I’ve told versions of this story before, but I was reminded of it again today.

When I was in grad school studying both architecture and real estate, I used to walk back and forth across campus and jump between two very different kinds of academic experiences. On the one side of campus, it was taboo to talk about money. And on the other end, the only important thing to talk about was money. (I am exaggerating in both cases, but I think only slightly.)

Given that I was studying and genuinely interested in both, this always felt like a weird false dichotomy. I mean, why not care about, you know, multiple things? But that’s generally not the way it was. Talking about money tainted the purity of design. And talking about things like design and beauty felt out of place and less serious in a room where cap rates were being debated and serious financial models were being honed.

This is not to say that nobody was thinking across disciplines. I was in a joint program, after all. I can also remember attending a lunch & learn where a student asked a seasoned real estate executive what he should study in addition to finance. The response he got was something along the lines of, “the furthest thing from finance. Study something that will give you a different perspective on real estate.”

I remember this really resonating with me — probably because I was searching for breadcrumbs to make me feel like less of an outsider at Wharton. Still, this came across as a unique perspective at the time.

Knowing how money stuff works is absolutely fundamental. (We need to teach more of it in schools to young people.) And as a developer, it all starts with managing risk, executing (i.e. doing what we said we would do), and being an honest steward of other people’s money. Don’t do this, and you likely won’t be a developer for very long.

But then, what else? What unique insights can we bring to the assumptions that feed a finely honed model? Fast forward to today and this is now the basis for how the Globizen team aims to look at real estate opportunities. We want to cover all ends of campus. And that means we are more than okay talking about unserious things like design and beauty.