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More than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, early-stage startups across the world are re-inventing how we work. But founders aren’t flocking to build just another SaaS tool or Airtable copycat — they&#8217;re trying to disrupt the only thing possibly more annoying than e-mail: the work meeting.
On an episode of this week&#8217;s podcast, Equity hosts Alex Wilhelm, Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas discussed a flurry of funding rounds related to the future of work.

Rewatch, which makes meetings asynchronous, <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/zoom-fatigue-no-more-rewatch-raises-20m-to-index-transcribe-and-store-enterprise-video-content" target="_blank">raised $20 million from Andreessen Horowitz</a>, AnyClip <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/anyclip-snaps-up-47m-for-its-video-search-and-analytics-technology" target="_blank">got $47 million in a round led by JVP</a> for video search and analytics technology, Interactio, a remote interpretation platform, <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/interactio-a-remote-interpretation-platform-grabs-30m-after-seeing-12x-growth-during-covid-19" target="_blank">landed $30 million from Eight Roads Ventures and Silicon Valley-based Storm Ventures</a>, and Spot Meetings got <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/20/spot-meetings-seed/" target="_blank">Kleiner Perkins on board in a $5 million seed.</a>
We connected the dots between these funding rounds to sketch out three perspectives on the future of workplace meetings. Part of our reasoning was the uptick of investment as mentioned above, and the other is that our calendars are full of them. We all agree that the traditional meeting is broken, so below you’ll find each of our arguments on where they go next and what we’d like to see.
<ul>
<li>Alex Wilhelm: Faster information throughput, please</li>
<li>Natasha Mascarenhas: Meetings should be ongoing, not in calendar invites</li>
<li>Danny Crichton: Redesign meetings for flow</li>
</ul>
<h2>Alex Wilhelm: Faster information throughput, please</h2>
I’ve worked for companies that were in love with meetings, and for companies where meetings were more infrequent. I prefer the latter by a wide margin. I’ve also worked in offices full-time, half-time and fully remote. I immensely prefer the final option.
Why? Work meetings are often a waste of time. Mostly you don’t need to align, most folks taking part are superfluous and as accidental team-building exercises they are incredibly expensive in terms of human-hours.
I am not into wasting time. The more remote I’ve been and the less time I’ve spent in less-formal meetings &#8212; the usual chit-chat that pollutes productive work time, making the days longer and less useful &#8212; the more I’ve managed to get done.
But I’ve been the lucky one, frankly. Most folks were still trapped in offices up until the pandemic shook up the world of work, finally giving more companies a shot at a whole-cloth rebuild of how they toil.
The good news is that CEOs are taking note. Chatting with Sprout Social CEO Justyn Howard this week, he explained how we have a unique, new chance to not live near where we work in 2021, but to instead bring work to where we live. He’s also an introvert, which meant that as a pair we’ve found a number of positives in some of the changes to how tech and media companies operate. Perhaps we’re a little biased.
A number of startups are rushing to fill the gap between the new expectations that Howard noted and our old digital and IRL realities.
Tandem.chat might be one such company. The former <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/tag/tandem" target="_blank">Y Combinator launch-day darling</a> has spent its post-halo period building. Its CEO sent me a <a href="https://blog.tandem.chat/the-virtual-office-is-here-to-stay/" target="_blank">manifesto of sorts</a> the other day, discussing how his company approaches the future of work meetings. Tandem is building for a world where communication needs to be both real-time and internal; it leaves asynchronous internal communication to Slack, real-time external communications to Zoom and asynchronous external chats to email. I agree, I think.

Founders aren’t flocking to build just another SaaS tool or Airtable copycat — they’re trying to disrupt the only thing possibly more annoying than e-mail: the work meeting.

