With the latest Series B raise, Austin-based Ownwell says it has now raised $54 million in total equity funding since its 2020 inception. and co-led its latest round, which included participation from , , , , and . provided the $20 million in debt financing.

CEO said he and CTO started Ownwell to “democratize access to the tools and resources real estate experts use to build wealth and financial freedom.”

As a former asset manager, Pace said he worked for some of the wealthiest families and individuals in the world on the investment management side.

“I saw firsthand how billionaires manage their 28 homes and their apartment complexes and their retail across the country, and how everything is perfectly optimized,” he told Crunchbase News in an interview. “And so we built software for the purpose of providing tools for everyone, regardless of the value of their asset.”

Ownwell launched for customers in 2021, initially handling the property-tax appeal process. Pace said its tech automates “complex steps and analyzes millions of local records” to surface the strongest case to present to local municipalities to argue for a lower home assessment and, in turn, a lower property tax bill.

“We market to people that are typically very underserved,” Pace said. “That law firm down the street doesn’t want to help a $200,000 home [owner] appeal their property taxes. They want the skyscraper.”

Pace claims that Ownwell is the only multistate company of its kind. It currently operates with local tax consultants in about a dozen states: Texas, New York, Florida, California, Illinois, Georgia, Washington, Maryland, Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Part of the newly raised capital will go toward expanding to other markets, and “going deeper” into existing markets, he said.

A million appeals

Ownwell doesn’t charge customers unless it lowers their tax bill. Depending on the market, its contingency fee is 25% to 35% of the savings it earns for property owners. (The fee depends on its cost to operate in that market.)

“The majority of homeowners do not appeal or even think to appeal, so bringing consistent awareness to this for the average homeowner is the biggest challenge,” Pace said.

Recently, the company surpassed more than 1 million appeals processed, and says it has saved its customers over $400 million in property taxes.

Over the years, Ownwell has expanded its offering to include helping people get property exemptions, compare insurance providers and explore refinancing options. The company is also integrated with , and has partnerships with and . Ownwell gets commissions from carriers or lenders that it refers homeowners to, similar to ’s model, Pace said.

The startup also markets a nationwide property tax packet to help people outside of the 12 states in which it is operating to file their own appeals.

“We’re taking the internal data that we’ve collected over the past six years and over hundreds of thousands of appeals across the country, and figuring out what wins,” Pace told Crunchbase News. “We’re prompting AI tooling with all this proprietary data that we have to give customers a useful packet that basically is the ultimate ‘how to appeal’ in markets that we are not in yet.”

Ownwell has over 500,000 customers, including residential and commercial property owners throughout the country, in addition to homeowners. Since inception, Ownwell has maintained an annual growth rate of over 100% every year, according to Pace. In 2025, it grew customers by over 180%. Pace said the company is currently profitable (both cash flow and net income positive) but “is prioritizing growth.”

A ‘customer-obsessed experience in a much larger market’

In 2025, global real estate-related startups pulled in about $10.5 billion in seed- through growth-stage financing, per Crunchbase . That’s up about 17% from $9 billion in 2024.

For its part, Ownwell is not sharing its current valuation, with Pace saying only that it “has grown significantly from round to round.” Presently, it has 108 employees.

, managing partner at Left Lane Capital, which led Ownwell’s Series A round, notes that he served on Truebill’s board during its $1.5 billion acquisition by . “I’ve seen firsthand that helping consumers save money never goes out of style,” he wrote via email.

Ownwell, in Pujji’s view, has built a “customer-obsessed experience in a much larger market.”

“With a tech-enabled agentic product built for complex, local markets, “the team has achieved something you rarely see: tripling customers served annually at scale.”

In a blog post, Intuit Ventures said it was impressed with Pace’s vision “to help millions of homeowners and save money for the consumers who need it most.”

The firm added: “We’re proud to support the Ownwell team as they continue to deliver a product that creates holistic, money-saving experiences for consumers.”

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• Sector Snapshot: Real Estate Tech Funding Sees Slight Rebound, But Still Far Lower Than Peak Years

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But now in 2025, as rates have started to somewhat, venture dollars raised by real estate tech, or proptech, startups are inching upwards slightly compared to recent years. Capital is largely going to companies that either sit inside core workflows around payments, closings and procurement, or deliver explicit ROI via automation and artificial intelligence. But tech-enabled homebuilders are getting a piece of the pie, too.

The broad trend: Even before the pandemic-fueled funding peaks, proptech startups received more than double the amount of venture funding in 2019 than they have in more recent years. While investors haven’t given up on proptech, funding to startups in the space is only slightly higher in 2025, and deal count is at a multiyear record low.

Notably, private equity firms have been involved in three of the five largest deals in 2025.

