A warm hello to our friends and partners in the built world. To bring the community together, we will be sharing on a bi-weekly (or monthly basis) things that we are seeing, learning and exploring in the space.
As always, send us your love, feedback, suggestions and more!
Warmly,
Kunal
What’s Happening 💡
NFTs are coming for real estate. A home in Florida will be auctioned on Thursday, February 17th, where the winning bidder will get an NFT, which will record the person’s ownership of an LLC (limited liability company) on an online ledger. The only asset owned by the LLC will be the underlying home that goes on auction.
More than 7,000 bidders have signed up for this auction, in what seems to be an increasing use case of leveraging NFTs to create the ‘connective tissue’ between the digital world and the real world.
Of note: Last year, someone spent $450,000 in buying a digital plot of land next to Snoop Dogg’s land in the metaverse, known as Snoopverse.
And while the real estate industry still tries to get a handle on what the metaverse (digital land parcels included) would mean for the built world, Jamestown’s NYE event on Decentraland attracted 3.3 million people from around the world, who interacted with One Times Square’s digital version in some fashion.
The debate around the future of work continues. While big tech continued to sign leases in the Tri-state area last year, 2 orthogonal themes emerged as hybrid teams become a permanent fixture in our economy.
The emergence of the third place, which saves employees the commute to HQ, and functions as a suburban spoke to the central office hub. Think about a place that is walking distance from your residence, and where you could take a conference call or get work done, when the home gets too loud or busy.
The arrival of corporate wellness centers for employees to disconnect from tech, connect with each other and enrich company culture. Salesforce acquired a 75-acre ranch in California, and we believe this could be the beginning of a trend.
What We’re Reading 📚
SoftBank’s investment in Arm, what it means for IoT, and how it impacts our understanding of smart cities.
Who’s going to be more in demand in ‘22: the Chief Metaverse Officer or the Head of The Future of Work?
Goldman Sachs’ report on Framing the Future of Web 3.0, Metaverse Edition.
Select Financings in the Built World 💸
A Place for Mom | aplaceformom.com
$175.0 mn Growth Round
Assisted living referral platform connecting families to senior living service providers.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/a-place-for-mom-raises-175-million-in-funding-round
RenoRun | renorun.com
$142.0 mn Series B
Single source platform for general contractors to purchase materials.
EasyKnock | easyknock.com
$57.2 mn Series C
Residential sale-leaseback platform.
https://therealdeal.com/texas/2022/02/10/home-sale-leaseback-startup-easyknock-raises-57-million
Headout | headout.com
$30.0 mn Series B
Global marketplace of travel experience bookings in 60+ cities worldwide.
withco | with.co
$28.0 mn Series A
Withco’s mission is to purchase properties and then rent them back to small business owners with the option to purchase the property at a future date.
Wander | wander.com
$20.0 mn Series A
Operator and owner of smart homes intended for vacations and workcations.
Mystery | trymystery.com
$18.5 mn Series A
Mystery curates virtual and in-person experiences for team building, and provides software tools for companies to coordinate logistics and track their employees’ reactions.
LEX | lex-markets.com
$15.0 mn Series A
LEX Markets is a commercial real estate securities marketplace that takes commercial buildings public through single-asset IPOs.
https://therealdeal.com/2022/01/28/startup-lex-raises-15m-to-take-buildings-public/
Occupier | occupier.com
$10.5 mn Series A
Lease management software solution for commercial real estate tenants and brokers.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/09/after-seeing-200-arr-growth-occupier-raises-10-5m/
For a full list of 45 additional investment announcements from the first two weeks of February, click here!
h/t to Aaron and Hovik for putting in late nights to get this together