Amid a boom in real estate-focused venture funds, one investment outfit is going against the grain. Upper90, founded earlier this year by Seamless co-founder Jason Finger, Goldman Sachs veteran William Libby and Alex Urdea, formerly of Solus Alternative Asset Management, offers an alternative to venture capital. Rather than provide cash in exchange for big stakes in startups, it seeks to fund startups’ more capital-intensive real estate projects, for example by extending loans. The model is ... [more]