The numbers: So far in 2025, global real estate-related startups have pulled in about $10.2 billion in seed- through growth-stage financing, per Crunchbase — down 57% from 2019, the second-highest year on record after the 2021 venture funding spike. Deal count is down 58.3% in 2025 compared to the high of 2,722 in 2021, the peak of the funding craze. The lower deal count signals both potentially decreased investor interest in the space, as well as larger round sizes.

Noteworthy recent rounds

Several large megadeals have taken place in 2025, many of them in the second half of the year. Unsurprisingly, AI surfaces in more than one deal.

Just this month, Santa Clara, California-based tech-enabled homebuilder raised $400 million in new financing — $300 million in real estate capital (for the purchase of lots) and $100 million for its operating company. CEO and co-founder told that the company’s goal is to be “the Amazon of homes.”

In its core markets, Homebound claims it is now building homes about 40% faster than its direct competitors, with build costs around 25% lower. It uses a proprietary AI platform that manages millions of data points across more than 1,000 distinct tasks required to deliver a home, from lot acquisition through move-in.

The company says it has grown its topline by more than 4x since 2021, and margin dollars by more than 6x, and is on track to be profitable in 2026.

The startup has raised nearly $530 million in capital since its 2018 inception. Investors include , , , , and , among others.

In July, New York-based , whose platform aims to allow consumers to earn rewards on rent and daily neighborhood spend, raised $250 million at a $13 billion valuation in a round co-led by and real estate company . Impressively, that’s up from a valuation of $3.1 billion in January 2024.

The company has raised over $800 million since it was founded in 2021, per Crunchbase . Other backers include , , and .

And in August, netted a $250 million Series E financing at a $2.25 billion valuation. led that round, which also included participation from , and . ElisaAI is focused on automating healthcare and housing systems.

The New York-based company has raised nearly $392 million since its 2017 inception, per Crunchbase . Its products include AI-guided tours, lease audits and a maintenance App designed to lower costs and improve tenant experiences, according to a by .

, former executive and current president of digital home finance startup , told Crunchbase News that he believes proptech is “on the precipice of a massive transformation in the next year or two.”

“The benefits of that transformation will accrue to the consumer,” he added. “AI applications will re-make the way we discover, buy, finance, and manage our homes, and there’s suddenly a new opportunity for a next generation of leaders to rise to the top of the proptech industry.”

Other notable raises

There were also a number of other interesting raises in the space over the course of the year that didn’t fall under the megadeal category. Many of their business models revolved on automating tasks as well as giving investors and homebuyers more options when it comes to purchasing or investing in homes.

• In November, -backed , a Seattle-based fractional real estate investing platform, announced $27 million in new funding alongside the launch of a marketplace that it says gives investors a way to buy and sell shares of individual rental homes across the U.S. “with just a few clicks.”
• , a New York-based mortgage tech startup powered by agentic AI, landed $22 million in Series A funding. (Interestingly, digital wealth management platform , which just went public, also entered the mortgage tech space.)
• , an AI-powered real estate platform based in Deleware that claims to help homeowners sell their homes without “costly” commission fees, announced a $6.4 million seed round led by .

While there was a small rebound in 2025, it’s difficult to get too excited yet about the real estate technology funding outlook. Many of the biggest rounds were a mix of private equity and later-stage financings. Unless interest rates get meaningfully lower, we should probably expect more of the same in 2026.

Related Crunchbase query:

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• Real Estate Startups Aren’t Seeing Much Love
• Wealth Management Platform Wealthfront Targets $2.05B Valuation In Latest Fintech IPO

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The company aims to help sales agents and wholesale distributors “efficiently bid and supply” construction products. The company claims its key differentiator is its ability to “instantly identify products available in the market that satisfy complex specifications provided by the customer” using artificial intelligence.

“This enables customers to cut time and cost to bid in half, while simultaneously improving bid quality and compliance, enabling them to bid and win more projects,” CEO and co-founder said in an interview.

The company began with a focus on lighting and electrical products and has since expanded to support mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) products.

(formerly DFJ) led Parspec’s Series A financing, with participation from existing backers including , , and . The funding brings San Mateo, California-based Parspec’s total raised to date to $31.5 million.

While the company declined to reveal its valuation, Flager told Crunchbase News that it was “up 3x” from the time of its seed raise in March 2022.

The raise comes at a time when venture funding to real estate-related startups in the U.S.real estate funding in the United States has been on the decline. The sector saw a total of $13.7 billion raised across 1,088 deals in 2021, per Crunchbase data. Hurt by a surge in mortgage interest rates, property prices and construction costs, real estate startup funding plunged to $4.9 billion in 2023 before dropping even further to $3.6 billion for 2024. So far in 2025, $2.1 billion has flowed into real estate startups across 201 deals in the U.S.

