Where AI Lives: Daniel English on the New Real Estate Frontier

 Some investors chase returns. Others build the systems that power how the world actually works. In Episode 6 of Deal Flow Diaries, we sit down with Daniel English, co-founder and managing partner of Legacy Investing, to explore how real estate, technology, and infrastructure are converging to shape the next century.

Daniel shares how his path from early tech startups to real asset investing led him to a clear insight. If technology is transforming everything, the real opportunity is to own the infrastructure behind it. Today, that means developing e-commerce logistics and data centers that quietly power everything from AI to everyday communication.

From converting historic buildings into high-performance AI facilities to rethinking how cities integrate this new layer of infrastructure, Daniel offers a forward-looking perspective on what it takes to build with both conviction and responsibility.

Join us as we talk about:

• Why owning infrastructure, not just participating in technology, is the long-term investment play
• How data centers are becoming foundational to culture, communication, and modern life
• The shift toward embedding digital infrastructure directly into urban environments
• Rethinking design and architecture for a world built around machines as much as people
• Why embracing volatility, staying adaptable, and thinking independently are essential when building something new

Whether you are an investor, builder, or simply trying to understand where the world is going, this episode offers a clear and thoughtful look at the systems shaping our future. Deal Flow Diaries is where capital meets clarity.

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Questions and comments; reach out to us at inquiries@dealflowdiariespodcast.com

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Recorded at The Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center.

Thank you for listening.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

DealFlow Diaries, where the dealmakers talk. A podcast that takes you inside the minds of the Titans shaping today's global economy. I'm Alexander Fairweather.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

And I'm Elaine Chamberlain. Together, we sit down with visionary founders, fund managers, and deal makers across private equity, real estate, fashion, tech, and beyond.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Each episode, we uncover the untold stories behind their biggest deals, hardest setbacks, and boldest bets. Lessons in strategy, risk, and ambition you won't find anywhere else.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Smart, unscripted, unfiltered. This is DealFlow Diaries. Some investors chase returns. Others design the physical systems that shape how cities and capital function for generations. Today's guest sits at the intersection of real estate, technology, and infrastructure, building spaces designed not just for today's economy, but for the age of AI. This is DealFlow Diaries, where we unpack how real assets are built, how capital compounds over time, and how operators think when they're building for the next century.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Daniel English is the co-founder and managing partner of Legacy Investing, where he leads the development of next generation infrastructure from e-commerce warehouses to data centers built for the age of AI. With a career bridging technology and real estate, Daniel is known for transforming spaces into high performance, design-driven environments. He believes the next century's great cities will be built around intelligent infrastructure where compute becomes part of the urban fabric. His projects, including the adaptive reuse of the historic Chicago Board of Trade headquarters into a sustainable AI facility, reflect a simple but powerful belief. Daniel, welcome to DealFlow Diaries. We're so happy to have you. So, Daniel, you've built this incredible career at the intersection of real estate and technology. Can you tell us how this all began?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yes. My parents told me I had two career options when I was growing up, and one was engineer and the other was accountant. Oh, perfect. I'm definitely not being an accountant. So I studied engineering, which worked out well because the timing was late 90s. And so the the whole tech boom was happening in Tech Startups. I was like, ooh, I'm gonna So I moved to New York City actually two years into college, I dropped out of Carnegie Mellon, and I came here and I was like, I'm gonna be a dot-com millionaire, which was very in vogue at the time.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Aaron Powell Well, Howie, let's go back quickly. So was it stressful dropping out, or did you know you had this conviction that this was the time to do something?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

It was not nearly as grand as that. It was just what everybody was doing, right? Like so at the time, if you knew how to program in the late 90s, there was this whole tech movement towards, oh, we've got to go create the new great startup company.

unknown 3:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

But were you scared? Or you're just like, you know, I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yeah, I was just gonna go do it. It was naive, I was naively, it was naive bliss, right? I was just like, oh, I'm just gonna go do this. And so I had no idea at that point. So I actually moved to New York City and participated in my first startup. I did not become a dot-com millionaire doing that.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Um was a startup.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

