CTOs to Know: meet Apto's Paul Fox

Denver’s  may have had humble beginnings, but as one of the fastest-growing companies in the Colorado community, they’re hustling hard.

Apto’s technology enables some of the largest commercial real estate brokerages in the United States to manage everything from building a property database to tracking deals to calculating commissions.

Leading the tech team is CTO Paul Fox, who brings more than 12 years’ worth of experience to the table. We caught up with him to talk developing for a diverse customer base, the future of commercial real estate and the power of powder days.

What technologies power your business?

Apto is built on the Force.com platform. Being a Salesforce.com partner means that our engineers spend the majority of their time working on business logic, integrations and front-end design, and we have one person who spends part of his time on DevOps. Developing on the platform also means that everything we build is immediately available to about a half dozen APIs, and through the iOS, Android, and web-based mobile UIs.

The majority of our code is written in Apex, an object-oriented language built by Salesforce.com, somewhat similar to the Java that powers it. On the front end we have a few different technologies, but most of our pages use AngularJS and Sass.

To help us get it all done, we use some pretty standard technologies  — GitHub, Jira, Jenkins, and a variety of text editors. This helps new developers get up to speed fast, even if they’ve never used Force.com before. Our new engineers typically start contributing to the code base within the first week.

What technologies are playing the biggest roles at Apto this year?

As you can imagine, maps are a critical component to any commercial real estate application. We’re looking forward to making some improvements to our existing mapping technology, so our users can easily get insights about the properties that they’re working with.

We’re also excited about Salesforce’s new component framework, lightning. Based on the open source aura framework, this technology will allow us to build components that can be used within our own custom pages, but also leveraged by business users to create their own applications by simply dragging and dropping components onto a page. And they’ll communicate with each other through standard event handlers and be mobile-friendly.

What upcoming tech project are you most proud of?

We’ve been working on some major changes to our back-office product, a system that allows brokerages to complete complex transactions, generate invoices and calculate commissions. We’ve seen a big increase in the number of companies interested in migrating from outdated systems that nobody wants to use, and we’re spending a lot of time trying to take something really complex and make it simple.

What are the biggest technology challenges you've faced in the past? How did you overcome them?

One of the challenges with having a complex, highly configurable product is that each customer is different.

When customers can change what shows on a screen, easily add other applications on top of Apto, integrate with our APIs and even do their own custom development on top of our application, we have to think carefully about how we build new things and change existing components.

One of the most important things that we do to address this issue is to think of our tech stack as a series of reusable components. Whether we’re building a service class or a UI component, we try to separate concerns as much as possible so it’s like we’re building legos that we can use to create the perfect system for each customer.

What lessons have you learned about working in Colorado that other local entrepreneurs can learn from?

First of all, the community is amazing. If you have a company here and you never leave your office, you’re missing a huge part of the value. Denver has a large and constantly growing tech scene. Whether you’re attending a session at Denver Startup Week, going to a local [insert any technology name] meetup, having a beer at Built in Brews, or sponsoring your own event, it doesn’t matter. Get involved and be prepared to be surprised at how much you get back.

Second, keep in mind that people here care about work/life balance. And it’s not about ending the day at at a certain time every day. The best companies are finding ways to give their team members the ability to have freedom in their work and their life, so that they can find out what works best for them and their team. Apto has been working hard at this, and our employee satisfaction and productivity has continued to climb as we have implemented programs like flex time and powder days.

What sort of people do you look for when hiring?

We look for smart people that are willing to wear many hats and can fit in with our culture, especially people that are comfortable being candid and come from a variety of backgrounds. Those seem like vague terms, but the reality is we don’t look for people that know XYZ language or have a certain length of experience.

If you have experience that aligns with what we do, we see that as a bonus. But technologies change and so do the problems that we’re solving, so we look for the fundamentals.

Can you solve problems? Can you help out when it’s needed, even if it’s “not your job”? Can you argue for what you believe in, but change your mind when you find out you’re wrong? If so, let us know. We’re always hiring.

How would your team describe working with you?

I would hate to put words in their mouth, so I asked them. Here are some of their unedited comments:

“Working with Paul, it's like working with someone you've known for years. He's easy to talk with, but doesn't shy away from being heard, when facts are present. He pushes you, but makes it your win, not his. Always available to listen, never interrupts or tries to speak over you, only to you. He uses his vast knowledge of leadership skills to promote your skills to the next level and accepts your mistakes/fails, as a learning mechanism for your career and personal growth. He knows what it takes to be a remarkable leader and strives to display this using ethical leadership principles.”

What trends do you see happening in your industry over the next three years? How is Apto anticipating those trends and working towards them?

I think in the next three years commercial real estate is going to see some drastic changes. We’re already seeing major changes in how brokerages use technology to run their businesses.

New technologies like virtual reality tours, IoT connected buildings, and blockchain transactions combined with increased sharing and the ability to process large amounts of data will have major effects on how commercial real estate is handled.

We are also paying attention to changes that are affecting our cities  — from autonomous cars to green building design.

In order to play a large part in this revolution, Apto spends a lot of time working with our customers and other technology companies to form strategic partnerships, helping to advance the pace of innovation by combining ideas together, finding out what’s truly important, and working tirelessly to make these changes happen.

We won’t be building all of these things ourselves, but we can continue to build the best platform for connecting it all together so that commercial real estate companies can focus on what’s important  — improving the cities around us.

What else do you want the Colorado startup community to know about Apto?

Did I mention we’re hiring? Check us out online or look for our team members at various startup events around the Denver area. We’re always happy to talk to other Denver entrepreneurs and share our experiences and learn about yours.

Photos via Apto. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

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