Era Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on investing in a broad range of business model innovations to catalyze positive change in the built world, announced the launch of its inaugural $88 million fund. Era Ventures will deploy capital across multiple stages and a full spectrum of sector-focused innovations, from enablement technologies that improve existing processes to truly disruptive platforms that reshape the industry, the company said.
The firm has identified seven core business models driving change, including but not limited to SaaS and AI, marketplaces, embedded fintech and hardtech ventures leveraging new technologies to optimize physical assets, and will actively invest across these categories.
Founded by industry veteran Clelia Warburg Peters, Era Ventures’ investors include institutional investors such as Ivy League Endowments, ICG Advisors, New York Presbyterian Hospital, The Ashforth Company, BentallGreenOak (BGO), Continental General Insurance Company (CGIC), Pelwood Holdings, First American, Bain Capital Ventures, Fenwick & West LLP and others.
“We are proud to have invested in and to support Era Ventures in its mission to drive transformational change in the real estate sector,” said Jeff Assaf, Chief Investment Officer at multifamily office ICG Advisors. “We’ve seen specialist venture funds consistently outperform in similarly complex sectors like financial services and healthcare, and Era’s approach positions it to drive fundamental disruption in a massive, yet technologically lagging, industry.”
Peters has been an investor in the proptech space since its early days — first as a co-founder of MetaProp, one of the original, strategically backed proptech funds, and then as a venture partner at Bain Capital Ventures, a generalist venture firm. She is the first woman to raise an initial fund of this size in the category.
“I’ve seen firsthand the need for a new approach to physical world innovation that combines the creativity and quality of the generalist investing approach with the sector knowledge and relationships brought by specialist funds,” said Peters, founder and managing partner at Era Ventures. “Era Ventures is leveraging our unique blend of institutional backing, top-tier venture experience and deep real estate expertise to bring both rigor and care to driving transformational change in the physical world.”
The fund’s launch comes at a critical juncture for the nearly $380 trillion global real estate industry. With productivity in construction rising just around 1% annually over recent decades according to McKinsey and buildings consuming 30% of global energy, according to the International Energy Agency, the need for innovation has never been more urgent.
Fund 1 has already backed Honey Homes, a digital handyman subscription service provider; Latii, a cross-border construction-materials marketplace; Welcome Homes, a platform to manage and build custom homes online; Ostrich, a next-generation real estate listing service in the U.K.; Shepherd, an embedded insurance platform designed for the construction industry; Truehold, a single-family rental company that combines home sales and rental leases; Homeward, an embedded financial platform powering residential real estate transactions; PassiveLogic, an AI-enabled platform for autonomous buildings; ViaBot, a Robotics-as-a-Service facility management platform and Indigo, an AI-powered platform to facilitate residential real estate transactions.
