Recap on 2018

2018 is coming to an end. It was an exciting year for us! So, I want to take the moment to recap on the year and tell you what moved us, what we experienced and what changed. Enjoy!

PropTech Yearbook

At the end of 2017, Alex had the more analogue idea to come out with an overview on the PropTech scene in the DACH region in form of a book. Publishing a book is not as simple as one would think though. In a team of 4 people we scanned almost 400 PropTech Startups, meaning their business model, the founding team and their socials from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We gathered all this infomation as well as the typeforms some startups completed themselves, and previous data we already had into an excel (damn excel...), which then turned into the profile pages in the book. Next to this we started researching the different categories the companies were settled in to see how the distribution is in the whole scene. With all of this and the help of a wonderful designer from Operation Butterfly (who also designed "The Hundert") this then turned into our PropTech Yearbook! So much work, but so worth it now! It's great to hold something in your hands that you worked on for several weeks with your team and receive positive feedback from people.

Demo Day | Batch 2

On March 8th we celebrated our Demo Day for Batch 2! Over 90 people from the industry such as investors, VC's and other PropTech passionates came to Techquartier to watch AllVR, Simplifa, VRnow and wohnungshelden pitch their business model and present what they learned in our program. At the end of the event Alexander gave a short outlook on the upcoming batch where the booster wants to become more international and broaden its spectre even more. Great day and even greater to see now what they achieved in the last couple of months after completing the program. They are extremely hard working teams and it is great so see how successful they are!

Selection Day | Batch 3

After the second Batch ended, Jakob and Alex started scouting again for new teams for the third batch. Out of around 40 applications, we invited 12 of them to our selection day which took place on the 16th of May. Our investment committee consisting of Klaus Freiberg (Vonovia), Marc Stilke (Booster Co-Initiator), Axel von Starck (Hevella Capital) and Dr. Emilio Matthaei (Colinus) debated for over an hour with Alex and Sebastian which teams would be selected to participate in the next program round. They decided on: Bots4you, Rentseed and Stegimondo. Exquance joined a little later as well. In the beginning of August Batch number 3 could then officially begin!

FUTURE: PropTech Berlin

Our mother company blackprintpartners organised FUTURE: PropTech Berlin for the second time this year. It was an successful event with over 400 attendees, insightful panels and deepdiving tech speeches. My personal favourite of the year. The day itself was stressful but went quite smoothly. After this we held the second Franco-German PropTech meetup with Robin Rivaton, which was also very successful! I am looking forward to FUTURE: PropTech Berlin 2019!

Speeches | Moderations | Workshops | Interviews…

... you name it! Alex and Jakob are your people! Since the Booster's mission is not only to accelerate PropTechs through connecting them to renowned real estate companies, but also to participate and work for the constant development in the digitalization of the real estate industry they travel all over Europe to enlighten people on the topic. To only name a few, we made an appearance (Panel / Speech/ Moderation) at PropTech Riga, PropTech Russia Summit, Real Innovation, Real Estate Innovation Summit, MIPIM PropTech, Expo Real, ZIA Tag der Immobilienwirtschaft, FUTURE: PropTech London/Berlin/Vienna and many more...

Research

After publishing our PropTech Yearbook and together with our research pro Rame, we really dived deeper into researching. Together with Jakob, the both of them started working on a profound database with information on the PropTechs of the DACH region, to really acquire a deep knowledge of the market and its changes. This is one of our most important assets because it really demonstrates our broad market awareness. This database is the basis for the development of our statistics and overviews. If you are interested in our results, the button will take you to our graphics page, where you can also download them.

University Cooperations

We had so many student groups here at Techquartier this year, very exciting! We have official cooperations with Hochschule Aschaffenburg, EBS University of Business and Law and TU Darmstadt. About one we have to talk about in particular: Alex co-organizes the course "Entrepreneurship in Real Estate" at Hochschule Aschaffenburg, where the team with the best business model could win 1,000 EUR (sponsored by us!). The best part is, this team not only saw this as a university project but really founded their PropTech Startup based on this course. They are called DOCESTATE. We love to spark the founders passion in students and seeing them develop their idea and evolve into a legit business.
Other universities that visited us were IREBS Regensburg and HfWU Nürtingen Geislingen. Always a good time talking to young motivated people who are eager to learn about our scene!

Demo Day | Batch 3

The culmination of generation 1! We celebrated our Demo Day on 29th of November, together with our PropTech Alumnis, our Partners, our current PropTech teams and anyone interested in the scene! We kicked it off with a warm welcome by Alex and Sebastian and then Jakob presented our research results which we acquired in the last couple of months, which was very interesting for the audience (find our statistics on here under "PropTech Insights"). Then our Alumni teams (Roomhero, AllVr, Vrnow and wohnungshelden) presented their achievements after the Booster program ended for them, which made us very proud. They are working very hard and are all extremely passionate people! The most important part of the evening, which was our current Batch 3 teams Pitches, were successful as well. We are looking forward to hear more about what opportunities opened up for them after it. It was a great evening, which we ended with a couple bottles of wine, great food and nice talks. Now we are looking forward to starting Batch 4 and by this our second Generation!

4 new Booster Team Members

The Booster Team doubled in size this year and we are still recruiting!
Junior Marketing Manager Jill joined in January to support the Booster in the online marketing sector.
Research working student Rame joined in March to dive deep into the PropTech backgrounds.
Graphic Designer Felix joined in June to rescue the Booster from creating graphics in powerpoint, and is an immense support in the whole field.
Business Developer Mark joined in September to start developing the company builder within our company group.
Want to know more about everyone? We have a blogpost up introducing the whole team!

Scouting for new PropTech Teams

Also a very important and interesting, yet very time consuming part! Alex, Sebastian and Jakob go through all the PropTech team applications, coordinate videocalls with them, partly meet them in person and decide which teams we invite to our selection day to pitch in front of the investment comitee. This also contributes to our deep knowledge of the market, because we experience directly where the founding tendency is going at what time. Which aspects are important here? Definitely the team itself, their experience, if they can cover several areas of competence (e.g. tech, real estate...), then of course the potential of the business model and if one of the partners is fit to work with them. Very interesting!

Team Events

Next to the occasional beer after work, events for teambuilding are extremely important. For example in June we participated in the NAI Apollo charity soccer cup where we teamed up with some of our alumni team members, which was really fun! We also went to the annual summerparty from Feldhoff & Cie, which is also part of our company group. Paul held a big barbecue at his home, which was cool! Also, so much fun was our internal christmas party with the "SleevesUp"-team, where we played lasertag and had glühwein and snacks at their open space in Rödelheim. We are already looking forward to the next team events!

‍

What an eventful year it was! Thanks to everyone who contributed to it. Now, we will go into the christmas break, rejuvenate our powers and start our work freshly in 2019.

Happy Holidays!

The Booster Team

‍

‍