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Fintech and proptech are two sectors that are seeing exploding growth in Latin America, as financial services and real estate are two categories in particular dire need of innovation in a region.
Brazil&#8217;s QuintoAndar, which has developed a real estate marketplace focused on rentals and sales, has seen impressive growth in recent years. And today, the São Paulo-based proptech has announced it has closed on $300 million in a Series E round of funding that values it at an impressive $4 billion.
The round is notable for a few reasons. For one, the valuation – high by any standards but especially for a LatAm company – represents an increase of four times from when QuintoAndar raised a $250 million Series D in September 2019.
It’s also noteworthy who is backing the company. Silicon Valley-based Ribbit Capital led its Series E financing, which also included participation from SoftBank’s LatAm-focused Innovation Fund, LTS, Maverik, Alta Park, an undisclosed US-based asset manager fund with over $2 trillion in AUM, Kaszek Ventures, Dragoneer and Accel partner Kevin Efrusy.
Having backed the likes of Coinbase, Robinhood and CreditKarma, Ribbit Capital has historically focused on early-stage investments in the fintech space. Its bet on QuintoAndar represents clear faith in what the company is building, as well as its confidence in the startup’s plans to branch out from its current model into a one-stop real estate shop that also offers mortgage, title, insurance and escrow services.
The latest round brings QuintoAndar’s total raised since its 2013 inception to $635 million.
Ribbit Capital Partner Nick Huber said Quintoandar has over the years built “a unique and trusted brand in Brazil” for those looking for a place to call home.
“Whether you are looking to buy or to rent, QuintoAndar can support customers through the entire transaction process: from browsing verified inventory to signing the final contracts,” Huber told TechCrunch. “The ability to serve customers&#8217; needs through each phase of life and to do so from start to finish is a unique capability, both in Brazil and around the world.”
QuintoAndar describes itself as an “end-to-end solution for long-term rentals” that, among other things, connects potential tenants to landlords and vice versa. Last year, it expanded also into connecting a home buyers to sellers.
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2158709" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-2158709 " src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ezgif.com-crop.jpg?w=680" alt="" width="555" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ezgif.com-crop.jpg 713w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ezgif.com-crop.jpg?resize=150,125 150w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ezgif.com-crop.jpg?resize=300,250 300w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ezgif.com-crop.jpg?resize=680,566 680w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ezgif.com-crop.jpg?resize=50,42 50w" sizes="(max-width: 555px) 100vw, 555px" />Image Credits: QuintoAndar
TechCrunch spoke with co-founder and CEO Gabriel Braga and he shared details around the growth that has attracted such a bevy of high-profile investors.
Like most other businesses around the world, QuintoAndar braced itself for the worst when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year – especially considering one core piece of its business is to guarantee rents to the landlords on its platform.
“In the beginning, we were afraid of the implications of the crisis but we were able to honor our commitments,” Braga said. “In retrospect, the pandemic was a big test for our business model and it has validated the strength and defensibility of our binsess on the credit side and reinforced our value proposition to tenants and landlords. So after the initial scary moments, we actually felt even more confident in the business that we are building.”
QuintoAndar describes itself as “a distant market leader” with more than 100,000 rentals under management and about 10,000 new rentals per month. Its rental platform is live in 40 cities across Brazil, while its homebuying marketplace is live in 4. Part of its plans with the new capital is to expand into new markets within Brazil, as well as in Latin America as a whole.
The startup claims that, in less than a year, QuintoAndar managed to aggregate the largest inventory among digital transactional platforms. It now offers more than 60,000 properties for sale across Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belho Horizonte and Porto Alegre. To give greater context around the company’s growth of that side of its platform: in its first year of operation, QuintoAndar closed more than 1,000 transactions. It has now surpassed the mark of 8,000 transactions in annualized terms, growing between 50% and 100% quarter over quarter.
As for the rentals side of its business, Braga said QuintoAndar has more than 100,000 rentals under management and is closing about 10,000 new rentals per month. The company is not profitable as it&#8217;s focused on growth, although it is unit economics are particularly favorable in certain markets such as Sao Paulo, which is financing some of its growth in other cities, according to Braga.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="fHqEBkmeQ9"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/22/brazils-loft-adds-100m-to-its-accounts-700m-to-its-valuation-in-a-single-month/" target="_blank">Brazil&#8217;s Loft adds $100M to its accounts, $700M to its valuation in a single month</a></blockquote>
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" style="position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);" title="&#8220;Brazil&#8217;s Loft adds $100M to its accounts, $700M to its valuation in a single month&#8221; &#8212; TechCrunch" src="https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/22/brazils-loft-adds-100m-to-its-accounts-700m-to-its-valuation-in-a-single-month/embed/#?secret=fHqEBkmeQ9" data-secret="fHqEBkmeQ9" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
Now, the 2,000-person company is looking to begin its global expansion with plans to enter the Mexican market later this year. With that, Braga said QuintoAndar is looking to hire “top-tier” talent from all over.
“We want to invest a lot in our product and tech core,” he said. “So we’re trying to bring in more senior people from abroad, on a global basis.”
<h2 dir="ltr">Some history</h2>
CEO Braga and CTO André Penha came up with the idea for QuintoAndar after receiving their MBAs at Stanford University. As many startups do, the company was founded out of Braga’s personal “nightmare” of an experience – in this case, of trying to rent an apartment in Sao Paulo.
The search process, he recalls, was difficult as there was not enough information available online and renters were forced to provide a guarantor, or co-signer, from the same city or pay rent insurance, which Braga described as “very expensive.”
“Overall, I felt it was a very inefficient and fragmented process with no transparency or tech,” Braga told me at the time of the company’s last raise. “There was all this friction and high cost involved, just real tangible problems to solve.”
The concept for QuintoAndar (which can be translated literally to “Fifth Floor” in Portuguese) was born.
“Little by little, we created a platform that consolidated supply and inventory in a uniform way,” Braga said.
The company took the search phase online for the first time, according to Braga. It also eliminated the need for tenants to provide a guarantor, thereby saving them money. On the other side, QuintoAndar also works to help protect the landlord with the guarantee that they will get their rent “on time every month,” Braga said.
It’s been interesting watching the company evolve and grow over time, just as it’s been fascinating seeing the region’s startup scene mature and shine in recent years.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="ybiO470ris"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/09/softbank-mints-quintoandar-a-new-unicorn-in-latin-american-real-estate-tech/" target="_blank">SoftBank mints QuintoAndar a new unicorn in Latin American real estate tech</a></blockquote>
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" style="position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);" title="&#8220;SoftBank mints QuintoAndar a new unicorn in Latin American real estate tech&#8221; &#8212; TechCrunch" src="https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/09/softbank-mints-quintoandar-a-new-unicorn-in-latin-american-real-estate-tech/embed/#?secret=ybiO470ris" data-secret="ybiO470ris" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Fintech and proptech are two sectors that are seeing exploding growth in Latin America, as financial services and real estate are two categories in particular dire need of innovation in a region. Brazil’s QuintoAndar, which has developed a real estate marketplace focused on rentals and sales, has seen impressive growth in recent years. And today, […]

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Brazilian proptech startup QuintoAndar lands $300M at a $4B valuation

