Students celebrating at commencement
VCU will hold spring commencement on May 11 at 10 a.m. at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. (File photo by Thomas Kojcsich, University Marketing)

April 22, 2019

Andy Florance, CoStar Group CEO and founder, to deliver VCU spring commencement address

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By Mike Porter

Andy Florance, CEO and founder of CoStar Group, will be the speaker at Virginia Commonwealth University’s spring commencement ceremony in May.

Man in business attire.
Andy Florance

Florance founded CoStar Group from his dorm room as an undergraduate student at Princeton University. Last year, half a billion people from 70 countries used CoStar Group’s websites to rent, buy, analyze or finance a trillion dollars of real estate. As CEO of CoStar, Florance leads a team of more than 3,700 employees in 100 offices, operating 25 companies, including CoStar, Apartments.com, LoopNet, BizBuySell.com and Lands of America. Together, the CoStar Group companies have 200,000 clients.

In addition to founding and leading CoStar Group, Florance has co-authored a number of academic articles on commercial real estate economics and received a Manuscript Prize award in 2016 and the Practitioner-Scholar Award in 2017 from the American Real Estate Society. He is active in education and has served on six school boards. Florance is currently chair of the Washington National Cathedral board and serves on the board of Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a nonprofit that develops diverse leaders. 

VCU will hold spring commencement on May 11 at 10 a.m. at the Greater Richmond Convention Center, 403 N. Third St. For more information, visit commencement.vcu.edu/.