📰 TLDR

• Gradient Comfort raises additional $9M in Series A

• Material Evolution raises £15M in Series A

• Woodio secures €16.3M in growth funding

• Honey Homes raises $9 million in a Series A

• WIDMO gets €5.5M from the EIC Accelerator

• Clearstory raises $5.5M in funding

• Guest House raises $3.5M in funding

• Glowb has raised £1.2 million in its first funding round

• 🌟PropTech Star of the week: 1KOMMA5° is a residential ClimateTech startup (and newest German unicorn) that aims to be the one-stop shop for sale, installation, and services related to solar, electricity storage, and charging infrastructure for homes in Europe.

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❗Highlights in PropTech

Gradient Comfort

• Gradient Comfort raises additional $9M in Series A

• Gradient Comfort is a San Francisco, CA-based green technology company focused on transforming heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC)

• Gradient Comfort provides the Gradient, a window heat pump designed to give consumers a heating and cooling system that does not block the window.

Material Evolution

• Material Evolution raises £15M in Series A

• Material Evolution, a Middlesbrough, UK-based materials company producing cement from industrial waste streams

• Material Evolution uses proprietary technology to produce decarbonized cement. It replaces the kiln in traditional cement production with an Alkali Fusion process that manufactures cement at ambient temperatures, resulting in a cement that is economical, lower in carbon, and is produced with less energy.

Woodio

• Woodio secures €16.3M in growth funding

• Woodio is a design company manufacturing ecological, water-resistant wood composite products for bathrooms. Woodio uses aspen in chip form and chips generated from side-streams of the forest industry as its main raw material. The company says that carbon footprint of a wash basin made from its biomaterial is up to 80 percent smaller compared to an equivalent-sized ceramic basin.

Honey Homes

• Honey Homes raises $9 million in a Series A

• Honey Homes wants to make the maintenance part of home ownership less painful by offering up a dedicated handyman to on a monthly basis to take care of all the random tasks on your to-do list

• Homeowners pay Honey Homes a flat fee ($200 per month or $2,000 per year) for the convenience of a membership-based “end-to-end” service using its app.

WIDMO

• WIDMO gets €5.5M from the EIC Accelerator

• WIDMO builds a unique solution for subsurface tomography based on spectral ground penetrating radar and advanced analytical software.

Clearsatory

• Clearstory raises $5.5M in funding

• Clearstory provides a change order communications tool for general contractors to prevent lost revenue, specialty contractors get paid faster, and teams make financial decisions through access to real-time data in one centralized location.

• The company has onboarded Specialty Contractors of all sizes across every trade vertical, including KONE Elevators, Cherry Coatings Painting, Performance Contracting Group, TrueTeam Insulation and Conco Concrete. Clearstory also provides real-time integrations with ERP systems, accounting software, project management and cloud storage solutions, including Procore, CMiC, Viewpoint, Sage and others.

Guest House

• Guest House raises $3.5M in funding

• Guest House aims to help realtors and homeowners use technology to their advantage through tech-enabled home staging.

Glowb

• Glowb has raised £1.2 million in its first funding round

• Glowb offers simple solar energy and battery solutions for homeowners, due to the complexity of sourcing solar solutions

🌟PropTech Star of the week: 1KOMMA5°

Germany-based 1KOMMA5° is targeting the energy transition in the real estate industry by digitalizing heat supply. Recently, the company has made significant strides by securing a €430M Series B and securing the title of Germany’s newest unicorn. This company seeks to revolutionize the heating industry by enabling real estate owners to manage and optimize their heat supply digitally, improving energy efficiency and sustainability.

Like many sectors, the heating industry is undergoing a significant transition, moving from traditional energy sources to more renewable, sustainable options. 1KOMMA5° stands out in this transition by providing a cloud-based solution that gives real estate owners full transparency over their heat supply.

1KOMMA5° Solutions:

1. 4 Product Categories -

   • Solar Power System

   • Energy Storage

   • Wallbox

   • Heatpump

2. Digital Control - 1Komma5° offers a comprehensive digital interface that allows users to control, analyze, and manage heat supply remotely.

3. Data Analysis - With the use of data and analytics, the platform offers insights into energy consumption and efficiency, enabling users to optimize energy use and reduce costs.

At the core, 1KOMMA5° produces an Internet of Things (IoT) device called Heartbeat, which helps homeowners reduce their electricity cost by connecting their solar system with their electricity storage, wallbox, and heat pump.

1KOMMA5° is capitalizing on its recent expansion into six additional markets through the acquisition of Viasol. 1Komma5° is also setting its sights on further growth into Spain, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland by the end of 2023.

What do we like?

• Climate Impact - The platform's focus on energy efficiency aligns with global climate change goals. If 1KOMMA5°'s solution is widely adopted, it could potentially have a meaningful impact on CO2 emissions reduction in the real estate sector.

• Potential Market - Given that heating makes up a substantial portion of energy consumption in buildings, the potential market is substantial, especially given the EU regulation on achieving sustainability goals by 2050. This is particularly true in Germany and other colder climates where heating is a significant cost for property owners for most of the year.

• Economic Benefit - With rising energy costs, the platform's ability to optimize heat supply and potentially reduce costs could be of considerable financial benefit to property owners.

What are the risks? 

Given the large potential market and recent unicorn status in terms of funding, there’s little probability that 1KOMMA5° would succumb to major risks. If so, such risks may be:

• Competition - the market is large enough that multiple companies can grab sizeable market share. This doesn’t seem like a factor in the short term.

• Regulation - compliance and data privacy or regulations in a variety of different countries that may require costly modification in production lines, software, or processes.

• Operations and logistics - scaling, maintaining, and ensuring customer success and profitability, especially when dealing with consumers and selling hardware, is quite challenging. This is the most probable risk in our opinion, but given the amount of capital that 1Komma5° has raised, is less likely to occur.

Overall

Though it’s a young company in a hot subsector of the real estate industry (sustainability), 1KOMMA5°'s recent funding success suggests that the company is well fortified against the aforementioned risks. As the company continues to grow and secure market share, it will be interesting to see how it transforms the industry in the long term.

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