LISTEN | ‘Fewer but deeper’ – Hazelview’s tech investing playbook
3 August 2022 11:19
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Invaluable insight from directors Michael Tsourounis and Roger Poirier of Toronto-headquartered Hazelview Investments, exploring their dual approach to backing the right tech solutions and embedding them across the group’s portfolio.
Hazelview’s hot takes
- Established venture division coming out of pandemic as the group looked for ways technology could help improve energy efficiency, reduce waste, enhance customer experience and add value to properties
- ‘We are accelerating our thinking to improve our offerings through tech’
- Hazelview uses own its property portfolio to scale tech its invests in rather than investing in a separate VC fund
- More solutions driven than immediately financially results driven
- Will invest in fewer companies because of internal resource limitations for onboarding but will go deeper, ‘we really care about that company and that segment of the market’
- Three investments made so far:
- Typical investment range between US$1m and US$4m
- ‘There are only so many things you can throw at your property management team at any given time, that’s the bandwidth issue, we can look at adding one or two companies into that process each year but no more’
- Construction materials and build-tech are priority number one – ‘When it comes to retrofit and new build we can look at many more applications [than property management] and that’s the focus for us right now’