Why We Invested in Mogul: Institutional Real Estate Investing, Opened Up

Draper Dragon has invested in Mogul, the AI-driven real estate investing platform, as part of its oversubscribed $15.5 million Series A led by Draper Associates. Ava Labs, Blizzard Fund, LAUNCH and Gaingels also joined the round.

Single-family rental homes have long been one of the most dependable ways to build wealth in the US, and large institutions have built big businesses buying them. Doing it their way takes deal sourcing, underwriting, property management and a lot of capital. That has left most individual investors with two choices: buy and manage a home themselves, or hold a fund that bundles thousands of properties together.

Mogul was founded in 2022 by Alex Blackwood and Joey Gumataotao, who both worked in Goldman Sachs' Real Estate Investment Group before leaving to build it. Their team finds and underwrites individual rental properties with the discipline they used on Wall Street, and investors can buy a share of a specific home. Investors receive monthly distributions from the rent, plus their share of any gain when the property is sold.

Two things convinced us to invest.

The first is how efficiently the business runs. Mogul uses AI across sourcing, targeting, performance analysis and asset monitoring, while its investment team still leads due diligence on every deal. According to the company, that has let a supply team of four people grow the portfolio to more than 150 properties, and Mogul is already cash-flow positive.

The second is that investors keep coming back. Mogul has facilitated more than $110 million in real estate investments, and the company reports that 80% of its investors invest again. In a business where people are trusting you with their savings, repeat investment is the clearest sign the product works.

We have backed real-world assets for years, and our view is that the opportunity is in making them easier to own and more useful to the people who hold them. Mogul does that for residential real estate and brings it straight to individual investors.

"Mogul is a true 'rhino,' charging ahead with investor retention, relentless growth and real execution," said Tim Draper, founder of Draper Associates and co-founder of Draper Dragon, in Mogul's announcement. "The company has the potential to become the defining model for the next era of real estate investing."

Learn more about Mogul here.