Weekly Radar #269 - Founders Gotta Borrow Too, Preventing Homelessness with AI, and Battening the Sustainability Hatches
Here are the headlines covered for this week:
- Meow released a white glove service for founders to access mortgages.
- A pilot program in Los Angeles is leveraging AI to prevent people from slipping into homelessness, and has helped 560 people with an 87% success rate in two years.
- 830 LEED certified buildings are at risk of flooding, and regulators are exploring adding resiliency as an important factor in certification.
Let's get into your weekly dose of real estate tech and built world signal!
FINANCING
Founders Gotta Borrow, Too
By: Drew Meyers
Meow is a business banking platform that raised $22 million in 20202 led by Tiger Global. The latest development is a white-glove service for founders to access mortgages. Note that Meow is not a mortgage lender, broker, of institution, with "mortgage services [being] provided by BNY Mellon, N.A., through a partnership with Atomic Invest LLC."
This is doubly-cool. Help for founders often purposely minimizing their own salaries for the good of the business's cashflow is a needed service in the market. Additionally, I happen to love cats...thus, I love the name.
The Amazon-Better Equity Unlocker partnership is another example of helping cash-poor individuals. You can bet, more financial services targeted at this lucrative long-term segment are coming.