Founders Fund is a venture capital firm that invests at every stage in companies building revolutionary technologies. It has been investors, founders, and early employees of prominent technology companies. It has historically invested in a wide variety of sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health, and consumer Internet.

Founders Fund

Capital Factory is a venture capital firm and an accelerator that seeks to invest in seed-stage, early-stage, and later-stage companies. It accelerates companies in the software, media, and technology sectors. With boots on the ground in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, the firm meets entrepreneurs in Texas and introduces them to their first investors, employees, mentors, and customers.  In 2009, Sam Decker, Joshua Baer, and Bryan Menell co-founded Capital Factory in Austin, Texas.

Capital Factory

Draper Associates is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in industry-transforming companies. They invest globally, in great teams of people creating revolutionary companies in new media, gaming, SaaS, cloud, new finance, IOT, and mobile. Their portfolio companies disrupting markets in the tens of billions and are on a clear path to later rounds of fundraising. Draper Associates encourages entrepreneurs to drive their businesses to greatness, to transform industries with new technologies, and to build platforms for extraordinary growth, jobs, and wealth creation. It was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Mateo, CA, USA.

Draper Associates

Boost VC is an early stage venture capital firm with $200m AUM+, investing in deep tech: aerospace, VR/AR, energy, climate, robotics, crypto, bio/health, AI/ML & more. Boost VC leads the first round of $2M or less.

Boost VC

NextGen Venture Partners invests $1-2M in seed-stage companies with the participation of 1,800+ Venture Partners. The firm specializes in the fields of private equity, business strategy, start-up acceleration, and fundraising.

NextGen Venture Partners

Gigafund makes long-term concentrated investments in founders who are capable of growing with their companies and impact over a period of decades.In order to keep housing affordable, we need millions of new homes. The cover is preparing to mass manufacture high-end, well-designed homes at a fraction of the cost of traditional housing. Last energy is creating clean, low-cost nuclear power to meet the growing energy demands and reverse the effects of climate change.

Gigafund

Calpoly Ventures is a venture capital firm.

Calpoly Ventures

Sunroom Rentals

Sunroom Rentals is a real estate technology startup that assists property managers and landlords in leasing their properties. Sunroom Rentals assists renters in locating, touring, applying for, and moving into apartments and houses. Sunroom Rentals has self-showing locks for private in-person showings or online 360-degree tours for virtual showings on all homes listed on the site, and the company has a team of representatives standing by to help seven days a week.

<div>Based in Austin, Sunroom Rentals rents out residential properties on behalf of homeowners and property management companies. The app allows renters to view properties online, apply for available units, and lease the units. The company has handled 2,000 leases, and more than 100,000 renters have already registered through the platform to use its services (around 10% of renters in the greater Austin metro area) as of February 2021. Sunroom Rentals claims that it can speed up the leasing process to be about five days faster than the market average.</div>

Property owners and real estate companies are able to handle larger portfolios while offering faster and cheaper services.

Residential PropTech

<div>
 
 Based in Austin, Sunroom Rentals rents out residential properties on behalf of homeowners and property management companies. The app allows renters to view properties online, apply for available units, and lease the units. The company has handled 2,000 leases, and more than 100,000 renters have already registered through the platform to use its services (around 10% of renters in the greater Austin metro area) as of February 2021. Sunroom Rentals claims that it can speed up the leasing process to be about five days faster than the market average.
 
 
 In February 2021, Sunroom Rentals raised USD 11 million in a Series A funding round led by Gigafund. Following this, the company plans to expand its operations in Texas, to Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. Moreover, the company will invest in a partner portal to allow its clients to view leasing performance in real time.
 
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<div>
 
 Houzz is a platform connecting homeowners with vendors such as home improvement professionals, interior designers, and others. The platform gives opportunities to home improvement professionals to showcase their work and provide contact information so they can be reached by homeowners in need of such services. 
 
 
 Over time, the company has also established an e-commerce marketplace for selling goods, such as furniture and others. 
 
 
 The company has operations across 14 countries as of 2018, including the US. The company was valued at around USD 4 billion when it raised its last funding round in 2017.
 
 
 The company’s core business is to offer subscription plans to vendors so they can list their services. The subscription fee without marketing services (known as Lead Program) ranges from USD 59 to USD 99 per month, while including marketing services costs around USD 199 to USD 999 per month. Aside from that, the company also generates revenue from advertisements and commission fees from the e-commerce marketplace.
 
