Michael Rudin

Rudin Ventures, New York ownership giant Rudin’s proptech-funding arm, has been firing on all cylinders in the last decade.

So, at this point, it’s understandable that the company headed by Michael Rudin isn’t jumping at every opportunity in the proptech market like it used to when the sector was still nascent. Instead, Rudin — the executive and the companies — has the experience to take a more mature position on tech: that unless a piece of innovation directly improves the operation of its real estate portfolio, it’s less likely to see an investment opportunity.

“The investment side of things has slowed down a little bit in the past year or two, but the implementation and how we’re leveraging proptech within our portfolio is just as active as ever, and it’s everything from business intelligence to property management to tenant experience marketing,” Michael Rudin said. “We’ve got a lot going on in the physical real estate side. And, frankly, I think the sort of opportunities that we’ve seen have been less compelling than they once were.”

But one of the things that Rudin has been working toward is its partnership with Cove, an engagement platform for commercial tenants. The relationship started slow, but now the office landlord is expanding the platform into more of its buildings as it performs well.

Across its multifamily portfolio, Rudin has launched Runwise, a program that facilitates a wireless control and sensor network for smart heating control that will be in place before the winter sets in. Rudin is also using marketing and customer service platform HubSpot on both its commercial and multifamily portfolio.

“By leveraging our portfolio, we can bring a lot to the table for these startups beyond just our checkbook,” Rudin said. “We can quickly say to a company, ‘This works, this doesn’t work.’ Or we can put it to play in a building and say, ‘Yeah, this element is working. This element is not working. You need to refine it or fix this.’ ”