Real Estate Dot-coms Want Your Business

Note: Bob Potter, who moderated the Venture Funding Panels at PikeNet 2000, wrote this Dispatch. Bob's e-mail address is bpotter1@pacbell.net.

Money Talks -- Part Three... Twelve web sites (see Pike's Picks in the last Dispatch) were invited to demonstrate their new Internet applications at the conference held in San Francisco last week. Venture firms (listed below) then rated the presenter's chances for success. EquityCity.com, the Denver-based company that matches equity investors with real estate developers, received the highest average rating of the Pike's Picks in a survey of venture capitalists who attended PikeNet 2000. InscribeIT.com, an online project management and collaboration system, and Storetrax.com, a retail real estate management tool, tied for second in the survey. SitesStuff.com, a procurement e-market site, and Equity Office Access, which provides multiple broadband options to its tenants, each garnered the third highest ratings.

The venture firms that participated in the survey included AEW, Autodesk Ventures, Banc of America Securities, CalPERS, Cohen & Steers, GE Capital Real Estate, Marcus & Millichap Ventures, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Putnam Lovell, Real Estate Technology Partners, Staubach and Zero Gravity Venture Partners.

Pike's Picks represent just the tip of the iceberg of new companies and products entering the space. From idea mode to stealth mode to established concern, conference participants got a taste of the technologies and ideas that are shaking our world. These are not just garage players either. Rumor has it that more than one $100 million-player (in addition to Goldman Sachs) will be announcing by summer's end. And investors, although more cautious given recent NASDAQ gyrations, appear to be ready to meet them all at the intersection of opportunity and fear. My guess is that by the PikeNet Expo in October, a whole new group of industry stars will have emerged and the staid world of commercial real estate will look a lot more like Hollywood. Stay tuned.

--Bob Potter

PikeNet 2000 Picks: CapitalThinking.com, CityFeet.com, Commercial Professional, EquityCity.com, Equity Office Access, Inscribe IT, NAIdirect.com, Redbricks.com, SiteStuff.com, SiteToDoBusiness, Storetrax.com, YieldStar.com. Peter's Note: Pike's Picks are representative of many new services and products that will change our industry. There are many other sites that deserve your attention. (Hey, that's why you read the Dispatch.)