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Real Estate Espresso podcast host Victor Menasce spent the first 25 years of his career in the high-tech industry. On his eighteenth trip to Tokyo in a year and a half, Victor realized he was on the wrong path. He felt the way he was working wasn't right for him nor his family, so he made the conscious decision to move full-time into the world of real estate investment. Victor stops by to share his knowledge about investing in the US from his home in Canada.
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From Silicon Valley To Real Estate With Private Money with Victor Menasce
I am thrilled to have on this episode, Mr. Victor Menasce. Welcome to the show.

It’s great to be here.

Victor and I met back in the summer of 2018 at a podcast conference. I remember we were in a group in a room talking and nobody seemed to have a real estate podcast. Victor said, “I've got a real estate podcast.” I interrupted the lady speaking with us, “Excuse me, I need to go speak with this man.” Here we are, you're on the show. Thanks for coming on and you have an interesting background for when you started off in the tech field but then like many people, either you grew tired of it or you decided to come over into real estate and here you are now. You're a developer, you utilize private money. You have a real estate podcast, The Real Estate Espresso. Let's try to unpack a little bit about that. Tell us a little bit about your journey on how you got to where you are now.

If I go back to 2009, 2010, I was still working in the tech industry. I was managing a microprocessor development team and we're basically designing chips that we used in mobile phones and data cards. We're building a new cellular network in Japan and I was literally traveling back and forth to Tokyo every two weeks and it was burning me out. It wasn't the right thing for me. It wasn't the right thing for my family. I resigned my position as VP of engineering and decided to take a hard left turn in my career into the world of real estate investing on a full-time basis. If you remember what was happening back then, it was probably the opportunity of a lifetime to invest in real estate, particularly in the United States. I took advantage of that opportunity and decided to jump in with both feet. That's where I got my start on the journey.

One of the things that I discovered along the way is I had a bunch of skills that were pretty portable. Project management is a very portable skill. It doesn't matter whether you're managing software development or microprocessor development or new construction, it's all the same. The other key skill was the ability to raise capital and I learned how to raise money in the tech industry. It's much more difficult to go raise $5 million for an idea than it is to raise money for something that's going to cashflow in six months. Those are vastly different and I was able to transport that skill set over into the world of real estate as well.



Going to Tokyo every two weeks, how long of a flight was that?

In the summertime, it was a direct flight from Toronto, thirteen hours into Narita Airport. It was pretty good. In the winter time, I had to fly through Vancouver. That added another five-and-a-half-hour flight as an appetizer to the big flight.

I can see why you get burned out at that real quick. You're in Canada, in fact.

Yes. I live in Ottawa, Canada and I’m halfway between Montreal and Toronto, almost due north of New York City. Even though it's Central Canada, we still refer to it as East Coast but it is somewhat Central Canada.

That’s still in Ontario if my geography is correct. You are English first and then the Quebec next door to you has the French. You are my first Canadian interview on this show. If anyone knows me,