The thing I would tell 25-year-old me

When I started my first company, I thought advice was the answer to everything I didn't know yet.

I listened to every podcast on my commute, read every founder book I could get my hands on, and saved every LinkedIn post that promised the secret to growth, fundraising, or hiring the right people. My notes app became a graveyard of frameworks I never actually used, and my browser had 40 tabs open at all times because I was convinced the next piece of wisdom was going to be the one that changed everything.

But here's what nobody tells you when you're starting out and hungry for someone to hand you the playbook. Most advice is really just someone describing what worked for them in their specific market at their specific stage with their specific team on a specific Tuesday in 2019, and by the time it reaches you, it has been stripped of all the context that actually made it useful.

Raise fast, stay lean, hire for culture, hire for skill, niche down, stay broad, go enterprise, go self-serve. It all sounds smart when you hear it in isolation from someone you admire, but when you try to hold all of it in your head at once, you end up in a kind of paralysis where every decision feels like it might be the wrong one.

The thing I would tell 25-year-old me, if I could go back and sit her down, is pretty simple:
Stop collecting advice like Pokemon cards. Start questioning if it actually applies to you.

Who said it, what were they selling when they said it, what stage was their company at, did it work once or did it work ten times, would it still work in your market with your customers at your price point with your team of three people running on fumes?

Advice without context is just noise dressed up as wisdom, and the sooner you learn to interrogate it, the sooner you stop executing on someone else's playbook and start building your own.

The second time around, I listen to way fewer people, I ask way more questions, and I trust my own pattern recognition more than I trust a viral post from someone who raised a Series B in a zero-interest-rate environment.

Turns out that was the real lesson the whole time.

🎉 In the Built World has a new Advisor

Talking about people I’ve met whom I now trust and are happy to work with, I am excited to have Ryan Elazari joining “In the Built World” as an Advisor.

He has joined our first event ever in New York as a speaker, and is now coming on board to help build relationships between real estate operators and the technology builders serving them

Ryan is a real estate innovation strategist, educator, and media voice at the intersection of commercial real estate, technology, and the built environment. As Founder and Host of CRE Unplugged, he built a content platform and podcast that connects developers, investors, asset managers, and operators with the founders and ideas reshaping how we build, manage, and experience space.

He teaches Real Estate Entrepreneurship at Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, has served as President of the NAIOP NYC Metro Chapter, and is a member of The Built World Innovation Council with Forum Ventures.

🇷🇴 The first ITBW event in Bucharest

This month, we hosted our first "In the Built World" event in Bucharest, Romania, together with INVOX Call Tracking and Digital Partners

It was a curated gathering that brought together some of the most important real estate developers in Bucharest.

We shared up-to-date real estate market data, sales conversion rates and we talked about how the buyer behaviour evolved in the last few years and what's needed to adapt in the sales process.

You can learn more about In the Built World here.

A few words about me

I’m Irina Constantin—entrepreneur, educator, and avid reader with over a decade of experience in the tech industry. I’m the CEO and co-founder of VAUNT, a bootstrapped, profitable pro-tech startup transforming how residential developers sell properties worldwide.

I started my entrepreneurial journey at 21, founding a software development agency focused on B2B and B2C products. Today, I’m building VAUNT into the operating system of the residential industry.

I’m passionate about leveraging technology to solve real estate challenges and committed to building solutions that create lasting impact. My work has earned me recognition, including being named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2022.

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