CrowdStreet (founded in Bend, Oregon), a crowdfunding marketplace connecting accredited investors with institutional-quality real estate investments, announced it has closed $800,000 in seed funding, led by Green Visor Capital and Seven Peaks Ventures and joined by Portland Seed Fund. CrowdStreet will use the capital to grow its investor membership base, attract new real estate sponsors and continue to enhance its platform.
“CrowdStreet was born and bred in Bend, thanks in part to the support and innovative culture at Compass Commercial Real Estate,” said Darren Powderly, CCIM, co-founder of CrowdStreet, Inc. along with CrowdStreet CEO Tore Steen.
“It’s fun and rewarding to see the company establish itself nationally as a leader in the real estate crowdfunding marketplace. Local investors can join the ride by registering as investor-members and browsing our commercial real estate offerings to see if they meet their investment criteria. We’re obsessed with providing our investors with the best possible experience.”
Dino Vendetti, general partner at Seven Peaks Ventures, and Simon Yoo, managing partner at Green Visor Capital, have joined the board of directors. Additionally, CrowdStreet has added two key executives to its roster: Ian Formigle as vice president of Investments and Steve Drew as vice president of Product and Marketing.
“CrowdStreet’s mission is to provide the most trusted and reliable real estate investment marketplace designed to simplify transactions between accredited investors and institutional-quality real estate developers and operators,” said Steen.
“CrowdStreet has already posted properties exceeding $100 million in total property value that provide investors a variety of both income or growth-oriented investment opportunities. Today marks an exciting milestone for the company as we enter a new phase of growth with the financial backing and an experienced leadership team to support our expansion.”
“We invested in CrowdStreet because of the team’s hyper-focus on the institutional real estate market, where accredited investors want to put their money,” said Michael Walsh, partner at Green Visor Capital. “They have attracted a high caliber of investments out of the gate and we believe this strategically differentiates CrowdStreet from its competitors. The founding team’s deep experience in commercial real estate, securities, consumer Internet and software development is the right mix of expertise and pedigree to give them an edge in fundamentally changing the way accredited investors invest directly in real estate, and the way high-end developers and operators market their investment opportunities.”
The Service
CrowdStreet offers accredited investors unique access to institutional-quality commercial real estate investment opportunities through an intuitively designed online marketplace. Through the marketplace, investors can easily find suitable investment opportunities, manage offers, track investment performance and build a portfolio of commercial real estate investments — at no cost to the investor. Investors can search the CrowdStreet marketplace to find and select pre-screened commercial real estate opportunities by product type, geographic region and targeted return.
CrowdStreet also provides real estate operators a channel for reaching a large nationwide pool of high net-worth and accredited investors outside their existing regional networks. By automating the marketing and subscription process, each transaction becomes incrementally more cost-effective for the operator, reducing the time and cost of raising capital. CrowdStreet offers marketing assistance, support services to facilitate the investment process, a single point of contact for each sponsor and a mechanism for ongoing customer service over the life of the investment.
In July, CrowdStreet completed its first public posting on behalf of Mainstreet Bloomington, LLC to fund a 66,197-square-foot, Next Generation™ care and rehabilitation facility with 100 recovery suites. Mainstreet raised $1.6 million in just four weeks, one of the largest raises for a real estate crowdfunding transaction.
“The campaign we ran on CrowdStreet produced outstanding results in a very short period of time and we couldn’t be happier,” said Scott White, COO of Mainstreet. “Changes to the JOBS ACT have opened the door to expand the geographic reach of our real estate investment opportunities. We think CrowdStreet is the perfect vehicle for developing relationships with a wider pool of accredited investors throughout the U.S.”
New Executives
Prior to joining CrowdStreet, Formigle served as an acquisitions officer for ScanlanKemperBard Companies. He has more than 20 years combined experience in real estate private equity, capital formation, startups, securities and equity and options trading. Formigle will manage the company’s accredited investor channel and screen new posting proposals to ensure that investment opportunities meet the company’s criteria and vision.
Drew is a senior product management and marketing executive with more than 15 years of experience in the software industry, launching multiple new products and expanding existing products into new markets. He has worked for Sage Software, Paydici, Radiant Systems (acquired by NCR) and BlueCube Software (acquired by Red Prairie). Drew is charged with expanding the company’s product feature set and market reach.
About CrowdStreet
CrowdStreet provides a crowdfunding marketplace that connects accredited investors with institutional-quality real estate investments. With its cloud-based investment processing and investor relationship management platform, CrowdStreet offers real estate operators, funds and private equity companies an online vehicle to raise capital and manage relationships with new and existing investors more efficiently and cost effectively. Based in Portland, Ore., CrowdStreet was founded in 2013 by a team with deep experience in commercial real estate, finance, consumer Internet and software development. For more information, visit www.crowdstreet.com.
About Green Visor Capital
Green Visor Capital invests in, and works with, passionate entrepreneurs that use innovative technology to solve substantive issues in financial services and do so in a socially responsible manner, which we believe will lead to the generation of large-scale shareholder value. Green Visor Capital was launched in late 2013 and its general partners include Joe Saunders, the former chairman and CEO of Visa, Inc., the world’s largest payments company. For more information visit www.greenvisorcapital.com.
About Seven Peaks Ventures
Seven Peaks Ventures is Oregon’s premier early-stage venture capital fund investing in capital-efficient companies whose founders are passionate about transforming lives, industries and businesses with innovative solutions in consumer software, enterprise and digital health technologies. Founded in 2013, Seven Peaks’ mission is to give entrepreneurs in Central Oregon and throughout the Pacific Northwest an “unfair advantage” in building and scaling their businesses by providing them with capital and access to experience, expertise and networks that can help them execute on their vision. For more information visit www.sevenpeaksventures.com.
