Funding slowdown pivots toward “real businesses”

Sure, if you held your stocks since the dotcom bubble, you would’ve been up—eventually. But three years after the dot-com bust the S&P 500 was still far down from its peak. So, how else can you invest when almost every market is tied to stocks?

Lo and behold, billionaires have an alternative way to diversify: allocate to a physical asset class that outpaced the S&P by 15% from 1995 to 2025, with almost no correlation to equities. It’s part of a massive global market, long leveraged by the ultra-wealthy (Bezos, Gates, Rockefellers etc).

Contemporary and post-war art.

Masterworks lets you invest in multimillion-dollar artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso—without needing millions. Over 70,000 members have together invested more than $1.2 billion across over 500 artworks. So far, 25 sales have delivered net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.*

Want access?

[Click here to skip the waitlist →]

_{Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd}

Crunchbase data show fewer PropTech deals versus the 2021 peak, but the market is stabilising around ventures with clear revenue and strong unit economics.
Africa angle: good news for founders building revenue‑first PropTech (rent collection, property management, developer sales enablement, mortgage distribution, title digitisation) instead of hype‑driven ideas.

A recent Techpoint feature explains how Ule Homes, founded in 2024, evolved from a class project into a rent‑financing and housing‑credit. The company pays tenants’ rent in full and collects monthly repayments, quietly building users’ credit. In less than a year, Ule Homes has disbursed more than ₦700 million in rent and housing finance to over 182 customers, mainly in Lagos, Abuja and Ibadan. This illustrates how rent pain continues to drive new PropTech narratives centred on affordability and access.

TechCabal’s 2025 ecosystem review notes that proptech led Egypt’s funding surge. In May 2025, Nawy—a full‑stack platform combining marketplace, brokerage and financing—raised $75 million in total financing (equity plus debt), making it Egypt’s largest deal of the year. This hybrid capital model, de‑risked by local banks partnering with international VCs, positions Nawy as a regional category leader and shows how full‑stack platforms can scale in emerging market.
The success of Nawy underscores that the biggest PropTech winners combine marketplace, brokerage/ops and financing into one loop, especially in regions where trust and documentation are friction points.

SEE YOU AGAIN SOON