Moderne Ventures Announces its 2021 Passport Class

Moderne Ventures Announces its 2021 Passport Class

Moderne Ventures accepts seven companies into its Passport Program. These companies are driving important changes addressing the biggest challenges facing real estate, finance, insurance, hospitality and home services.

CHICAGO, April 20, 2021—Moderne Ventures, a venture fund focused on real estate, finance, insurance, hospitality and home services, announced seven new companies accepted into its 2021 Passport Program, an intensive, six-month industry immersion program providing its participants education, exposure, insight, and relationships to drive customer growth.

The 2021 Passport Companies range in services to drive greater financial health and access, sustainability, and automation within these trillion-dollar industries. This Class has raised over $32M in funding with collective valuations north of $230M. The companies are:

• JoyHub (Joyhub.io) – Culver City, CA: An AI-driven platform providing data aggregation and standardization across the leading property management systems to draw actionable business intelligence insights.

• Kaiyo (Kaiyo.com) – New York, NY: A full-service marketplace for gently-used furniture committed to great design, exceptional care and a more sustainable planet.

• Peek (Peek.us) – New York, NY: Virtual leasing solution focused on digitizing the leasing experience through interactive tours, analytics, content management and marketing tools.

• Piñata (Pinata.ai) – New York, NY: A rewards platform designed to reduce landlords’ account receivables by incentivizing residents for on-time payments, sustainable behaviors, and other community initiatives.

• MotoRefi (Motorefi.com) – Arlington, VA: Simple, transparent auto refinancing. MotoRefi helps car owners save up to $100 per month on their car payments.

• Tailorbird (Tailorbirdhomes.com) – Princeton, New Jersey: Tailorbird leverages computer vision technology to decrease construction cost and improve speed-to-market by 60+ days for value add renovations.

• Trash Butler (Trashbutler.com) – Tampa, FL: Doorstep trash & recycling powered by exceptional customer service.

“In a time of uncertainty, industry leaders are leaning in to technology solutions to guide and enhance regular revenues and operations. These Passport companies provide a big leap in helping them achieve their goals.” said Constance Freedman, Moderne Ventures’ Founder and Managing Partner.

About Moderne Ventures

Moderne Ventures invests in technology companies in the trillion-dollar industries of real estate, finance, insurance, hospitality, and home services. It has both a fund and an Industry Immersion Program, the Moderne Passport, designed to foster innovation, partnership and growth between industry partners and new emerging companies.

Moderne has built an extraordinary network of over 700 executives and corporations within its core industries and evaluates over 4,500 emerging tech companies each year. Moderne most often looks outside its industries to find technologies that can be applicable within them, and it has invested in over 100 companies across its funds, including DocuSign, Homesnap, Leaselock, ICON, and Hippo Insurance.

Learn more here and register for our Innovation Day on April 29th to hear directly from our new Passport companies.

Moderne Ventures Says Hello Alfred

Moderne Ventures recently invested in the Series A round of Hello Alfred – a logistics focused company that combines smart tech and excellent service so property managers may offer multiple on-demand amenities to tenants in their Class A properties.

Hello Alfred for Multifamily Building Tenants

Just like Bruce Wayne’s trusted butler, an ‘Alfred’ is a dedicated home-life manager who proactively takes care of time consuming tasks such as grocery shopping, laundry/dry cleaning duties, packaging, and shipping. Tenants in an ‘Alfred Building’ typically receive this basic weekly services package, however, they may also coordinate with their Alfred for additional services such as deep in-home cleaning, gift shopping, washing your Batmobile, or whatever inconvenient tasks that need to be done (at market rate), all directly through the Hello Alfred app. They appreciate the efficiencies and experience that their Alfred delivers; helping to manage “life’s administrata” allows them to spend more time on the things they love. To date, Hello Alfred has made more than 700,000 home visits, saving tenants more than 380,000 hours of time.

Hello Alfred for Multifamily Building Property Managers

Hello Alfred’s tech enabled services have a clear impact on buildings and their property managers by:

• Increasing revenue
• Reducing lease-up time
• Lowering resident churn
• Reducing operational overhead

Hello Alfred and Moderne Ventures

Something that drew the MV team to Alfred is their ability to establish personal trust with tenants in an on-demand economy where the same provider is rarely used to deliver the same service. The result is that tenants trust their Alfred (a lot). Putting a face, name, and personality in a home, a place where a very limited number of people have access too is critical to the company’s success and the happiness of tenants, who see Alfred as a differentiator and factor in whether to renew a lease or live in an Alfred building. 

We also see Alfred taking advantage of several macro trends that align with the company’s longer-term success by positioning for win-wins on several fronts:

• Multifamily construction deliveries will continue at a record pace into early 2018. Most expect supply to outstrip demand, which will place further emphasis on a building’s ability to differentiate itself. In order to compete for the growing number of consumers that value the superior amenities and the flexibility that renting brings.
• Increasing (or maintaining) rental rates with an amenity that doesn’t take up space has a positive impact on NOI.
• The ‘Amenity War’ is shifting tactically from traditional brick-and-mortar offerings, like the pool or a gym, to technology-based enablement.
• Digital natives (tenants) expect to engage with their buildings and living spaces in a customized and seamless manner

We’re excited to be a part of the Alfred story, helping to change the way people live with a service that gives them back something we all need more of: time.  

Moderne Ventures at the National Apartment Association

Moderne Ventures attended the National Apartment Association in Atlanta, GA the week of June 19th with 5 of our new Moderne Passport Class companies. An afternoon full of mentor meetings with executives from the likes of Greystar, Cortland Partners, Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, Real Property Management, and Federal Capital Partners, fostered new relationships, and filled all parties with knowledge and insight. 

On Friday afternoon, the CEO's/Founders of abode, Baroo, CubiCasa, Hello Alfred and HelloTech all presented to an engaged crowd on how they're delivering innovation to the multifamily space. Whether through amenity driven services or improving data quality, the companies and the crowd were exposed to new ideas that stand to help each other differentiate themselves across their respective marketplaces.