This week it was announced that Social Capital Hedosophia II -- a special purpose acquisition company associated with Chamath Palihapitiya -- will merge with the real estate startup Opendoor, effectively taking the company public. Without going into all of the details, SPACs are kind of popular right now. They're a way to take companies public without going through the traditional IPO process. And Chamath is clearly a believer in the approach, as he has gone ahead and reserved all of the symbols from "IPOA" to "IPOZ" on the New York Stock Exchange. $IPOB is what will be merging with Opendoor.

But SPACs are not the point of this post. The point is that I have written a lot about Opendoor over the years on this blog. (Here are those post.) And I'm pretty sure that, on a number of occasions, I have referred to it as one of if not the most promising consumer-facing real estate startup. So in my view this announcement is a pretty big deal for both the company and for the industry. As Chamath puts it in the below investment thesis, "real estate is the largest, undisrupted form of buying/selling in the US worth more than $1.6 trillion annually." And it's only a matter of time before that process moves online.

"Cities have become the basic platforms for global innovation and economic growth, supplanting the corporation as the fundamental organizing unit of the contemporary economy." -Richard Florida

Richard Florida and Patrick Adler of the Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto have been doing some research on what they are calling "urban tech." They define it as encompassing the following industry sectors: co-living and co-working; mobility; delivery; smart cities; construction tech; and real estate tech.

Here are the largest urban tech startups based on the amount of VC investment they have received:

Below is how the space breaks down by sector. Mobility / ride hailing is the behemoth, receiving 61% of all VC investment. Food delivery is next. And "proptech" is at the bottom.

Finally, here are the top "urban tech" cities. Beijing is right up there with San Francisco.

For more information on the study, click here.

Tables: CityLab

This week it was announced that Social Capital Hedosophia II -- a special purpose acquisition company associated with Chamath Palihapitiya -- will merge with the real estate startup Opendoor, effectively taking the company public. Without going into all of the details, SPACs are kind of popular right now. They're a way to take companies public without going through the traditional IPO process. And Chamath is clearly a believer in the approach, as he has gone ahead and reserved all of the symbols from "IPOA" to "IPOZ" on the New York Stock Exchange. $IPOB is what will be merging with Opendoor.

But SPACs are not the point of this post. The point is that I have written a lot about Opendoor over the years on this blog. (Here are those post.) And I'm pretty sure that, on a number of occasions, I have referred to it as one of if not the most promising consumer-facing real estate startup. So in my view this announcement is a pretty big deal for both the company and for the industry. As Chamath puts it in the below investment thesis, "real estate is the largest, undisrupted form of buying/selling in the US worth more than $1.6 trillion annually." And it's only a matter of time before that process moves online.

"Cities have become the basic platforms for global innovation and economic growth, supplanting the corporation as the fundamental organizing unit of the contemporary economy." -Richard Florida

Richard Florida and Patrick Adler of the Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto have been doing some research on what they are calling "urban tech." They define it as encompassing the following industry sectors: co-living and co-working; mobility; delivery; smart cities; construction tech; and real estate tech.

Here are the largest urban tech startups based on the amount of VC investment they have received:

Below is how the space breaks down by sector. Mobility / ride hailing is the behemoth, receiving 61% of all VC investment. Food delivery is next. And "proptech" is at the bottom.

Finally, here are the top "urban tech" cities. Beijing is right up there with San Francisco.

For more information on the study, click here.

Tables: CityLab