The Disappearing STR
Plus 9 financings, 2 pieces of news, 8 good reads, 2 videos, and a podcast.
With this week’s announcement that one of the cofounders of Lyric is leaving the company while they close most of their locations, I think it’s becoming more apparent that the short term rental market is becoming thin. Or at least thinner.
Sonder managed to raise almost $200M a few weeks ago and a few of the other players are doing fine, but companies like Lyric and Stay Alfred have/are shut down and this once high-flying sector of PropTech is becoming more concentrated into a few companies.
(Expect to see more of this in other areas of PropTech, by the way.)
In the dumpster fire that is 2020, this all makes sense. These companies relied on travelers to stay in apartments that have been converted in to nightly rentals. The idea is that these apartments are often a compelling alternative to staying in hotels.
But now . . . there are no travelers. Of any kind.
We don’t need to get into the specifics of the structure of these companies and their models, but I will ask you to ponder this -
Do you think the STR model is doomed to fail?
Is this the beginning of the inevitable demise of all these companies?
I’ll share my opinion next week . . .
On to this week’s deals and data:
Fundings:
Sonder, a SF-based short term rental company, raised a $170 Series E led by Fidelity and Westcap.
SevenRooms, a guest management technology company, raised $50M from Providence Growth.
Mynd, a SF-based property management technology firm, raised a $41.5M Series C led by Wells Fargo.
HelloOffice, a SF-based office brokerage startup, raised a $20M series A from Point72 and other investors.
ThirdWave, and autonomous forklift developer, raised $15M led by Innovation Endeavors.
Pudu Robotics, a Chinese robotic indoor delivery startup, raised a $15M Series B From Meituan.
Doorkee, a NY-based tenant vacancy startup, raised $5.7M led by Simon Baron Development.
Bellman, a French property management firm, raised $4.5M from Lakestar.
CognitOps, an Austin-based warehouse management software platform, raised $3.5M from Chicago Ventures.
News:
Note sure why Fifth Wall became a B corp.
Looks like Salesforce and Siemens launched a smart office platform.
Funds:
Paid Subscribers only.
Read:
Bloomberg’s take on how coronavirus is changing cities and the New Yorker thinks it’s redefining architecture.
Bloomberg also notes how regular people are hacking together things in their post-COVID cityscape.
Check out PropModo’s take on the $1B Brookfield retail bet.
Forbes has an article on new industry trends in PropTech by the founder of Rentigo.
The NYT agrees with my assessment that PropTech will get us back in the office.
I don’t like boosting my own stories, but my article on PropTech 3.0 has been getting some attention, so I’ll share it with you.
Apparently the build-to-rent sector is starting to get some attention from PropTech.
ArchDaily explores how digitalization and remote construction will change architecture.
Watch:
Blueprint has a nice interview with Nooklyn’s Moiz Malik.
Check out the University of Zurich’s panel on people leaving cities and what it means fo the future of urbanization.
Listen:
PlaceTech has a podcast with Essensys CEO Mark Furness.
Thanks for reading! Keep an eye on next week’s newsletter as I’ll start providing details on our monthly happy hour fo paid subscribers.
If you learned something from this newsletter, please send it to a friend. If not, send it to someone you hate and help me clog their inbox.
If you have any financings, articles, or suggestions for me, please send them to MKnight@blkhwk.com.