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It isn\u2019t easy to find white space in the world of venture capital, where every venture firm must have a specific vision to sell to the\u00a0universities, pension funds and family offices that tend to\u00a0fund them. But Brendan Wallace and business partner Brad Greiwe have a fresh pitch, as well as nontraditional investors. Their\u00a0L.A.-based venture firm, Fifth Wall Ventures<\/a>, invests in startups that are benefiting from changes in the real estate market, and they turned to the country\u2019s largest real estate companies to fund it.<\/p>\n Just some of the\u00a0heavy-hitting limited partners to contribute to the firm\u2019s $212 million debut fund include CBRE, the brokerage and real estate services giant; Equity Residential, the\u00a0largest owner of apartments in the U.S.; Hines, a major developer of office buildings in the U.S.; Lowe\u2019s, the home improvement franchise; Host Hotels & Resorts, a real estate investment trust (REIT) spun off from Marriott in 1993;\u00a0Lennar, one of the nation\u2019s largest homebuilders; Macerich, which is the third largest mall operator in the U.S.; and the warehouse operator Prologis.<\/p>\n \u201cOften, new solutions in real estate aren\u2019t hard to build from a tech perspective,\u201d explain\u00a0Wallace.\u00a0\u201cYou\u00a0can put\u00a0vendor management tools in the cloud. \u00a0You can demonstrate a positive ROI. What\u2019s harder is go-to-market and distribution risk,\u201d he continues. \u201cIf you can\u2019t sell to one of the big [real estate] incumbents, it\u2019s hard to succeed. A handful of these companies really dictate outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n Fifth Wall is betting its backers\u2019 vested interest in its portfolio companies will naturally help them vault past competitors. Meanwhile, these\u00a0industry\u00a0giants are betting on the pair because of their own, somewhat unique backgrounds.<\/p>\n Wallace, who says he grew up in a real estate family, worked first an analyst at Goldman Sachs, then in real estate private equity at Blackstone Group after graduating from Princeton. After attending business\u00a0school at Stanford, he says he invariably \u201ccaught the entrepreneurship bug.\u201d First, along\u00a0with some Stanford classmates, he cofounded\u00a0 a recruitment data and analytics company called Identified that sold<\/a> in 2014 to Workday for undisclosed terms. Again\u00a0with classmates, he says he later cofounded (but never worked for) Cabify<\/a>\u00a0in Madrid, Spain, which is among the larger ride-share services in Latin America.<\/p>\n Greiwe also says\u00a0he grew up in a real estate family. His first stop after Harvard was as a real estate banking analyst at UBS. Afterward, it was on to the real estate investment firms Tishman Speyer and Starwood Capital Group as an associate before he cofounded Invitation Homes<\/a>, a tech-heavy home leasing company that went public earlier this year and is currently valued at $6.7 billion.<\/p>\n Greiwe met Wallace through connections at Blackstone, which was the sole investor in Invitation Homes and helped incubate the company; in\u00a0recent years, the two had begun forming special purpose vehicles, backing between 10 and 15 companies on AngelList that somehow involve helping to transform the physical world as we know it.<\/p>\n Fifth Wall has since\u00a0invested\u00a0$62 million across\u00a0seven start-ups over the last year, using its new fund as it was securing commitments for it. Its biggest bet to date is on OpenDoor<\/a>, the richly funded<\/a> startup that\u00a0pays cash to buy homes and then resells them. Others of its bets include Notarize<\/a>, an online notarization technology company that we wrote about<\/a> last year, and VTS<\/a>, which makes leasing and portfolio management software for commercial real estate companies.<\/p>\n VTS\u00a0had already raised a meaningful amount of money, including from Thrive Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and RRE, by the time Fifth Wall participated in its $55 million<\/a> Series C round last year.<\/p>\n Wallace and\u00a0Greiwe now say that the company,\u00a0which has now raised roughly $110 million<\/a> altogether, is in talks with both CBRE and Hines\u00a0about adopting its technology.<\/p>\n Pictured, left to right:\u00a0Brad Greiwe and Brendan Wallace.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/05\/brendanandbrad_fifthwall_headshot_by_kateochsman_2017.jpeg?w=680\")
It isn’t easy to find white space in the world of venture capital, where every venture firm must have a specific vision to sell to the\u00a0universities, pension funds and family offices that tend to\u00a0fund them. But Brendan Wallace and business partner Brad Greiwe have a fresh pitch, as well as nontraditional investors. Their\u00a0L.A.-based venture firm, Fifth Wall Ventures, invests in… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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