New Report on the European Proptech Ecosystems
European PropTech Association has just launched its yearbook 2020 'Demystifying European Proptech'. A report containing a fresh temperature measurement on European proptech and with state-of-the-nation snapshots from all our peer proptech association around Europe. PropTech Denmark is a member of European PropTech Association and has also contributed in the making of the report. We have summarised some of the key findings from the report below.
European proptech at a glance
The European proptech ecosystem consists of some +3000 proptech startups (and scaleups) all together employing nearly 200.000 full time employees. To this comes +1600 investors that have invested in proptech companies during 2020. Further, the report shows:
The majority of European proptech startups offer solutions related to property management and operations.
The European proptech ecosystem seems to be maturing with a bigger share of startups being in the scaling and maturity phases compared to just a year ago.
Compared to the development in European fintech, the level of investments in proptech is around two years behind, but seems to be catching-up.
The three biggest growth barriers for European proptech startups are; 1) Troublesome laws & regulation, 2) Internal problems in scaling processes and organisation, and 3) Market/clients that are still not ready for the solutions offered.
The three most common strategies for accessing new markets are; 1) Founders themselves work on developing new markets, 2) Collaboration with established local partners, and 3) Hiring a 'launcher' that opens up new markets from HQ.
A proptech revolution in Denmark
The report also brings an article by former PropTech Denmark Hub Director, Jakob Stoumann, potraiying the proptech ecosystem in Denmark and how 2020 was the year when a traditional and somehow sleepy Danish real estate sector woke up and started embracing the proptech revolution.
While Denmark for long was a progressive frontrunner in architecture, human centric urban planning and sustainable cities, the Danish real estate sector, until recently, did not pay much attention to the new transformative movements related to proptech and digitisation. For long, it seemed like the Danish real estate sector was going to miss out on the massive new opportunities inherent in the growth of digital technologies and that Denmark would lose a hard gained position as one of the world leaders in creating highly efficient, functional and livable buildings and cities.
However, as Jakob documents in the article, things are changing - rapidly now! And 2020 will be remembered as the year where Danish real estate joined forces in embracing the digital revolution and Danish proptech suddenly accelerated from ‘0 to 100’ in a short time. This among others with the establishment of PropTech Denmark.