Optimization through information

Flager met co-founder while he was working on his post-doctorate degree at . Havelia was a student in his research lab. In conducting research into how designers could leverage computing to better explore options and optimize buildings for things like energy efficiency, the pair realized that the “optimizations are only as good as the information you feed in,” Flager said.

“Information about building products, such as the performance of different windows or lighting materials, was not really available at scale,” he added. “It was just really hard to get that information.”

Flager went on to lead the software team at , a -backed construction tech company that ultimately went under in 2021. While there, he gained a better understanding of the kind of mechanics of how material gets purchased, and also the sort of information the distributor has.

“I wanted to build a solution that would empower the distributor, and ultimately provide a means to collect product information in a way that I thought can be useful to many different players in the value chain,” he recalls.

Parspec was incorporated in 2020, but Flager and Havelia began focusing on it full time in 2021.

Flager claims that today there are no other products on the market that are able to instantly identify spec-compliant products or automatically locate product documentation such as install guides or warranties. That differentiator, in conjunction with the launch of its quoting product in January 2024, gives the company a competitive edge, he believes.

As a result, Parspec has experienced 4x revenue growth over the past 12 months.

Flager believes that Parspec — which combines the words “parse” and “specifications” — has the ability to help drive down construction costs across the supply chain. Construction material prices are approximately 40% higher than they were in 2020, so to Flager a more agile and efficient construction supply chain is needed more than ever.

AI component

Describing Parspec as a “workflow tool,” Flager said each component in the workflow leverages AI capabilities. The company uses machine learning and LLM models to pull out products from unstructured documents such as drawings and specifications. It then identifies the technical requirements from the natural language spec.

“Then, when we’re talking about matching products to spec, we have the whole AI pipeline to create comprehensive pipeline where we’re crawling about 4,000 different manufacturer websites, indexing all the PDF product documentation they have there, and then using AI ML models to pull out the attributes and create that catalog that matches those products to the requirements,” he added.

Parspec currently has 288 customers, primarily wholesale distributors and sales agencies in the MEP product verticals. The company said it’s working with four of the five largest electrical distributors and three of the five largest lighting agencies in the U.S.

Its revenue model is a usage-based subscription. The usage component of the subscription is based on the number of documents the customer creates using the Parspec platform. Qualified documents include quotes, submittals, and operation and maintenance packages.

Threshold Ventures partner told Crunchbase News via email that his firm was impressed with Parspec’s “truly AI-native product to automate the procurement process,” which he believes allows the company’s customers “to win more business while improving profit margins in a trillion-dollar-industry.”

“Parspec’s proprietary materials dataset and fine-tuned generative AI models give the company a strong data moat and AI competitive advantage,” Islam added. “The company’s platform can automate the entire procurement workflow for the construction industry, from product selection and pricing to quoting and submittals.”

Related Crunchbase query:

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• Real Estate Startups Aren’t Seeing Much Love

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.

Huge rounds were the theme of the week, as we saw six rounds of $100 million or more — including two of a half-billion dollars or more. What’s interesting is all the rounds came from different sectors — although one could argue two were in cybersecurity. While AI is dominating the headlines, investors placed bets in several other areas too this week.

1. , $850M, real estate: One of the difficult aspects of creating this list is trying to figure out what is debt and what is actually growth equity in many of these larger rounds. (This will come up again further down the list.) New York-based Dreamscape, a real estate development and investment firm, completed an $850 million capital raise this week. However, it’s unclear what was debt and what was equity. We do know led the debt syndicate and led the equity private placement, but that’s about it. We don’t know how much of that $850 million was equity. Regardless, it is a big raise. The firm will use the proceeds to create two new platforms: Dreamscape Entertainment Properties and Dreamscape Entertainment Integrated Resorts, both involving  gaming, hospitality and entertainment.

2. , $500M, AI: Nearly a year after spinning out of tech giant , AI and quantum computing startup SandboxAQ finally announced more funding details this week, saying it had raised a $500 million round. SandboxAQ is examining the related effects of both AI and quantum — which is where the company gets “AQ” — to develop commercial products for telecom, financial services, health care, security and other computationally intensive sectors. One aspect of security the startup is looking at is how companies and the government can replace current public-key cryptography algorithms with algorithms that are resistant to quantum computer-based attacks. Quantum computing is a level of compute much faster and at a level superior to classical computers that examines quantum states to perform computation. Investors named included , former CEO , , , funds and accounts advised by , , , , and other funds and investors.

3. , $180M, cybersecurity: Cybersecurity funding has proven resilient, even in this down market. Managed detection and response company Deepwatch is the latest in the sector to close a big round — locking in a $180 million round of “equity investments and strategic financing.” The financing comes from a handful of investors, including — ’ “credit-investing strategy offering flexible, customized debt and structured equity financing,” per its website. However, the company declined to offer a breakdown of the round pertaining to equity investment and debt/credit. The Tampa, Florida-based startup reported 100% sales growth in 2022 while announcing the funding. Founded in 2019, the company has now raised $256 million, per Crunchbase.