It was called the Angel Tips, which I think last I checked, I think Angeltips.com is now a nail salon website. But it was it was like an angel investment connecting platform, sort of what like Angel List is today. But that was my first venture into tech. And then I ended up studying finance and finishing out college at Emory. But I was in tech startups for quite a number of years and transitioned into real estate because ultimately the bet that myself and my business partner landed on was let's own the underlying infrastructure that we see all these companies need. And so for us, infrastructure meant warehouses and data centers. And so for the last 15 years, we've been investing in building and developing really e-commerce warehouses and data centers.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah. How did you meet your business partner?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Aaron Powell Through the tech startup world. So both of us were tech startup guys. We took one of the startups public together, and sort of in classic tech startup world, you say, okay, what do we do next? And uh we're like instead of another startup, let's think about it the underlying infrastructure. And that sort of organically then led us to where we are today. And and sort of sort of funny to reminisce about dot-com era and whatnot when now AI writes our software for us. Yes, if you think about that. And that's what we're building now is AI data centers, and we have them around the country. So the technology just keeps evolving, but I think the piece that of course matters is that there are real buildings that house it all.

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Going back to your past, can you tell us a little bit more about the tech startups that you started with, the one you took public? Yeah. Just a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

You know, I think in the early to mid-2000s, there was, you know, this whole idea of software eats the world was a very common buzz phrase. And so there was this idea of how do we transform logistics, how do we transform shipping? And the one that I took public uh was education. So how do we transform educational content? It was called cricket media. Nobody's ever heard of it, and that's fine. But like Does it still exist? Uh I think it does actually. Wow. But I think there was this whole era of technology. We think about technology is as running in cycles, right? And so and so there was this this whole era around sort of software generation, and and I was lucky enough to participate that in the in the startup side. And uh, you know, now there's this whole new wave of technology that's really changing the world right now. And it's you know, it's it's something that's fascinating to me is our, you know, if you buy something on Amazon, a data center made that happen.

SPEAKER_03 6:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

And an e-commerce warehouse made that happen. You you know, it's our warehouses still run on data centers. Like our Zoom meetings run on data centers.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

And so it's really another level of technology that's changing how we live.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us about the first data center that you did and what that process was like bringing it to light?

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah. There's two things that are fascinating to me. In the history of humankind, we've never had data centers before, obviously, but we've never had this type of building before. And so, you know, we're sitting in a famous, iconic New York City building. It's designed for humans, right? The pyramids were technically designed for humans. They held humans, right? The Christmas story is famous for, right? There's a hotel moment uh in Nazareth. And and and I say that because all of real estate and the built environment was designed for humans. Data centers are not designed for humans, they're designed for machines, and they hold machines. And and so that changes how we think about architecture and buildings. So it's this very new phenomenon. And so the original data centers started out in basements of human buildings, right? Because it was like, where do you put the machines? Oh, we put them in the basement, or you put them in uh in a funny room that you've built out for that. And so our first data centers were actually taking buildings that were uh like it was a expanded closet or a basement and we converted them. And so that was our first data centers. And we were doing that in Northern Virginia, which is of course where all the data centers sort of started.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

Right. Could you talk about what data means to you? I know you are at this amazing, also you're involved with the arts, and I'd love to hear about that as well. What it signifies?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Aaron Ross Powell Data Centers are in many ways cultural institutions, right? Which is which I realize e even I, when I first started thinking about this, sounds a little absurd to me to say out loud, because they are big boxes of machines and power, but they house our cultural moments. Like if you think about your text messages, flirting with somebody or or expressing love or your photos with your best friends, those now live in data centers, right? And I I think there's a conception that they live in your phone or that they live on your laptop, or how people will watch this as happening in their phone or their laptop. It's actually happening in a data center. Data is not just a, you know, a repository of something analog that that's digital. It is now the crux of our communication art. It holds so much of our art and our ideas. And I think that's getting more extreme as we go forward. And so I I do think of these, and I don't mean to be too grand about this, but like data centers are very meaningful parts of our society today. Yeah, absolutely. When data centers started uh on in the architectural plans, if you pull up an old data center from like the 80s or 90s, there were tape rooms and and they're marked on the architecture plan as tape room. And a tape room, uh you see this in media, right, is where they stored the tapes that held the data that don't exist anymore. Um you don't have tape rooms, you have servers, and so if those servers go offline, you sort of you're not really drawing on it, right? You sort of need them to be alive.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Aaron Powell Yeah. And could you talk about the fresh perspective that you're bringing to data centers and how it relates to urban planning and landscapes and really the legacy that you're leaving behind from an architecture standpoint?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Aaron Ross Powell At this moment in time, you it's easy to pick up the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, whatever, and they all say terrible things about data centers. In fact, I think there was a headline this morning about the administration trying to intercept that bad sentiment. Data centers are generally hated.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

