A new online investment platform is on the block, with an app launched this week and $ 6 million in new funding.
Seattle-based Concreit allows users to invest in their real estate fund with the click of a few buttons on their app and as little as $ 1 of initial investment.
The app’s launch is the culmination of a more than a year-long development effort by CEO Sean Hsieh, who had previously founded the Seattle-based VoIP communications company Flowroute, which he sold in 2018.
“After selling Flowroute, I started to figure out how to diversify my portfolio,” Hsieh previously told GeekWire. “And private commercial real estate became really interesting to me.”
Hsieh co-founded Concreit with Flowroute co-founder Jordan Levy and Rui Maximo, who was previously CTO at blockchain startups LifeID and StormX.
In 2019, Concreit raised nearly $ 1 million in funding from Unlock Venture Partners, a Seattle-based firm co-led by angel investor Andy Liu.
Concreit aims to offer easy access to real estate investment for anyone, Hsieh said in a statement. “We are democratizing the real estate investment process,” said Hsieh, who is also a former professional hip-hop dancer and GeekWire Geek of the Week.
The company’s real estate fund has obtained an annualized return of 5.47%, calculated from July 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021. It is managed by a group of financial professionals and focuses on passive income: Users can receive weekly payments or withdrawals on demand.
However, there are other real estate funds that people can access with a low initial investment. Vanguard’s real estate ETF, for example, is linked to a real estate index and has posted higher annual returns.
The seed funding round was led by Matrix Partners, Hyphen Capital, as well as individual investors such as Liu de Unlock, Ben Elowitz and Jon Stein, CEO of online savings and investment apps company Betterment.
