Connected Cities: Has the future changed in light of Covid-19?

Microsoft’s Big Game Plan With Teams

The coronavirus pandemic that has kept so many office workers at home since March has also made a fresh case for Teams, Microsoft’s package of workplace collaboration tools that compete with services like Slack, Dropbox and Zoom. Usage of Teams has skyrocketed since lockdowns began. Unique visitors to the platform during the month of May were 943% above the same period last year, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report citing Comscore data. Microsoft reported 75 million daily active users of …

AI-powered Leasing Startup Raises Series A

MeetElise, an AI-powered leasing startup, raises $6.75M. It’s rare that apartment seekers limit their searches to business hours. But a New York startup, backed by two of the country’s biggest landlords, has built an AI-powered leasing assistant available to field queries 24/7

The Robots Are Coming’: Hotels Adjust To New Reality With Some Unusual Tools

When the Hôtel Monville in Montreal opened in 2018, it was one of the first hotels in Canada that offered a truly contactless visitor experience. Guests at the 269-room hotel could check in via the hotel’s app or website or at any of the four check-in kiosks in the lobby of the hotel. If a guest forgot a toothbrush, wanted an extra towel or ordered room service, a 3-foot-tall robot would deliver the item straight to their room.

Industrious and Wythe Hotel Offer Co-working

Industrious and Wythe Hotel turn empty rooms into offices. Faced with a glut of empty rooms, the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg is teaming up with flex-office provider Industrious to offer “on-demand workspaces.” … It donated 2,000 rooms to front-line workers, according to its website.

PocketList Launches In LA With $2.9M Seed Funding

PocketList announced it launched with $2.9 million in seed funding, led by David Sacks-led Craft Ventures. Abstract VC and Spencer Rascoff’s Wonder Ventures also participated in the Seed round. Rascoff has been busy this year.

Fireside Chat Featuring L.D. Salmanson, CEO and Co-Founder of Cherre and Robert M. White, CEO and Founder of Real Capital Analytics Added to the CREtech Virtual Global Summit Lineup

CREtech (cretech.com) and FUTURE PropTech, the largest intelligence platforms devoted to Reimagining Real Estate, announced today that L.D. Salmanson, CEO and Co-Founder of Cherre, will take the stage for the Reimagining Real Estate Virtual Global Summit, the largest global real estate tech virtual conference ever assembled. In this 30 minute session, L.D. and Robert will discuss how real estate data has evolved over the past 20 years, including the proliferation of vendors, the advent of new an…

Join Us For Our Final Day of Reimagining Real Estate Global Virtual Summit

CREtech and FUTURE PropTech are proud to present a four-day completely free Global Virtual Summit that will feature the leading owners, landlords, investors, asset managers, brokers, and technology leaders discussing how they are Reimagining Real Estate during the pandemic. As the largest truly global real estate tech digital summit, attendees will learn from those thought-leaders shaping the future of real estate and network with thousands of new business connections. Register today to hear fro…

Greg Lindsay on The Future of Cities, Millennial Metrics, and Multigenerational Homes

This week, we officially kick off a series of interviews about the history and future of cities. Our first guest is Greg Lindsay, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things urban. Greg is the director of applied research at NewCities and director of strategy at its mobility offshoot CoMotion. He is also a partner at FutureMap, a geo-strategic advisory firm based in Singapore, a non-resident senior fellow of The Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative.

Q&A with CREtech’s Michael Beckerman: Proptech is Now a “Must Have”

When we started Connect seven years ago, we realized that we couldn’t just be a news organization. Informing the industry was important, but showing the experience and intelligence behind the deal was just as important. Taking commercial real estate digital took on a whole new meaning. As the proptech world was growing, people realized that new technologies were exciting, but they also had to look at their own homes first, which was a basic website, social media and messaging; most didn’t even h…