The Sensor Global team were honoured to take part in the global PortCo summit of entrepreneurs held in San Diego last month by one of the world’s largest proptech venture capital firms, Second Century Ventures.
The event was attended by members of REACH cohorts from around the world including the US, Canada, SE Asia, South America, the UK and Australia.
Andrew Cox , Sensor Global CEO said “There is something about being surrounded by a bunch of other successful proptech startup founders and people who work regularly with them that is hugely energising”.
Getting a new proptech launched – especially one that involves both tech development and hardware manufacturing like Sensor - is an enormous job - not that we are complaining!
But here was a bunch of people who genuinely understood the road we’ve travelled so far, who had their own war stories, triumphs, hard times and advice to share. It really was a tribe that got our vibe!
The quality of the formal sessions was incredible giving us access to US tech founders who had billion dollar valuations and exits.
It was also incredible how helpful everyone was across the three days. We engaged and shared ideas with founders from all countries, all of whom are genuinely curious and thoughtful about technology and entrepreneurial ideas. We were overwhelmed by the support, connections and ideas on how to approach different markets, the introductions to potential clients and advice on ways to achieve key elements of our roadmap.
The scale of the US also never fails to amaze, evidenced by the concentration of ownership of rental property held by large REIT’s and single owners, where some single organisations own and manage over 120,000 rental homes. While Build-to-rent and centrally managed single and Multi -family residential property is a relatively new concept in Australia (community housing, student housing and retirement villages notwithstanding), with single states in the USA having more rental properties than the whole of the Australian market ( in a very favourable legislative environment for smoke alarms), the opportunity for Sensor internationally is significant, exciting, close and very achievable.
Plus there was some wonderful opportunities to hang out with other attendees and their families and really get to know each other, while exploring San Diego. Many laughs – some great food and drinks were had, all in the name of scaling the business, of course!
The trip was hugely valuable at helping us to plan our growth into the USA, providing us with valuable connections, insights and tactics that we are now incorporating into our strategy. Watch this space.
