10 Years of Proptech: Creating a digital, sustainable built world
This month, we marked a major milestone: ten years of Pi Labs in the Proptech industry.
To celebrate, I had the privilege of sitting down with Rory Cellan-Jones, a former Tech Correspondent for the BBC, for a fireside chat. It was a rewarding experience to pause and reflect on our journey, from the founding of Pi Labs to how our vision has evolved over the past decade.
Looking back, every step of this journey has been pivotal in shaping where we are today.
My upbringing and early adulthood was heavily influenced by an international lifestyle. I spent my early years in Belgium before moving on to various American International Schools, and eventually, I found myself in California, when I decided to attend UCLA. This international upbringing has shaped our global outlook as an investor — each company we back must be building a product for a global customer base.
I was at university in the late nineties and early 2000s, right in the middle of the first dot-com boom. I was fascinated by the fast-growing tech sector and ultimately decided to study computer science alongside my business economics degree. My time in California and the fascination with tech and curiosity to explore new themes it engendered has helped shape the core of the culture we have built at Pi Labs.
Upon graduation, I was recruited by a tech consulting firm but quickly realised, however, that the lure of entrepreneurship, high-growth start-ups, and innovative tech was irresistible. At 25, I took the plunge and founded my first tech start-up, diving headfirst into the world of e-commerce.
Like many others, my first start-up didn’t achieve the scale I had envisioned, which led me to rethink my approach. I decided to attend Oxford in pursuit of an MBA, as part of the intriguing Skoll scholarship program funded by Jeff Skoll, a co-founder of eBay. The scholarship fully-funds students who are pursuing entrepreneurial solutions for urgent social and environmental challenges.
Oxford was packed with opportunities to meet people from around the world, and it offered a rigorous academic and practical grounding. However, my unconventional background — a mix of tech consulting and start-up experience — made me somewhat of unusual as a candidate for a traditional career path. This led me to consider venture capital (VC) as a potential fit, where my operational experience could be valuable in evaluating and helping to scale start-ups.
During my time at Oxford, I secured a summer consultancy role with a family office in Mayfair, which I landed by pitching myself to former BBC Dragon James Caan, the principal of the office, during one of his talks at the university. This role gave me a broad view of various investment opportunities and allowed me to formulate my own strategy, particularly focusing on the real estate sector amid the global financial crisis.
Real estate was in my blood, thanks to my family’s background in the sector, though I had never considered it professionally. The crisis of 2008–09 presented a unique opportunity to explore new businesses in real estate. I began by backing a few real estate investment platforms, which performed well, and this experience piqued my interest in the intersection of tech and property.
By 2013, my hypothesis revolved fully around the emergence of proptech as a sector. Early successes like Zoopla and Airbnb demonstrated the potential of tech in real estate, even though the term “Proptech” wasn’t widely used yet. My first significant investment in this space was when I backed the first online estate agent in the U.K. And despite its eventual failure, and the overall online agency space not working out, it was a valuable learning experience and paved the way for future successes.
This first investment led to further investments in this space and the formulation of an investment thesis which laid the foundation for what would eventually become Pi Labs (Property Innovation Labs). Founded in 2014, Pi Labs has now made 80+ investments, across 15 countries, over 3 funds, and has delivered 13 exits. We invest in European start-ups going global, backing the founders who are creating a digital and sustainable built world. We are now proud to call some of the largest real estate developers and landlords globally as our LPs.
What’s next for proptech & Pi Labs?
Building and scaling Pi Labs has been a thrilling challenge that demands a great team, a clear vision, and a relentless focus. What drives us as a team is our curiosity, passion for innovation, and desire to make an impact.
Ten years ago, the real estate sector was antiquated, traditional, and slow to adopt new technologies. Ten years on, the industry is finally embracing Proptech to solve both current and future problems, including the big push to decarbonise at global scale. This shift has opened up opportunities for innovation and growth as property owners, developers, and occupiers increasingly adopt solutions to future-proof their operations and assets.
Our strategic focus lies in identifying and nurturing technology start-ups that are creating a digital and sustainable built world. Staying ahead of the curve by investing in emerging themes before they gain mainstream traction has been crucial in shaping our portfolio and driving meaningful change within the real estate industry.
Years before the pandemic made flexible work environments a necessity, we saw the potential and invested in OfficeRnD back in 2015, which turned from a small venture to a global-scale business, exiting in 2023 and delivering a 60x return. Similarly, innovations like Contilio’s AI platform to monitor construction sites and Moonhub’s immersive VR platform are now reshaping construction management and blue collar employee training, respectively, in response to evolving industry demands.
VC is a long-term game, it takes time to build sustainable businesses that can have an impact on a global scale. As we want to create lasting value for the built world, we make investments that we believe will make a significant difference over the next five to ten years. This drives us to explore diverse themes such as robotics, AI, cybersecurity, sustainability, deeptech, and more. We’re looking at the emerging technologies of tomorrow as the key to addressing future challenges and contributing to sustainable solutions in a rapidly evolving world, and we’re convinced that the existing technologies of today are not enough to get us there.
But adopting new technology isn’t always easy, especially when it’s unfamiliar. When AI first came onto the scene, there were worries about it taking jobs. We were very curious to explore AI’s role in tackling sustainability challenges in real estate. In our research, Sustainably Intelligent: AI for a Greener Built World, we analysed the influence generative AI has had on technology adoption in the built environment and the outsized impact AI use cases could have on the sector’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
AI and automation technologies, such as robotic process automation and deep learning, are not only addressing sustainability challenges in real estate but also complementing human efforts rather than replacing them. For instance, companies like Sorted, Kestrix & Contilio exemplify this synergy by using AI to optimise processes, improve efficiency and empower workers allowing them to work more efficiently and sustainably.
Reflecting on the past decade at Pi Labs, we’re proud of the role we have played in shaping the future of Proptech by investing in early-stage next-generation technologies. Our experience has shown how technology not only disrupts but also significantly improves human capabilities and sustainability efforts in real estate. Looking ahead, I’m eager to continue our mission of driving positive change through technology and back visionary founders who are building digital and sustainable cities of the future. With the support of our global partners and ecosystem, we’re eager to empower the next generation of innovators as they drive transformative change on a global scale.
