Flirting with Oblivion

Chain Drain interviewee Brad Hargreaves writes on LinkedIn about a surprising takeaway, after attending the Blueprint conference:

There’s serious appetite for M\&A in proptech right now… It felt like every other company I sat down with was looking to buy startups. And it wasn’t just the big PE groups, either. Plenty of them were operating companies looking to make strategic acquisitions that plug into what they already do.

These weren’t dumpster divers hunting for cheap acquihires of overfunded, underperforming companies….
As far as I can tell, there’s one reason for this: data moats.

Everyone has figured out that features aren’t a defensible moat in a world where AI can build them for you… It’s data that the frontier models don’t have: construction projects and bidding, maintenance requests and tenant complaints, building systems breakdowns, leasing inquiries and tour bookings.

All the data cruft these unprofitable startups have been generating for years is now gold, and the incumbents are willing to pay real money for it.

Not 24 hours after Greg texted me about this, I saw an ad on Instagram for Nyne.ai promising exactly that: “6-figure payouts” for data from firms with 20+ W-2s. *BB-9/29/26