from a first-generation Greek immigrant family in Chicago where I was raised in the small-business restaurant business. It taught me the value of hard work, how to organize a business, and how to prioritize customer service. I decided to attend Grand Valley State University to launch myself outside of my comfort zone and where I have no support system. I currently remain in Grand Rapids where I started with no network and now it is the polar opposite. I made it my mission to become well-connected with the Grand Rapids community and to become an educator to my peers. Through these goals, I have learned a ton and taken on many opportunities in wealth management, real estate, consulting, and other industries. On-campus I currently am the VP of the Analyst Training Program for the Seidman Investment Portfolio Organization, and previously the VP of Portfolio Management where I develop our LMS system and modernize our education process for new analysts in our organization. I currently brought back the Real Estate Club on campus and the current Vice President and upcoming President for the next school year. I am a member of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization where I met many mentors. Additionally, I am the founding father and president of the Zeta Psi Fraternity on campus where our commitment is to build fine gentlemen and prioritize professional development.

These on-campus experiences helped me develop my network and find these opportunities very quickly. Especially through the real estate club and the Zeta Psi Fraternity, I was able to make the connections needed in order to make RentrEasy possible. From the guidance of mentors from multiple organizations.

Enough about my background, RentrEasy’s goal is making real estate, easy. There is no other platform available that is specifically geared towards small-scale investors that provides educational materials, resources, and premium tools such as ours. We want to make sure we are a supportive tool that is not going to put a dent in our client’s pockets. We are here for you because we are you as well!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

For student entrepreneurs, it is hard to put together capital for a new venture due to our lack of experience and age, unfortunately. However, my mentor at the time gave me a heads up that there is a Student Pitch Competition at Michigan Tech Week which will provide us funding if we go up there and pitch our business. I have never done this in my life and it turns out it was 2 days away. I learned everything and anything possible about public speaking and pitch decks within 48 hours to pitch at this competition. I met peers who were brilliant and driven as well and it was a great experience. I won a total of $100! This may have been a drop in the bucket for a tech startup, but it was an indication for me to keep going to these competitions and give myself the chance to win more. I continued to do these pitch competitions and have raised a good amount of capital in order to fund our developers to get the MVP done!

How did you build your audience on social media?

I am very passionate about social media marketing despite my background always being in finance. I am a secret marketing lover! In order to build a strong social media presence you need to understand how to deliver value to the audience in order to capture them and reel them into your page. For RentrEasy we put up a post each and every day delivering content and education to the audience on Instagram and Facebook. These are the best posts in my opinion in order to develop a social media presence because not only you are learning yourself from doing the research but you are educating others. Please make sure you use credible sources because spreading false-information is very prominent in this day and age. Stand out from the others by choosing your niche and delivering value to them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rentreasy.com
• Instagram: /rentreasy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliasgiannakopoulos/

Image Credits
RentrEasy