 
 Houzz was impacted negatively by the Covid-19 pandemic and had to lay off 155 employees (10% of the total) in April 2020. However, that was not the first layoff as it also let go of around 180 employees in January 2019 when the company stated that it was preparing for its IPO. The IPO is expected to be finalized in early 2022.
 
 
 In December 2021, Houzz acquired an Australian-based SaaS platform providing home construction planning and professional estimation tools through ConX. ConX’s tools were to be built into the end-to-end Houzz Pro offering to serve construction contractors better through the Houzz platform. It, therefore, allowed users of the Houzz platform to streamline the estimation process and efficiently manage workflow when undertaking home improvement projects.  
 
</div>

Houzz

<div>
 
 DocuSign offers eSignature tools to facilitate the management of electronic agreements. These tools enable users to upload and send documents that require signatures, with other features such as checking the status, sending reminders, and storing documents online. The company offers its services to many sectors, including real estate, healthcare and insurance. As of June 2021, the company served over 890,000 customers across 180 countries.&nbsp;
 
 
 For the real estate sector, DocuSign automates many transaction processes by providing electronic signing of documents, online notarizations, and a&nbsp; collaboration workspace for the relevant parties (buyers, sellers, agents, etc.). DocuSign claims it helps the property sector reduce paper costs and speeds up the process, while reporting that around 82% of documents sent through its platform get signed within a day.&nbsp;
 
 
 DocuSign has two subscription plans for real estate: 1) real estate starter (USD 15 per month/USD 120 per year) and 2) DocuSign for Realtors (USD 35 per month/USD 240 per year).
 
 
 DocuSign went public in 2018 and was valued at around USD 4.4 billion at the time of its listing.&nbsp;
 
 
 For 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9055?industryIds=37">
 FY2022
 </a>
 , DocuSign reported a total revenue of USD 2.1 billion (up 45.0% YoY), compared to a total revenue of USD 1.5 billion recorded for FY 2021. The non-GAAP operating income margin for FY 2022 was reported as 19.9% (up 7.5 percentage points YoY) from a margin of 12.4% recorded for FY 2021.&nbsp;
 
</div>

DocuSign

<div>
 
 HomeLight initially started as an agent matching platform for home buyers and sellers, but has expanded its product portfolio to provide title and escrow, home estimation, home loans, and other services.
 
 
 For the agent matching service, buyers and sellers answer online questionnaires to determine their specific needs. The platform then uses an algorithm to crunch historical transaction data to find the most suitable agents in its database, which included 28,000 agents as of September 2021. The platform typically lists up to three agents for buyers/sellers to select from and offers a consultation service to refine the selection further and ensure clients get the most suitable agents.
 
 
 HomeLight also provides a trade-in service, where it will guarantee to pay a certain price for the client’s current home. This way, clients do not need to worry about home sale contingency (a new home transaction is contingent on the sale of an existing home) when they want to purchase a new home. In addition, clients will get additional cash (less any selling-related costs and trade-in fees) if HomeLight can sell their old homes in the market for more than the guaranteed prices (i.e., clients can get the full market value).
 
 
 The platform is available for free to buyers and sellers, but the agent matching service charges a standard referral fee of 25% to the gross commission of agents when they get selected. The platform stated that its recommendations are transparent and based solely on the agents’ performance metrics. In August 2020, HomeLight acquired a transaction management tool, Disclosures.io, that enables real estate professionals to manage transactions as well as market and sell homes in one place. In June 2022, HomeLight acquired Accept, a property financing platform, for an undisclosed amount. Through the acquisition, HomeLight leveraged Accept’s tech-based mortgage solution to offer clients a contingency-free transaction and provide homebuyers with pre-qualified mortgages to facilitate cash offers.
 
