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One such company is Austin-based , which has developed an agile leasing platform and network. The startup just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by of (who’s also backed the likes of and ). Breyer is contributing $5 million of the capital. , the venture arm of commercial real estate brokerage giant , put up the remaining $3 million. The financing brings Swivel’s to $14.6 million, according to its Crunchbase profile.

Swivel raised an $850,000 seed round in 2016 and then another $1 million in June 2017. In 2018, the company in what Swivel founder and president described as a Seed 2 round.

The startup has been testing its model across Texas, mostly in Austin and some in Dallas and Houston.

“Everything seems to be proven right and working,” Harmon told Crunchbase News. “So we raised this round to scale up nationwide.”

How it works

founded Swivel in late 2016 with some initial incubation capital from . He and Floodgate Co-Founder had started and sold a software company together in the late 1990s called , and decided they wanted to work together again.

They both ,” Harmon said, and felt like the commercial real estate office market needed to be disrupted.

So how does it work? Pre-qualified member companies can contract with Swivel’s landlord partners for turnkey office space on flexible terms with little or no upfront capital expenditure and no lease lock-in.

Landlords use the company’s agile leasing platform to backstop their leases for member companies. (I wrote about a similar startup, Landing, recently that is focused on flexible apartment leases). Using Swivel, leases are typically a 12-month commitment with a maximum of four years.

Clients are able to use Swivel’s software to configure and design the space however they want; most offices are between 3,000 and 10,000 square feet. Companies need only to give 60 to 90 days notice before moving out and then are not charged any penalties or move-out fees, and don’t have to deal with subleasing.

Since its network launch in 2019, Swivel has signed up over 30 landlords representing more than 150 properties across Austin, Dallas and Houston.

What it is and what it’s not

Harmon is quick to point out that unlike other flexible workspace operators such as or , Swivel is not a landlord. It does not lease space.

“We’re more like a VRBO for office space,” he told me. “People who own properties use our technology and platform to lease to new tenants on more flexible terms. Landlords make the money and share their profits with us.”

For example, a landlord can open up two floors in a building specifically to be listed via Swivel. They can charge a (10 to 20 percent higher) price per square foot because of the flexible terms, but it will still come out to about half the cost of a co-working space, Harmon said. Swivel will completely furnish the space, and “the building becomes more valuable,” according to Harmon.

“We work with hundreds of landlords,” Harmon said, “and we allow them to make more money by bringing a different kind of client into their building and providing a new class of service.”

Swivel is also not out to replace commercial real estate brokers, opting instead to partner with them so it saves money on marketing as well. It works out well for all involved, Harmon said.

Looking ahead

Swivel’s target market is tech-enabled companies in their growth phase, which make up about half of the tenants leasing through its platform. (It works with tenants such as Dremio, Graylog, Guideline 401k, hOp, Plivo, Samcart, TalentRobot, and Vertify.)

The process is a more appealing one to tech upstarts that simply prefer a more digital process in general.

“They’re just used to flexibility and that sort of convenience in other parts of their lives,” Harmon said.

But Swivel has also helped a number of multinational companies that require flexibility for their satellite offices.

The company plans to use its new capital primarily to expand across the U.S. in 2020. It is in talks with landlords in Boston, New York, Northern Virginia, Charlotte, N.C., Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Utah, Denver and San Francisco.

“Expansion cities are a finite list and expand based on how our landlord partnerships unfold,” Harmon said. “Landlord partners will determine the order and timing of opening up each market.”

For his part, Breyer believes Swivel’s business model is an ideal approach to help landlords be able to meet the evolving needs of tenants.

“As a VC, one of my mantras [to portfolio companies] is ‘don’t sign anything longer than two years,’ ” Breyer told me. “Real estate hasn’t kept up with that, as the leasing business hasn’t yet been tech-enabled, particularly in very important markets, like Silicon Valley and Austin.”

In general, he also believes flexible leases will become more and more important in general given workforce needs.

“The next generation thinks about flexibility first and foremost,” Breyer told me. “Swivel gives landlords the opportunity to attract the tenants of the future.”