Trying to buy a house in a competitive market is perhaps one of the most stressful things an adult can go through.
Competing with a bunch of people all putting offers on a house that fly off the market in a matter of days is not fun. One startup that is trying to give home buyers a competitive edge by giving them a way to offer all cash on a home has just raised a boatload of money to help it keep growing.
Austin-based <a href="http://www.homeward.com" target="_blank">Homeward</a>, which aims to help people buy homes faster, announced today it has raised $136 million in a Series B funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners at a valuation “just north of $800 million.” The company has also secured $235 million in debt.
Blackstone, Breyer Capital and existing backers Adams Street, Javelin and LiveOak Venture Partners also participated in the equity financing, which brings Homeward’s total equity raised since inception to $160 million. 
Homeward’s model seems to be appealing to both home buyers (including first time ones) and agents alike, with lots of growth occurring since May 2020 when it raised $105 million in debt and equity. The company declined to reveal hard revenue figures but noted that its GMV (gross merchandise value) run rate is up over 600%+ year over year.
Also, as of March, Homeward says it had experienced a 5x increase in the volume of homes transacted and 9x year over growth in the number of new customers. Plus, It’s hired 161 employees since January alone, and currently has a headcount of 203, up from about 33 at this time last year. 
CEO Tim Heyl founded the real estate startup in late 2018 on the premise that in most cases, sellers prefer to receive all cash offers because they are more likely to close. Loans can fall through, but cash is cash.
Heyl started the company after having worked in the industry for the previous decade, first as a broker then as the owner of a title company. During that time, he saw firsthand many of the problems in the industry. And one conundrum he frequently ran into was people not wanting to make an offer on a home without knowing for sure their current house would sell in a certain amount of time. This is a dilemma many are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic as demand outweighs supply in many major U.S. cities.
“The pandemic has greatly increased demand for our product,” Heyl told TechCrunch. “It’s a historic seller’s market with unprecedented demand from buyers and the lowest inventory levels in decades.”
The company plans to use its new capital to “double down” on its offering, scale up to meet &#8220;outsized demand” and open additional markets. Currently, Homeward operates in Texas, Colorado and Georgia.
“Right now, we have a waiting list in every market across the country, so this growth capital will enable us to meet that demand,” Heyl said. Its ultimate goal is to open its offering to agents nationwide.
Homeward also plans to double the size of its title and mortgage teams in the latter half of the year so it can offer its clients and partner agents “a single streamlined experience.” It’s also planning to integrate its consumer and internal software systems for approvals, offers and closing “so everyone can be on a single platform and we can eliminate confusion and waste,” Heyl added.
So, how does it work exactly? Homeward will make an all-cash offer on behalf of a customer wanting to buy a house. Meanwhile, that customer can hire an agent (from brokerages such as Redfin or Keller Williams) to list their home with less pressure to sell it in a certain amount of time or at a discounted price. Once Homeward buys a home, it will lease the property back to its customer until they sell their house, get a mortgage, and can buy the property back from Homeward, plus a 2 percent to 3 percent convenience fee. During the process, Homeward offers a predetermined guaranteed price for its customer’s home with the promise that if it’s unable to sell the house for at least that amount, it’ll buy the house from them.
Heyl believes Homeward’s “alternative iBuyer” model is a better deal for customers since it doesn’t purchase a customer’s old home for below market value. The company also works with agents, and not against them, he said. For example, its offerings are available to any agent, but the company “strategically” partners with top brokerages and teams, providing them with what it describes as “dedicated support, white-label branding, and digital marketing tools to help them stand out from the crowd and attract more clients.”
“Most alternatives to traditional real estate minimize or replace the agent,” Heyl said. “But we are agents ourselves, and we’ve built this for agents.”
Homeward is profitable on a per unit basis if you count transaction revenue minus costs to acquire and complete each transaction, according to Heyl. However, it is not yet profitable on a net income basis.
<a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/tag/jeff-crowe" target="_blank">Jeff Crowe</a>, managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners, will join Homeward’s board as part of the funding.
“Homeward is innovating at the intersection of real estate and fintech — that’s the next frontier,” he said. “Homeward’s cash offer addresses real problems for homebuyers in all market conditions, and the team has identified a winning strategy by partnering with agents and their clients.”
Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital describes Homeward as one of Austin&#8217;s most innovative companies.
&#8220;We are inspired by the company&#8217;s mission to build home finance solutions to overcome the limitations of the traditional mortgage and we are proud to support them as they continue to scale rapidly and efficiently,&#8221; he said.

Trying to buy a house in a competitive market is perhaps one of the most stressful things an adult can go through. Competing with a bunch of people all putting offers on a house that fly off the market in a matter of days is not fun. One startup that is trying to give home […]

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Homeward secures $371M to help people make all-cash offers on houses

