Fifth Wall Ventures


Fifth Wall Ventures, founded in 2016, is a venture capital firm focused exclusively on real estate technology. It is the largest fund specialized in real estate technology, also known as "prop tech." Major financial backers include large real estate industry companies that agree to be matched with the products and services of the firm's portfolio of start-up companies. The firm has a separate fund for investments in retail space technology.

History

The firm was founded by Brad Greiwe and Brendan Wallace, both from the real estate industry. Greiwe co-founded single-family home rental company Invitation Homes, which went public in 2017 with a $6.7 billion valuation. Wallace started his career as a real estate analyst at Goldman Sachs and worked for The Blackstone Group's real estate division. He also founded Identified and co-founded Cabify.
Fifth Wall Ventures was formed in 2016 with capital commitments of more than $20 million. Wallace said that the firm identified real estate technology as an underserved investment niche because while real estate represents about 13% of the U.S. economy, the industry has traditionally used very little technology and was therefore open to disruption. The firm name refers to a fifth wall the firm says it provides in addition to the four physical walls of a building. It is part of an emerging category of "PropTech" investors.
A new $221 million fund was reported in May 2017. About half of the firm's initial $240 million in funding came from large strategic real estate industry partners. A second $400 million fund was reported in SEC filings in June 2018, with Asian real-estate developers among the investors. An additional $200 million fund called Fifth Wall Ventures Retail Fund L.P. was reported in SEC filings in May 2018, dedicated to retail real-estate tech.
Wallace, the co-founder, identified energy efficient software, real estate as a service, real estate drones and operating systems with analytics for buildings as the most important real-state tech trends of 2018. His partner, Greiwe, said "tokenization" of real-estate investing, through digital currencies, would "democratize" real-estate investing.

Investments

The firm had invested in 27 companies as of August 2018.
The firm expanded into early stage investing in July 2017 with an startup accelerator virtual program.