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For this first installment, we’re concentrating on industries that attracted both high funding totals and a lot of individual funding rounds. The methodology, which we’ll detail more below, 1 focuses most heavily on North American startups and attempts to avoid the distortive effects of single supergiant rounds on funding totals.

We ended up focusing on four sectors that are attracting rising funding: Fintech, real estate, insurance and automation. All are seeing particular traction at the late stage, where checks are largest.

Below, we unpack the numbers and trendlines for each industry in more detail:

Fintech And Banking

This seems to be the year that every startup decided to become a bank. And every venture capitalist decided to write a check to one or more of those startups.

Much of the funding went to “neobanks,” a fancy term to describe upstart digital banks working on everything from savings and checking accounts to mobile debit cards. Many are focused on bringing banking services to both consumers and businesses that have previously been underserved by traditional banks.

Investors are apparently banking on some big returns. Companies focused on fintech, banking and mobile payments in North and South America brought in $11.7 billion in 2019, per Crunchbase (see ). That’s up from $9.2 billion in all of 2018, per Crunchbase.

It wasn’t just a handful of giant investments either. This year’s funding was spread across more than 700 known rounds for startups.

Still, supergiant rounds did help boost the totals. One of the best known upstart banking brands, , pulled in an astonishing $700 million across two mega-rounds this year, pushing its valuation to $5.8 billion. Brazil’s , meanwhile, raised a whopping $400 million in a single July round.

Real Estate And Property Management

The single biggest headline generator in the venture-backed real estate space for 2019 was undoubtedly the implosion of WeWork and its ill-fated IPO. But setting that debacle aside, other trendlines for the real estate startup sphere this year have been pretty positive.

As of early December, investors had into an assortment of U.S. startups. The largest funding recipients include , the furnished workspace rental provider, , the online home-selling platform, and , a tech-enabled real estate brokerage. Altogether, those three companies raised nearly $1.2 billion in funding rounds this year alone. Other potentially less capital-intensive areas of ‼����DZ�ٱ𳦳�” also attracted investors’ favor, including a bevy of property management software providers.

Insurance

Insurance is a startup sector that’s been growing steadily for a few years now, and it hit its highest funding levels to date in 2019.

As of mid-December, U.S. companies in the insurance and insuretech categories secured just over $4.75 billion in seed through late stage funding (see ). That’s up from $3.4 billion in 2018.

A huge wave of seed-stage insurance startups launched three to five years ago, and that’s one of the reasons big financings and investment totals are rising so much. Hot companies in that cohort are rapidly maturing, and they’re seeking ever-larger later-stage rounds. Corporate venture arms of established insurance companies are also active in the space, contributing to rising valuations.

, a provider of health plans for Medicare recipients, closed the largest funding round, a $500 million Series E. , which offers car insurance with rates tied to driver behavior, raised $350 million, while , a home and renter’s insurance provider, pulled in $300 million.

Automation

Automation is essentially shorthand for getting technology to do something that used to require a human. In the dawn of the industrial age, this generally entailed huge, heavy machines voraciously sucking down fuel. Today, it’s likely a software program capable of running on a pocket-sized device.

To that end, automation software developers are securing rising sums of venture capital. In 2019, U.S. companies in the space pulled in $2.89 billion in known funding, per Crunchbase data. (See ), exceeding 2018 levels. This year’s total is expected to rise higher in coming months as more late-reported funding rounds get added to the database.

Familiar names topped the list of largest funding recipients. , which develops software to automate repetitive tasks for office workers, pulled in $568 million in Series D financing, bringing total funding to date to $1 billion. Rival , meanwhile, closed on a fresh $290 million last month.

It’s Not All Up

Overall, 2019 is shaping up as yet another really strong year for U.S. venture funding. The rise of supergiant funding rounds, a robust fundraising environment for well-regarded venture firms, and growing momentum across a host of hot sectors are all factors contributing to keeping the investments flowing.

But while this piece highlights standout sectors, it wasn’t all rosy in startup-land this year. That’s why, for the next installment in this end-of-year series, we’ll look at sectors that posted significant declines in 2019.

For now, though, we’ll end on an optimistic note, observing that while everything was up, automation, real estate, fintech and insurance all posted pretty impressive venture funding tallies.

Illustration: .

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