Company: La Haus
What they do: La Haus is a consumer-focused end-to-end residential real estate platform that facilitates traditional real estate transactions digitally in Latin America.
Industry: PropTech (real estate technology)
Funding: Total of $16M; $10M Series A
Co-Investors: Kaszek Ventures, Acrew Capital

At NFX, to make transparent to the founder community how VCs think, we like to make public our rationale for investing. We recently participated in a Series A round for La Haus. We also led the seed round and have known the team since they first launched in 2017. When La Haus Founder Jeronimo Uribe first cold emailed me, he was starting a business that grew out of a class project at Stanford about online real estate in South America. His sophistication was impressive and highly unusual for early founders. When we met the team, we were equally impressed with his co-founder and President Rodrigo Sanchez-Rios and CTO Santigo Garcia. The more we learned about La Haus, the more clear it became they were a perfect fit for NFX.

Here are 3 biggest reasons we decided to invest in La Haus.

1 – A World-Class Team with Local Expertise

The founding team is outstanding. They combine deep, local country knowledge and understanding of their specific geographical market – where they were born and live – with the best of Silicon Valley. They spent considerable time in the Valley as founders and as students. Jeronimo (Colombian) and Rodrigo (Mexican) both went to graduate school at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The strength of the founding team and their global network gives them the ability to bring on world-class talent. We also love their scrappiness. By the time we first invested at the pre-seed stage, La Haus already completed more than 100 transactions, an early sign that this is a team that can execute on a big opportunity.

2 – Deep Market and Industry Knowledge

The founding team had spent many years in the real estate industry – one that I know very well from my time at Trulia. Prior to launching La Haus, Jeronimo and Rodrigo founded a real estate investment and development company in Medellin, Colombia that generated over $350 million worth of projects in retail, industrial, and residential properties. They know the LatAm real estate market inside and out. La Haus estimates residential real estate in LatAm is worth $10 trillion with over 150 million urban residential units. When it achieves market parity with the U.S. in terms of efficiency, LatAM should drive over 5 million residential real estate transactions each year. This is a large addressable market that is highly fragmented and inefficient. From his time in Silicon Valley, Jeronimo understands how great proptech companies have been built in other parts of the world and he grasps the market opportunity to professionalize, modernize, and drive innovation in LatAm real estate.

3. Good Timing

I’ve written about why timing is everything for startups. And I believe the timing is perfect for La Haus and the market need they are addressing – residential real estate in one of the fastest growing economic regions in the world. In my career, I have spent 10+ years studying and operating in the real estate industry, going back to my time as the CEO of Trulia. As a European, I’ve always been interested in learning from international models. I have studied similar online real estate businesses and how real estate markets are developing on every continent. The LatAm market remains highly fragmented. Information about real estate in LatAm is scarce. There is no equivalent of the Multiple Listing Service in the U.S. Even estimating market size is challenging. Inevitably, dominant marketplaces for buyers, sellers, and real estate agents form in every market. La Haus is positioned to be that dominant marketplace; it is a startup in the right market at the right time.

To learn more about La Haus, visit their website.