4. , $133M, financial services: Ever wonder how GPs and LPs communicate? Well, one way is through San Francisco-based Juniper Square’s platform, which allows GPs and LPs to connect and manage their partnerships. The company announced a $133 million growth capital round this week led by . According to the company, more than 1,800 GPs use Juniper Square to help support more than 32,000 investment partnerships and $700 billion in LP capital. Founded in 2014, the company has raised $241 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.

5., $110M, transportation: Nearly everyone has changed the way they travel and commute in the last several years. New York-based transit company locked up a $110 million round to help cities and agencies better traverse that changing landscape of transportation. The new round values the company at $3.5 billion and was led by . The company ended 2022 with an annualized revenue run-rate of over $200 million, more than doubling since the previous financing round — a $130 million Series G in November 2021. Via plans to use the money to further expand its line of products that help cities and transit agencies improve the efficiency of their transportation systems. Founded in 2012, Via has now raised around $900 million, per Crunchbase.

6. , $105M, biotech: Salt Lake City-based biosafety technology startup R-Zero closed a $105 million funding round led by the global investment firm . Founded in 2020, the company has now raised more than $170 million, per Crunchbase.

7. , $77M, biotech: Menlo Park, California-based Hexagon Bio, a biopharmaceutical company focused on medicines encoded in the global metagenome, raised a $77.3 million Series B. New investors in the round include the . Founded in 2016, the company has now raised nearly $271 million, according to Crunchbase.

8. , $65M, batteries: Chicago-based battery materials company NanoGraf raised a $65 million Series B led by and . Founded in 2012, the company has raised nearly $90 million, per Crunchbase.

9. , $55M, advanced materials: Alameda, California-based Checkerspot, which designs materials used for outdoor recreational products, closed a $55 million Series C led by . Founded in 2016, the company has raised $109 million, according to Crunchbase.��

10. , $53M, software: Los Altos, California-based Descope raised a $53 million seed round led by and and emerged from stealth. The company has launched a new authentication and user management platform for developers.

Big global deals

U.S.-based startups were not the only ones to raise rounds of a half-billion dollars or more this week.

• China-based , which develops and manufactures electric vehicles, raised a $750 million Series A.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of Feb. 11 to 17. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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Sadly, the same does not hold true for those who put capital into newly public real estate startups. There, the reverse applies, with shares of many housing-focused companies hitting new lows this month after an already rocky year.

Overall, venture-backed U.S. real estate-focused companies that went public in the past two years are down an average of 85% from their offering price, according to a Crunchbase analysis. None are above their offering prices.

Some of the worst performers are down 90% or more. This includes i-buying platforms and , as well as , a homeowners insurance upstart.��

For a broader sense of how venture-backed real estate companies have performed on public markets, we assembled a chart of seven below that debuted in the past couple years:

Altogether, it’s a pretty staggering decline. A total of more than $42 billion in post-debut market capitalization has been wiped out as of early this week.

To put that in perspective, $42 billion is well above the combined market caps of the second- and third-largest U.S. homebuilders. (Those companies, and , have a combined market cap of around $31 billion.)

It’s the kind of decline that usually has some pretty obvious causes. In the case of newly public real estate players, we can point to four:

1. Valuations were too high at first: Markets were bubblier when companies on our list debuted, with valuations more reflective of sunny futuristic presumptions than present fundamentals.

Take Opendoor. When it debuted on in December 2020, after completing a SPAC merger, it commanded an initial valuation around $18 billion.

That’s an ambitious value given that for the three calendar quarters prior to its offering, the company had $2.3 billion in revenue, and a net loss of nearly $200 million. Even for a SaaS company that’s a lofty valuation based on the earnings. But Opendoor’s business—buying and selling properties—has much lower gross margins than software.

Or consider , the fast-growing real estate brokerage. The company, also a comparatively low-margin business, posted a $270 million loss for the year preceding its 2021 IPO. Nonetheless, it managed a post-debut valuation around $8 billion.

2. Companies underperformed expectations: Many companies on the list also haven’t met investors’ performance expectations.

Compass, for example, posted a than analysts expected in three of the past four calendar quarters. It’s also been making cuts, including most recently reportedly laying off roughly 50% of its 1,500-person tech team.

has also underperformed. In its last quarter, the workspace provider missed analysts’ projected earnings estimates by a wide margin, pushing shares lower.

Opendoor, meanwhile, is facing all kinds of troubles. The company paid $62 million this summer to settle an FTC charge that it pitched potential home sellers “using misleading and deceptive information.” The company also faces multiple shareholder class action lawsuits with allegations including that its algorithm has failed to adjust to changing market conditions.

