Cousins: PropTech and FinTech
Plus 2 Financings, 4 Pieces of News, 10 Articles, and a great semi-related article.
Oh, CBInsights! How I do love your data visualization.
CBI released their annual Fintech 250 this week and, as usual, it looks great. Along with Visual Capitalist and Chartr, they really are next-level on logo clouds and data visualizations.
Tons of familiar names on here, but why is this included in a newsletter about real estate technology?
Simple - FinTech and PropTech are very similar . . . in some ways.
Obviously, commercial (and some residential) real estate is an investment. Investments are run by financial pros and those pros need tech tools to source, underwrite, fund, manage, and report.
But I would not call PropTech a subset of FinTech.
Even if you stuck with my definition of PropTech and eliminated all the consumer-facing FinTech.
It’s still a different animal.
It’s huge, nuanced, and, if I’m honest, extremely insular.
When I look at my data on technology specific to office buildings or hotels or retail, only about 10 - 20% would I classify as FinTech. Much more of it is tenant-facing or operations focused.
Better, sleeker, more intuitive financial tools or markets are a huge and interesting problem in PropTech.
But not the ONLY problem.
Still, I do think it is highly instructive to follow what happens in FinTech and what works and what doesn’t in such an obviously adjacent market.
All of this is to suggest that you should follow the FinTech market closely but not conflate it as equivalent to PropTech. PropTech is a cousin of FinTech, not a child.
On to this week’s deals and data:
Fundings:
Mosaic, a construction technology platform for homebuilders, raised a $14.25M Series A round led by A16Z.
SpaceOS, a property management system for coworking, raised 2.5M Euros from Immofinanz.
News:
Congrats to Felicite and the entire Stratis team on the sale to RealPage.
Looks like Amazon is finally getting serious about getting into smart apartments.
EB at TRD is launching a weekly PropTech Newsletter! (I paid to subscribe.)
Funds:
Paid Subscribers Only.
Articles:
Check out some of the top voices in PropTech talking about the future of cities and offices on TechCrunch. ($)
MF Tech startup Beekin has a good article on tech-enabled tenant retention.
Autonomous construction tech is having a moment.
The WSJ posts about the key to coming back into buildings: ventilation.
Check out CBInsights’ MASSIVE guide to the technology driving the Post-COVID world.
What is an Office for? According to the Harvard Business Review. ($)
GlobeSt is putting PropTech into buckets.
What are the most popular office buildings in Wikipedia?
Fast Company explores the hub-and-spoke model of office space.
Does NfX actually invest in startups or do they just publish long-but-great content on startups? This one is about starting companies in recessions.
Semi-related but great:
A playbook for fundraising by Marc McCabe. I liked the breakdown into Preparation, Outreach, Navigating the Process, and Partner Meetings + Closing.
Thanks for reading!
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