November 2019. Bright Spaces, an innovative PropTech solution dedicated developed by a local Romanian startup, received 185.000 EUR for development and implementation. The round was led by Sparking Capital as a Lead Investor, together with Growceanu Angel Investment and Ilinca Paun.

Bright Spaces is a digital leasing and management platform for office spaces that will be launched in the spring of 2020. It will offer real benefits to landlords, by optimizing flows and generating new leads, as well as to tenants, through an easy to use interface where users can see the renting history and the flow of the process: listing, offering, singing the contract, payment, management, business intelligence.

Sparking Capital, a Venture Capital fund based on private investments, led the round. The fund is focused on pre-seed and seed investments in innovative companies from Property Tech, Marketplace, Marketing Tech, Digital Transformation and Sustainability.

Cristian Negrutiu, Partner, Sparking Capital: “This investment in Bright Spaces confirms our strategic interest in PropTech. We are happy to announce a new investment in an ambitious team, that has the potential of creating an innovative product. Besides the financial investment, Sparking Capital also contributes to the multidimensional development and international scaling of the companies it gets involved in with expertise, mentorship and networking. We are also happy to have other Romanian investors involved and we consider that the Romanian entrepreneurial ecosystem is on a good path.”

Growceanu Angel Investment and Ilinca Paun, Business Angel, also invested in Bright Spaces, alongside Sparking Capital. Growceanu brings together a group of business angel investors, it is active in Timisoara and the West part of Romania and it is focused on high-tech startups. Growceanu Investors contribute with expertise, network and personal money to the development of high-growth-potential startups.

Ilinca Paun is an investor with 18 years of experience in real estate. Currently, Ilinca Paun is the founder and CEO at The Entrepreneurship Academy, a business faculty in partnership with Team Academy Olanda, and an investor at Impact Hub.

 Adrian Erimescu, Lead Investor from Growceanu: „The geographical and expertise diversity of the investors represent an advantage for this very ambitious project. We managed to bring together people from complementary areas, such as real estate, online, B2B sales, marketing, fintech, AI and software development from Bucharest, Timisoara and Cluj. We consider that being associated with Sparking Capital and Proptech Romania is a beautiful accomplishment of the Romanian investors’ community.”

Ilinca Paun – Business Angel: „When I left my executive role in Real Estate 1 and a half years ago, I promised to myself that I would only return as an investor in companies that really innovate space leasing and management. After investing in a coworking space, I am now joining a group of investors with expertise in Real Estate, as a business angel, in order to help two motivated and very capable entrepreneurs who will offer landlords with many tenants a very smart management solution. The digitization of Real Estate is just beginning and the market has a huge potential. Technology hasn’t entered the real estate management services market too much.  

I am happy about this investment because of the innovation it can bring to the industry and because of my personal mission to support and grow the young entrepreneurship in Romania.”

“Bright Spaces represents the materialization of our team’s know-how in Digital Product Development, after 10 years of working with projects similar in complexity. We are lucky to have experienced Real Estate investors and mentors – some of them have already exited successfully various businesses – by our side. We now have the ingredients to build and scale Bright Spaces and achieve global success in PropTech” – founders of Bright Spaces – Bogdan Nicoara and Andrei Constantin.

Bright Spaces PropTech solution was presented for the first time at Real Estate Hackathon, the first real estate hackathon in Europe, organized in 2019 in Bucharest, by Proptech Romania.

Ciprian Pasca, Co-founder Proptech Romania: „Only 6 months after wining the first place at the Real Estate Hackathon and after 3 months from wining the investment event Proptech Demo Day, Bright Spaces becomes the first proptech startup that manages, with the support of Proptech Romania, to attract a pre-seed investment in order to develop the wining solution and to contribute to the digitalization of the local real estate industry.”

The legal assistance for the transaction was offered by the Boanta, Gidei and Associatesi and DLA Piper Dinu law firms.

The header image, left to right: Ciprian Pasca and Teodora Mocian (Proptech Romania), Bogdan Nicoara and Andrei Constantin (Bright Spaces), Ciprian Man (Growceanu), Cristian Negrutiu (Sparking Capital).