We’re backing Allthings

We are excited to announce our investment in Basel based Allthings and join the team on its mission to create a better life in buildings. Earlybird is leading the CHF 13.7M series A together with our friends from Idinvest (read the official press release here).

Real Estate operation is antiquated

Real estate is one of the largest industries —for example in the US it represents 5% of the country’s GDP — and at the same time one of the least digitized. Similar to mobility, we are seeing the transition from an ownership model towards an “as a Service” model. New usage concepts, for example introduced by Airbnb or WeWork cry for a more flexible operation of real estate. However, buildings are largely operated in the same way they were 50 years ago. What’s more, the collaboration between major stakeholders — property owners, property/facility managers, and tenants — is inefficient and ill-aligned. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me give you a personal example: I moved into a new apartment serviced by a professional property manager. When the shower head broke, it took me three phone calls to reach the company. After explaining what happened, they then sent over technical staff who then called a contractor to replace the showerhead. This process took 2 weeks. The contractor then bought a replacement for 400€ instead of the 2cm smaller one for 120€, because someone else is footing the bill. And the owner of my building, a large insurance company, has no idea what’s going on, let a lone if my problem was adequately solved.

Allthings turns buildings into digital products

The Allthings software platform connects all major stakeholders in the real estate industry and initially focuses on increasing transparency for the property owners (often times institutional asset managers) and improving the interface between property manager, facility managers and tenants. Going forward, Allthings will be the basis to increasingly automate the highly inefficient $ 60bn property and facility management industry, as well as become the “go-to” app for everything related to a tenant’s home/work place. Allthings is built fully modular, which allows easy customization of the app for every asset manager’s portfolio, building, or even a single rental unit. The platform is open for integration of third party services and will therefore offer an unparalleled variety of functionalities to tenants, ranging from concierge services to digital door locks and indoor navigation, through a single user interface.

We believe that Allthings is in a unique position to transform the real estate industry and turn buildings into digital products. We’re excited to work with Stefan and the phenomenal team (that feels more like a family) he has built.