 
 As of September 2021, the company had served over one million customers and expected its revenue to exceed USD 300 million in 2021, triple that of 2020. HomeLight’s Cash Offer, the service that allows homebuyers to make upfront cash offers through its certified agents, grew by 500% YoY in transaction volume and achieved USD 3 billion in combined referred transaction value with Accept.Inc in Q1 2022
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11160?industryIds=37">
 In June 2022
 </a>
 , HomeLight raised a USD 60 million extension to its Series D funding in September 2021. This funding was from Zeev Ventures and valued the company at USD 1.7 billion. The company also raised USD 55 million in debt financing during this round and planned to use the funds to pursue business expansion and sustain the turbulent housing market during the following two years. In September 2021, the company raised a total of USD 363 million in funding through a combination of equity and debt financing. The round includes USD 100 million in private equity funding led by Zeev Ventures—which valued the company at USD 1.6 billion— while the remaining USD 263 million was raised in the form of debt financing. The new funds will be geared toward further development of its platform, in addition to expanding into new states.
 
 
 
</div>

HomeLight

<div>
 
 Porch operates a home services platform. In the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment, Porch provides an online marketplace that connects homeowners with home improvement professionals (e.g. appliance repair, electricians, plumbers, etc.). The company states that it works with two out of every three homebuyers in the US every month. The company also offers home moving and handyman services, as well as home and auto insurance. It&nbsp;
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25523">
 launched RynohVerifi
 </a>
 , a fraud warning tool aimed to offer fraud protection for title and escrow companies in January 2024.
 
 
 In the business-to-business (B2B) segment, the company provides home inspection software and home moving software for home service companies. Porch has formed partnerships with many leading companies across a number of verticals, including real estate companies, home inspection companies, retail companies, home warranty companies, and others.
 
 
 Although the company&rsquo;s core focus has been home improvement and repair services, Porch has also made notable acquisitions to branch out into new segments. In January 2021, the company acquired Homeowners of America (home insurance provider) for USD 100 million, V12 Data (omnichannel marketing data solution provider) for USD 22 million, and Palm-Tech (home-inspection software company) and iRoofing (roofing app for contractors) for undisclosed amounts.
 
 
 In July 2020, Porch announced a merger with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), PropTech Acquisition Corporation, through which the company would go public. The merger was finalized in December 2020, and the company began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker &lsquo;PRCH&rsquo;, raising a total of more than USD 322 million at a valuation of over USD 1 billion.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 For FY2023, Porch reported 56% YoY growth in total revenue to USD 430.3 million, compared to USD 275.9 million recorded in FY2022. Adjusted EBITDA loss for FY2023 amounted to USD 44.5 million (translating to an adjusted EBITDA margin of -10%), compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of USD 49.6 million recorded a year ago (translating to an adjusted EBITDA margin of -18%).
 
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Porch

<div>
 
 Mynd operates a platform for individual investors (i.e individual landlords) of Single Family Rental (SFR) properties that provides full-service property management (mostly to individual owners) using digital leasing with 3D tours, self-showings, tenant screening, tenant and owner portals, financial reporting, electronic rent collection, repairs and maintenance, a dedicated portfolio manager, and 24/7 emergency support.
 
 
 The company claims the platform has reduced leasing times and generated high-quality tenants with low delinquency for its users. One advantage of using Mynd is that the company provides a guarantee of up to USD 5,000 when 1) tenants fail to pay rent, 2) damage to the properties beyond the normal wear and tear, and 3) tenants cannot pay and get evicted. The company has different subscription fees for various cities. The company’s pricing for its full service without guarantees ranges from USD 69 - 99 per month, while its prices range between USD 99 - 199 per month with the inclusion of guarantees. As of June 2021, Mynd had purchased an average of 50 homes per month, which the company expects to increase to 1,000 homes per month by 2022. 
 
 
 As of September 2021, the company managed over 9,000 homes and operated in 25 cities in the US, and hopes to expand into 15 new cities within the next three years.
 
 
 In September 2021, the company raised USD USD 57.3 million in funding from QED investors. Apart from further developing its technology and platform, the fresh funds will be used to expand its workforce and increase its national footprint. 
 
</div>

Mynd

Allows real estate agents to create 3D virtual tours for properties

Uses AI/ML to support property related tasks such as rental payments and spatial data capturing

Uses GenAI to help customers navigate listings, enhance marketing content, and automate communications

Transaction closing tools that use the blockchain to facilitate title and escrow services

Tools for automating property lease management workflow processes. Some startups handle the entire leasing process while others only handle part of the process (e.g., rent collection). Leasing tools for agents are included here.

Sunroom Rentals

Residential PropTech

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