W
elcome to the TechCrunch Trade, a weekly startups-and-markets e-newsletter. It’s impressed by the daily TechCrunch+ column the place it will get its title. Need it in your inbox each Saturday? Join here.
Not way back, I questioned whether or not startups could help solve the U.S. housing disaster. Now there’s a brand new title on the town: Airbnb spinout Samara, which simply secured recent funding. As for Dig, it obtained acquired not lengthy after I began digging into its class: information safety posture administration. — Anna
The Airbnb playbook
With a scarcity of no less than 3.8 million dwellings, the U.S. housing disaster isn’t displaying many indicators of enchancment. Evaluating the scenario to what it was only one yr in the past, VC agency Gutter Capital famous that it even worsened in some respects — mainly, funding.
“[I]nvestor curiosity within the housing market, beforehand chilled, has frozen over,” managing companion James Gettinger wrote. “Whereas rising rates of interest have been no match for the undersupply of housing, they have been greater than sufficient to scare away enterprise capital traders. We’ve been informed by proptech funds that they solely put money into software program now. Regrettably, software program can’t construct properties.”
In distinction, Gutter Capital nonetheless stands by the thesis it phrased one yr in the past: “There’s a historic alternative right now to put money into companies that speed up the event of housing in america.”
