Clelia Warburg Peters (left) and Raja Ghawi.
Clelia Warburg Peters and Raja Ghawi
Founder and managing partner; partner at Era Ventures
Era Ventures is just getting started, and with a woman at the helm.
The Manhattan-based, proptech-focused venture capital firm was founded in 2022 by proptech industry veteran Clelia Warburg Peters, making Era the largest such female-led fund in the industry.
Peters partnered with Raja Ghawi, an engineer and Harvard grad, to create a firm that moves across asset classes and is “focused on innovation in the physical world,” the duo said.
“We’re a firm who’s very interested in what it’s actually going to take to think about moving our physical world forward,” Peters said. “We’re excited to be part of this broader group of people who are working to drive the industry forward at this point.”
In the past year, Era has “skewed” toward investing in fintech — financial-focused technology — marketplaces, hardtech and vertical AI, as well as raising money from institutional investors as opposed to strategic investors, Peters said. The firm also invested in 10 separate companies this year, three of which are making waves in construction, property management and finance, according to Ghawi.
Those include Passive Logic, what Ghawi describes as a “hardware-AI combination product” that automates heating and cooling in buildings; Latii, a construction materials trader for the U.S. and Latin America; and Truehold, a single-family rental company for owners looking to sell and then remain in their homes.
And, just last month, Era announced it had secured $88 million for its inaugural investment fund from investors that included ICG Advisors, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Bain Capital Ventures and BGO. Era said it will use the funding across multiple stages and technologies.
As for 2025, Era plans to continue to invest in companies that it thinks are transforming the commercial real estate industry and partner with founders who are “making fundamental changes,” Peters said.
“We are opportunistic investors looking to partner with the best founders in the space, and a lot of the time those founders are more visionary around what could happen than we are,” Peters added. “So we see ourselves more as a supporting player than the star.”
