Everyone from developers to government officials to landlords tends to agree that the systems used to pay property taxes or finalize the transfer of title deeds are a painful process. It’s outdated, bulky – oh, and also vulnerable to theft by hackers.
Balcony Technology Group – one of the first graduates of the NJ FAST program at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken – believes it has a product that can change that.
Dan Silverman, CEO and co-founder of the Hoboken-based company, said his startup has a blockchain-based land data management system that is more efficient than the same software platforms that local governments rely on have been building on over the past decades.
He and his team of 15 developed this solution as part of the first class of the NJ FAST program. Gregg Lester, president of the startup, said the experience was both incredible and crucial to their fledgling business.
Balcony emerges from the incubator after seeing 200% growth in 2024. Its leaders say they have come a long way toward their goal of enrolling New Jersey municipalities in a system that modernizes land records — with an emphasis on transfers of ownership and compliance. documents – while better protecting it against ransomware attacks that have cost municipalities millions of dollars.
Cybersecurity company Sophos released a recent report that shows 72% of ransom demands exceeded $1 million for state and local governments in 2024. The city of Hoboken, where the startup is based, reported that it had been another ransomware victim in the past two months.
Alexander McGee, the company’s other co-founder and head of government affairs, gives an example of the kind of impact they can have with their work at Orange, one of the startup’s first partner cities after its launch in May. There, most properties sold would not have required a certificate of habitability on file, verifying that basic requirements were met for a property to be inhabitable.
The problem for them, as for many other local governments, is the disconnect between sometimes outdated technologies, McGee said. The Balcony team markets its technology as a layer that connects municipal records to provide better, more transparent notifications about documents like these.
“Local governments don’t really have cutting-edge technology as a whole, but they interact with people more than any other sector of government,” McGee said. “So we believe that if we are able to give civil servants the appropriate tools, they will be able to increase their margins, increase their overall compliance with the various ministries while providing a better place to live, because citizens will be more aware of what they are doing. passes.”
The startup has even bigger ambitions than partnering with local governments to store and encrypt land data. McGee said they are in conversation with the U.S. Treasury Department to help them resolve some of their technology issues. McGee said their solution could help track the purchase of land near military bases and critical infrastructure by potential foreign adversaries.
In short, they’re right at the tipping point for an idea they think could put New Jersey tech startups on the map in a major way.
“Regardless of your political affiliation…the tailwinds are changing: the government is now taking a more positive stance on the efficiency of government systems, cleaning up broken systems that bring in lots of money for taxpayers, and there are more than a few pro-blockchain. position,” Silverman said. “We couldn’t have known that this would fit the timeline of what we’re looking to accomplish, but it does.”
