Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

FinTech

Eve Picker wins national Real Estate Award.

Connect CRE has named Small Change founder and CEO Eve Picker as one of their National 2022 Women in Real Estate Award winners. 

Central to Connect CRE’s selection of Eve was her establishment of the Small Change Index to evaluate the impact of real estate projects according to ESG-related factors. All projects listed on Small Change must score at least 60% on the Small Change Index in order to prove that they offer an opportunity for real impact within their community.

Connect CRE noted that Eve is on a personal mission to democratize real estate and highlighted Small Change’s performance as strong evidence of Eve’s success: over half of the projects have either a minority and/or female sponsor, 65% have included affordable housing and 78% have been located in underserved communities.

Connect CRE also reported that the US News & World Report has ranked Small Change as one of the top seven real estate crowdfunding platforms.

To read more visit https://www.connectcre.com/awards/2022-women-in-real-estate-awards/national/eve-picker/

Image courtesy of Eve Picker

In support of Crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding for equity, or Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF), came about as part of the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. The legislation aimed to make raising capital easier for startups and small businesses while providing opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs.

Crowdfunding has had its teething problems and is still evolving. For starters, Reg CF took four and a half years to write and implement, only launching in the middle of 2016. Enter the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA). Established in 2012, just after the signing of the JOBS Act, the CfPA’s mission was to create a trade association for this new and emerging industry. Dedicated to equitable representation for the Crowdfunding industry globally, it also supports the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on rule making.

In practical terms, CfPA provides the industry with education, professional networking opportunities and the tools needed to promote industry best practices.

CfPA’s board includes consultants, journalists, authors, technology experts, and Samson Williams, the current board president, an expert in Blockchain, AI, Cryptocurrencies and FinTech and the space economy!  Samson is an Adjunct Professor at University of New Hampshire School of Law, and Columbia University, and is Chief Data Scientist, Milky Way Economy, LLC, monetizing the data of the Space Economy. You can hear Samson on all these subjects and more in this podcast.

‘The Crowd’ by gyro, licensed by Canva,

The Fintech Times.

When asked about building a Fintech business (as a woman) by the Fintech Times, Eve Picker, founder of SmallChange.co had this to say:

“Be realistic about the good and bad aspects of building a business. I’ll start with a negative: you’ll probably have a tough time raising money. After all, only two to three per cent of VC funds go to women. You can let that start depress you or you can move forward and refuse to give up. If you persist, you might very well become a trailblazer for other women. And that brings me to another positive: It’s an amazing experience to build a business, especially one that is forward-looking and future-thinking. Fintech is the future and so are women.”

Want to read about all 13 amazing Fintech women? Click here.

Image courtesy of The Fintech Times

Social Impact Hero.

“As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eve Picker” writes Yitzi Weiner for Authority Magazine.

“Eve Picker is the founder and president of Small Change, a crowdfunding platform that enables developers to raise capital for real estate projects with social impact. She is a trained architect with extensive experience in urban planning, real estate development, and community building. Under her leadership, Small Change, which was founded in 2016, has helped 39 developers raise over $10 million for projects in 21 cities, big and small, across the United States.”

Want to read the entire interview? Click here!

Image courtesy of Eve Picker

Superpower. Stick-to-itness.

“What is your superpower?” This is the question that Devin Thorpe asks every one of his podcast guests in his podcast show, Superpowers for Good, where he focuses on inspirational impact. And true to form, Devin asks Eve the same question in this episode, Developer Becomes a Tech Entrepreneur to Help Community-Focused Peers.  Her answer?  Stick-to-itness.

Eve’s career has evolved from Columbia-trained architect to community-focused developer to fintech entrepreneur, but the theme has remained the same – building better cities that are equitable places for everyone. Small Change, her real estate crowdfunding platform (a FINRA-registered crowdfunding portal), provides a way for developers to raise money for real estate projects with a social impact.

Small Change is a testament to her endurance. “When I started down this path, I honestly didn’t even know what a security was,” says Eve. She had to educate herself. She read the 650 pages of regulations and converted them into a fluid online platform, easy to use but fully compliant. “And, by the way, I had never built a technology platform before!” says Eve.

She is unstoppable.

Image by real444 from Canva