Weekly Radar #294: The Glass Act, Have A Little Empathy Mate, Co-Ownership's Price Moment
What's covered in this week's GEM Crystal Weekly Radar:
- Smart window maker View declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy and goes private.
- Hume AI's Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) technology optimizes for human well-being. The demo is open for new users to try.
- Pacaso is lowering the price of co-ownership by adding more listings and making more templates available.
- Consisting of 30 stocks, the GEM Proptech Index had a combined market cap of $250.928B, a 3.35% decrease from the previous week.
Geek Estate Blog Recap:
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Transmission Recap:
Most recently, Dennis Steigerwalt dove into a few technologies that help real estate developers maximize water efficiency and minimize waste. Before that, we released our Proptech Earnings Radar for Q4 2023.
CLIMATE
THE GLASS ACT
By: Logan Nagel
View, makers of smart windows that allow control over their level of shade or serve as semi-transparent displays, will go private and declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy following a precipitous stock price drop. The company will not wink out of existence—investors RXR Realty and Cantor Fitzgerald plan to keep the company active and allow it to continue to grow as a private company, should the bankruptcy be approved.
Alongside several regulatory challenges, View drew the terrible hand of going public as an office-focused product in 2020. With office investment down and materials costs up, purchases of View’s windows plummeted. Their price point of up to 10 times that of traditional energy-efficient windows doesn’t help either. With energy performance benefits, increases to user comfort, and, at least for now, a cool factor, smart windows still have legs despite View’s misfortune. Other property types such as multifamily and medical offer promise, and are areas View is already operating in. Competitors could step in: SageGlass and Gauzy have both raised substantial funding, while Swedish firm Chromogenics announced their first North American order just this week. The landscape is unconsolidated, and every single property needs a lens to the outside world of light. Keep an eye out for the next giant name in this niche.
STARTUPS
HAVE A LITTLE EMPATHY, MATE
By: Drew Meyers
Hume AI's CEO Alan Cowen was the guest on a recent episode of This Week in Startups. I listened to the podcast on my drive down to Central Oregon today and was blown away with how far voice AI has come. With a goal of helping developers bring empathy to every conversation, the company describes its Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) as "a conversational voice API powered by empathic" that "measures nuanced vocal modulations, guiding language and speech generation." It combines "language modeling and text-to-speech with better EQ, prosody, end-of-turn detection, interruptibility, and alignment." Everything is aligned to optimize for human well-being.
Siri and Alexa have jaded us into the thinking that talking to a "bot" is dry and transactional. With Hume's technology, I assure you that is not the case. With Hume, the interactions seem, well, human. It tells jokes and "roasts" people. It picks up both tone of voice and facial expression, and then responds accordingly. Prior to the demo on the podcast today, I thought we were years away from having emotionally intelligent conversations with computers. Now, I know that reality is already here. I highly encourage you to demo it for yourself here...then, come back here and tell us what you think.
REAL ESTATE
CO-OWNERSHIP'S PRICE MOMENT
By: Drew Meyers
Pacaso is finally leaning into lowering the price of co-ownership opportunities, announcing that they are opening up "thousands of new listings nationwide resulting in a 200-fold increase in homes, with co-ownership opportunities now starting as low as $200,000." Beyond that, they are also now selling "a la carte co-ownership services to support individuals looking to independently co-own real estate." That comes in the form of two templates, one "to help convert a home into an LLC to share with others" ($50) and the other "helps lay out an operating agreement for managing the property" ($250), according to Inman.
Smart move by ❇️Spencer Rascoff, Marnie Blanco❇️ and team to significantly increase listing inventory at lower price points. I still believe ❇️the magic price point for the explosion of co-ownership is sub $100k❇️, however, $200k is better than $500k-$1M (or higher). Pacaso certainly has huge brand/mindshare in this category. That said, a simple demand matching interface across every MLS listing could work: Let anyone express interest in co-owning any listing, and then use a group chat for those interested to sort out the details. Seems a worthwhile test for a platform such as Fractional (cc ❇️Stella Han❇️), or could serve as en entry for a large portal (ie Zillow).
BIZ INTEL
Proptech Index Update
Consisting of 30 stocks, the GEM Proptech Index had a combined market cap of $250.928B, a 3.35% decrease from the previous week.
Editor's Note: This week, smart window maker View was removed from the Index after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 2nd. The restructuring, financed by Cantor Fitzgerald and RxR, will transition the company to private ownership. Trading of View's stock ceased on Wednesday when shares dropped to $0.14, reflecting a 98.5% decrease in value in the past year. At its peak on June 10, 2021, View's shares were valued at $580.80, with a market capitalization of $2.1 billion.
WeWork remains in our portfolio due to its industry relevance and marketable property assets, even as it undergoes bankruptcy restructuring.
GEM DIAMOND MEMBER NEWS
- Notable was added to LeadingRE's Solutions Group. – Jeff Kennedy, Austin Lane and Max Kuhl
- Listen to Jeff Allen talk CubiCasa on ClearCapital's podcast, ClearCast. -- Kenon Chen
- Bryan Copley was sworn in as a Planning Commissioner for the City of Redmond, WA.
- ZenniHome partnered with the Navajo Nation. – Bob Worsley