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| Croma Concept/Pixabay |
Remember how it was like to invest in stocks before the internet? You probably don't because you never had the opportunity to fill out complicated forms in triplicate, write out checks and wait to hear from your stockbroker on your landline phone, when you got home for dinner.
But thanks to technology, investing in stocks today is as easy as booking a train ticket or getting your favourite cuisine home-delivered.
There is a clear correlation between investment/consumption and technology. If you want to serve more and more investors/consumers, the only way to do it is by using technology.
Technology and Real Estate Investments
Take the example of Blackstone, a company that has poured billions into properties, ranging from film studios to a megatron* amount of homes in San Francisco.Per available data, Blackstone was the world’s largest private owner of commercial real estate in 2020 with $378 billion invested. For perspective, that amount is China's entire R&D budget for the current year.
How on earth can home buyers, office space renters, and others looking for property know about these offerings, view them online, make a shortlist and reach Blackstone to close a deal? Dinner time landline calls are probably not a desirable solution.
All of those properties require and benefit solely from implementing the latest technology, especially at the scale Blackstone operates on. Unplug the tech and Blackstone will probably make more money selling tyres by getting an SEO bloke to divert typo traffic from a major tyre manufacturer.
More Investors = More Proptech
Combine that ever-growing demand for proptech with the hot venture capital market and you’ve got a recipe for sky-rocketing valuations for proptech startups.
What else could we call it? Per recent data from Crunchbase, VC-backed proptech firms have raised nearly $11 billion this year already, up 22% from a year ago.