Why Tenant Engagement is Interesting
Plus 4 fundings, 6 pieces of news, and 11 interesting reads
Below you’ll see a new round of funding for a company called Lane. They’re a Canadian tech firm that focuses on a space called “Tenant Engagement.” It’s also called “Tenant Experience.”
The theory behind this niche goes like this - traditional property management systems (“PMSs”) like Yardi, RealPage, MRI, etc are all great at accounting and financial transactions. They are . . . let’s say “less great” . . . at softer and more relational aspects of the tenant-landlord relationship.
Things like access control, package delivery, guest access, and maintenance requests fall slightly outside of the core wheelhouse of these PMS platforms.
Enter the Tenant Engagement platforms.
They will integrate with your existing PMS and help make the tenant experience seamless and (possibly) quite easy.
The appeal to the owner is apparently straightforward as a proliferation of companies have popped up in the space over the past 5 years. Companies like Rise Buildings, HqO, Equiem, and Livly have come into the market with force and attracted capital from most major Proptech investors.
Expect to see these companies take off. If they can make tenant actions seamless and maybe even a little intuitive (gasp), then landlords are going to start being forced to incorporate these platforms into their tech stack.
The good news is that they often end up saving the landlord money. Instead of paying for a single solution for access and one for packages and one for guest access and one for maintenance requests and on and on, they simply pay the TE provider and end up saving money more often than not (especially as many of these offer revenue sharing opportunities).
So, as I said, look for these platforms to start taking off in the office and apartment asset classes in the near term and to be a part of an indispensable tech stack of most forward-thinking landlords.
Fundings:
Office tenant engagement platform Lane raised $10M led by Alate Partnes and Round 13.
Seattle-based construction inspection startup HeadLight raised $25m from Viking Global.
Dubai-based Ajar, a property management platform, raised $7.5M led by SBX Capital.
Hent, a Brazilian HOA management platform, raised $1M led be Canary Ventures.
Funds:
Paid Subscribers only.
Other News:
Looks like AirBnB is starting to see people travel again.
NfX reported he results of their remote work survey and the results are . . . interesting. (74% of founders plan full or mostly remote teams)
Can’t go a week without talking about WeWork, so here is a founder leaving.
Tencent is going to try to do what Google couldn’t, build a city.
TechCrunch Disrupt is going fully digital this year and has a panel focused on PropTech.
Amazon is pulling back on facial recognition technology with government agencies.
Read:
From the WSJ, Can Office Culture Survive?
Did Cities Fail Us? by Dror Poleg.
Check out this collab between CRETech and EY on the hottest concepts in built-wold tech.
Bisnow has a quote-heavy article on reopening office spaces with technology.
Mansion Global posted about Technology at the Forefront of Healthier High-Rise Buildings.
Brookfield thinks office buildings are going to be just fine.
The NYT looks at how COVID has affected thriving CRE investments.
Bloomberg looks at the Post-Pandemic Office Layout.
Sce posted a good article in Forbes about data privacy in multifamily.
Khushbu wrote about why the Future of Connectivity is Contactless.
Appfolio posted an interesting (if self-promoting) article on post-pandemic property management.
Thanks for reading!
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If you have any financings, articles, or suggestions for me, please send them to MKnight@blkhwk.com.