As we transition from the pandemic to whatever comes next, Airbnb is evolving. The company <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/airbnb-doubles-down-on-flexible-search-improves-the-host-flow-in-preparation-for-summer-2021" target="_blank">announced a major redesign of its website</a> and introduced a bevy of features focused on both hosts and guests today. All told, the release includes more than 100 new features or upgrades, with the goal of increasing and diversifying the supply side of the business to not only fuel overall growth but also meet the changing demands of guests.
The changes come in response to the way travel has evolved during the pandemic; Airbnb as a company has changed, too.
TechCrunch sat down with Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO, to discuss the future of travel, how his company worked to support a changing market and what it was like leading the world&#8217;s biggest travel startup during a global pandemic.
If you want to read more about today&#8217;s update, you can check out our article on it <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/airbnb-doubles-down-on-flexible-search-improves-the-host-flow-in-preparation-for-summer-2021" target="_blank">here</a>.
The TL;DR version is as follows:
<ul>
<li>New search flexibility around dates, destinations and matching criteria</li>
<li>Easier onboarding and efficiency for hosts</li>
<li>Increased and enhanced customer support</li>
</ul>
From a very high level, the first change is designed to help drive demand, the second to boost supply and the third to keep both sides of the marketplace healthy.
TechCrunch&#8217;s interview with Chesky follows. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
TechCrunch: A lot of the announcement today comes from the fact that we&#8217;ve been through more than a year of a pandemic and travel has evolved, and you are responding to that. As a CEO, you&#8217;ve been through so many big moments, from the IPO to the early launch days to a long regulatory journey. Where does leading a company during a pandemic fit into the CEO journey for you?
Brian Chesky: Yeah, Jordan, I would probably say that I never thought we would do anything as crazy as starting Airbnb. I kind of assumed, until last year, that that would probably be the craziest story I&#8217;ll ever have. Little did I know that a travel company in a pandemic might even be crazier than starting a company based on strangers living together. I kind of feel like I&#8217;m now 39 going on 49. It was definitely the craziest year ever.
Our business initially dropped 80% in eight weeks. I say it&#8217;s like driving a car. You can&#8217;t go 80 miles an hour, slam on the brakes, and expect nothing really bad to happen. Now imagine you&#8217;re going 80 miles an hour, slam on the brakes, then rebuild the car kind of while still moving, and then try to accelerate into an IPO, all on Zoom.

TechCrunch sat down with Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO, to discuss the future of travel and what it was like leading the world’s biggest travel startup during a global pandemic.

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Brian Chesky describes a faster, nimbler post-pandemic Airbnb

The real estate sales market has been in an <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/petertaylor/2021/04/18/yes-americas-housing-market-is-officially-over-heating-everywhere-how-long-can-it-last/?sh=67f362964437" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">upswing</a> this year, and today a startup that&#8217;s addressing one of homeowners&#8217; biggest needs &#8212; repair and maintenance services, and specifically the stress of sorting these out when things break down &#8212; is announcing some funding on the heels of strong growth.
<a href="https://www.hellosuper.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Super</a> &#8212; which has built a business providing repair and maintenance for electrical and mechanical systems, appliances, and plumbing by way of a monthly subscription &#8212; has closed a growth round of $50 million.
The startup plans to use the funding to expand into new markets, to hire more people, and to continue adding more maintenance/repair services and partnerships into its wider home-warranty-by-subscription proposition.
CEO Jorey Ramer, who co-founded the company with Ryan Donnelly (VP of engineering), also said that another part of the investment will be used to enhance the AI tech that underpins Super&#8217;s service and <a href="https://www.hellosuper.com/pricing" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">pricing plans</a>. More on that below.
The San Francisco-based company is currently active in some of the fastest-growing housing markets in the U.S.,  Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Washington, D.C. (ironically not in SF itself), and it has grown revenue 7x since April 2019, when it previously raised money, a<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/super-raises-20m-to-fix-the-home-services-and-repairs-market-with-its-subscription-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank"> $20 million Series B</a>. It&#8217;s not disclosing actual revenue numbers, nor user numbers.
This is latest Series C has a number of strategic backers that speaks to the bigger ecosystem of financial and insurance services that interlink with each other, and which are used by the average person in the course of home ownership. (Indeed, Super these days seems to refer to itself as an &#8220;insuretech&#8221;.)
Led by Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, the venture arm of the banking giant, others in the round included home construction giant Asahi Kasei, AAA &#8211; Auto Club Group (which also sells insurance), Gaingels, and REACH. The last of these is a scale-up service from Second Century Ventures, which is the investment fund of the National Association of Realtors. Aquiline Technology Growth, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Moderne Ventures and the HSB Fund of Munich Re Ventures &#8212; which all invested in <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/super-raises-20m-to-fix-the-home-services-and-repairs-market-with-its-subscription-service/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Super&#8217;s previous $20 million round</a> back in April 2019 &#8212; also participated.
The company has now raised $80 million in total, and it&#8217;s not disclosing its valuation.
As we have noted before, Ramer came up with the idea for Super when he himself moved to San Francisco after he sold his previous startup, Jumptap — an advertising network <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/millennial-acquires-jumptap/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">acquired by Millennial Media</a> (which is now part of Verizon by way of its acquisition of AOL, just like TechCrunch). He&#8217;d been an apartment renter for all of his adult life, but when he moved to the Bay Area, he found himself buying property, and it came with more than a little reluctance because of the headache of taking care of his new home.
“I liked being a renter,” he said in an interview. “You pay a fee, and you know what to expect.” (“Super” is a reference to the superintendents that handle maintenance and repair in an apartment building, and to what Super hopes customers will think about its service.)
The route that Ramer decided to take for how to approach filling that gap, interestingly, is not unlike the challenges that Jumptap faced in the world of ad tech: instead of trying to build a services business from the ground up, he opted to build an integrated network that tapped into a number of small services enterprises already working in the business of maintaining homes. (The correlation here is that, rather than building a first-party behemoth, the approach is to knit together a number of online properties so that people looking to advertise can do so across a wide range of places in a network).
Super has created a kind of marketplace: the services businesses and individuals that Super engages with to carry out maintenance and repairs are all licensed and use its platform for free, essentially, and Super handles remuneration based on call-outs. For users, the call-outs come as <a href="https://www.hellosuper.com/pricing" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">part of their monthly plans</a>, and they include different options based on which level of service they pay for.
The funding it&#8217;s announcing today will be used in part to enhance how those monthly plans work.
Not only are there algorithms that Super has built to determine how to price its services based on location, size of home and other factors; but there are features in the app that subscribers can use to interact with Super to report issues, call out maintenance people, and provide more detail about problems to improve faster, and in some cases, automated adjudication on issues.
Better tech for more responsive home services has been an interesting area of the market, but one that&#8217;s largely been ignored up to now, but as they have matured, AR and other computer vision breakthroughs have definitely helped to advance that game. (And a number of others are also tapping into that, including <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/hover-secures-60m-for-a-3d-imaging-platform-used-to-assess-and-fix-properties" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Hover</a>, <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/nana-nabs-6m-for-an-online-academy-and-marketplace-dedicated-to-appliance-repair" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Nana</a>, <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/jobber-raises-60m-as-its-platform-for-home-service-professionals-hits-100k-users" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jobber</a> and more.)
The way that the service has been built to scale &#8212; working with contractors means adding in more kinds of coverage is easier than building from the ground up &#8212; also means that Super over time may well add more services into the mix.
&#8220;The things we would do are things your super would do,&#8221; Ramer said. &#8220;So that might include fixing plumbing, but might also potentially include cleaning carpets, which you could think of as maintenance. Painting is another interesting area. It seems like it might be a cosmetic thing, but if you do not paint, you risk dry rot. It&#8217;s also preventative care. So if we, say, cover 100% maintenance you could imagine that included, too.&#8221;
One area where it&#8217;s unlikely to move is general contract work, say rebuilding a bathroom or kitchen, or adding in a new room in your loft: the focus it seems will remain on the essentials of keeping your home working.
But aside of expanding the services directly on its own platform, there are also potentially opportunities for how Super might work with partners. AAA for example has a notable business not just in roadside assistance but also insurance coverage. Ramer describes Super as &#8220;roadside assistance for your home,&#8221; and he points out that it&#8217;s a natural partnership to sell those alongside each other.
Similarly, Wells Fargo, as a mortgage lender, is a natural complement, providing a route to its customers to help maintain the properties that they&#8217;re in the process of paying off to the bank. This in turn also becomes a kind of insurance policy to the bank itself, as it keeps the homes it is financing in better shape.
“Wells Fargo embraces innovation, and we’re excited to support a tech-forward platform like Super which brings further advancement to the home services market,” said Matthew Raubacher, managing director for WFSC’s Principal Technology Investments Group, in a statement. “The challenges of ongoing repairs and maintenance resonates with every homeowner, and Super provides an experience that is convenient for the customer, while boosting job visibility for local contractors and businesses. We look forward to seeing them continue to widen their geographic footprint and expand their product offering.”

