Fifth Wall Ventures

Fifth Wall Ventures, founded in 2016, is a venture capital firm focused exclusively on real estate technology. As of 2017, Fifth Wall Ventures had raised $212 million.

The firm was founded by Brad Greiwe and Brendan Wallace. Greiwe co-founded single-family home rental company Invitation Homes, which went public in 2017 with a $6.7 billion valuation. Wallace started his career as a real estate analyst at Goldman Sachs and worked for The Blackstone Group's real estate division. He also founded Identified (company) and co-founded Cabify. Greiwe met Wallace through Blackstone, which was the only investor in Invitation Homes. The two began investing by forming special purpose vehicles.

Fifth Wall Ventures was formed in 2016 with capital commitments of more than $20 million. The firm announced a $221 million fund in May 2017. About half of Fifth Wall’s $240 million in funding comes from strategic real estate industry partners. These include CBRE Group, the largest commercial real estate services and investment firm in the world; Prologis, the largest industrial REIT in the world; Equity Residential, the largest owner of apartments in the US; Lennar Corporation, the second largest homebuilder in the country, Macerich, a mall operator; Lowe's, the home improvement chain; Host Hotels & Resorts; and the office developer Hines.

As of May 2017, Fifth Wall had invested roughly $70 million dollars in half a dozen companies, including portfolio management software company VTS, home-selling platform Opendoor, title insurance startup States Title, and storage provider Clutter. Other investments include ClassPass (a reservation app for fitness classes); B8ta (technology retailer) and Notarize (online notary software). The fund’s biggest holding as of May 2017 was OpenDoor, which has raised almost $320 million.

The company expanded into early stage investing in July 2017 with an startup accelerator program. While its main fund is reserved for companies with existing large real estate clients, the accelerator invests in companies with valuations under $25 million, making investments between $500,000 and $1 million. The program is virtual, consisting of weekly calls with investment staff and introductions to potential corporate partners. The accelerator is also investing in companies that will be of the most use to its strategic real estate backers. The program ends with a demo day for potential co-investors.