The State of Students and Proptech:
PropTech, AKA property technology, is a broad term for any technology which aids any part of the real estate sector. Such technologies can include smart home tech, technologies to reduce paperwork, technology to make buildings greener, property sourcing technology and much more.
Over the last ten years, there has been a 300% increase in proptech startups. As seen by the graph below, total funding in 2019 was $8.8 billion, however, just in the first half of 2021, proptech startups saw over $9.7 billion in funding. This rise in funding was accelerated by COVID, leading many to see and solve the flaws in real estate, as well as the adoption of property technologies such as improved data and analytics softwares by many more companies.
SOURCE: cbinsights.com
But here at Crescent Fund, we focus on student founders. So, is it really possible to found a proptech startup while you’re in college? Most property technologies require detailed knowledge of a certain niche or a large amount of experience in real estate. Can students, most of whom have never bought a house or even signed their own lease, really be successful in this space? The answer is yes. This is because students do have intimate knowledge of one real estate vertical — student housing. Enter Explorastay.
Explorastay is a search engine for short-term rentals of 1 to 11 months. It scrapes over 25 housing sites and compares them, allowing users to be confident they’re getting the best deal. They have raised $125k in funding since being founded in June of 2020. The three co-founders, Avner, Jaideep, and Collin had the idea after struggling to find student housing near UT. Not only were they tackling a previous need in the market, COVID, which left so many struggling to pay their bills, has expanded the middle market rental space greatly.
SOURCE: explorastay.com
In addition to having users come to their website to hunt for rentals, they also now host widgets including pop-ups, maps and more on well-known partner sites such as Vrbo and KAYAK. Explorastay boasts the largest database of over 500,000 middle market rentals globally.
For more information about Explorastay, visit: https://www.explorastay.com/
What if someone created a robot to help with the construction, maintenance, and inspection of buildings — would that be considered proptech? You bet. Harry Smith, co-founder and CTO of HausBots, a UK-based startup, has helped do just that.
SOURCE: hausbots.com
Their proprietary, wall-climbing robots help increase the safety of workers since they do not have to scale the tall buildings and walls, increase the speed of the job, and reduce the cost since scaffolding and machinery is no longer needed to scale the buildings. HausBots has raised just $273k to date since being founded in February of 2018.
For more information about HausBots, visit: https://hausbots.com/
As we’ve seen, students can dive right into proptech, and with it being such a hot industry with so many exciting opportunities and innovations, they certainly should feel secure in doing so. As one of the last industries to embrace technology and all it has to offer, the rise in proptech is a trend that’s surely here to stay.