Aaron Ross Powell Can you explain why?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah, there's a perception that they are driving our electricity costs way up. They are ugly if you've driven past uh this is common sentiment in in Northern Virginia, where I also have a home, and they're 65 feet tall, they look like sort of like prisons. And so that community in Northern Virginia where there is a huge set of data centers, um, and that's really because that's where one of the core internet nodes is. People are like, my beautiful farmland is now prisons on prisons.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

How do we make them cuter?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Well, you can. Uh so so there's a perception that they're environmentally bad and they're ugly. That is a misconception of what they have to look like. I think that was it was cheap to build them that way. Um and it was it's it was efficient. I mean, again, these are giant machines. We have a beautiful glass tower data center in downtown Minneapolis, and it is six-story tall. It is all glass, it's actually mixed use. It's half office, half data center. We put a data center on top of an office building. The city loves it. It's gorgeous. It doesn't look like a data center. Nobody would really know it's a data center. It's one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world right now. It is an AI data center. And so I think there is room to interject in the conversation a different type of data center.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Can you talk about the project that you did in Chicago as well?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yeah. So I guess sim, you know, really inspired by the success we had in Minneapolis, believe it or not, Minneapolis is a great place to put data centers.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Aaron Powell What makes a location a good location for data centers?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

It takes time for all these little digital bits to move around the country. And so if you're chatting with your AI app or you're creating a custom emoji or whatever, that takes time. You may have noticed that. Like sometimes my AI bot this morning kept timing out and I was very annoyed.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

Yeah, I get so frustrated. Like, you're not allowed to do this.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

No, you know, it's like supposed to be instantaneous.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Only I have a brand. Why is that happening though? Is it due to energy?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

There is a combination of things going on. So one thing that AI thinks about a lot of compute has this problem, which is it takes time to deliver the digital bits to you. And so one of my favorite examples that I hear in the industry is when sort of Siri type applications first rolled out, it was on the West Coast data centers for Siri. And so if you were in New York City and you tried talking to Siri, it was very slow. It's because the digital bits were traveling all the way across the country to have the conversation with you, right? Oh, that makes sense. And so it's sort of like if you want your next day Amazon package, it takes time for that package to get to you. And so the warehouses are increasingly coming closer and closer to cities. Um you see the same thing in data centers. So data centers do position themselves based on their ability to deliver the those sort of data packages to to us.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

And so that's why Chicago is really interesting. And so what it ultimately means is that there's a shift away from despite what the headlines would suggest, that you imagine these big data centers and big farm fields, which the there is some of that happening. But what's starting to happen is you're seeing more and more data centers be embedded in the urban core, right? In highly populated areas. And frankly, it's being driven by what we're all doing with the technology. Yeah, of course. And so the project that we're incredibly excited about is the CBOE, Chicago Board of Trade Options Exchange headquarters, which is in the loop. We are transforming that into an AI data center. And so and that's exciting because it was a it was a trading, sort of like the New York Stock Exchange, something there's like trading slips. In fact, I have a package of trading slips I took from the building when we bought it.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

And the trading floor stuff is still in there in the telephones. Yeah. But but that's where you started to see electronic commerce start. Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yes. Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

And some of that was sort of invented in these buildings. And so the idea of now transforming that is very cool. But it's a beautiful building. It's it's architecturally interesting, and there's an opportunity to revitalize that building too.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

