If you’re putting up a hotel, building workforce housing, or developing a retail center with apartments on top, you don’t have time for messy systems.
That’s the world PlattPointe lives in.
PlattPointe is a nationwide capital markets advisory firm that helps developers and construction companies secure debt for lower middle market construction and development projects. The firm launched nine years ago in Denver and was intentionally built to stay lean while operating nationally.
Jason Aubrey, Principal at PlattPointe, has spent his career in alternative finance for commercial real estate and his team is small by design. Altogether, they have seven people, hundreds of active projects, and thousands of lender and developer relationships.
And somehow, it all has to stay organized.
That’s where Copper fits in.
Big deals with zero room for chaos
From the beginning, PlattPointe didn’t want a bloated tech stack. They didn’t want layers of enterprise software that required full-time admins just to function. They wanted something that worked the way they worked.
When they looked at what competitors were using, the price tags alone were enough to pause.
“We were looking at software packages for what our large competitors used and it was [so expensive per month] per user to onboard,” says Aubrey. “We just didn't have that spending capability in the beginning."
So instead of copying the industry, they built their own approach.
Aubrey credits his partner with setting the tone early: “What if we used Google for everything and built around that, and then what we really need, we go buy?”
That became their criteria: being able to use Google Workspace at the core, with integrations layered in thoughtfully — and no unnecessary complexity.
At first, they tried another CRM, but it couldn’t keep up.
“We couldn't subdivide lists. We couldn't track our pipeline. We couldn’t do marketing out of it,” says Aubrey. “It was a really, really basic CRM.”
PlattPointe needed segmentation, visibility, marketing, and they needed flexibility, because commercial real estate lending doesn’t move in straight lines.
So they asked one practical question: What’s the best Google integrated CRM? That’s how they landed on Copper. They’ve been with Copper close to seven years now, and instead of forcing their workflow into a rigid template, they’ve built Copper around how they actually operate.
“We've created things inside of Copper that work for us,” Aubrey says. “We built it ourselves.”
The pipeline is their command center
At any given time, PlattPointe has hundreds of deals sitting in their pipeline. When we spoke, there were over 350 active projects inside Copper. About 60 were truly active. The rest were delayed, early-stage, or long-cycle opportunities.
They run one primary pipeline for real estate, and it mirrors the real-world lifecycle of a deal.
It starts with warm leads, which Aubrey jokingly calls a bit of a catchall. From there, deals move into prospect, then pre-qualification, then signed CSA when the client formally engages them. After that comes LOI stage, underwriting, and finally closed.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the team runs pipeline meetings directly from Copper. They pull up the pipeline kanban board view and walk through deals together.
“We use Copper to run that meeting,” Aubrey says. “The click and drag is amazing.”
There’s something satisfying about moving a deal from left to right across the board, but it’s more than visual. It keeps everyone aligned. It keeps momentum visible. And it makes progress tangible.
Every morning, before anything else, Aubrey checks two things: “I'm checking my automations and I'm checking my pipeline.”
That’s the rhythm.
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They built their own lender engine inside Copper
Here’s where things get interesting: PlattPointe doesn’t just track deals, they’ve built a lender targeting system inside Copper using company search and custom filters.
They’ve created filters for geography, asset class, size, and more. When they’re ready to send a client’s deal to market, they can generate a targeted lender list quickly.
That list becomes the foundation for outreach.
Instead of relying on a massive, expensive lender-specific platform, they built what they needed directly inside Copper.
Is it complex? Yes. But, is it worth it? Also yes… because it gives them control while saving money.
Automations changed their marketing completely
If there’s one area where Aubrey gets especially animated, it’s email automation.
“We are heavy into your automations,” he says. At one point, he counted nearly 30 automations running. Some are for new prospects based on specific data. Some are for rekindle campaigns. Some are current client outreach and the team uses detailed merge fields in subject lines and email bodies.
“I’m averaging a 55 to 70% open rate on my email campaigns. That’s insane!”
Response rates hover around 5%, and when they send campaigns to current clients, they’ve seen over 100 replies from a single push.
That level of consistent outreach would be exhausting manually. But with Copper automations running in the background, it becomes part of the daily engine.
“The email automation has changed our marketing,” Aubrey says. “Changed it.”
A connected tech stack that’s easy to scale
PlattPointe’s tech stack is simple on purpose, and that’s exactly how they like it. They run on Copper, Gmail, Slack, Zapier, Mailchimp, Fireflies for note-taking, Wix, and Dropbox — all working together without a bunch of extra noise. Everything plugs into Google, and everything flows back into Copper. That tight connection means fewer headaches, faster onboarding, and a system that actually supports how they work instead of slowing them down.
“If you ask about my tech stack, I can onboard somebody in five minutes,” Aubrey says. “It's all connected.”
For a boutique firm that works with interns, contractors, and specialized hires, that ease of onboarding matters. It keeps the focus where it belongs: on deals.
Growth without growing the team
It’s difficult to tie one specific dollar amount to a CRM. Commercial real estate cycles are long, and markets fluctuate. But Aubrey is clear about the direction.
“I could see us having our best year ever, and Copper is a big part of that.”
From day-to-day pipeline visibility to automated marketing at scale, Copper helps PlattPointe operate like a much larger firm without actually becoming one. The team has been able to increase volume and revenue without stacking on unnecessary headcount or operational layers.
And for a firm that prides itself on staying boutique, that’s exactly the point.
If you’re building a business where relationships, follow-up, and visibility actually drive revenue, it’s worth seeing what that looks like in your own workflow.
You can try Copper free for 14 days and explore how it fits into the way you already work.