3. Investor preferences changed: A year ago, money-losing growth companies were in. Now, they’re out, with public investors preferring profits, dividends and old-fashioned value stocks. That leaves our crop of unprofitable, newly public real estate companies largely out of favor.

4. Real estate markets shifted: Then of course, U.S. real estate markets are shifting rapidly. Today, the average interest rate on a 30-year mortgage is around 7%. That means buyers can no longer afford to finance homes at last year’s prices, when rates were half that. Inventory is sitting. Prices are deflating. And demand for new mortgages has cratered.

While such changing conditions aren’t necessarily catastrophic for newly public players in the real estate space, they will require some adjustment, and, in some cases lowered expectations.

Where does that leave startups?

Even as public valuations have tanked, venture investors continue to fund real estate-focused startups at a good clip.

So far this year, investors have into seed through growth-stage rounds for U.S. startups tied to real estate, per Crunchbase data. That puts 2022 on track to come in lower than last year, when $7.95 billion went to the space. But considering that venture funding is down sharply across most sectors year over year, it’s not a bad showing and indicates a sturdy level of investor confidence.

The totals include some very large rounds. The biggest financing went to , a construction technology company focused on the homebuilding sector. It raised $400 million in a February Series D led by . After that came , the -founded home rental upstart that snagged $350 million from in August.

Another big round went to , an online platform for investing in rental homes, which pulled in $240 million in a March Series E. And , a home financing startup aimed at making it easier for people to buy a new home before selling their old one, nabbed $220 million in a June financing.

The overall picture: While public investors might not find much to like among recently public real estate companies, private markets still see a lot of upside in the space. We’ll be keeping watch to see if their enthusiasm persists.

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To get a sense how becoming an early unicorn correlates with future success, we took a sampling of companies that passed the $1 billion value mark less than two years after founding. We then categorized them based on their ability to sustain high valuations and market growth.

Below, we look at the cohort across three categories: fast faders, public market flops, and those for whom the verdict still awaits.

Fast Faders

First off, it’s obvious that many startups that were quick to join the unicorn herd also flamed out rather rapidly.

The poster child for this phenomenon is probably , the audio-based social networking platform that became a thing in early 2021 for the pandemic work-from-home crowd. As Clubhouse’s invite-only downloads soared, so did its cache among investors. The app, launched in 2020, landed a Series B in April 2021 at a reported $4 billion valuation.��

Things have largely gone downhill since. While Clubhouse is still around, it’s not a buzzy property anymore. The app ranks No. 67 in the U.S. for the on the Google Play Store, per AppBrain. Meanwhile, looking to narrow its focus, Clubhouse reportedly carried out in June.��

The instant grocery delivery services and were also quick to soar and then falter.��

Berlin-based Gorillas, founded in 2020, raised nearly $1.3 billion in 2021 at a reported post-money valuation around $3 billion. More recently, the company’s has been marked by layoffs, exodus from multiple markets, and focusing on cutting cash burn.

Meanwhile, fast delivery provider Jokr, founded in 2021, raised $430 million last year and logged one of the swiftest paths to unicorn status of any startup. It slowed fast too. This summer, the company announced it was shuttering New York and Boston operations as it focuses on Latin America.��

Public markets won’t support these numbers

Sometimes, venture investors give companies much higher valuations than public markets will support.

This was the case for , the e-scooter rental platform that soared to unicorn-hood in autumn 2017, just a few months after its launch. In the following years, its branded scooters became omnipresent on the streets of major cities.

Then, in May 2021, Bird announced it would go public through a SPAC merger at an expected initial valuation around $2.3 billion. It worked out badly. Bird plummeted immediately upon completing its merger in November. So far this year, the price has fallen further, with shares recently going for 36 cents each.

, the 3D printing company that had an unusually rapid ascent to a billion-plus valuation, has also struggled on the public markets. While the stock was trending up for a few months following its NYSE debut in December 2020, it’s since sharply reversed. Today, Desktop Metal’s market cap is around $800 million. That’s not a pittance, but certainly well below its valuation as a private company.

Newer fast unicorn outlook seems iffy

Last year set the all-time record for startup investment, and many members of the fast unicorn club minted billion-plus valuations just a few months or quarters ago. Thus, it’s speculative to assess whether those values will hold up in the near or long term.��

So far, it looks iffy for several.

For one, some of those were pandemic-driven market trends which are showing signs of receding. For instance , a platform for managing virtual, hybrid and live events that was founded in 2019, pulled in $1 billion in 2020 and 2021, hitting a peak valuation of $7.75 billion.��

A year later, Hopin is cutting back. The London-headquartered company 29% of its staff in July, after cutting 12% a few months earlier. The company has also been re-positioning its offering for broader appeal in a world where live events are back in vogue.

