No matter the type of area in which you live—be it urban, suburban, or rural—there’s an exceedingly high chance that there’ll be a myriad of vacant, unused buildings. Think: derelict town halls that instead could be office spaces for fledgling businesses; abandoned theatres that could once again serve as a community arts hub; or empty residential properties that could be repurposed into social and affordable housing.

For Grand Bequest, the Scotland-based, woman-led property technology (proptech) startup, this is the mission at the core of its efforts: ensuring that the hundreds of thousands of underpurposed, unoccupied buildings scattered across the country are put back into effective use, and in a way that directly aligns with local community needs.

To learn more about the inspiration behind the proptech’s creation, the sheer amount of work involved behind the scenes, and the innovative new technologies that are helping facilitate building regeneration and repurposing, not least artificial intelligence and geospatial data, we spoke to CEO Katherine Gunderson.

Read on to find out what the passionate, forward-thinking entrepreneur told us.

From Detroit to Dunbartonshire

The initial idea for Grand Bequest didn’t so much start in Scotland as much as it did Detroit. Just as the American city is globally recognised for its rich cultural tapestry spanning from music to food, it wouldn’t be remiss to say that it’s also infamous for its urban decay; a large contributor to this being the gradual demise of the city’s once-thriving automobile industry.

For U.S.-born Gunderson, who was living in Detroit while remotely studying for a Doctorate of Business Administration and Management at the University of Liverpool, the brokenness was undeniably stark—and deeply impactful on both personal and professional levels. At the time, the city had just filed for bankruptcy, with countless unused buildings being removed. (The Guardian, shortly after, reported that 200 houses alone were being demolished each week—with ten of thousands left to be cleared.) However, with the glaring issues of homelessness and the wider housing crisis in the city, the outright removal of innumerable buildings didn’t quite add up for Gunderson. Instead, why couldn’t they be repurposed into habitable homes and spaces that’d better serve local communities?

While the concept of Grand Bequest began to form, Gunderson somewhat serendipitously visited Scotland on a whim, and she immediately recognised its potential as an ideal sandbox for a startup at the intersections of property, regeneration, law, social justice, community, technology, and sustainability. It wasn’t long before the founder, whose compelling forthrightness and pragmatism is immediately noticeable within moments of meeting her, called her husband to say not so much as state that they’d soon be moving countries. “My husband laughed and said, ‘Let’s do it… it’s time for you to make your mark,’ knowing that the pieces were coming together and that we were undoubtedly in for a fun adventure,” Gunderson recounted.

Grand Bequest was officially founded in Scotland on February 26th 2020, mere weeks before COVID-19 fully entrenched itself and local lockdowns were ordered to mitigate spread. In spite of the intense tumultuousness that it consequently brought, Gunderson’s resolve to make good on her newly-founded startup was steadfast. Because, ultimately, it wasn’t just a business idea: it was a way to facilitate meaningful change for people and place.

From Unused to Useful

Grand Bequest’s innovative approach for seeing vacant building regeneration through to purposeful usage is consolidated down to a six-stage process (though, due to the inherent complexities, it isn’t entirely sequential).

Anyone can kick things off by “bequesting” (read: flagging) a building for repurposing through the free-to-use web app. The local community, in combination with suggestions from Grand Bequest’s in-house AI programme, then put forward potential new usages for the space. A voluntary lead, referred to as a “Champion,” is chosen to help spearhead the project and help see it through completion. But, considering that no building regeneration project can be done without the appropriate financing, the necessary resources are investigated and secured—e.g., from the likes of impact investors. The building’s physical integrity is also digitally documented via drones, with the geospatial data then being fed into AI algorithms which propose how best to go about restoration, with architects and construction staff then carrying out the required reconstructive work. The last step, after the building has secured a new lease on life, centres around celebration: all stakeholders—from the citizens who live nearby, to the workers whose labour led to the project’s triumph—reflect on and honour the reconstituted space, whatever it turns out to be, at the project’s grand opening.

At the time of writing, the projects that Grand Bequest is helping to facilitate, like the historic Balloch Castle at Loch Lommond’s southern edge, are in the early stages. That’s because the startup is still relatively young—and, considering its massive scope, Gunderson is undergoing the rest of the learning needed for the success of each of Grand Bequest’s regeneration stages. For instance, as part of efforts on the funding front, she recently partook in a five-day intensive course at the University of Oxford on impact finance innovations and finance vehicles for impact investments, helping to build out her knowledge and ideas on how the promising regeneration projects can better access and attain essential funding. “What is so exciting about this point in history, is the fact that leaders like Aunnie Patton Power and Sir Ronald Cohen are spearheading the impact finance revolution at the exact same time that generative AI technology has never been more accessible or powerful,” the founder said. “Everything is new, fast moving, and ripe for enabling the societal re-engineering that is necessary to literally survive in the coming decades.”

