Women in PropTech — A Changing Scene?

PropTech, or RealTech, means software and apps to do with real estate, from CRMs aimed exclusively at rental agencies to house-hunting search engines. It’s a fast-growing industry, combining the built environment with a range of emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning. Historically, real estate is a male-dominated industry. Combine that with the fact that women-led companies tend to get less investment than their male peers, and you have to wonder, "Is there really a niche for women in Proptech?" We certainly think so — here’s why.

The Tech Gender Imbalance

Back in 2019, Forbes reported that only 10% of PropTech founders were women. This was portrayed as a shocking statistic, but sadly, for those in the know about the gender imbalances within tech businesses, it’s not that surprising at all. In 2022, women hold just over a quarter of the jobs in tech. The landscape gets bleaker the higher you climb, with the percentage of women in executive positions even lower, and the diversity here sorely lacking. Black women, for example, represent only 4% of female CEOs. However, as we’ve already seen in the world of FinTech, more women founders and leaders of tech startups are getting noticed every year.  

The same is true for PropTech and real estate in general. What was once a “boys’ club” is definitely opening up to a more diverse membership, with many women leading exciting projects that are turning heads all over the world.

Women Re-Building PropTech Expectations

Back in 2016, Savannah de Savary was hailed as one of the top 25 PropTech influencers. One of only two women on that list, her primary achievement was founding Industry Hub, now Built-ID, a professional online platform and community connecting real estate developers with the right consultants and encouraging investment in communities. She went on to receive Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2018 Property Awards, and her team recently won an EG Tech Award.

Rebecca Fitts directs real estate at Leap, an omnichannel retail platform that combines brick-and-mortar stores with digital insights via highly granular data. She’s a highly experienced real estate developer and is now interested in how the metaverse could change retail real estate.

Back to female founders, Iris Cedon and Maya Gal are both founders of Okapi, an AI-based platform that helps landlords manage medium to high-risk tenants. They combine manual risk assessment and research with the latest machine learning techniques to make incredibly accurate predictions around tenant behavior, mitigating losses for landlords. So far, Okapi has already raised $2.5 million in seed funding and is used by a number of industry leaders.

Global Support for Women in PropTech

With so many trailblazing women shattering the glass ceiling of PropTech, does more need to be done? Of course, the answer is still yes, and probably will be for a while. That’s what inspired Nikki Greenberg to start the organization Women in PropTech — a global initiative aimed at connecting women investors and entrepreneurs to try and close the gender gap in the growing real estate technology industry. There’s a hunger here to increase diversity but also to further the adoption of new and emerging technologies and show that women founders and tech specialists are just as excited, if not more so, by what the future could hold for the built environment.

The main hubs for Women in PropTech are New York, Toronto, and London, with Greenberg herself now residing in Sydney. This shows just how global the movement for women PropTech innovators is and that we should certainly expect more exciting ventures to hit the headlines very soon.

Final Word

Here at Arch Collective, we know that diversity is more than just a tick box and that everyone should have equitable opportunities to get the investment they need for their venture. Building a startup from the foundation up is an exciting challenge and one that needn’t be made harder by outdated attitudes toward gender. Talk to us about the right branding package and marketing advice, including the option to hire a freelance marketing executive, to get your tech offering in front of the right people. Book a 15-minute introductory call with our dedicated team, who can connect you to the right freelancer for your PropTech proposition or other tech venture.

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