Real estate was never a choice for Boxer Property founder Andrew Segal. His love for the industry began when he played in the office of his fathers student apartments as a one-year-old, and he never considered another career. (Sorry, astronauts and firemen--this boy daydreamed of triple net leases.)

Andrew tells us his first job was buying a vacant office building in Dallas, which he still owns. It was 1992, and he moved from NYC (where he grew up, although he was born in Montreal) to Texas because he heard we had great people, schools, and infrastructure but were struggling from the oil bust and had lots of vacant buildings. At the time, he was living in a $19/day room in a Red Roof Inn, driving a $270 car, and couldn't afford a name for his company (or AC, but thats a different story). Six months later, he had tenants in the building and Boxer Property was officially born.

Andrew tells us he originally got equity by calling up friends who drove fancy cars in college. (People would ask his exit strategy and werent amused when he replied hed go bankrupt like everyone else.) In 93, he bought two office buildings, the next year he bought four, and the rest is history. 21 years later, his firm owns 11M SF across the country and has a third-party management division with 5M SF. We have Boxer CFO Jeff Harris to thank for the firm HQing here; in 1997, Andrew decided he needed to consolidate operations and chose Houston because Jeff--then a new hire--lived here.