We’re excited to welcome Alcove to the LAB Ventures portfolio. Alcove is a property management software platform that allows landlords to rent out single-family properties by the room, providing a convenient and lower cost option for students and young professionals looking for housemates.
CEO Colin Tai and CTO Patrick Wickham met while studying Engineering at Duke University and experiencing for themselves the pains for finding off campus housing. Along with co-founder Mitchel Gorecki, the team began operating as a full service co-living provider in 2018 but over time has built a full software platform to allow property managers (or landlords who self-manage) to easily convert single-family rentals into a by-the-room offering.
Alcove is funded by Bling Capital (Lyft, Palantir, Instacart, Square) and Streamlined Ventures (DoorDash, Rappi, AppLovin) and currently operates in North Carolina and Georgia, with aggressive expansion plans across the sunbelt that include Florida. The company says they typically save tenants 40% versus the cost of a one-bedroom apartment and is targeting a market of 18M rental units, a $600B market.
“We have been following this market segment for a long time, and had previously tried to build a portfolio of SFRs near the University of Miami, so we know how attractive this model can be for both landlords and for tenants,” explains LAB Ventures CEO Tigre Wenrich. “But we were blown away by the software platform that Colin and Patrick have built, and how easy they make it for landlords. They’ve been growing at an impressive clip and we look forward to helping them continue to build on that success, especially as they expand to Florida.”
LAB Ventures works strategically with early stage PropTech startups and investors from the Real Estate and Construction industries providing them access to capital, corporate development, customers, innovation and outsized returns through venture capital investments.
