In this episode of PropTech Talks for the London PropTech Show, we had a conversation with Todd Gleave, Head of Sales at Fu3e, whose unique career spans from the high-stakes world of professional rugby to the fast-evolving landscape of real estate technology. Todd shares how the lessons from elite sport—resilience, adaptability, and clarity under pressure—now shape his work helping developers, funders, and consultants drive smarter, faster decisions in a tightening market. From aligning stakeholders to unlocking billable hours, we unpack the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of property and tech.
Q: You’ve worked in high-pressure environments your whole career, from professional sports to real estate tech. Let’s start there. How did your journey take you from the rugby pitch to the boardrooms of UK developers and funders?
A: I guess for me, family is probably at the heart of it. My father is the CEO and an original architect of the platform. It was probably a natural transition for me to move into the business as I was retiring from rugby and a career in high performance, into the technology arena and real estate—where we've got deep family roots. I felt like it aligned quite nicely with the performance and pressure side of what we’re trying to help businesses with.
Q: At Fu3e, you’re helping real estate businesses under serious pressure—like tighter margins, complex stakeholders, and rising expectations. How does Fu3e tackle this head-on?
A: I think where the market is at the moment is very volatile in terms of what you're seeing. Teams are under pressure to cut costs or deliver more with their existing resources. So what we're trying to do is drive efficiencies across these teams. I think what you probably see is teams not necessarily lacking talent—there’s bundles of talent—but what people do lack is time.
So we're trying to figure out the best way we can give them back their time and eliminate the manual processes that typically come with real estate projects and reporting.
Q: Stakeholder alignment is at the heart of your role. That sounds simple, but in reality, it’s a delicate art. What does that alignment actually involve, especially in high-value real estate projects?
A: I think alignment is an interesting point because everybody probably has a different focus—whether that’s internal alignment for their business or externally when you’ve got different projects being delivered.
From our customer base, you've got funders, developers, consultancies—all feeding into the same project but with different interests, alignment, and expectations. So I think what we're trying to do is align them through one system to enable them to share data and give people within the businesses access to the latest project information. That helps drive smarter, faster, more informed decisions on those projects, which will hopefully lead to a favorable outcome and align everybody in terms of what success and winning looks like.
Q: You’ve mentioned helping leadership teams connect strategy to action. That’s such a powerful phrase. Can you unpack what that means and maybe give us an example of where Fu3e has helped make the connection clearer or faster?
A: I think it probably takes me back to analogies from my past experiences in high-performance environments and how that relates to business and what teams are looking to achieve.
From a strategy aspect, you're looking at what’s going on in the boardroom, with management teams and their plans. From a sporting background, that’s probably the game plan—what are we trying to achieve on a project? And then in a real estate sense, the action is the boots on the ground—taking the message from the boardroom and translating it into what’s actually happening day to day.
Strategy is great if it stays in the boardroom, but if it doesn’t land with people on-site and if the reporting doesn’t filter back up, it just becomes another slide deck. Ultimately, how closely is that messaging being filtered down throughout the different teams?
Q: Let’s get into the operations side a bit more, especially where tech meets business outcomes. I want to touch on “unlocking billable hours” and “protecting margin”—phrases that matter deeply in consulting-heavy industries. How does your platform help companies actually realize those efficiencies instead of just talking about them?
A: I think for us, it's about understanding the processes that businesses are currently using—what that looks like and where the efficiencies or bottlenecks are.
Like you said, billable hours are heavily tied to the consultancy side—i.e., how much time is being spent on potentially low-value administrative tasks that could otherwise be used to increase billable hours and put people in the best positions. What we're trying to navigate is this: studies we've looked at, like a report from Autodesk, show that construction professionals typically spend around 14 hours a week on administrative tasks and chasing information.
If you can give a percentage of that time back by automating some of those tasks and streamlining information sharing between departments, it quickly builds up in terms of efficiency and time savings. Across smaller teams, that time is precious. Across larger teams with tens or hundreds of people, saving even a small amount of time has a huge impact.
That ties back to my sporting background—constantly asking, “How can you increase by 1%?” Because if you can do that consistently, it adds up to a major efficiency gain.
And there are obviously lots of different areas to target—whether you're looking at a real estate project, a reporting cycle, or the decisions a management team needs to make. That loops back to what we spoke about earlier—about information flowing from boots on the ground all the way back into the boardroom.
Q: Your sports and event background gives you a unique edge. How have those experiences shaped the way you lead teams, build relationships, and sell into the space?
A: I think they’re all very different industries, but ultimately, they align in a lot of ways.
You’ve got to be agile, adaptable, and able to operate at pace—all things I’ve hopefully learned along the way and that I face daily. But I think it also comes down to simplicity under pressure—having something you can rely on.
From a software perspective, how can we simplify processes so that when pressure builds, you’ve got rock-solid foundations? It’s similar to a sporting environment—when the pressure is on, when the fans are loud and the clock is ticking, people fall back on what’s ingrained, on systems they trust, not just one-off ideas.
And with events, there are a lot of moving parts. When you’re dealing with large crowds, you get surges in pressure—moments where delivery is critical. Then you get a moment of breathing space, and it all starts again.
Q: Zooming out, the whole real estate industry feels like it’s in the middle of serious change. What do you see as the biggest shift right now in how developers, funders, and advisors are operating? And how are the best teams adapting?
A: I think we touched on it earlier. The best teams we see are focusing on how they can get smarter, which will help them grow in the long term.
What does that look like? It means embracing innovative strategies—from both development and funding perspectives, but also from a technology standpoint in terms of the systems they’re putting in place.
The teams that are open to innovation and ideas are ahead of the curve. AI is obviously a big topic right now. Some businesses are already quite advanced in terms of technology, especially post-COVID, which forced people to reassess their tech stacks. So we’ve made progress, but AI presents a whole new frontier.
Things are moving incredibly fast. Five or ten years ago, something like remote working was rare. Now it’s expected. Same with next-day delivery—once a novelty, now it’s the norm.
Electric vehicles are another example. A decade ago, you rarely saw them. Now, they’re taking up a big share of the market, and real estate businesses are planning around EV infrastructure. It’s now a key part of what we see in projects every day.
Q: So, my final question: for people stepping into proptech or trying to lead better in complex, fast-paced environments, what’s the one mindset or lesson that’s served you the most in your journey so far?
A: I don’t think there’s one single thing that sticks out for me. I’m a big believer that everything happens for a reason—even if you can’t necessarily see it at the time. I think the biggest thing is learning. You’re going to have highs and lows along the way, but it’s about taking the valuable lessons from those experiences, putting them in your pocket, and carrying them forward. That’s probably the one thing that stands out to me—and something I try to implement on a daily basis.
As the real estate industry continues to evolve, Todd’s insights offer a timely reminder that success lies not just in innovation, but in execution. Whether it’s bringing clarity to complex stakeholder networks or grounding strategy in everyday action, his emphasis on simplicity under pressure is a lesson for anyone leading in dynamic environments.
