Reinvesting Real Estate Revenue in Community, By Community
UPSIDE provides tools for communities to receive and manage long-term direct financial benefit from new developments happening in their backyards — and enable developers to build projects faster and support the economic vitality of the neighborhoods they build in.
With UPSIDE, the developer controls the asset. The community controls their own share of the profit. Each has real power, without undermining the other.
At its most basic, UPSIDE combines a digital governance app with a community benefit trust (CBT), a legal entity that is controlled by local residents and distributes profits from local real estate assets.
FAQ
Our Story
Upside's three founders have years of experience working at the intersection of real estate, social impact, and technology. We have been working to solve some of the most complicated problems in cities for many years, like housing crises, racial and gender wealth gaps, eroding trust in democratic systems, and a lack of meaningful community engagement. We've learned that while change is often required, making change can be confronting and hard on everyone, including those who want and need it. We launched Upside Collaboration Company in 2023 to build something that takes care of the change in a way that takes care of people.
Meet The Founders
Alison Novak
Co-Founder
Alison is a real estate development executive with a focus on sustainable and equitable development practices. At Sidewalk Labs she was head of the urban development group which provided advisory services to clients across the nation, helping them set ambitious and innovative goals addressing inclusive development and climate change. Prior to Sidewalk she was a principal at one of New York City's premier real estate development firms, The Hudson Companies Inc, where she also co-founded a WBE construction company and worked closely with the property/leasing management business.
Chrystal Dean
Co-Founder
Chrystal works at the intersections of real estate development, technology, and communities, with a focus on economic equity and community governance. She is a convener and collaborator across sectors and between communities and institutions. In her consulting practice she works with clients on everything from affordable housing innovations, to inclusive product design, to transforming community engagement. At Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet company, she led the theory of change for their inclusive growth practice, engagement on social impact with clients, and developed accountability and structures for the company's social impact practices.
Chrystal has lived on three different continents and worked on projects in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US. She lives in Toronto with her wife and son.
James Burns
Co-Founder
James is a PhD economist, tech entrepreneur and product leader who has worked at the intersection of media and technology for the last 15 years. His first company GoPop was acquired by BuzzFeed where he built their video engineering team and later led the consumer products engineering team. Most recently, James served as the CTO at The Recount, a political news media startup. While completing his PhD in economics at Harvard, James co-founded metaLAB(at) Harvard, an experimental research unit exploring the intersections of arts, media, and humanities.
Contact Us
If you're interested in learning more about our work, please send us a message at info at upsidecollab dot com.