To say that a lot of behind-the-scenes work that does and will go on in any given regeneration project—and amid the backdrop of Gunderson learning in real time—is a sizeable undertaking is nothing short of an understatement. That’s why the practically-minded Gunderson is intentionally collaborating with partner companies to streamline Grand Bequest’s entire process, rather than tackle every single meticulous action itself, in turn creating a bespoke supply chain that can usher in change as efficiently and effectively as possible.

From Information to Innovation

Although a Grand Bequest regeneration project hasn’t yet moved through all six of its stages, innovative technologies are already being utilised by the proptech to make good on its mission.

For instance, and as briefly touched on earlier, a critical component of the proptech’s process is bringing in a specialist Midlands-based drone company, Terra Measurement, to measure the interior and exterior measurements of identified, potentially promising buildings, and down to a millimetre of accuracy. This integral data is then passed along to a Northern Ireland-based partner, DesignID, who is then able to unlock structural integrity-related insights via its artificial intelligence platform. Specifically, following assessment of the data, the company reports back to Grand Bequest with a holistic overview of how physically sound the building in question is—detailing, for instance, which walls are perfectly safe and stable, or which floors require attention before future usage. By highlighting the way these different kinds of companies can work together to deliver actionable insights, Grand Bequest aims to become a new type of technical convener, bringing the various pieces together across the technological partners, construction companies, public body organisations, and local citizens needed to re-engineer the entire regenerative supply chain and begin delivering social and affordable housing at scale.

Though Grand Bequest collaborates with key supply chain partners in the name of efficiency, that isn’t to say the startup doesn’t create its own tools when needed. Gunderson explained how, due to there currently being no product available in the market that adequately meets the company’s requirements in this area, the small team is currently building HOME (the Housing Optimisation and Monitoring Engine), an AI model which suggests what a regenerated building could become for its community. The model, whose further development is currently in review to receive an additional £150,000 grant from Scottish Enterprise, is but another instance of how the proptech is deploying cutting-edge technology to hasten positive change for people and place—and exemplifies the small team’s gumption and drive to create the answer themselves.

Grand Bequest’s usage of such technologies prompts an interesting question, though. Would the proptech even be able to exist if both AI and data hadn’t become as accessible and usable as it has in the last few years? Gunderson, without missing a beat, said no. “I believe the challenge is no longer a lack of technological capabilities, as vital and powerful as it is,” the CEO added. “The challenge facing society now, and where meaningful value will be created, is in the social engineering needed to exponentially scale, what I’m calling ‘profitable impact,’ around the world. This will require more collaboration, empathy, genuine curiosity, kindness, and an open-mindedness that our old ways of doing business were not built to do.”

Recommended reading

• This Scots Tech Entrepreneur Has a Superpower—Her Neurodivergence
• How Is Smart Data Foundry Unlocking the Power of Data for Positive Change?
• Can a Scottish Crypto Help the Third Sector?

From the Present to the Future

With a clear vision for what it wants to achieve and much of its foundations already built, what are the next steps for the mission-led proptech? In the near term, at least, Gunderson will be undergoing further opportunities to broaden her knowledge to ensure that the six-stage process is facilitated as smoothly as possible. For instance, she’s now gearing up to focus on how innovative financial structures, like social impact bonds, recoverable grants, and sustainability-linked bonds, can be used more locally. Further, the founder is also looking to raise the next batch of funding, though whether it’ll be a significant round like a Series A, or something smaller in the interim, is still being considered. (Financially-speaking, Grand Bequest has thus far been supported by an external £300,000 pre-seed round, which involved participation from Venture Studio, the venture capital arm of homelessness charity Crisis which invests in, builds, and scales ventures that help end and prevent homelessness, as well as money from Gunderson’s supply chain consultant work.)

On top of these challenges that inherently come with being and growing as an early-stage startup—though these issues have undeniably been exacerbated in recent years, not least due to the post-COVID global economic turbulence and its knock-on effects—Gunderson also has to contend with further complication: she’s an immigrant. With recent changes made to the UK’s immigration system, it’s meant that her progress with attaining citizenship has effectively been reset, putting her back at least another 3 years on that journey, with the associated £10,000+ fees that come along with it. The mere act of staying in the country to build the business is proving to be a costly, confusing process, only adding to the multiple strains that a founder needs to successfully navigate. Not to mention the limited and adverse funding landscape for women entrepreneurs, which the recent Innovate UK ‘Women in Innovation’ funding debacle exemplifies, where an underserved community was underserved further—until public frustration caused the innovation agency to award the full 50 financial grants, worth £75,000 each, rather than only 25.

When speaking with the inspiring founder, however, it was abundantly apparent that Gunderson has resolve and dedication in spades. During the conversation, she mentioned that, more and more, she’s seeing how people are having a topic they’re dedicated to; a particular issue or cause that they care deeply about that then directly guides their work and lives. And perhaps this is where Gunderson’s undeniable resolve stems from: bettering the unnecessarily complex process of building regeneration and repurposing and putting unoccupied buildings back into use is her topic; her purpose. To hear her speak so passionately about her venture and mission, it’s hard not to wonder yourself: How could I wield technology to make a difference?