Our partnership with leading industry players to provide proptech startups with investment and sector expertise to scale rapidly

We are pleased to announce our partnership with real estate professional services firm JLL, investor Starwood Capital Group, and flexible office provider Fora to launch Concrete, a new initiative to enable property tech companies to scale more effectively.

Lead by Seedcamp Expert in Residence, Taylor Wescoatt, the strategic alliance addresses one of the biggest challenges faced by proptech startups: accessing sufficient capital, expertise, and relationships to grow rapidly enough to serve large clients.

Concrete and its panel of expert advisors will provide these essential ingredients to a carefully-selected intake of early stage companies, giving their property tech innovations every chance of success with key insight and support.

Concrete has already made three investments and we have welcomed into our Seedcamp portfolio HubbleHQ, Opensensors.io, and Beagle.ai. Each brings transformative innovation to the real estate community and will be supported by expert representatives from diverse disciplines within the real estate sector to support their growth.

This does not mean our approach has changed. As Europe’s first seed fund, and with a portfolio of over 250 startups, our sector agnostic approach remains the same. However, we are constantly on the lookout for growing sectors and have made a number of high profile property tech investments, reflecting the growing trend in the market including the likes of Property Partner, eMoov, Trussle and Hubble.

Reshma Sohoni, Founding Partner of Seedcamp, commented: “Proptech is a space we see huge potential in at Seedcamp. We’ve already backed a number of companies in the sector and we’re seeing an ever increasing number of startups in this space coming to us for investment. We’re excited to partner with other great brands and respected names to create Concrete and build the ecosystem we know works best for startups.”

To lead the Concrete offering, Taylor Wescoatt, currently Expert in Residence for Seedcamp, has been appointed Director. Taylor Wescoatt, Director of Concrete and Expert in Residence at Seedcamp, added: “A flood of technology trends are shaking up the global real estate market which is worth $217 trillion. Startups are using new technologies such as VR, blockchain, and big data to enable solutions in what has been a very traditional marketplace for a very long time. Concrete is here to fund and scale these businesses, supporting them with the great support of Seedcamp, JLL, Starwood Capital Group and Fora Providing an extensive network, access to further funding and the knowledge to grow.”

Guy Grainger, EMEA CEO, JLL said, “Our alliance with Concrete enables JLL to be at the forefront of the next generation of real estate-related technologies. It also helps us to meet our strategic objectives of bringing tech-related benefits to our clients and leading the transformation of the real estate industry more broadly. We’re looking forward to getting started, lending our expertise and insights into what investors in, and occupiers and developers of, real estate need, and playing a part in helping the best ideas take root and grow.”

Zsolt Kohalmi, Head of European Acquisitions, at Starwood Capital Group, said: “At Starwood, we believe a partnership like this gives a critical insight into where technology is moving in real estate. We are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to create greater value in the space and we’re delighted to be able to work alongside JLL and Seedcamp to create the Concrete offering.”