This Month at FIRE - Jan '25
Our First Edition
Welcome to our first edition of This Month at FIRE.
This newsletter will serve as a monthly update on everything going on with the Foundation for Innovation in Real Estate and what you can expect from us in the coming weeks and months.
We’ll break out news and progress by program: Academia, Emerging Managers, Job Board, Mental Health, and the Petting Zoo. Plus notable news and an events calendar at the end.
It is meant for our donors and partners, but feel free to forward it to anyone you believe will benefit from it. If you have any feedback or requests, let us know.
Our biggest ask for this month is that we need a naming sponsor for both our Mental Health Program and the Petting Zoo Booth. We also have a few speaking slots left open for our revival of the Trailblazers conference, now known as The FIRE Summit. If that’s you, email me at MKnight@innovatere.org
Academia
Why - We are only as strong as our people. We need a constant influx of talented young people and FIRE is educating them on careers in our industry.
Partners and Sponsors - JLL Spark and DIVCO West, plus Stackpoint and Building Ventures.
After a successful Fall at MIT and Harvard, we are following up with programs this Spring at Stanford and (hopefully) Berkeley. We are open to adding other schools but need sponsors for both cost and content!
Our program consists of virtual events (to educate undergrads/grads about careers in the space) and in-person events (to excite them with face-to-face meetings).
ASK - More schools to recruit from and an additional sponsor for in-person events.
Emerging Managers
Why - Emerging Managers are the best adopters of new technologies. The more we can curate an elite group of them, the more we can accelerate tech adoption.
Partners and Sponsors - Stackpoint and Goodwin Law
As of this writing, we have about 75 EMs in our database and are working on getting them all onto our new Slack channel (sponsored by Stackpoint).
In the coming weeks, we’ll be co-posting an article with Brad Hargreaves about the program and expect to grow our member numbers meaningfully.
Some of you have already asked about attending the FIRE Summit in May and we are happy to discuss our allocations of tickets.
Reminder - We have our free pilot document here thanks to Goodwin Law.
ASK - A few more members. Once we are at 100 members, we can unlock special opportunities.
Job Board
Why - We have a job board that is meant to serve the entire industry. Rather than searching by a single startup or fund for roles, we aim to aggregate all the roles into a single source of truth for the industry.
Partners and Sponsors - LMRE, Alate Partners, JLL Spark
As of the publication date, we have:
190 companies listed.
Over 3,000+ job vacancies.
Over 12,000+ page visitors.
Featured Job - Chief of Staff, People @Metropolis (New York, NY).
Looking for a role in PropTech or looking to hire someone? Check here.
ASK - Please help us get more resumes and people on the job board as we already have thousands of open positions.
Mental Health
Why - We are only as strong as our people. We need our founders to stay healthy for our companies to stay healthy.
Partners and Sponsors - Need one!
We’re ramping up our Mental Health Library of free resources.
Reminder - we have four therapists ready to talk (anonymously) to our founders and innovators at discounted hourly rates, on us! And check out our best practices call from December:
Petting Zoo
Why - Why can’t we capture the magic of CES? Let’s get hardware and robotics into our industry events.
Partners + Sponsors - All event managers below, Need a naming sponsor!
2024 Recap: 40+ companies participated, 2,000+ booth visitors, 250+ leads.
Gearing for 2025: We’re in talks with 50 potential companies after CES and as follow-ups from our conversations last year.
Events - We are aiming to have a presence at RETCON, Housing Innovation Summit, Blueprint, CRETech NY, OPTECH and need help with Apartmentalize, IMN, and BuiltWorlds.
ASK - We need a large naming sponsor to help us expand our reach and bring in more physical technologies!
Other Interesting News This Month
Check out all these interesting acquisitions:
Divvy (Brookfield), Industrious (CBRE), Deskpass (Yardi),
Huge funding Rounds: TravelPerk and Qvantum.
Plus, another PropTech SPAC from Hennessy.
Events + Calendar
CES:
Upcoming Events:
FIRE Virtual Co-Working Hour: Feb 5th + 19th (recurring every 2 weeks)
IBS: Vegas, Feb 25th - 26th
RETCON: Vegas, Mar 10th-12th.
FIRE Summit: La Jolla, May 6th - 8th.