The real estate sales market has been in an upswing this year, and today a startup that’s addressing one of homeowners’ biggest needs — repair and maintenance services, and specifically the stress of sorting these out when things break down — is announcing some funding on the heels of strong growth. Super — which has […]

Apps

Artificial Intelligence

Augmented Reality

Ecommerce

Home Services

Super

Super raises $50M to cover home repairs and maintenance via a subscription model

As a longtime real estate developer based in Chile, Benjamin Labra was able to spot gaps in the buying and renting markets in Latin America. To meet demands, he started <a href="https://houm.com/cl/" target="_blank">Houm</a>, an all-in-one platform that helps homeowners rent and sell their properties in the region.
Fresh out of Y Combinator’s W21 cohort, today Houm announced an $8 million seed round. 
If you think the concept sounds like Brazil’s unicorn, QuintoAndar, it’s because Houm is very similar. While QuintoAndar dominates the Brazilian market, Houm operates in Chile, Mexico and Colombia, and aims to capture the rest of Spanish-speaking LatAm.
Think of Houm as a homeowner-run Zillow meets TaskRabbit. The company offers a marketplace run by the property owners themselves and cuts out the realtor by employing 200 freelancers who prepare the property for sale or to manage it. 
Houmers, as they are called, go to the owner&#8217;s home, take photos and then help possible buyers or renters view the property. For their work, Houmers are compensated each time a home they worked on sells or gets rented.
However, Houm’s selling proposition isn’t just the ease of use it provides; instead, it also serves as a guarantor in my ways, making the buying process more accessible.
“In Colombia and Mexico, for someone to be your guarantor, they have to have a property that’s free of mortgage so it can be used as collateral,” Labra told TechCrunch.
On the flip side, the company also guarantees that renters will get paid every month, and if a tenant falters, Houm covers the cost. “You really have nothing to lose if you use Houm,” Labra said.
You can imagine that a company like Houm now has all sorts of data on the real estate market, especially around sales and rental prices. As a result, Houm uses this data in an algorithm that helps the homeowner determine a fair price for their property, but the listed price remains up to the owner.
The company, which was founded in 2018 and is based in Chile, now has about 200 full-time employees, in addition to their freelance team. While Labra declined to say how many active users it has, he said Houm is now showing a property every eight minutes.
The current funding round had no lead investor but includes Y Combinator, Goodwater Ventures, OneVC, Vast VC, Liquid2 and Myelin. The company plans to use the money to expand within the region, perfect its algorithm and generally speed up growth.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="osR156EpiV"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/fifth-walls-brendan-wallace-and-hippos-assaf-wand-discuss-proptechs-biggest-opportunities" target="_blank">Fifth Wall&#8217;s Brendan Wallace and Hippo&#8217;s Assaf Wand discuss proptech&#8217;s biggest opportunities</a></blockquote>
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As a longtime real estate developer based in Chile, Benjamin Labra was able to spot gaps in the buying and renting markets in Latin America. To meet demands, he started Houm, an all-in-one platform that helps homeowners rent and sell their properties in the region. Fresh out of Y Combinator’s W21 cohort, today Houm announced […]

