A new online investment platform is on the block, with an app launched this week and $6 million in new funding.
Seattle-based Concreit enables users to invest in its real estate fund with the click of a few buttons on its app and as little as $1 starting investment.
The launch of the app is the culmination of an endeavor more than a year in the making by CEO Sean Hsieh, who had previously founded Seattle-based VoIP communications company Flowroute, which 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 formerly 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 longtime angel investor Andy Liu.
Concreit aims to offer easy access to real estate investment for anyone, said Hsieh in a statement. “We are democratizing the real estate investing 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 earned 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 is focused on passive income — users can receive weekly payouts or on-demand withdrawals.
There are other real estate funds, however, that people can access with a low initial investment. Vanguard’s real estate ETF fund, for instance, is pegged to a real estate index and has earned higher annual returns.
The seed funding round was led by Matrix Partners, Hyphen Capital, as well as individual investors including Unlock’s Liu, Ben Elowitz and Jon Stein, CEO of the online investment and savings app company Betterment.