Yeah. Is that a main focus of yours? Is to find new locations that are either historical buildings or I have a business partner who constantly is looking for historical buildings because it brings more value to his business. Do you think that will bring more value, or do you think it's just for vanity purposes?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Aaron Powell I think there's a long history of cities doing this. My favorite reference point would be Rome, right? So if you if you go to Rome or you go to some of these Italian cities, there are sort of layers of prior cities, right? And you sort of you can see where like, oh, this was part of the Roman city and this is now modern. I think American cities have that too, right? Not quite as grand. But there's a phenomenon of that happening now. So you take the Chicago building or our Minneapolis building, those had a prior life, and they're now being reinvented and upgraded and tweaked because as a society, what we are doing is changing. And so I sort of think about it as a new layer that's right.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

No, it's beautiful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

And data centers are a type of infrastructure. So our lives now, this technology that we're all using to generate new art or to shop online, it requires a different infrastructure. Just like when electricity first rolled out, which uh this is amazing to me. Only about a hundred years ago did the US at scale all have electricity from the 1930s. Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

And so it's insane to think about.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

So New York City, where we're sitting now, did not have substations and power lines that long ago. And we had to inject that into the city. And so you're seeing the same thing now with with data, right? And so data and logistics are both getting interjected into urban areas as we sort of live differently.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Aaron Powell Yeah. We talked about it a little bit offline, just the cost of putting these data centers together and the business that you've had to build with legacy investing. Can you talk about what that looked like in terms of bringing this project, how all the fundraising and how you go about doing this?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah, I mean investments take a lot of capital. Yes. Data centers are fascinating. Data centers from a capital perspective, the average U.S. data center can cost on the low end half a billion dollars to twelve billion dollars. You know, maybe as a size reference, the Wynn Casino sold for I think it was like seven billion just to give you a sense of scale of and so most buildings are not this capital intensive. You know, if we take the buildings that we've repositioned, we've increased the overall capital value of that building tenfold, right? And so that's sort of an an amazing phenomenon. The good news is there's a lot of capital that wants to support data centers right now. So as our investment firm pulls together capital from different sources to enable these projects, we really lead the projects, but we we use capital from people like pension funds, right? And institutional investors, and that gives them an opportunity to invest in this new infrastructure that's rolling out across the country and to be a participant in that without necessarily having to have all the expertise in it.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Right, right. Yeah. What do you say to people that are resistant to AI and where the world is going?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

I read this fascinating comment that every era is a byproduct of its technology. And I think about that because if you if you say, what was Jules Verne's writing about when when when we when his books, When You Went Under the Sea or to the Moon, it was in an iron ship, right? Which made sense at the time. I think I am practically aware that AI and technology doesn't go backwards, right? So I'm practically aware that AI is not going backwards, it's here. Right. I think there is absolutely a conversation going on in the industry right now to try and put appropriate mechanisms, controls in it. There is a need and an importance to think about sustainability and the impact that we are having and the built environment that we're deploying this much capital into, because that is very high impact. The good news is, my experience is the industry as a whole is absolutely thinking about that and trying to think about how to have a positive impact. I guess I, on a practical level, say I can't make it go backwards. It's not going to go backwards. Never in human history has the technology gone backwards. But if you're in the conversation and in the flow, you can have a positive impact by influencing it.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

Aaron Ross Powell Articles I've read, there's a lot of criticism around AI and you know, you hear the complaints about stealing jobs from humans. And I don't believe that that's the case, but what would your argument be towards someone who has that type of rhetoric towards AI and where that technology is going?

