$100M Milestone - Reflections on Creating the Largest Global PropTech Seed Fund

This week MetaProp announced our latest major milestone, one that is also significant for the broader PropTech ecosystem. MetaProp Ventures III, L.P., our third seed fund, closed oversubscribed at more than $100 million.

Over the past several years, our team has built the largest PropTech portfolio, secured the largest international strategic investor group and is actively deploying capital out of the largest global PropTech seed fund. 

This week, in the aftermath of our close announcement, I gave myself a moment to reflect on our exciting, sometimes exhausting, but always surpassingly rewarding PropTech journey to date.

Market

Since MetaProp started investing in 2015, I’ve observed the PropTech financing market blossom. The latest KBW research shows 18 new public sector entrants over the last year inclusive of IPOs and SPAC merger announcements. According to investment bank GCA, despite the challenges of 2020, it was another record year for PropTech. We saw 295 U.S. investments into PropTech totaling $7.3 billion in equity and debt. In addition, the M&A market remained highly active, with more than 100 PropTech transactions in the United States alone! 

Even more exciting, as of June 2021, 98 PropTech M&A transactions have been announced, totaling $56 billion in deal value -- on pace to more than triple 2020’s record of $33 billion, according to investment bank AGC Partners. Affirming these numbers, MetaProp’s latest Global PropTech Confidence Index reflects record-breaking positive investor and entrepreneur sentiment.

Community

Not so long ago, the real estate technology community was primarily the domain of United States-based enthusiasts and early adopters. As recently as 2019, we published the industry primer, PropTech 101, and partnered with global PropTech influencer Julia Arlt, of PwC, to help newcomers get exposed to an emerging set of global PropTech resources. 

Today, there are institutional-grade resources building impressive track records around the world for PropTech. As a PropTech startup founder, you can now secure investment capital from a suite of specialist firms, including Fifth Wall, MetaProp, and Brick & Mortar Ventures. You can expect to more easily and effectively than ever pilot, test, and scale deployment of new technology across real estate businesses and portfolios. 

PropTech startups can benefit from accelerator programs such as RealTechX in Asia; PiLabs in Europe; MetaProp Accelerator at Columbia University in the United States, as well as attend PropTech classes at Oxford and Columbia University and access bespoke professional education via the Real Innovation Academy. PropTech startup founders can gather with like-minded peers at must-attend events like Propel by MIPIM and CRETech. All these resources have come together to create an industry ready to accommodate and uplift the impressive talent and groundbreaking technology that continues to enter the space.

MetaProp

As a dedicated backer of this growing ecosystem, MetaProp continues to crush milestones and serve as an innovation engine for the global real estate industry. Some highlights: 

• MetaProp funds’ various PropTech portfolios include over 135 PropTech companies. Our team continues to source and screen more than 200 new investment opportunities per month. We’re off to the races with this newest fund, investing in some incredible new PropTech startups. A few of our most interesting new portfolio companies to watch include Proper.ai, Ergeon, GoFor, Dongnae, HighArc, Milo, and StayOpen.
• Our fast-growing, global investor group now leverages more than 20 billion square feet of owned/managed real estate for the benefit of our portfolio companies. Additionally, we continue to enjoy support from leading institutional and family office capital partners. Importantly, property industry CEOs benefit from our investment team’s front row perspective, point of view, and insight. MetaProp LPs now include select new category leaders from around the world, including Ivanhoe Cambridge, Intact Ventures, Messer, and Ferguson (North America), DAMAC (UAE), Development Bank of Japan and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank (Japan), Swire Properties (Hong Kong, China), Jakarta Setiabudi International (Indonesia), Eugene Corporation (South Korea), and Ananda Development (Thailand).
• We’re known for our long-standing investment in scaling support for entrepreneurs. In fact, we built PropTech’s first dedicated Startup Services platform competency. At the same time, we’ve built a reputation for institutionalized support of financial and strategic fund limited partners thanks to the additions of key MetaProp executives Maureen Waters, Monica O’Neill, and Peter Ko. 

Zach Aarons, Zak Schwarzman and I, along with the rest of our team, are extremely proud to have helped create and define PropTech as a booming category of technology innovation. It has always been our goal to help lead real estate industry change and to act as the connective tissue between property companies and tomorrow’s technologies.

MetaProp will continue supporting PropTech unicorns from idea to exit, transforming incumbents from dated to digital, and seeding the future of real estate innovation across the entire industry -- from dirt to disposition.

Enough reflecting. Now, back to work!

Aaron Block
Co-Founder & Managing Director