A behind the scenes look at WiredScore’s $15m series B fundraise

Led by Beringea, with key participation from strategic and venture fund investors, including Cushman & Wakefield, Crow Holdings, and Taronga Ventures as well as returning investors Fifth Wall, Bessemer Venture Partners and Jona Capital.

This marked commitment to WiredScore enables us to deliver more impact by continuing to bring industry-enhancing products to market, empowering people and places through technology.

Hi Arie and William – could you talk us through how the Series B fundraise ties in with WiredScore’s overarching vision?

Arie: At WiredScore, we empower people and spaces through technology all over the world. Humans can do some pretty amazing things when they have access to great connectivity and tech. To facilitate this, our spaces need to be fit for purpose. This is why WiredScore exists. With the Series B funding, we believe that we can accelerate the pace at which we fulfil our purpose. With more capital we can:

• Continue to grow our team and join up with the most talented people in the world that share our vision: to become recognized and trusted as the leading voice for technology in the built world.
• Expand the WiredScore footprint to drive value to a wider breadth of buildings in more geographies.
• Invest in product development to help us continuously set the global standard for technology in the built world through certification and education.

William: We are in an extraordinary position to be able to capitalize on the base that we have built with our global brand, broad client base and deep technological expertise. Even without funding we have a bright future ahead of us. With funding, we can achieve even more – the capital means we can be more ambitious in our investment into growth, placing us in an exciting position for the future.

What made you target those investors specifically?

Arie: It was important that we found investors who align with our mission and purpose. As a public benefit corporation, we care deeply about the environment, our clients and their customers, our suppliers and our team, meaning that any investment must be value aligned with WiredScore. We believe that the investors we have chosen to partner with are the best fit to give us the general and specific advice we need to push into our next phase of growth.

Walk us through some of the challenges you faced in fundraising:

William: The challenge is, as ever, to find the right investor-company fit. There are thousands of investors with capital looking for companies, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right people for WiredScore. We needed to find a lead venture capital investor with expertise in helping a company of our size on an ambitious growth journey, who was also enthusiastic about the real estate space, and, as Arie mentioned, was values aligned. After that, we had to look for strategic investors within the industry who could support our specific growth aspirations! That ends up being a complicated puzzle to put together.

What’s the most valuable lesson that the process taught you?

Arie:

1. Importance of sustainable growth – from day 1 we’ve grown our business with operational effectiveness embedded in our DNA, and while the importance of this is very apparent in the public markets today, this was also something prized by a majority of the venture capital teams we engaged with.
2. Ability to craft the optimal strategic partner set – from the start of our process, we were crystal clear and unwavering about our targeted growth vectors in discussions with potential partners. This helped us to pair up with strategic partners who could easily see the ways in which mutual value would be created – like the expansion of our Accredited Professional platform with Cushman & Wakefield; growing of our WiredScore Home multifamily product with Crow Holdings (one of the top multifamily developers in North America); or our expansion across APAC with Taronga, the most important PropTech VC firm in APAC.