, an aggregator of online brands selling on , was also quick to hit a high valuation. Founded in 2018, the Massachusetts company raised $2.2 billion in equity funding and $1.2 billion in debt by late 2021 to fuel its ultra-fast growth.

Then its fortunes turned. By May 2022, Thrasio was carrying out layoffs, and plans for a public offering at a potential $10 billion valuation have been thrust aside as U.S. e-commerce growth subsides.

, known for its Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, is also facing a much-changed environment, but nonetheless seems to be holding up OK. The Miami-headquartered company, founded in 2021, raised $450 million in March at a reported $4 billion valuation. Shortly afterward, prices for its signature imagery hit their peak. But although they’ve fallen, even the cheapest was still recently for around $110,000.

Then there’s , a two-year-old, San Francisco-headquartered service for buying stakes in second homes that hit unicorn status just five months after launch. Since then, U.S. real estate markets have been shifting fast in the face of sharply rising mortgage rates. However, it’s probably too early at present to conjecture about how Pacaco’s business model will fare.��

Two other quickly minted recent unicorns–Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity startup and Miami-headquartered crypto payments and NFT upstart –fall in a similar bucket. It’ll take time to vet how they’re managing to grow in these leaner times.

Is there a lesson here?

Are there lessons to be learned from the early unicorn crowd? An obvious one is that generating buzz and high valuations at an early stage isn’t a reliable indicator of future success. Another is that when you’re betting on a trend, make sure it looks like a lasting one (and not, say, a pandemic-driven temporary adaptation).

Still, there is some truth to the notion that transformative companies and founders can be recognized early. When four-year-old went public in 1980, for instance, it was already a profitable company with a hit product. , founded in 1998, took just a couple years to dominate the search engine space.

So, yeah, it’s probably realistic to expect some of these fast unicorns to soar to amazing heights. Many, however, will fall to Earth.

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Yes, it does sound like fiction. But that actually is the situation facing , founder of e-scooter network .��

VanderZanden, who this past week from his post as Bird CEO, was expecting his stake to be worth hundreds of millions when the company inked a in the spring of 2021 to go public through a SPAC merger. The agreement reportedly set a valuation around $2.3 billion for the then 4-year-old company, of which VanderZanden owned a roughly 13% stake.

As it happened, the timing of the SPAC deal coincided with a growing tech world fascination around Miami, which had been attracting an influx of prominent VCs and crypto entrepreneurs. Though Bird was founded and based in Santa Monica, VanderZanden joined the Florida-bound flock and went house shopping. Bird also later moved its headquarters to Miami.

VanderZanden’s Florida starter home was a splashy one. In August 2021, shortly before the merger closed, the scooter mogul a $21.8 million mansion in a posh waterfront gated community in Coral Gables. Featuring nine bedrooms, 11 baths, an infinity edge pool and private dock, the property checked the boxes one would expect at that price point.��

The home also comes with an interesting history. It was purchased in 2016 by a Panamanian shell company linked to Samark Jose Lopez-Bello, a narcotics trafficker on the ICE . The federal government later seized the property and reportedly it in 2020 for $12.5 million.��

By the time VanderZanden came around in 2021, scooters were looking like a much more attractive and legal path to fast wealth. Bird’s following the SPAC deal announcement called for the company to have an initial offering value in the billions. VanderZanden’s ownership stake, at that point, looked like enough to afford a whole portfolio of similar mega-mansions

High-flying Bird falls to earth

Things didn’t work out that way. Bird stock has been heading steadily downward since shortly after the merger closed in November, hitting a new trough around 33 cents per share this week. Bird’s market capitalization is a mere $94 million now. And VanderZanden’s stake—13% in the last annual report—is worth around $12 million.

Given this decline, it’s not surprising to see that the Florida mansion is back on the market. This time, per , there’s a $39.9 million —a surprisingly ambitious markup for such a short duration of ownership.

Notably, this isn’t the only mega-mansion that VanderZanden has purchased, or even the highest-profile one. In 2020, he paid $21.7 million to buy a Bel Air mansion formerly owned by Daily Show host . (That went up for sale again too, though it’s unclear what the current status is.) Before that, the would-be scooter mogul bought an $8.1 million Santa Monica property, which he shortly resold for $9 million.

It’s also unclear whether Bird is VanderZanden’s only source of wealth. He served as COO of from 2013 until 2014, and left work as VP of global driver growth at in 2016, before launching Bird. (Lyft later him for allegedly breaking his confidentiality agreement, before settling for an undisclosed sum.)

One thing that is clear, however, is that VanderZanden did not become as rich as he expected to become with Bird. Nor did a host of the company’s very high-profile investors, including , which led its Series C and D, and , which led the Series B.�� 

The scooter space, in general, just didn’t work out as planned for the early mover crowd. As we documented a couple months ago, VCs pumped billions into the space, only to find that public markets weren’t at all receptive to hoped-for valuations.