SPEAKER_00 17:47

We see I mean, and I would say this for myself and generally a lot of the industry believes that we are helping amplify and enhance employment. So I spend a lot of time studying prior technology deployments in the US. There are lots of new jobs that are created. If you think about data centers, again, barely existed more than 20 years ago, every data center we build has new jobs. Every data center that's alive has new jobs. AI is in itself creating new types of jobs. So while certain jobs that we may have previously done, there was a lot of manual labor that no longer exists, right? But today there are new jobs that replace that. And this concept comes up in logistics too, because a lot of logistics jobs have the ability to be automated. And there's a question around, um, and this is something we're also involved in very heavily, you know, is that removing jobs. If you work at a warehouse today for doing fulfillment of e-commerce, a lot of those jobs require people to walk 10 miles a day around the warehouse. In fact, most of their time and payroll is going to walking. That's a very manual job and is very taxing on people's bodies. Right. There are automation technologies that can make those jobs erb ergonomic and reduce the need to walk everywhere. Um that's actually a net positive to society. Absolutely into people. And so our view is that it can be used to eliminate maybe manual labor or thoughtless jobs and allow us to have higher impact roles.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

I love that response. It's really thoughtful. Could you talk about your interest in art?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah, absolutely. I collect art, I love art. I got into it I guess in college. I didn't grow up with art. There was no art in my house growing up, but when I started to discover art, I guess as we do through education, um, I realized it was such so many different perspectives, right? It was it was such an eye-opening experience to see art reflecting back different ways of looking at the world. I have a particular bias towards throughout art history, a lot of art changes when new technologies come in. I agree. When we developed new color theories, you saw a big shift in in art, right? Um abstract art came about when there were certain technologies that allowed us to start to think about the world that way. Of course, airplanes changed how we looked at landscape, which changed our art. AI is going to change our art, right? I love that art captures a distinct moment in time of how we're looking at the world as a society and what we're feeling, and it sort of captures that and it becomes a snapshot of it, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Aaron Powell Yeah. I feel in the future it's going to become even more important and creativity. I mean, that initial spark will just, you know, what you see it when you're coming up with a project, and even if you're just using Chat GPT, you want you need that initial spark. So creativity is very important still.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah, I re I read um I read this idea the other day that the more pervasive AI and images come, right? So uh something I love about art history is when you read about how an artist traveled to an art show and suddenly their body of work changed, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:46

Yeah. We know all about that.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Right? There's a long history of that. But today I sort of am sad that we're so bombarded by images. Um, some are real, some are not, that it feels like a little bit of that moment, that that sort of spark of a fresh idea is lost. And so I read this idea that art is now about capturing reality and what is real and less about the mythology, right? Or escaping from reality, which is is what a lot of original art was. I guess I love that idea because I do feel like, to your point, art is transforming right now. Like the the amount of technology change right now is incredible when you just put it in the context of human history. Yeah. And what is that doing to art? And I think I've heard some people that are maybe worried about it. I understand that, but I'm also very excited about it.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

I guess to me, the part of the point of art is it is capturing what we're seeing at that moment in time.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's such a unique way to grow. I mean, especially just thinking about the Chamberlain estate and John Chamberlain and obviously our relation to him, but thinking about how to expand on his work and what he did in his legacy and how you can bring it back in the sixties to life today, right? And I I think Alexandra, I've talked to her about this, just doing such a great job at bringing his legacy to light in a more modern way. But I think in terms of new art and artists now, it also creates this juxtaposition of where to take their art, right? Like which forms, which ways they want to go. That, like you said, the colors, it's very, very interesting. I love to hear that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Well, obviously Art Basil this year had a whole digital art section. Exactly. Which was really amazing. And I felt like what was there was a conversation at Basil this year around the intersection of art and technology. I mean, Beepl's, you know, robot dog, AI dogs, the the sort of transform somehow between sculpture, technology, AI, data centers, because that's where that's happening. I had some folks after Basil say that was the ugliest thing. How is that art? It's not pretty. And I think though there's obviously art that is pretty, but it it's it is interesting to me that that is what we are now talking about and thinking about and grappling with, perhaps. We're still trying to make sense of what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Yeah, it's a commentary on our times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

And it's interesting to see like Christie's, Sotheby's, all of these auction houses that have now developed into more than just auction houses, but where they're taking their ventures and where money is being allocated and what their focus is. Yeah, it's really interesting. So I have a question in terms of intersection of art and data centers specifically. So when you're speaking to people, how are you raising awareness of data centers and what you're doing and how the whole concept of data centers can be transformed or I guess misrepresented in a way? How are you thinking about changing that idea and perception?

