Built by the People Who Built the Playbook.
DOMÍ's founding team brings 96 combined years of experience across every discipline that determines whether a hotel development succeeds or fails: strategy, market analytics, design, construction, finance, capital markets, and operations. Two of DOMÍ's founders were senior executives at Extended Stay America. They didn't study this sector from the outside. They ran it from the inside.
$20B+
Hotel investment experience
96
Combined years of expertise
60
Years in the hotel industry
14
Hotels launched in under two and half years
Steve Scheetz
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
Steve brings 35 years of real estate private equity and principal-side development experience to DOMÍ, with more than $17.5 billion in commercial real estate transactions including $14.5 billion in lodging. His career spans controlling interests in 11 hotel portfolio companies, six of them NYSE-listed, aggregating more than 1,450 hotels and 199,000 rooms.
At Extended Stay America, Steve co-managed a 629-hotel, 69,000-room portfolio and led 17 concurrent ground-up development projects during the Blackstone and Starwood era. He helped pioneer ESA's development department, building the pipeline, processes, and protocols that took the program from concept to execution at scale. He also led M&A efforts for the $6 billion sale of ESA to Starwood Capital, one of the largest lodging transactions in recent history.
Prior to ESA, Steve served as CEO of a UK-based real estate development company and CFO to a developer of W Hotels and Residences across Dallas, Hollywood, and San Diego.
At DOMÍ, Steve leads finance, risk management, and capital structure, oversees fund economics, financing, and dispositions.
B.A. in Economics and Management, DePauw University
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
Clay Scheetz
Clay brings 30 years of commercial real estate investment experience to DOMÍ, having underwritten more than $60 billion and closed more than $5.2 billion in transactions across multifamily, lodging, retail, senior housing, self-storage, and mixed-use.
As Chief Investment Officer of Sterling Group, Clay made $701 million in apartment and self-storage investments and led an acquisition-rehabilitation fund that delivered exceptional, top-quartile returns. Most recently, at Sanduster Capital in partnership with Great Lakes Capital, he developed $300 million of apartment and mixed-use properties across five projects in three states.
Earlier in his career, Clay held senior investment roles at Olympus Real Estate Capital ($5.5B AUM), where he led 31 transactions totaling $1.2 billion, as well as positions at Starwood Capital, Nomura Asset Capital, Grandbridge Real Estate Capital, and Ernst & Young.
At DOMÍ, Clay leads capital formation, investor relations, and GP co-investment, owns the fund’s underwriting standard and deal-analytics function, and manages master general-contractor relationships and commercial terms.
MBA, Columbia University. BBA, University of Notre Dame
Rick Canale
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
Rick brings 31 years of experience to DOMÍ, including 23 years in hospitality. At Extended Stay America, Rick directed the next-generation ESA Premier Brand prototype, overseeing design, costing, value-engineering, and operational efficiency from the ground up. He created DOMÍ's site selection systems and market analytics platform, including the submarket evaluation tools that now evaluate every U.S. extended stay submarket. He informed pricing strategy and revenue positioning across ESA's extended stay portfolio, and co-led more than $200 million in development and new construction supporting 14 ESA Premier hotel openings.
Rick also led the integration of a $1.5 billion, 111-hotel extended stay portfolio acquisition, delivering meaningful revenue share gains across the combined platform. Earlier in his career, Rick spent 11 years at InterContinental Hotel Group in finance, development, and strategy roles across the company's Atlanta and London headquarters.
At DOMÍ, Rick owns the proprietary market-selection model and analytics platform, leads market and product strategy and prototype standards, sets the development playbook the team builds to, and owns brand, franchise, and hotel-management relationships.
BBA, Saint Louis University
Three Founders. One Integrated Platform.
What makes DOMÍ unusual isn't any single credential: it's the combination. The capital formation expertise to raise and deploy equity. The analytics platform to identify exactly where to build. The development experience to execute without surprises. And the operating knowledge to know exactly what makes a top-performing extended stay hotel work.
Most development platforms are strong in one or two of these dimensions. DOMÍ was built to be strong in all of them.
Extensive resumes and references available upon request.