Where real estate finance meets software instinct
Mike Sroka arrived at Hudson Advisors fresh out of Southern Methodist University with a B.S. in Economics, watching how some of the largest private equity real estate firms on the planet managed their deal data. The answer, for most of them, was: badly. Spreadsheets multiplied across inboxes. Deals stalled in email chains. Billion-dollar investment decisions lived in files no two people could agree were current.
He didn't build a company right away. First came a detour through gaming. Sroka joined Zynga during its peak years, working at the intersection of fast-moving software development and millions of users. Then Fanhood, a social sports platform acquired by FOX. Then OneSeason, picked up by Cantor Fitzgerald. Each stop taught him something different about what it takes to build a product people actually use at scale - and what happens when a company fails to organize its own data.
In March 2014, Sroka co-founded Dealpath alongside Andy Lee and Kenter Wu in San Francisco. The premise was direct: commercial real estate needed a centralized command center for front-office operations - one that combined pipeline management, portfolio tracking, and collaboration tools built specifically for the precision demands of institutional investing. Not a generic project management tool. Not another CRM bolted onto an existing workflow. Something purpose-built for deals worth millions to billions, where speed and accuracy are both non-negotiable.
The timing looked risky. Most institutions weren't ready to move. Then COVID happened, and the "nice to have" became essential overnight. Distributed teams needed remote-accessible data. Investment committees demanded standardized workflows. The security requirements for transactions at this scale had never been sharper. Sroka's instinct - that real estate's digitization was inevitable, not optional - proved correct three years ahead of schedule.
By September 2022, Dealpath closed a $43M Series C led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, with Blackstone, 8VC, JLL Spark, Nasdaq Ventures, and GreenSoil PropTech Ventures participating. Total funding reached $75M. The platform had by then supported over $10 trillion in investment transactions. Clients evaluating deals on Dealpath were closing 154% more of them. They were screening 194% more opportunities. The math was hard to argue with.
Sroka's current focus is AI - specifically, using machine learning to automate the data extraction, deal matching, and underwriting steps that still consume too many human hours. His "AI Extract" product, launched in 2023, was an early signal of where the platform is heading. His words on the matter are precise: "The future is more programmatic portfolio management, and it starts with organizing and structuring all of the data that these firms have access to, visualizing it so that they can be more data driven in their decision making, and automating steps along the way."
He lives in the Bay Area with his wife and two kids. He serves on Blackstone's PropTech Advisory Board - a notable position given Blackstone is simultaneously one of his largest clients. He is a member of California Trout, the Urban Land Institute, NAIOP, ICSC, and the Forbes Real Estate Council. In March 2024, Dealpath turned ten years old. Every year since founding has been a growth year. Not many software companies get to say that.