By Alex Robinson, Co-founder and CEO
Today, we’re making a big announcement—Juniper Square has surpassed $1 trillion in managed assets spanning more than 21,000 investments and 800 General Partner (GP) clients. Plus, we’ve appointed four new executive leaders to support our growth.
COVID-19 has accelerated the need for commercial real estate (CRE)-specific technology solutions. We’d like to share how Juniper Square’s all-in-one investment management software is playing a leading role in this increased demand, and how we’re helping transform the industry and enabling investment sponsors to scale their business.
The need for digital transformation
In recent months, COVID-19 has accelerated investments in technology solutions. One of the industries in which this is most evident is commercial real estate, which has historically relied on spreadsheet-based systems to manage trillions of dollars in private capital.
As Chris Powers, CEO of Fort Capital told us, “The tailwinds behind technology just ramped up 10x. The COVID crisis has cut the window of opportunity for people unwilling to adapt and has infinitely increased the opportunity for the ones that are.
Two years from now I think you’ll see companies that are much better having gone through this pandemic and companies that have gone away. A key deciding factor will be how they’ve adopted technology.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but COVID-19 has been the catalyst for technology adoption.
Better investor communication
A key driver of transformation has been the heightened need for better investor communication. In times of market uncertainty, investors want information that’s accessible, transparent, and timely.
As Brian Adams, President of Excelsior Capital stated, “Being able to use Juniper Square to communicate with our investors during this period, reassure them, and give them 24/7 access to all the data that they could ever want at their fingertips has been huge for us and has really helped us grow over the past few months.”
With Juniper Square’s investor reporting, real estate investment sponsors are able to easily and efficiently share customized statements, notices, and reports.
Govan White, Managing Partner at Covenant Capital Group, agrees that agile communication has been key.
If we hadn’t implemented Juniper Square this would be a much more challenging time with our employees working from home. With the platform we’ve been communicating consistently and people feel like they know what’s going on.
With a goal of enhancing GP and LP relationships, our software saves managers time and produces an unparalleled reporting experience for investors.
Fundraising in a pandemic
Another catalyst for transformation has been the availability of capital. Because of volatile market conditions, investors are looking to move money into commercial real estate as a safer asset class—and most sponsors are using this opportunity to raise money.
Consider the results of a market survey we conducted this month:
- 70% of Juniper Square sponsors have been fundraising at some point in the last four months—as compared with 52% of typical sponsors during that time.
- They were twice as effective in closing new capital commitments from existing investors (60% vs 29%).
- They were also nearly twice as effective in closing capital commitments from new investors (53% vs 30%).
As the numbers show, our clients have found that the streamlined fundraising process Juniper Square enables has translated to increased productivity.
Primed for growth
Since the beginning of 2020, Juniper Square’s total staff has grown 50% between its San Francisco and Austin, Texas offices to service the needs of an expanding client base.
We’re also excited that four executive leaders have joined our Juniper Square team—Matt Lawson, Steve Love, Sophie Kitson, and Vittoria Reimers.
Matt, our new chief marketing officer (CMO), is responsible for branding, demand generation, and go-to-market activities; Steve, chief financial officer (CFO), leads business operations, finance, accounting, and facilities; Vittoria, our VP of Investor Services, is responsible for building services offerings for our growing client base; and Sophie, senior vice president of people, is responsible for talent acquisition and development. Matt, Steve, Sophie, and Vittoria bring a wealth of expertise to our team from their experience in leadership roles companies that include Google, Dialpad, PagerDuty, and Funding Circle.
Our rapidly growing team is better equipped than ever to serve our customers and the industry during this rapidly changing time.
Making the world a better place
Juniper Square exists because we understand that better markets make the world better.
We’re helping investment managers realize this vision through our integrated technology solutions. We’re looking forward to helping more investment managers successfully navigate a quickly changing environment by communicating better with their investors, operating more efficiently, and fundraising more effectively.
Learn more about how we do this on our website.