Property Innovation Labs (Pi Labs), an accelerator-turned-early-stage VC fund that invests in property tech startups ‘pre-Series A’, has closed a second fund of $10 million, from which it plans to make a total of 35 investments.
The London-based firm says it will invest between $70,000 and $4 million in early-stage companies globally “across the full supply chain for real estate, real estate finance and construction asset classes”.
To help with this it plans on opening international offices over the next 18 months to invest further in global property tech opportunities, although it isn’t yet disclosing where.
Notably, the second fund — which is more than ten times larger than Pi Labs minuscule first fund — has already invested in 14 property tech startups, primarily in seed and pre-seed rounds. It plans to close roughly another 10-15 deals over the next 12 months.
The VC firm recently co-led a £1 million seed investment in insurance app Brolly. Other recent investments include participating in a £1.5 million seed extension round in Airbnb management service Airsorted, and a £2.5m investment round for Plentific, a platform connecting homeowners to tradespeople.
In addition to making new investments — and now that it has a larger fund — Pi Labs says it will also look to follow on and invest in multiple rounds to further support its portfolio companies as they scale and grow. Specifically, whilst its “pre-seed investment programme” remains a cornerstone of the Pi Labs strategy, the VC says going forward it plans to deploy the majority of the new fund at seed stage.
“In the last 36 months we have progressed from an accelerator focused fund to a VC that proactively invests across the seed spectrum, which has placed us at the very centre of the property innovation ecosystem,” says Dominic Wilson, co-founder and Managing Partner of Pi Labs.
“We have already invested in a number of exceptional opportunities with this new fund and see plenty more to do over the next 24 months. We are proud to have quickly become a significant growth engine for the nascent property tech industry.”
Meanwhile, investors in the second fund include Round Hill Venture Partners, and partners from Prestbury Investments. There are 26 investors, the majority of which are institutional or family office investors across the U.K., Europe, U.S., Canada and the Middle East.