A friend of mine flipped me this New York Times article today talking about the rapidly growing interest in proptech and about Opendoor – a topic and a company that I have written about many times before on the blog. Here’s a snippet about proptech:… Read More
I’ve been hearing a lot about Bird recently. Perhaps it has something to do with the $15 million Series A round they raised last month (February 2018) and the $100 million Series B round they announced earlier today. A “Bird” is small electric scooters that… Read More
Yesterday it was announced (here, here, and here) that Toronto-based Top Hat has raised $22.5 million (USD) in Series-C funding. The round was led by New York-based Union Square Ventures. I am always excited to see Toronto-based startups doing well and I am particularly excited… Read More
I have been writing about the startup Opendoor.com for over 2 years now. And I continue to believe that they are the most promising disruptor in the residential real estate space. Here is the first post that I wrote back in July 2014 after they… Read More
The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto recently published a new report that looks at worldwide venture capital investment by city. The report is called Rise of the Global Startup City. The data is from 2012, because that’s what was available from Thomson Reuters, so… Read More
In 1960, real estate investment trusts were created in the U.S. with the goal of democratizing real estate ownership. Here’s how Yale professor Robert Schiller described it: “REITs were created by law in 1960 to democratize the real estate market and make it possible for a broad… Read More
Version One Ventures – which is an early-stage venture capital fund based in Vancouver – recently published a free handbook called, A Guide to Marketplaces. Online marketplaces are really fascinating because they are perhaps broader in scope than you might initially think. For example, Uber… Read More
Sunset in Toronto by Daniel Fernandes on 500px https://500px.com/embed.js If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I generally like to include at least one photo with every post. Sometimes I run out of time and I don’t always do that,… Read More
Yesterday afternoon Sam Altman of Y Combinator published a blog post talking about a new YC Fellowship program for even earlier stage companies. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Y Combinator, they are a super successful funding platform for early stage startups. They are… Read More
Electric Dreamway by Jonathan Teo on 500px https://500px.com/embed.js As disappointing as this week’s vote on Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway East was, there is one good thing that has come to the forefront and that is the will to explore road pricing. At this point, I have… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 