# Ray Hespen

> Ray Hespen is the CEO and co-founder of Property Meld, a Rapid City software company that applies the operating discipline he learned as a mining engineer and manufacturing manager to residential maintenance. Founded with college friend David Kingman after years of frustrating rental repairs, Property Meld grew from a basement startup into a platform serving property managers across the United States and Canada, raised a $15 million Series B in 2023, acquired AI maintenance company Mezo in 2025, and now uses repair data to connect maintenance performance with resident renewals, cost control, and property economics.

- **Role:** CEO and Co-founder at Property Meld
- **Organizations:** Property Meld, South Dakota Mines
- **Education:** Bachelor's degree in Mining Engineering, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (now South Dakota Mines)
- **Known for:** Co-founded Property Meld and developed it from a basement-stage startup into a residential property-maintenance operations platform serving the United States and Canada., Led the company through a $15 million Series B funding round in 2023, with announced total funding reaching $22 million., Testified before the U.S. Senate in 2020 about the venture-capital gap and entrepreneurship outside traditional technology hubs.

## Career timeline

- **2009** — Graduated from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology with a mining engineering degree and began a career in manufacturing and operations.
- **2009-2014** — Moved through roles and locations including Tulsa, California, the Chicago area, Baltimore and Colorado while working on manufacturing operations, cost control and process improvement.
- **2014** — Began investigating the property-maintenance problem with college friend David Kingman after comparing frustrating experiences as renters.
- **2015** — Co-founded Property Meld and became CEO after customer discovery with property management operators.
- **2017** — Moved Property Meld into Rapid City's Ascent Innovation Center and began building the company in South Dakota.
- **2020** — Testified before the U.S. Senate at a hearing on expanding entrepreneurship outside traditional startup hubs.
- **2021** — Property Meld began constructing a downtown Rapid City headquarters designed for a growing team.
- **2023** — Property Meld announced a $15 million Series B led by Frontier Growth, bringing announced total funding to $22 million.
- **2025** — Property Meld acquired Mezo and added its AI maintenance intake and triage assistant, MAX, to the platform.
- **2026** — Property Meld expanded MAX Intelligence and began rolling out TrueCost, connecting repair operations with cost projection and billing data.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Property Meld and developed it from a basement-stage startup into a residential property-maintenance operations platform serving the United States and Canada.
- Led the company through a $15 million Series B funding round in 2023, with announced total funding reaching $22 million.
- Testified before the U.S. Senate in 2020 about the venture-capital gap and entrepreneurship outside traditional technology hubs.
- Led Property Meld's 2025 acquisition of Mezo to add AI-assisted maintenance intake, triage and mitigation.
- Helped establish a maintenance dataset that Property Meld says now covers about 3 million service issues per year and more than 800,000 rental doors.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Discussed Property Meld's origin, founder-led sales, organizational scaling and employee development on Garret Wong's Investing to WIN podcast.
- **2026-02** — Announced the rollout of TrueCost, a MAX Intelligence product suite designed to add cost projection, cost capture and billing clarity throughout a repair.
- **2026-01** — Property Meld's 2026 forecast argued that AI in maintenance should expand human decision-making through granular repair data and operational context.
- **2025-12** — Reported on LinkedIn that 2025 was Property Meld's largest growth year to date.
- **2025-01** — Property Meld acquired Mezo and announced plans to bring its MAX AI intake and triage technology into the standard platform offering.

## Links

- Website: https://propertymeld.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rayhespen
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/PropertyMeld
- YouTube: https://youtu.be/8ON9piTCb9I
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/propertymeld/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/ray-hespen
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-23