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RELEVATION is paving the way to save the world

Updated: May 12, 2022


If you had one shot, or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?

For many founders, VCs, entrepreneurs, and tech giants, the first 2 editions of RELEVATION was the place to make deals, share exit strategies, forge M&As, as well as, consolidation of innovation.


What is RELEVATION?


RELEVATION is a unique two day digital transactional event on 29th and 30th of June matching founders of UrbanTech with any kind of investors such as business angels, venture capital firms, to private equities and corporates. At first, RELEVATION targeting VCs, but then, gradually, it extended the scope of matchmaking to include connecting GPs with LPs, founders with exit partners, and employers with high potentials. After the huge success of RELEVATION ‘21, the only second edition of the summit, this year’s event promises to exceed expectations after securing an investment from CRETech, the industry’s tech giant, in order to fuel RELEVATION’s global growth. Why digital? Because we think that when it comes to transactions, remote events are more efficient. They allow the attendees to use digital features, target the right people to meet globally, send meeting requests and meet 25 people per day.


Last year’s event was a huge success, said, the founder of RELEVATION, Idriss Goossens. A total of 324 attendees, representing around 150 founders and 100 VCs and more than 2600 interactions on the summit’s digital platform, in terms of attendee engagement. Furthermore, a post-event survey showed that 95% of the people said that they will attend the next edition.


So what is RELEVATION ‘22 all about?


This year’s digital summit is structured with the most important content program and keynote speakers from around the world. For instant, the RELEVATION team was able to gather the largest public investors in the world, like Softbank, FifthWall, A/O Proptech, as well as, founders of multi-million exits such as Tim Curran, the founder of Building Engines, who sold to JLL, and the chairman of Polygon, who sold for 7 billion euros to Microsoft. In addition to that, this RELEVATION ‘22 is also focusing on topics that can raise awareness on how to save the world in eight years, the Net-Zero CO2 emissions target, and several lessons learned from people who made very successful exits in the past.


It is no surprise that this year the team wants to put a human dimension into the revolution of real estate and construction, that is why they are focusing on discussions dedicated to solving the climate crisis. Therefore, for the first time ever, RELEVATION is also inviting mayors of major cities to join the summit. This great initiative is the result of knowing that we cannot solve the global fight against global climate change without the help and support of regulators.


What are the short and long objectives of RELEVATION?


For founders, attending RELEVATION is beneficial because it's the only place where you can meet more than 150 VCs willing to invest in UrbanTech. On the other hand, for VCs, other than getting access to talents, and start exit conversations and upfront closings, VCs have the opportunity to meet more than 350 founders, who are raising capital, in just 48 hours. Yet, the most important value for a VC is to that RELEVATION is the only singular place where VCs can meet all the other VCs to discuss co-investment strategies, investment scope, and also meet their exit partners. Hence, it's really a way to build or to nurture the network that doesn't exist elsewhere.


Speaking to Idriss, he explains: “Our target is to generate 600 deals. Meaning the short term objective is to have 600 transactions that will not be closed at RELEVATION, but that will be initiated at the digital summit and then closed in the next six months. Such deals can be, for example, founders closing fundraising rounds, employers hiring talents, GPs closing the rounds with LPs. Yet, the long term objective is to contribute defining the standards, bring more efficiency and transparency into the investments in the built world. Since decarbonize Real Estate will cost USD 18-20T, we want to be the platform promoting UrbanTech investments, but also optimizing the process of investing and matching more efficiently the demand with the offer.”


What we are the most proud of is that when you assemble the right people in the right (digital) room, the magic really happens: big deals are initiated, big ideas are emerging, exits are profiling themselves and it really has an impact on the tangible built world. It really increases the innovation maturity of the the construction & real estate value-chain, for the benefit of us, humans, spending 85% of our time in-door.


How can RELEVATION push the trends of PropTech and UrbanTech moving forward?


In numbers, if you compare the amount of PropTech VCs existing in Europe, in 2015 we had only 3 vertical PropTech VCs existing in Europe in 2015, however, today there are 32 VCs in Europe. So the size of the capital available and ready to be deployed is huge. More so, globally $32 billion was invested in 2021 compared to $27 billion in 2020 and $25 billion in 2019.


Whilst we see a holistic growth in the industry, we know that we need much more capital to be able to decarbonize real estate. For instance, it has been documented that we need more than $20 trillion, however, in PropTech, the numbers say we only invest, on average, around $20 to $30 billion per year.


So, if we need to reach $20 trillion by 2030 and decrease 50% of the co2 emissions, we need to submit a large volume of investments each year. Hence, it is expected to see only more and more investments in PropTech, especially in everything related to social and environmental impact, because of the eight year time-horizon.


How will a fundraising summit like RELEVATION help the industry reach ESG goals, consolidation of innovation, and being self-sufficient and energy dependent?


It is crucial to understand that RELEVATION is not another webinar or another digital event! This is a transactional platform with the ambition to increase the number of transactions between the sector. The impact of RELEVATION could be that it generate 600 deals, however, there is also the possibility to facilitate X hundreds of millions of investments, and contribute to do X amount of exits in one year.


Concretely, with regards to ESG, RELEVATION facilitates the consolidation of PropTech. We are, today, in a phase where we see a growing number of consolidations, meaning more and more M&A are being made. This is why we decided to invite a big amount of tech giants like Nemetschek Group, Autodesk, Siemens, Microsoft, an Procore Technologies, as they are willing to acquire startups. As a result, RELEVATION will be facilitating the exit by having them in one place at the same time.





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