Chile

Goodwater Ventures

Houm

Liquid2 Ventures

Prop Tech

Property

Fresh out of YC, Houm raises $8M to improve the home rental and sales market in LatAm

The pandemic forced many employees <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/06/what-to-consider-when-employees-need-to-start-working-remotely/" target="_blank">to begin working from home</a>, and, in doing so, may have changed the way we think about work. While some businesses have slowly returned to the office, depending on where you live and what you do, many information workers remain at home.
That could change in the coming months as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/30/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases" target="_blank">more people get vaccinated</a> and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-cases-dropping/2021/04/30/0f0bb988-a845-11eb-bca5-048b2759a489_story.html" target="_blank">infection rate begins to drop</a> in the U.S.
As that happens, it is likely that more offices will reopen. We&#8217;ve already heard from major employers like Salesforce, which indicated it will be allowing <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/global-return-to-the-office-the-salesforce-approach/" target="_blank">a percentage of its workforce back to the office</a> this month, starting with the company&#8217;s San Francisco headquarters. The CRM giant plans to move slow and follow the government&#8217;s lead, allowing 20% capacity at first and hoping to build to 70% over time.
Most companies aren&#8217;t the size of Salesforce, which boasts a worldwide workforce of more than 50,000 employees. These smaller companies often don&#8217;t control entire skyscrapers, as Salesforce does in San Francisco. That creates complicating factors, including managing people who aren&#8217;t willing to be vaccinated, dealing with social distancing and masking, and sharing buildings or floors with other companies.
Even more, many companies have discovered that their employees work just fine at home. And some workers don&#8217;t want to waste time stuck on congested highways or public transportation now that they&#8217;ve learned to work remotely. But other employees suffered in small spaces or with constant interruptions from family. Those folks may long to go back to the office.
On balance, it seems clear that whatever happens, for many companies, we probably aren&#8217;t going back whole-cloth to the prior model of commuting into the office five days a week.
Last August, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/03/amid-pandemic-returning-to-offices-remains-an-open-question-for-tech-leaders/" target="_blank">we spoke to a number of tech company executives</a> about what returning to the office could look like. We recently went back to most of those same executives, as well as a Rhode Island state official and a medical expert we spoke to then to revisit the idea and talk about what&#8217;s changed and what work could look like as move slowly toward the post-pandemic era.
<h2>The office will never be the same</h2>
While their approaches vary, all of the executives I spoke to said that they foresee adopting a hybrid model when they can return in earnest, although there were definitely different interpretations of what that means, and what the office structure will look like.

This year, the whole notion of how we work and where we work is going to change yet again.

Health

Ec Real Estate And Proptech

Work From Home

As tech offices begin to reopen, the workplace could look very different

Better.com, a venture-backed digital mortgage lender, announced this morning that it will combine with a SPAC, taking itself public in the second half of 2021. The unicorn&#8217;s news comes as the American IPO market is showing signs of fresh life after a modest April.
The Better.com deal comes just over a month after it <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/09/mortgage-is-suddenly-sexy-as-softbank-pumps-500m-in-better-com-at-6b-valuation/">sold $500 million of its existing shares to SoftBank</a> at a valuation of $6 billion. At the time, TechCrunch described the deal as &#8220;further proof&#8221; that unsexy industries were able to secure attractive valuations despite their relative lack of pizzazz.
The SoftBank secondary round was hardly Better&#8217;s only recent mega-deal; the company raised a $200 million round <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-to-invest-500-million-in-mortgage-startup-better-11617899907">at a $4 billion valuation in November 2020</a>.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.  
Read it <a href="https://techcrunch.com/subscribe/?tpcc=theexchange">every morning on Extra Crunch</a> or get <a href="https://techcrunch.com/newsletters">The Exchange newsletter</a> every Saturday.

But the company&#8217;s SPAC combination will affix an even higher price than its April round managed, providing <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bettermortgage/company_financials">the Kleiner Perkins-backed Better</a> with what <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210511005602/en/Digital-Homeownership-Platform-Better-to-Become-a-Publicly-Listed-Company-via-Merger-with-Aurora-Acquisition-Corp.-Company-is-Redefining-the-Homeownership-Experience">it describes</a> as a &#8220;post-money equity value of approximately $7.7 billion.&#8221;
SoftBank is doubling down on Better, putting together a $1.5 billion private investment in the deal&#8217;s public equity, or PIPE, in effect repricing its own preceding investment. For the Japanese telecom and investing powerhouse, making successive bets in companies at ever-higher prices is essentially gospel. So, don&#8217;t read too much into the commitment.
As with all SPAC combinations, we have a pile of new data from the company that is going public as part of the transaction. So, this morning, we&#8217;re getting our hands dirty.
Our goals are simple: We want to understand whether Better is a weak business, an acceptably strong business, or a great business. To get there, we&#8217;ll have to start by digging into how the company functions. From there, we&#8217;ll discuss its valuation stacked against its trailing metrics. We&#8217;ll also take a look at its growth expectations and bring in the recent Compass IPO, a company that focuses on a different part of the mortgage market, to see if we can get a better handle on Better&#8217;s new valuation.
Ready? The deck is <a href="https://aurora-acquisition.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/better-roadshow-deck.pdf">here</a>. Let&#8217;s have some fun.
<h2>What&#8217;s Better.com?</h2>
If you have heard of Better but really had no idea what it does before this morning, welcome to the club. Mortgage tech is like pre-kindergarten applications &#8212; it applies to a very specific set of folks at a very particular moment. And they care a lot about it. But the rest of us aren&#8217;t really aware of its existence.
For the rest of us: Better is an online mortgage lender that aims to offer lower-than-standard fees to consumers looking for credit to help them buy a house. As the company <a href="https://better.com/content/how-does-better-make-money/">explains</a> on its website, it generates income by selling loans that it helps generate. Per its investor deck, Better also derives top line from selling insurance products.

