On Tuesday, property tech startup NavigatorCRE announced that it raised $17.2 million in its Series A funding round. Fulcrum Equity Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors.
Like the company’s name suggests, NavigatorCRE operates in the commercial real estate (CRE) industry. Commercial real estate — think office buildings, retail locations or property intended for renters — is nothing new. The industry has existed for a long time. But for that reason it can be a little outdated. Commercial real estate brokers and managers have to deal with a slew of paperwork, financials, legal documents and more on top of managing a portfolio of properties.
But all of this provides a lot of information that can help commercial real estate companies manage their business better. That’s why NavigatorCRE built an SaaS platform that uses data analytics to help CRE companies make more informed decisions.
“We saw there was an enormous chasm in the CRE industry for owner operators to be able to bring together portfolio, leasing, acquisitions, underwriting, debt, financials, aged receivables and market datasets into a harmonious data visualization experience,” NavigatorCRE CEO and founder Taylor Odegard said in a statement. “Most companies are forced to utilize various point solutions that have no central hub, and thus, resort to attempting to build a software platform in-house, which is rarely ever a successful or adopted endeavor.”
Investor Frank X. Dalton of Fulcrum Equity Partners added, “We’ve seen a need across industries for centralized data solutions, and Navigator has become that in the CRE space. They have revolutionized the way CRE operations approach data, paving the way for more informed, insightful decision making.”
NavigatorCRE was founded in 2015, but the company reports that it achieved significant success after expanding within the CRE industry — it used to focus on just broker services, but in 2019 it expanded to serve enterprise asset management and occupiers. With commercial real estate recovering in 2021 after a strange year due to Covid-19, NavigatorCRE hopes to continue to grow by raising this funding.
The company says it will use some of the funding to expand across North America and Western Europe, as well as launch a customer advisory council. In addition, NavigatorCRE is planning to fund a new hiring push in order to double the size of its company. It also hopes to double its revenue over the next year.
NavigatorCRE currently has about 40 employees spread across offices in Seattle, Los Angeles and Dallas.