SPEAKER_00 23:52

It's taking work. I actually wrote a book on this. So that's one way is trying to get new ideas on the data. Yes. It's called Data Centers Are Not Centers. But the idea actually part of the fun part about data centers is they are not themselves buildings. They are collections of infrastructure that because of that, you can get really creative in how you do that. So that's why we can transform the Chicago Board of Trade Building or a Glass Tower in downtown Minneapolis. They don't have to be ugly boxes, right? Yeah. It's because there is room for creativity. But I think the thing that surprises me the most is how few people actually know what a data center is. I talk to people all the time, and I think obviously we've heard the word. The perceptions I hear sometimes are that data centers hold data. That's not quite what they do. Um or there's a perception, again, that things are happening on our physical devices. So when I'm video chatting with you, it's it's just happening on my phone. And that's actually, of course, not what's happening. It's it's happening in a much bigger machine somewhere else. Yeah. And so I think there's a the need for at some level of education to even understand what it is. There's a discourse right now and a narrative around these big bad data centers are eating up our power in our farmland. And and I do fully appreciate and understand where that is coming from. I think there's a practical reality to these aren't going away and we're gonna have to live with them. And so I guess I'm very interested in trying to help guide the conversation to because we have to live with them. Let's make them beautiful, let's embed them in our urban core, and that's where they will continue to pop up, just you know, just like prior technologies will. And I mean, if you think about it, railroads, airports, they're all embedded in our cities now, right? Electrical infrastructure is embedded in our urban core.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Yeah. Could you talk about some of your greatest challenges in building this business over the last few years?

SPEAKER_00 25:38

As you know, building anything new has challenges, right? Anything that's a startup is it takes a certain amount of belief in the future. Yeah. And it sort of works.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

But especially in the space that you're in.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

I think there's a lot of people willing to say you can't do that. Right. I think so much of doing anything new, and this comes up in art a lot too, right? Is belief and conviction in your perspective and your ideas and being willing to push that forward. I think that's something I love about that intersection between art and real estate. And like Richard Serra is one of my favorites because when you when I was reading about how he developed his body of work, it was a conscious, iterative effort to see the world differently and to innovate and to push that into the world. And one of my favorite stories about him was the fact that he divorced his first wife because they couldn't agree on what sculpture was. And so when he introduced what we all know Richard Sculpture Sarah's sculpture to be, that sculpture, there was a disagreement around, he was like, This is sculpture, and she was like, No, it's not. And and that sort of, as I understood that from the story, propagated their divorce.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Oh wow. That sounds like an artist thing today.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

That's a challenge, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:52

Like totally.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

I feel like anything new that we're doing, whether it's a a startup tech company or a building, takes a little bit of that. I'm going to see the world differently and I'm going to push it forward. And some people are going to say that's not what you can do. So our glass tower data center, when we first did it, that was not considered something you could do.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

It of course is, and we've shown that, but it does take a certain amount of grit and resiliency and willingness to try and persevere.

SPEAKER_03 27:22

I have a question about you. You are so calm, you're so even keeled. Just I love your demeanor. Thank you. Do you get scared? Like what what you're doing is incredible. And being a pioneer of, you know, in this industry, and I'm curious. Do you have fear? Do you worry? Do you get anxiety? Tell the listeners, because I would love to understand how you overcome this and how you navigate these new industries that people are very scared of and hesitant towards and reluctant to adopt. So I'd love to hear more about you.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

I appreciate your kind words. We talk about this to our team all the time. I ask them to embrace volatility. If we accept that change is coming and it's a permanent, ever-present thing, I find it's much easier to address it because then you can lean into it and take control of it or navigate your way through it, right? So the analogy I use to the team is you're in a raft on some rapids and you got to go down the rapids and you don't quite know, you know where you're going. We know, like we can see the where we have a vision of where we're trying to get to. We don't quite know how we're gonna get there. It's gonna be rough and we're gonna have to do it together. And so when we think about our company and and when I guide folks, that's the analogy we're using. And I think that helps keep me calm and them calm, is I know it's gonna be rough. And so I don't need to be freaked out that I'm hitting a rapid. I just need to know that and have confidence that I have the skill to overcome that and and the creativity to think through it and to embrace that sometimes the raft might dip over and I gotta get back in it.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

