Founder: Greg Daniele, CPA
Website: ElevateSolutionsRE.com
Use: Real estate development, land development, property management and accounting software
Greg Was Supposed to Explain the Numbers, Not Spend His Days Finding Them
There is a particular frustration that comes with being a controller: everyone expects you to have the answer, but getting to that answer can take far longer than it should. After working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Greg Daniele became controller for a regional real estate company, where development, property management, syndications, accounting systems and spreadsheets all held different pieces of the same financial picture.
Month-end was not just about understanding the numbers. A large part of the work was finding them, reconciling them and pulling them back into something management could actually use. That experience eventually became the starting point for Elevate Solutions. Greg was not looking at real estate from the outside and wondering what software he could build for it. He was already inside the finance office, dealing with the exact reporting and visibility problems the product would later try to solve.
The Rearview-Mirror Problem
Greg now describes one of the core problems in simple terms: too many real estate companies manage projects while looking through the rearview mirror. Traditional accounting is very good at explaining what has already happened, but by the time a cost appears in a report, a commitment changes, or a project falls behind forecast, the important event may already be in the past.
That changes the question. Instead of asking only what happened, the better question becomes whether the team could have seen it earlier. Elevate Solutions grew around that idea: bring project information and financial information closer together so developers and finance teams are not always reconstructing the story after the fact.
Land Development Makes That Problem Obvious
Land development shows the weakness of backward-looking reporting particularly well because a large part of the risk appears before vertical construction begins. Due diligence, entitlements, rezoning, permits, engineering work, financing and regulatory delays can all affect a project before the stage most traditional construction systems are built around.
The National Association of Home Builders highlights how regulatory barriers and approval processes can add both cost and uncertainty to development. Elevate’s land development software is built around keeping lot data, budgets, commitments, forecasts and actual project spending visible together, rather than leaving finance and development teams to piece them together later.
For the controller, that means less time assembling the story. For the developer, it means a better chance of seeing what is changing while there is still time to respond.
The Idea Came From the Job
One detail from Greg’s background explains the company well. His father used to tell him that having the right tools makes any job easier. Years later, Greg found himself in a role where the tools were often the problem: too many disconnected systems, too much manual reconciliation and too much time spent collecting information before any useful analysis could begin.
That gap became the opportunity for Elevate Solutions. Mid-sized real estate companies can face many of the same operational and financial challenges as much larger firms, but the software available to them can be either too basic for the job or far more complicated than they need. Elevate grew around that middle ground, with software designed for real estate development, accounting, property management and portfolio operations.
The company has expanded well beyond the original problem Greg faced as a controller, but that original frustration is still easy to see in the product today. The goal was never simply to produce more reports. It was to spend less time hunting for numbers and more time understanding what those numbers mean.
Disclaimer: This success story was written in collaboration with the Elevate Solutions agency team to share Greg Daniele’s journey and the experience that led to Elevate Solutions, as part of WebSEO Club’s free Success Story initiative.
