2024 Ones to Watch - Innovators in CRE: Clelia Warburg Peters, Era Ventures

Clelia Warburg Peters founded Era Ventures in 2022, as an industry pioneer Peters helped coin the term “proptech” and has been leading investments in the space for roughly a decade. As managing partner, she identifies and evaluates investments and supports Era’s portfolio companies. She manages all fund operations, including fundraising and day-to-day support for the fund itself. Under her guidance and leadership, Era has invested in 10 innovative portfolio companies. The range covers a full spectrum of sector-focused innovations across six core business models, including marketplaces and tech-enabled services, Fintech, Hardtech, Vertical AI, and SaaS. She works alongside her investing partner, Raja Ghawi.

Innovative Solution:

Our fund arrives at an inflection point around innovation in the physical world. A new generation of companies has learned from earlier innovators and prioritized profitability and efficiency. Era deploys capital across multiple stages and a full spectrum of sector-focused innovations. We identified and invested in six core business models driving change (listed above).

Additionally, women only make up 11% of investing partners at VC firms in the U.S. (1) I bear a responsibility to pave the way for more female leadership and diversity in the industry. My investing partner is from Syria, and many of my startup founders are from diverse backgrounds.

Innovative Outlook:
Sector-focused innovation happens on a continuum from companies enabling the existing industry, to those replicating part or all of a value chain, to those that fundamentally transform an industry. For instance, productivity in construction has risen just around 1% annually in recent decades. Solving labor and material problems unlocks more construction productivity. Our portfolio company, Latii, is a cross-border Latin American construction-materials marketplace providing specialized materials otherwise inaccessible. They go beyond being a software platform and work directly with suppliers.

Buildings consume 30% of global energy. Our portfolio company, Passive Logic, is developing an AI-enabled building management system using autonomous controls to transform building management.

“Clelia Warburg Peters is the founder and managing partner of Era Ventures, a venture capital firm dedicated to innovating the physical world (including real estate, industrials and logistics). Era Ventures is one of the first institutionally backed venture funds in this space and recently launched an initial $88 million fund, which is the largest female-led, first-time fund in the category. Era has invested in ten portfolio companies.” - Jesse Kent, Derring-Do Inc.

(1) https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/wappp/research/past/venture-capital-entrepreneurship#:~:text=Currently%20in%20the%20United%20States,woman%20on%20the%20founding%20team