Female professional showing computer to businesswoman. photo credit: Getty
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A few weeks ago, I published an article discussing the dearth of female-founded PropTech startups. Part of the reason for this, as we saw in the article, is due to PropTech sitting at the intersection of tech and real estate, two industries that historically have lower female participation than other sectors. The other part, which is more disturbing, is that it seems women simply struggle to get funding for their startups.
Things are changing, albeit at a slower pace than we would like. When I reached out to my network to find out about female founders in the space, I discovered many strong women doing cutting edge things in a whole range of fields in construction and real estate. Here are six of the most groundbreaking female-founded PropTech startups out there. This is only a selection from a much longer list, and I will showcase many more exciting startups in future articles.
Okapi Vision
Co-Founded by Gal Haselkorn, Iris Tsidon, Maya Gal in San Francisco in 2017, Okapi is a platform that changes the way people operate, the decisions they make, and the operational priorities they set by using AI-driven insights to align performance with the company’s business objectives. It revolutionizes reporting since every staff member gets personalized AI driven insights, tailored to his or her responsibilities, on any device and in real-time. Okapi has raised a $2.5 million seed round to date.
Hello Alfred
Co-Founders Jessica Beck and Marcela Sapone started Hello Alfred in New York in 2014 to change the way people live in cities. They offer multifamily building customers hospitality services such as grocery deliveries, laundry, and cleaning, as well as more specialist things like tech support and pet care. They claim to have completed 4.5 million to-dos, saving their members 50 years of time. Hello Alfred has raised a total of $52.5M in funding over 5 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on May 31, 2018, from a Series B round.
District Technologies
Vanessa Butz founded District Technologies in London 2017 after she discovered the importance of tech and services in the workplace when developing the community, operations, and events at Factory Berlin. The District platform seeks to enhance people’s experiences of buildings, benefitting owners, occupiers and customers alike. With District you can engage your community and give users the ability to interact with people, join wellness events and utilize services available to them; showcase the best your building has to offer through smart integrations to reduce friction for landlords, companies, and users; collect and utilise data insights at a portfolio, building, company and user level to drive adoption and reduce overheads, while improving the bottom line.
Built-ID
Built-ID is a London-based online platform showcasing global real estate projects. It connects real estate developers with consultants and local communities, providing innovative collaborations and community engagement tools. Savannah de Savary founded Built-ID in 2015, with the goal of connecting developers and councils with a far wider demographic of voices than engage via traditional methods alone. It empowers local people to feel a sense of ownership and agency over a development scheme.
Travtus
London-based Travtus was founded by Tripty Arya and Andrew Day with the aim to automate property management by 2021. They developed an AI assistant for real estate called Adam, which can be used for both leasing and resident services. On the leasing side, Adam interacts with prospects, helping them find their perfect home and quickly schedule viewings. Travtus claims that this results in faster lets and reduced vacancies. Once a tenant has moved in, Adam fields service requests from tenants through phone calls, text and web chat. He takes their maintenance requests, understanding the scope of work that is required, the trade of worker needed and how long the job will take to complete, and then schedules workers in real time.
Versatile Natures
Founded in Tel Aviv in 2016 by Barak Cohen, Danny Hermann, and Meirav Oren, Versatile Natures seeks to transform any site into a smart, data-collecting field, allowing the company to provide detailed analysis on the project’s status while drastically improving onsite safety. The Versatile Natures platform is fully integrated with BIM, ERP, Project Management and other systems; paired with IoT solutions it enables developers and contractors to execute projects faster and safer with reduced cost and improved efficiency. Thanks to real-time insights, construction managers can make more timely, informed decisions than ever before, ultimately accelerating completion and increasing the profits of any project.