Real Estate Growth Needs More than VC

<Cue Jay-Z Music>

Allow us to re-introduce ourselves…

Since ramping up at the end of 2020, Unwritten Capital has backed over 400 “real estate” “tech” companies in venture rounds. (Yes, the quotes are intentional. More on that in a future post.)

As our portfolio has grown, a recurring theme emerged: Many companies don’t just need venture capital. They need real estate capital too.

Early in these company’s lives, some need to buy or lease physical assets to prove their model and reach terminal velocity for their business. 

During the venture boom, many turned to VC dollars for that capital.

Why? Because money was cheap and plentiful. 

But that approach had problems leading to a capital mismatch…

Venture capital expects 100%+ IRRs.  That’s a company’s valuation doubling every year.

Real estate is not that. The best real estate deals don’t look anything like that.

VC is better suited to scale bits, not atoms.

Software can scale infinitely. But building real-world platforms takes time, permits, people, and physical assets. (A future post on scaling atoms coming soon!)

What these companies need is real estate capital.

But the market is polarized:

• Friends & family: Too small. Unless you’ve got a rich uncle. In which case we’d like to meet your uncle so send him our way!
  

• Blackstone, Starwood, et al: Too big, too soon. These folks need to see an execution machine before they fund it. It takes 9 months to make a baby. There is no short cut there. Same story here. It takes time to both build a business that can quickly invest a nine figure investment, as well prove out a real estate thesis that supports the investment. You need both before scale dollars are comfortable jumping in.

Most traditional real estate capital doesn’t work here. 

The capital needs to be flexible in structure, forward in thinking, and comfortable playing early.

We fill the gap.

Unwritten Capital

Unwritten Capital partners with next-gen real estate platforms to provide real estate equity checks from $1 million to $100 million. That is paired with hands-on support to get operators ready for institutional scale.

Capital and Counsel are our calling cards.

We love niche asset classes. We love real estate that doesn’t look like your grandpa’s “real estate.” We love backing bold operators reshaping physical space in new ways.

We are actively partnering with the best next-generation platforms to help them win. 

Operators - ready to grow your platform with smarter capital? 

Investors - interested in co-investing in opportunistic and high-growth real estate platforms?

Let’s talk: [email protected]