The broker who kept losing deals inside spreadsheets, so he built the leasing platform that now runs across billions of square feet of global commercial real estate.
Romito co-founded View The Space in 2011 with Ryan Masiello, an idea that started as literal video walk-throughs of empty Manhattan offices and became, over a decade, the leasing and asset management platform used by landlords across billions of square feet of commercial real estate. The company was profitable in May 2012, eighteen months in. It merged with Hightower in 2016, rebranded to VTS, and closed a $125 million Series E in September 2022, bringing total funding to $451 million.
His origin story is the least interesting part of it. His current story is: a founder who has raised nine figures, employs roughly seven hundred people, and still tells reporters he has no particular financial need to take his company public. He would rather compound. That is a strange thing to say out loud in New York proptech, which is why he keeps saying it, and why people keep writing it down.
The tell, if you are looking for one, is what he named the conference rooms.
Before VTS, Romito was in the industry he ended up rewiring. He started at Murray Hill Properties in New York as a tenant rep and landlord broker, working an eight-million-square-foot office portfolio and helping international companies open U.S. offices. He moved to AM Properties, where he oversaw three million square feet of office. In 2009 he founded Titan Advisors, a full-service commercial real estate firm.
The Titan detour matters because it is where he stopped being a broker who wished the tools were better and started being a founder about to build them. He has told the story enough times that the beats are familiar: leases lived in spreadsheets, deals lived in email chains, nobody could see across a portfolio in real time, everybody flew blind, and the industry ran the fifth-largest asset class in the world on infrastructure that would embarrass a mid-sized dental practice.
The idea he took to venture capital was, initially, a video product. Show landlords the space through a screen. That first VC meeting was a rejection. The investor told him, per his own retelling, that the idea "has no legs." He put in fifty to a hundred thousand dollars of his own money and built anyway.
The early engineering team was in India. Romito set an alarm for four in the morning New York time to be on the same clock as the developers he had hired to build the first version. This is the sort of detail founders sometimes soften after the fact and Romito has never softened. He describes it as boring and grinding and the reason the product shipped.
By May 2012 the company was making more than it was spending. In 2013 it launched what would become VTS Lease, the modern leasing platform the industry now takes for granted. In 2016 View The Space merged with Hightower and the combined entity rebranded as VTS. Blackstone came in as a strategic investor. The Series D of $90 million landed in 2019, then the largest venture round in CRE software history.
In interviews he has been repeatedly asked when he plans to go public. His answer has been consistent: he does not need to, and therefore is not in a hurry. In 2019 he told Forbes that the Series D let him "put off" a public offering. In 2022 the Series E did the same job. Optionality is the strategy. Waiting is the strategy.
The most Romito thing about Romito is that he named the conference rooms at VTS after famous surf breaks. Mavericks. Pipeline. Trestles. He grew up surfing and still does. He has said on the record that if he wasn't in commercial real estate he'd be a pro surfer, adding, with the timing of someone who has said it before, "if talent was not a blocker of course."
He describes surfing the way founders describe founding. "It's like a chess match with nature," he told Bisnow. "You have to be a strategic thinker because you're dealing with all kinds of variables." Then, less strategically: "I owe a huge part of my life to having surfing as an outlet."
His father, Nick Romito Sr., was a professional boxer whose fights included Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. His brother Rocco went pro in the ring too. Nick learned to box at eight and picked a different arena. The family iconography in his office reportedly includes a signed Gennady Golovkin glove his brother gave him. Take from that what you will about the sort of household that produces a CRE founder.
Asked in interviews how he defines making it, Romito's answer is the same each time: work worth showing up for and family waiting at home. He credits his mother as his primary mentor. He mentions being raised without money. He mentions cleaning garbage at a New Jersey water park as his worst job, in a tone that suggests he still remembers exactly what the garbage bags weighed.
The management philosophy he repeats publicly is short and unglamorous. Hire people smarter than yourself. Give them room to run. Look for managers who will stop at nothing to get the result. He has not exactly hidden the ball on any of this. It is his whole approach and he has said it out loud since 2015.
The idea "has no legs," per the first venture investor he pitched. He kept building.
Video walk-throughs of empty New York office space. Hence View The Space.
Father fought Ali and Frazier. Brother went pro. Nick learned at eight.
Worst job on record: cleaning garbage at a New Jersey water park.
Mavericks. Pipeline. Trestles. Meetings held inside surf breaks.
Early dev team in India. NYC founder up before dawn to sync.
Haas grad who never left New York commercial real estate.
His mother, on the record, is the primary one.
A signed Gennady Golovkin boxing glove from his brother sits in the office iconography.
EY Entrepreneur of the Year, New York - Real Estate, Construction & Lodging.
Crain's New York Business - Most Notable in Real Estate.
GlobeSt Best Bosses in Commercial Real Estate, with Ryan Masiello.
Commercial Observer Power Proptech list, third consecutive year for VTS.
Co-founder and CEO of VTS, the commercial real estate leasing and asset management platform he started in 2011 with Ryan Masiello.
Tenant rep and landlord broker at Murray Hill Properties, then AM Properties, then founder of Titan Advisors in 2009.
University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business.
Approximately $451M total, including a $90M Series D in 2019 and a $125M Series E in September 2022.
Not on any published timeline. Romito has repeatedly said the company has no financial need to IPO.