Announcing our investment in SHARE, a completely digital way to buy and own cash-flowing US rental real estate. SHARE’s mission is to help its users achieve financial security by way of real estate ownership.
Like most investors in early 2022, we first met CEO & Co-founder Andrew Kim over a zoom call after a warm introduction from our friends at Allied Venture Partners. After that first call, it was clear to us that he was onto something big.
Andrew had been investing in Canadian real estate for several years before being introduced to US SFRs (single-family rental) while building and exiting his first venture-backed company in the US (acquired in just 14 months). After returning to Canada, he was recruited by Canada’s largest retailer, Loblaw, to spearhead operations and launch their e-commerce platforms. He helped scale this division from $0-$500M ARR within four years. At that point, he felt the itch for another startup adventure. Increasing passive income was top of mind and he looked to real estate, hoping he would discover faster ways to deploy capital and stabilize rental properties. After searching, he was unable to find anything. Instead, he left with unique insights into an obvious gap in the real estate investment landscape. These insights sparked the idea for SHARE.
Today, we are excited to announce our investment in SHARE’s oversubscribed $1.6M pre-seed round alongside Garage Capital, Allied Venture Partners, Valhalla Private Capital, Panache Ventures, First Fund, Venturon, KJSM Ventures, and others.
SHARE is the platform Andrew wished he had when he started investing in SFRs. SHARE digitizes the whole process of real estate investing. The user experience encompasses everything from deal sourcing, acquisitions, renovations, property management, taxes, portfolio management, and easy resale or refinancing. By digitizing this cumbersome process, SHARE looks to significantly reduce the barriers to entry into this amazing wealth-generating asset class and massive $4T US SFR market.
As technology & market forces converge and investors desperately search for yield, the timing for this type of offering couldn’t be better, especially when targeting a massively growing market. Our guiding thesis at Weave is to back founders building technology to enhance/disrupt legacy markets. SHARE is doing exactly this by transforming the traditional multi-month high-effort buying process into a low-risk/low-effort 48-hour experience.
We also love the company’s market entry strategy as they are targeting investors outside the US with US deals. As a Canadian facing historically high real estate prices (2x avg US home), finding and purchasing under-the-radar opportunities south of the border and managing a portfolio of these assets in an entirely digital way sounds like an extremely enticing proposition.
As a new real estate investor, currently in the market for my first property, I cannot wait to use SHARE’s platform to find my first rental property south of the border. Check out their website to learn more and make sure to sign up for the waitlist as they launch their new and improved fully digital platform.
