Cadre, an online investment marketplace, has raised $65 million in Series C funding, led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The company describes its platform as “a smarter, data-centric approach to investing, enabling broader participation and better investor outcomes.” Cadre’s platform automates key investment processes, and its team uses data science for a quick turnaround on analyzing individual assets and identifying market-level trends and opportunities.
“With a laser focus on our mission, we’re creating a platform that allows people to expand their financial futures,” said CEO and co-founder Ryan Williams in a press release. “We believe that, with technology, we can drive down marginal costs and enable broader access to attractive investment opportunities.”
Andreessen Horowitz general partner Jeff Jordan says the firm’s large investment in Cadre represents its love of marketplace businesses that “bring efficiencies to previously inefficient markets.” Jordan believes that Cadre’s platform will open the doors of investing for alternative asset classes, namely commercial real estate.
While the Cadre marketplace is primarily focused on commercial, Williams’ background includes billions of dollars in transactions across asset classes, including residential real estate, specifically at Goldman Sachs and then Blackstone, a Wall Street giant known for acquiring single-family rental homes. Last year, Cadre scooped up a suite of residential buildings, populated with millennials and retail stores, for $60 million.
“This is not, in fact, the first time that a marketplace model has been designed for large financial assets,” said Jordan in a written statement. “When I was at eBay in the early 2000s, an entrepreneur came and presented his idea for an exchange (aka a marketplace) addressing energy commodity trading.”
“That entrepreneur was Jeffrey Sprecher and the exchange was Intercontinental Exchange (ICE),” he added. “Fast forward a decade and a half and ICE now has revenue of $4.5 billion and a market cap (as of this writing) of $36 billion, and actually owns the iconic New York Stock Exchange. Clearly, the marketplace model can be successfully applied to large financial assets.”
Jordan notes commercial real estate investments have consistently yielded returns higher than the S&P 500, and that Cadre’s focus on transparency, low fees and access to deal-by-deal discretion is perfect for investors looking to invest in this industry.
Additional participants in the funding round included Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital, Ford Foundation, General Catalyst, Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures and Thrive Capital. Cadre’s existing investors include DST, Founders Fund, SL Green and others.
In previous funding rounds, Cadre raised $68.8 million, and Cadre CEO Ryan Williams said this round’s level of investment represents significant growth and will enable the company to expand into additional markets, further develop its data program and grow its technology and real estate teams.
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