For what it’s worth, VanderZanden’s tony Florida enclave also doesn’t look like the kind of place where scooter networks would work. In a gated community where homes come with multicar garages, it’s pretty well assumed that last-mile transport comes with four wheels, not two.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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That’s not exactly the plotline of a great science fiction movie. However, if you spend a lot of time reading seed funding data, it is the vision startups seem to be collectively bringing to fruition.

At least that’s where the money is going. A Crunchbase News analysis of North American startups 1 that have raised disclosed seed rounds of $200,000 or more in 2019 shows that certain sectors are getting a lot more investor love than others.

Fintech, in particular, is collecting an outsize share of seed dollars, an amalgamation of the rise of neobanks, crypto and AI. Other areas, including cannabis, agtech, real estate and security, are also big investment recipients.

Below, we look at the spaces that are generating the most enthusiasm from seed-stage investors, complete with lists and speculation as to what this all might mean, futuristically speaking.

Seed Investors Really Like Fintech

By far the biggest chunk of sector-focused seed investor money this year is going to, well, money. Startups offering tools for managing and moving money are attracting some of the largest rounds this year.

Altogether, startups tied to fintech and financial services pulled in a total of over $340 million. That’s roughly one-fourth of total U.S. and Canadian seed funding for 2019, per Crunchbase.

Finance-focused rounds are also the most numerous. At least 137 known seed rounds in 2019 were in some form of fintech or financial services, per Crunchbase data (see ). That’s roughly 20 percent of all recorded North American seed rounds for the year. Funds are going to a broad array of startups, with some of the larger rounds running the gamut from an  , to a platform, to upgraded tools.

What’s the draw? , managing partner at seed firm NFX, posited in a that there are a lot of factors at work. In particular, models for underwriting debt, insurance, and loans are becoming increasingly powerful thanks to AI and increased data availability. Startups can also compete with legacy companies with online tools that outperform in speed and ease of use.

Much of the enthusiasm can also likely be attributed to “spray and pray.” This is the popular but publicly disavowed seed investment strategy of making lots of bets destined for failure in the hopes that a tiny number of successes will pay back huge multiples.

In fintech and financial services, industry leaders generate huge valuations, both privately and on public markets, so the payoff for big wins can be enormous. For the S&P 500, about of the famed large-cap index is financial services, trailing only behind healthcare and IT.

Moreover, given the size of late-stage funding rounds, seed is still looking pretty cheap. All the 2019 seed rounds for fintech, for instance, aren’t too much more than funding to date for a single, hot, money-losing startup – – founded less than three years ago.

Here’s What Else Is Hot

So, enough about fintech. What other areas are hot for seed investors? Let’s look at some more standout sectors:

Cannabis: Startups in the legal marijuana space are still hot — but we’ll avoid calling them smoking hot, as many are veering into drinkable forms of their favored plant. Crunchbase counts at least 17 North American cannabis companies founded in the past three years that raised seed rounds this year. (See .) They include , a marijuana marketing and compliance platform, , a cannabis beverage maker, and , a kit for growing plants at home.

Agtech: Agriculture is also proving fertile ground for seed investment this year. Crunchbase counts at least 25 companies in the space that made our seed funding list. (See .) Top funding recipients include , an automated indoor farming platform, , a self-described developer of “strong and intelligent bees” for pollination, and , developer of a robotic platform for agricultural work.

Real Estate: Real estate has been a hot sector for seed deals for a few years now, and investors continue to favor the space. So far in 2019, we counted more than 50 real estate-related seed rounds meeting our criteria, pulling in more than $100 million altogether (see .) Large funding recipients include , a developer of software for property managers, , a co-living startup, and , a platform for co-investing with wanna-be homeowners.

Security: Everyone could use a little more security, and seed investors intend to help us get it. So far this year, they’ve poured over $130 million into more than 50 known seed rounds for companies in the digital security and identity management sectors (see .) Recipients of some of the largest seed rounds include , a cryptographically protected digital wallet, , a provider of real-time attack prevention, and, a developer of software to detect gun threats using camera images.

What Does All This Say About The Future?

It’s probably not advisable to spend too much time forming opinions about the future based purely on seed funding data. Nonetheless, here are a few trendlines.

Machines are getting smarter, and so are bees. People are getting more convenient options to enjoy a chemically altered mental state. And there are a lot more ways to move around our money and assets, even if we’re not actually getting wealthier.

It doesn’t look like the utopia that technophile futurists talk about. But on the bright side, there are worse things than cannabis and quick loan approvals.

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Founded by (USC) graduates in 2016, Tripalink has grown rapidly. According to CEO , the company has been profitable since the year it was founded and tripled its revenue in 2018.