We’ll have to wait to see how public investors value the company once it begins to float later this year. But as far as unicorn SPAC deals go, there have been worse ones that we’ve viewed.

Digging into digital mortgage lender Better.com’s huge SPAC

In April, real estate tech company <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/tag/" target="_blank">Compass</a> forged ahead with its initial public offering and is now valued at nearly $6.4 billion.
At that time, TechCrunch Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm caught up with founder and CEO <a href="https://twitter.com/RobReffkin" target="_blank">Robert Reffkin</a> to chat about his company’s debut in the market’s <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/what-to-make-of-deliveroos-rough-ipo-debut" target="_blank">suddenly choppy waters for tech and tech-enabled debuts</a>.
This week, I caught up with Reffkin on a whole other topic: his path to entrepreneurship as a child raised by a disowned single mother whose father had died homeless. Reffkin is so passionate about inspiring others from nontraditional backgrounds to pursue their dreams that he wrote <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/No-One-Succeeds-Alone/9780358454618" target="_blank">a book</a> about it.
In our discussion, Reffkin shared what he believes are the secrets to his success (hint: one of them involves lots of listening) and his advice for his young entrepreneurs, especially those from non-privileged backgrounds.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
TC: As the mother of a teen who is already trying to start his own business, I&#8217;m intrigued by your DJing as a teenager. What finally got you motivated to care about school and how did you manage to graduate in such a short amount of time?
Reffkin: Well, I think your son might just be on the right track! Please give him a word of encouragement from me, from one entrepreneur to another.
My mom says that a lot of other parents thought she was crazy for letting me launch my DJ business. But starting a successful DJ business in high school helped me learn about myself and my passion for entrepreneurship — and it ultimately helped me get into Columbia, forming the core of both my personal statement and the relationships I built with several members of the admissions team.
I believe the first step is always to dream big. For me, my big dreams for my college future started on a trip to New York City. I toured Columbia and fell in love with it, but I knew it was going to be hard for me to get in. In fact, my high school guidance counselor said, “Don’t even apply. It wouldn’t be worth your time and money on the application fee.” In that moment, my desire to go to Columbia went from strong to absolute, because suddenly it felt like it was about something larger than myself — not just where I went to school, but about a broader struggle for opportunity for people like me. So I poured myself into my SAT prep to show that even though I had a C average, I had what it took to keep up at a top school. And thankfully, it paid off. 
In high school and college, I was a C-student in part because I didn’t see how studying calculus or Western Civilization related to my life or my dreams. I knew that excelling in school wasn’t going to be the way I was going to distinguish myself in the world. At the same time, I was energized by my entrepreneurial efforts and my summer internships. I moved as quickly as I could to get through school and have my real life begin, because the real world made so much more sense to me.
TC: How do you think being raised by a single mother without privilege helped shape you as a man, and entrepreneur? How would you say being a person of color impact your path?
Reffkin: Growing up, it was just me and my mom. She’s an Israeli immigrant, disowned by her parents because I was Black. My father abandoned us and died, homeless, when I was young. What shaped me most as an entrepreneur was learning from my mother. She embodied the entrepreneurial spirit and taught me one of the most important principles: every time you get knocked down, you’ve got to bounce back with passion. I saw her face bad relationships, bankruptcy, and the stream of daily rejections that comes from being an agent. And she always bounced back. So when the world told me I couldn’t do something or that I was destined to fail, I was ready for them. Thanks to my mom, I already knew how to bounce back.
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2148765" loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-2148765" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Robert-and-Ruth-Reffkin.jpg?w=300" alt="" width="602" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Robert-and-Ruth-Reffkin.jpg 1536w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Robert-and-Ruth-Reffkin.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Robert-and-Ruth-Reffkin.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Robert-and-Ruth-Reffkin.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Robert-and-Ruth-Reffkin.jpg?resize=680,453 680w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Robert-and-Ruth-Reffkin.jpg?resize=50,33 50w" sizes="(max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px" />Image Credits: CEO Robert Reffkin &amp; mother, Ruth / Compass
Being Black and Jewish, I’ve felt out of place my entire life. In most classes in Hosch school and college, I was the only Black person. In almost every meeting early in my career, I was the only Black person. When I was raising capital for Compass, I almost never saw someone Black on the other side of the table. But I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been lucky to get terrific advice along the way from so many Black mentors, from the late Vernon Jordan, to Ken Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, to Bayo Ogunlesi, who is lead director for Goldman Sachs. There’s a really strong community of people who’ve all supported each other.
TC: You&#8217;ve had some impressive mentors over the years. How did those relationships develop? How have they been valuable besides the obvious? 
Growing up, I was hungry for advice. Coming from a single-parent home, I looked for guidance and wisdom on how to create a better life wherever I could find it. My mom connected me to several non-profits when I was in high school that helped open my eyes to how much opportunity and support there was out there in the world. 
The most important lesson I’ve learned in my life is that feedback is a gift. Even when it’s hard to hear, feedback is a gift. My relationships with many of my mentors deepened because I started asking them for really tough, candid feedback — the sort of things they thought other people wouldn’t tell me. And then, I’d actually take their advice, apply it in my life, and let them know how it had helped me. That did two two things: First, it led to more honest and practical advice that helped me get better faster. Second, it made the people who had given me advice feel far more invested in my success and the success of whatI was working on.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="fL9G1xEgxP"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/compass-ceo-hails-ipo-as-a-fundraising-event-amid-challenging-market" target="_blank">Compass CEO hails IPO as a fundraising event amid &#8216;challenging&#8217; market</a></blockquote>

