The Crowd with Us Podcast: Recent Episodes
Pola Krawczuk
Crowd with Us was founded in 2014 by three co-founders - Rob Wilkinson, Rob Pasternak and Thor Portess. They combined their experience of over two decades in property, management and the tech industry to build a crowdfunding platform that could remove the financial barrier of entry to property investment.
Consisting of experienced financiers from top tier financial institutions and leading lenders, the team at CWU focus on funding other developer’s deals.
In this podcast the co-founders speak with business and industry leaders to share their combined experience, knowledge and learning.
Fran Boorman is without doubt an accomplished woman. Recognised as the UK’s No. 1 Female Business Influencer 2019, her business, Goal 17, has been featured in Forbes, she’s a TEDx speaker, winner of the National Mentoring Awards, she was a competitive skier and is a radio contributor. She has scaled a very successful Networking Marketing business, written and published a book about it and is part of a non-political government steering group focused on women in enterprise.
Rod has had an unconventional career, at the age of 16 he started working as a bouncer which unexpectedly snowballed into building a 100-man security business. He also set up a sports nutrition company on the way before turning to property development, purchasing his first property sharing a party wall with Wandsworth prison!
Since then he’s structured and pulled off creative property development deals in major UK cities, he’s built a sustainable business by adapting to market conditions.
The developers behind HGS Properties, Paul Goodsir and Philip Howard join CWU Co-founder, Rob Wilkinson, to share their decades of combined property investment, planning and construction experience. They discuss their most successful strategies and share how they’ve been able to mitigate risk in their developments.
Predominantly focused on projects in and around London they made their success in areas such as Clerkenwell before they were trendy.
Mark is an experienced entrepreneur, business leader, investor and published author. He retired from corporate life at Board Level after 26 years deploying global infrastructure projects. Alongside his business partners he established EquaGroup in 2015, focusing on his passion for creating shared and sustainable value through property, driven to build multi-generational legacy.
Thor has been investing in property for over 20 years, having bought his first property at age 19 in Australia. He worked in the UK construction industry for five years up to 2010 as site foreman and project manager.
Thor started investing in London in 2009 and bought and/or sold 50 properties totalling over £17 million in value before creating Crowd with Us with his co-founders. His key skill sets are mitigating risk & structuring deals to be profitable and win/win for all involved.
A New Zealand Chartered Accountant and Project Manager, she has vast experience in Financial Services. Michelle spent a large proportion of her career working on massive financial transformation programmes before building a buy-to-let property portfolio.
More recently Michelle’s focus has shifted to investing, with a particular interest in SSAS - small, self administered scheme. As an advocate of crowdfunding she began investing personally before exploring the possibilities available with SSAS.
Deeply passionate about the construction industry, Michelle started working on site at just 17. Since then she’s worked and trained as QS, EA, CA and PM (listen to the podcast to find out what these mean!).
Michelle established Redshell Consulting in 2013 as an independent construction consultancy of cost, project and development managers, working holistically with clients to support them going beyond cost and project level results and providing strategic solutions to construction challenges.
An entrepreneur at heart with an economics degree from the University of Manchester, Matthew established Kin in 2001 - matching heirs to unclaimed inheritances. Seven years later, he built a portfolio in Reading and broke ground on the London market.
In 2017, Matthew established Qandor, with the ambition to create an environment where developers, investors and business owners regularly and exclusively interact with the aim of collaborating on existing and new projects.
Thor has been investing in property for over 20 years, having bought his first property at age 19 in Australia. He worked in the UK construction industry for five years up to 2010 as site foreman and project manager. Thor started investing in London in 2009 and bought and/or sold 50 properties totalling over £17 million in value before creating Crowd with Us with his co-founders.
Growing up in Sweden when serving in the military was mandatory, Fredrik joined the special forces and worked his way up the ranks, ultimately becoming responsible for over 250 officers. Alongside his military career, Fredrik managed to grow and balance a property company, consulting company, to study and still make time for his family.
Involved in a number of businesses and dominating the property industry Fredrik is now taking on the publishing world.
“My fundamental principle is don’t lose the capital.” - Helen Chorley
In 2008 Helen left the banking world and took some time to recover her health and wellbeing before turning her attention to property. Since 2016, she’s taken a professional approach as a property investor. Helen admits to having a cautious, risk averse stance, so talks about the process needed to combine investing in development with her financial background and mindset.
In this podcast, Gita and Rob explore the fundamental principles of goal setting and the elements most essential in accomplishing them.