The latest financing marks Tripalink’s third funding round in a ten-month period, Li said, bringing its total capital raised to $20 million. Existing investors , China-based , and participated in the round, along with new investor .

Tripalink has two product lines. First, it works with small and medium-sized developers to create and manage co-living spaces. Second, it has also become a developer, building out its own co-living projects.

Tripalink helps provide furnished, all utilities-paid co-living spaces in Los Angeles, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Irvine, Austin, and Philadelphia. It claims that its properties are “fully occupied” in most of the cities where it currently operates. The new capital will mostly go toward market expansion with a goal of being in 30 cities by 2020, according to Li. By the end of this year, the company expects it will have developed itself nearly 4,000 beds via master leases or joint ventures.

“Besides building a community, our price per bedroom is much cheaper compared to most luxury apartments,” Li told Crunchbase News. “Purchasing land and then building our own co-living space is our ultimate goal in each market.”

The model is attractive to developer partners because the more bedrooms in a unit, the higher the value of their property, Li said. Tripalink purposely targets centrally located areas that are more likely to see appreciation over time.

Most apartments that the company rents have room for four people, with a total square footage of about 1,200. Each person has their own bedroom and bathroom, and each unit has a kitchen and living room. Larger units that can room up to six people are about 1500 square feet. Average rent per person varies on the market, Li said. In Los Angeles, monthly rent per person runs around $1,300-$1,500 whereas in cheaper markets, it’s less. Each unit has common indoor and outdoor space.

The trend of rising rental costs in hot job markets has brought all sorts of new ideas regarding living to the market. WeLive product line, and more have become regular fare. And so long as jobs continue to cluster in big urban environments, the market may keep generating demand for new housing arrangements like what Tripalink and others can provide.

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According to and the company’s Crunchbase profile, that’s up 45 percent from its $4.4 billion valuation when it raised its $400 million last September. The round brings the company’s to over $1.5 billion since it was founded in 2012 as Urban Compass. (It dropped the “Urban” in 2015, according to its Crunchbase profile). A mix of new and existing investors participated in this latest round including Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Dragoneer Investment Group, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and the busy SoftBank Vision Fund.

In a press release, Compass said it plans to invest in “platform software and scaling operations, including continued expansion of its East and West coast product & engineering hubs.” It’s also planning to use its new capital to invest more in “cloud, mobile and AI.”

Compass said it is building an “end-to-end software platform” aimed at streamlining the buying and selling of homes. It also offers a that “fronts” customers money to do home improvements such as staging and painting.

Indeed, the company appears to be growing robustly with revenue surging over 250 percent in the second quarter compared to Q2 2018. (It did not provide specific revenue figures). A spokesperson told me that Compass now employs about 2,200 people, up from under 1,000 a year ago. Specifically, it’s tripled the size of its product and engineering team to over 300 employees since its last raise in September 2018. Currently, Compass has more than 300 offices across the country and a team of more than 13,000 agents that work as independent contractors.

Also since its last raise, Compass acquired , a cloud-based software company that has built a customer relationship management (CRM) system for the real estate industry. It’s also made a slew of new hires including tapping Joseph Sirosh, former CTO of AI at Microsoft and ex-VP of advanced technology at Amazon, to serve as its Chief Technology Officer. The company opened its first West Coast product and engineering “campus” in Seattle, Wash.

Looking ahead, the company declined to comment on whether it’s planning further acquisitions. According to its Crunchbase profile, it’s made over time, including three this year alone. Besides Contactually, Compass has also picked up luxury brokerage Alain Pinel Realtors and Stribling & Associates.

The company said it is planning to launch in August “a completely redesigned consumer search and app experience.” Also according to the and validating its brokerage acquisitions above, Compass has put lots of money into “wooing high-profile agents with hefty marketing budgets, slick technology and stock options as it dangles the prospect of an initial public offering.” An inside source confirmed the company indeed sees an IPO as “a potential option.”

The real estate-focused space is expanding by the day with the number of brokerages increasing left and right. This year alone, the industry has seen a number of mega rounds as well as a slew of upstarts (such as raising money to compete in the space as well.

As I reported earlier this year, U.S.-based real estate companies as a whole raised a combined $4.99 billion across 105 transactions in 2018, according to Crunchbase data. While that’s down from the $5.8 billion raised in 95 deals in 2017, it’s still a staggering 10 times higher than the $520 million raised by such startups in 2013, as you can see in the chart below.

I’ve been watching the real estate space for a while now and it’s no surprise that an industry that’s been (pardon the cliche) “ripe for disruption” is seeing so many startups raising mega rounds. All this is fine and dandy when the economy is good. But the true test of how viable these companies are will be when we hit another downturn. We’ll see.

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