So I it's a great lesson. I find that helpful.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

I love that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I often think, but I want this person in my lifeboat. So I like them. Now it's like I'm gonna make it more intense. There's a lot of waves. We're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

You can pick up your horse.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

We don't have helmets on. We might lose more. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I think a lot of anyone that's looking to go into a new industry that may be fearful of rejection or hesitation, reluctancy. I think it's great advice for anyone listening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

There's a great book that you can still pick up for like five bucks on a used bookstore called Future Shock. And I believe it was written in 1969, 70. And I love it because it was a bestseller at the time. And it was written by an author who was trying to capture the fact that people were scared of the future the way that you have culture shock when you would go to a new country. And so that was the idea of future shock.

SPEAKER_03 29:58

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

And it was fascinating because some of the things that they were talking about have absolutely come true. Some they they thought we would all rent our furniture today, which we of course don't. But it was so interesting that we now are all excited about the new iPhone generation or the new upgrade to Instagram or whatever. Like change has become so constant in our lives that we in many cases we look forward to it. In the 1970s, that was still scary. And I think it is obviously still scary. For most of human history, there was no change, or there it was so slow we didn't feel it. And now it's obviously very present and constant. And so I personally find that I feel empowered if I'm leaning into it and trying to influence it.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

I love that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

I loved what you were saying about how Sarah really inspired you to think differently because you know I was raised by an artist and Lainey was too. And I think that that's like the greatest gift that I ever received because I always feel that. It's like artists see the world so differently. They have that courage. They're not defied by social constructs at all, like any rules. Like and so it's like amazing to hear that that's something that really inspires you.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

I think art and architecture studies help us think about real estate differently because the built environment is is how we experience life every day, right? And I think art is very helps bring that fresh perspective. In real estate, there's a common narrative around the big bad developer. And I think that we all know buildings that we think are ugly and we're like, oh my God, why did we build that? And so I do feel a responsibility and a pressure and an ethical need to participate in helping make sure that the buildings were adding to the world, particularly at if they're a billion, two billion, three billion dollars, that they are ones that we actually want to be around.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

I think it's a good question. I love that point, and maybe that's the answer to my next question. But what legacy do you want to leave behind? What is your goal in this lifetime? Because you're doing such incredible work and it's fascinating. And I would love to hear more about what you want to leave behind 100 years from now.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

We are at such an interesting point in history, and I am deeply humbled and honored to be at a point where I can even be in the conversation. Right. And and I've heard some people say AI is sort of the next industrial revolution. I would just say, you know, compute in general has transformed our lives over the last 20 years in particular. You know, if you think about e-commerce is really only like 25 years old. Really, maybe 20. And so that this intersection is so interesting and there's a chance to influence that so that a hundred years from now, the cities that we're all still living in maintain our cultural values, our beautiful places, our places we want to live. And I feel like there's still room to guide that conversation. I do believe that there's a chance to shape that right now. And so so I guess that's what I'm aiming for is I would like to help shape the conversation and I would like to influence it. I know I can't control it, but I would like to shape it. And now is the time to do that before the ideas are so embedded that they're locked in, right? And so uh technology has a long history of like you think of Betamax and VHS or even the fact that we all know what an office building is supposed to look like today. Ideas do start to get embedded and but things are still in flux and still plastic right now, and so we can mold them. So I would say from a legacy standpoint, I maybe that's why the company is called Legacy Investing is about building a legacy. You know, we're building the real world foundation to AI. And I would like to have a positive impact on that.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Amazing. I have a last question, if you don't mind, before we go into the lightning rounds. Alexandra and I, we talk a lot about AI. I am very new to the AI world. Alexandra is a seasoned vet. Um do you have any favorite AI tools or any advice for those that are just now getting into the AI world like myself?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Aaron Ross Powell The best thing that I've read about AI is it is a repository of everything we know is is humans, right? So you used to have to travel to get new ideas, right? So you why are conferences so popular as we go to conferences to get fresh ideas. Well, because AI has ingested everything we know, one way to look at it is as a repository or great library of everything we know. There's a lot of tools out there, but I think what I have found so interesting is that is a unique novel human experience in all of world history that you could know what humans know at that moment in time. And so I would say embrace that.

