The Big Long: How Going Big on an Outrageous Idea Transformed the Real Estate Industry

An engineer, Artificial Intelligence patent-holder, and serial entrepreneur, Wiel began his career at Boeing, where he designed algorithms to improve automatic control systems on airplanes. After running a java programming consultancy that built early e-commerce systems like Charles Schwab's online trading website, Wiel partnered with Brien to launch Waypoint Homes in 2009. Wiel led the tech, M&A, and fundraising teams at Waypoint all the way to the NYSE, where Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust (SWAY) debuted its IPO in 2014.

In 2016, Brien and Wiel partnered again to create Mynd, a property management and real estate investing firm with more than 8,000 SFR units under management across twenty-five US markets. Last valued at $807 million by Silicon Valley venture capitalists in 2021, they're going long again on Mynd and leaving it all out on the field.

A former Super Bowl-winning NFL placekicker, Brien got his start in real estate following the collapse of the housing market in early 2009, when he and Colin Wiel began buying single-family homes to renovate and rent out. Together, they were able to scale an industry of mom-and-pop shops into a more-than-three-billion-dollar portfolio of over seventeen thousand single-family home rentals (SFR) that attracted institutional investors and competition from private equity firms. With the success of their company Waypoint Homes, Wiel and Brien defied critics to put SFRs on the map as a profitable and scalable financial asset class.