Source: Business Observer
Jan 2, 2026
Excerpt
To streamline processes and analyze materials in minutes that otherwise could take days.
Will Conroy, founder and president of Backstreets Capital was having lunch with two friends at the Vinoy in St. Petersburg when he was first exposed to the power of AI. It was a Friday meet up for the group in 2023, one they do every six months. During the conversation one of friends asked if the others had heard about this new thing called ChatGPT.
When both said they he hadn’t, the buddy pulled out his phone and prompted the program to write a story about three middle aged men having lunch on a Friday afternoon together.
“And it did,” says Conroy. “In the span of about 30 seconds, it pumped out an amazing story. And we, the two of us who had not seen this before, looked at each other and were like, ‘Oh, boy, this is different.’”
Now, two years after the lunch, Conroy has adopted AI “every day in some form” at the real estate investment firm he runs in St. Petersburg. The firm's projects include The Nolen, a 23-story luxury condo tower under construction in St. Petersburg and Icaria a more-than 200 unit Tarpon Springs apartment complex completed in 2021.
One of its primary uses is for administrative and clerical purposes, the kind of jobs that are critical but time consuming, volume tasks he calls them.
Source: Business Observer
Original reporting by Anastasia Dawson, Beth Luberecki, Elizabeth King, Louis Llovio, Mark Gordon
Jan 2, 2026