SPEAKER_03 34:42

Do you use Chat GPT?

SPEAKER_00 34:43

I do.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

Cool. Do you have any other favorite AI tools that we should be using? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

What about for e-comm? Any good AI tools?

SPEAKER_00 34:53

You know, it's interesting. Our tenants all use it. This is fascinating. AI monitors the forklift drivers, it processes all the contracts, so all the packages that are moving between these warehouses have contracts associated with them for transportation. All of that goes through AI. We have tools that read every single one of our real estate leases and manage them for us from AI.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Oh, amazing. Did you build custom AI agents to do that? Or are you working with companies that do that?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

And I think that's something that comes up in a lot of the conversations. I'm in, like I'll be on a round table for, say, logistics. And I was on a round table with Fortune 500 companies that are all have many warehouses around the country. And the conversation was, what are you using AI for? And it was not the things we do. We're not effectively asking it silly questions or making silly images. They are using it to run their core businesses. And I think there's a proliferation of non-consumer-oriented apps that are based on these same underlying large language models that are influencing how we do everything. But there's this underlying infrastructure that's embedded increasingly in society that's running on AI.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Yeah. Oh, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_03 36:01

I'm so excited by all of this. Yeah, it's really cool. I'm a newbie. Yes. So uh we always end our episode with the lightning round.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Excited.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

I'm ready.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

Okay. A belief you had to unlearn.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Risk equals return.

SPEAKER_03 36:16

Love that.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Risk does not equal return.

SPEAKER_03 36:19

I always say that and no one listens. I believe it. Yes. A moment you almost walked away from your career.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Oh man. I don't know that I do.

SPEAKER_03 36:31

You're so cool, calm.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Like I can't stop. You're in the road. I can't stop. I'm locked in.

SPEAKER_03 36:37

Okay. I love that. A habit that changed your trajectory.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Reading.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

What are your favorite books?

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Oh man, I I read Top five. Richard Serra's writings was one. Uh The Evolution of Technology, which talks a lot about where technology comes from and how it's going. That's maybe number two. Interaction Ritual Chains, which is a microsociology book on how things get done by Ronald Burt. Like that one's incredible. Oh man, I got to come up with two more. One more, one more.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

We've had Future Shock already.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Yeah, Future Shock for sure. So I read constantly and every day, and I find that with the world changing this fast, the more knowledge I can take in and the more I can push my mental models, the better.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

How do you find time to read every day?

SPEAKER_00 37:22

I get up early.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

What's time?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Five.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

Okay. Love. Do you work out?

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

Nice. I want to hear your schedule. Okay, last question. Something you're still working on.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Oh gosh, myself. Every day. Amazing. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:39

And I'm adding an extra one. Your daily schedule.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

It's generally five to eleven. 5 a.m. wake up. Yeah, 5 a.m. wake up. And what do you do? Do you drink coffee? I hand grind the coffee to wake me up. I read and journal. Then I work out. Then my meetings always start by 8 a.m., go till about five. It's meetings, it's travel, it's whatever. And then dinner meetings five nights a week.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

And do you look at your phone first thing in the morning?

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 38:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

To see what blew up overnight.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

Okay. This is the closing question. What's next for you in legacy investing? How can people learn more about what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 38:20

I'm extremely excited about this year because of where the trajectory and momentum is in AI right now in particular. And so there's a lot more projects we're doing like the Chicago project that are in evolution. And so I'm just excited for the next couple. This is a couple year thing that will play out. So I'm very excited about that. And we're publishing work on what we're doing. And um, you're gonna start seeing it in cities around the country.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Love. Thank you so much for joining us today. One last thing, where can we find you? And can you plug your book one more time?

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Yes, you can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and our website is legacyinvesting.com. And then my book was called Data Centers Are Not Centers. And if you reach out, I'll send you a copy.

SPEAKER_03 39:01

Amazing! Thank you so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Thank you.