The other thing my mentors gave me was the sense that even though the world was telling me I couldn’t be successful, I could be. Meeting someone like Vernon Jordan who advised presidents and CEOs alike, had a profound impact on me. He was a father figure to me. I met him when I was 23 years old, and at that time, it wasn’t clear to me that you could be successful in the business world as a Black man. I just hadn’t seen it before. When I started at Lazard, Vernon Jordan was the only other Black investment banker there. He was not just a senior partner, he was a legend, widely known for serving on more Fortune 500 boards than anyone in history. He took a strong interest in me, and with his support and advice, he made me feel like I belonged and helped me see a path where I could be as successful as I wanted to be. 
I founded a nonprofit in my twenties called America Needs You that has provided mentorship, career development, and college support to thousands of students. I wrote my new book, <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/tag/" target="_blank">No One Succeeds Alone</a>, as a way to pay it forward by making the lessons I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from so many remarkable people available to everyone — and it’s why I’m donating all of my proceeds to nonprofits that help young people realize their dreams.
TC: What advice you would give to young, aspiring entrepreneurs, especially those from non-privileged backgrounds?
Reffkin: Here’s the advice I’d give to someone from an underrepresented group who just graduated college and is in their first job:
1) Don’t let anyone get in the way of your dream. Not society, not your colleagues, not even yourself. Whenever anyone tells you to slow down, speed up.
2) Spend the next 10 years learning as much as you can from the smartest people you can. Find mentors in your job and outside that will give you the honest feedback that others won’t. Feedback is a gift. It’ll be hard for you to hear, but it’s actually even harder for them to give it to you. So you may have to ask for it directly and let people know that you can take it.
3) Learn how to turn negativity into positive energy that fuels you. There will always be skeptics, doubters, and haters telling you that you can’t do something or that you don’t belong. 
TC: What next after Compass?
Reffkin: I believe that to be truly successful, you can’t have a Plan B. As a CEO, you have to be all-in, and that’s what I am for Compass: 100% dedicated to our 23,000 agents and employees. One of my mentors told me about the “shower test” once — that if you’re not excited enough about your job to think about it in the shower, you’re probably not in the right job. And I’ll tell you: I’m so passionate about the company we’re building that I’m still thinking about Compass in the shower. At Compass, we’ve accomplished much in the past eight years, but we’re truly just getting started. 

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="jFUh7S1kHO"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/10-proptech-investors-see-better-era-for-residential-and-retail-after-pandemic" target="_blank">10 proptech investors see better era for residential and retail after pandemic</a></blockquote>

In April, real estate tech company Compass forged ahead with its initial public offering and is now valued at nearly $6.4 billion. At that time, TechCrunch Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm caught up with founder and CEO Robert Reffkin to chat about his company’s debut in the market’s suddenly choppy waters for tech and tech-enabled debuts. […]

Diversity

America

Columbia

Compass

Editor

Entrepreneur

Goldman Sachs

Ken Chenault

Lazard

How Robert Reffkin went from being a C-average student to the founder of Compass

What is the biggest opportunity for proptech founders? How should they think about competition, strategic investment versus top-tier VC firms, and how to build their board? What about navigating regulation?
We sat down last week with Brendan Wallace, co-founder and general manager of Fifth Wall, and Hippo CEO Assaf Wand for an episode of Extra Crunch Live to discuss all of the above.
<a href="https://techcrunch.com/ecl/" target="_blank">Extra Crunch Live</a> goes down every Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET/noon PT. Our next episode is with <a href="https://techcrunch.com/events/extra-crunch-live-forerunner-and-oura/" target="_blank">Forerunner&#8217;s Eurie Kim and Oura CEO Harpreet Rai</a>, and you can check out the upcoming schedule right <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/p/check-out-the-tech-leaders-joining-us-on-extra-crunch-live-in-may" target="_blank">here</a>.
In the meantime, dive into the wide-ranging conversation we had with Wallace and Wand. You can find the full video, including the ECL Live pitch-off, below.
<h2>Investing in the board</h2>
The first step in running a useful and beneficial board is determining who should be on that board, and that starts with the first round of capital investment and carries on forever.
One of the strategic benefits of Fifth Wall as an investor, according to Wallace, is that the firm was built specifically with strategic LPs in the real estate realm, allowing the firm to connect portfolio companies with massive incumbent players in the industry. Incumbents get access to new tools and software, portfolio companies get big customers, and Fifth Wall gets to reap the benefits of both. It&#8217;s a rare win-win-win.
We asked Wand about how he chose his investors, and how to weigh the value of a top-tier VC firm and a strategic angel investor, for example.
He explained that there is no right answer to a question like that, but it should always be thoroughly discussed by the team. One of the benefits of having a top-tier VC firm on board is that it has a signaling effect, helping you to recruit early team members and open doors.

What is the biggest opportunity for proptech founders? How should they think about competition, strategic investment vs. top-tier VC firms, and how to build a board? What about navigating regulation?

Assaf Wand

Brendan Wallace

Extra Crunch Live

Hippo

Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand discuss proptech’s biggest opportunities

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