Alexander Israel

Today we officially closed $1.8 billion in Series C financing and finalized our take-private of SP Plus Corporation (SP+) – this constitutes the third largest AI fundraise and the largest venture-backed M&A deal of the year. This transformational Growth Buyout has created a paradigm shift in how technology companies scale. We’ve created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deploy our proprietary, artificial intelligence technology to more than 50 million consumers, across 4,000+ locations, processing over $4 billion in payments a year. We are enabling checkout-free experiences with a speed, ease, and convenience that is unparalleled, even online. Our Series C was comprised of a best-in-class syndicate, led by our longtime partner Eldridge Industries with significant investment from BDT & MSD Partners’ affiliated credit funds, Vista Credit Partners, and Temasek as well as strong support from Metropolis’ existing shareholder group led by 3L. Thank you to all our exceptional partners, investors and advisors who thought outside the box and believed in our vision, every step of the way --  including Tony Minella, Todd Boehly and Lisa Ohlmeyer at Eldridge, Anton Zeitsman and Dave Leyrer at 3L, Goldman Sachs and BDT & MSD Partners. Today’s a day to celebrate. But we’re just getting started.

"Parking is the last bastion of non-institutionalized real estate in the US." From @Alex__Israel, co-founder of Metropolis: "It's just so sexy." "It's 15% of the surface area of our cities." "For us, it was the first touch point. We realize that once we roll up parking, we can move into gas stations, car wash and quickly into stores."

We spoke with @Alex__Israel, co-founder of Metropolis, about the future of autonomous vehicles. "Cars will not circle the block endlessly looking for their next job." "They're going to get off and back on the road as quickly as possible." "We can convert parking lots into mobility hubs for cleaning, servicing, charging, and deploying vehicles." "Metropolis is onboarding 50,000 Americans every day (to this future)."

Morning. Here are our guest call-ins today: - @hubermanlab (Huberman Lab) - @scottbelsky (A24) - @SaiVC_ (Redpoint) - @roybahat (Bloomberg Beta) - @Alex__Israel (Metropolis) - @karrisaarinen (Linear) See you all on the stream.

Jony Ive and Hiroki Asia from Apple inspired me to adopt founder mode Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Elon Musk embody many of the principles

Just saw Civil War. Spectacularly violent anti war movie. Saving Private Ryan intensity at times. But apolitical and leaves a lot to the imagination. Powerful and so well done. @A24. @CivilWarMovie

via @NYTimes nytimes.com/2024/01/12/bus…

We have raised a $395m Fund 3! Even better: @davidbfischer, former Facebook CRO, is joining us as Partner! techcrunch.com/2023/11/07/01-… After years of competing against David, it’s amazing to be on the same side of the table now. @dickc and i feel so lucky to work with him :) Our for-operators, by-operators fund is prob the only one where the partners have previously taken their companies from $0-$123B in yearly revenue. (Yes, David represents $121B of that!) And, @LiatBycel has joined us as an Operating Partner to work with our portfolio companies. Liat helped grow Airtable to $200m ARR — she’s incredible! Our focus is still the same: We come in right after companies have found product-market-fit and we help with scaling and GTM. We are mostly Series B but also late As. We love B2B SaaS (most of what we do) but would like to find some more consumer biz too! We work with Founders at a very critical time: when their companies are scaling and those Founders/CEOs are looking for help from people who have been there before. If you’re a Founder who is about to go thru a scaling moment, my DMs are open!

2023 @slow annual Limited Partner meeting in NYC with the team.

Honored. @GoldmanSachs’ Builders and Innovators Summit.

With just one main road and a population of 2,200, Driggs, Idaho, doesn't seem like a likely candidate to be the next uber-luxe, scene-y western mountain hot spot. See why that's about to change. on.wsj.com/3tqlE86

@Rahul_J_Mathur Well stated @Rahul_J_Mathur — if I don’t say so myself.

20+ years ago, Marc Andressen said "Software will eat the world" Yesterday, a private software company Metropolis raised $1.7bn to acquire publicly listed parking operator SP Plus. Metropolis builds software for quick check out at parking spots. ➡️Metropolis paid $1.5bn for acquiring the business from the $1.7bn raised in Series C financing ($650M in debt & $1050M in equity) 🤯Let this sink in: 20K+ employee parking operator founded in 1929 acquired by 2K+ employee software company founded in 2017. 💡While Western observers are going crazy over this historic transaction, we've seen one such transaction in India recently. ➡️ In 2021, Pharmeasy paid $600M+ to acquire majority stake in Thyrocare (which was publicly listed). 🧠The theme here is: Software companies are partnering with PE sponsors to raise money to backwards integrate (Pharmeasy into diagnostics & Metropolis into parking operations). I'd expect to see more such transactions as "software (continues to) eat the world"

1/ This is a very very fun one to be able to finally talk about... The tech native minnow swallows the old school whale. Software might eat the world, but that won't mean more and more software companies...

We’re excited to announce that we have raised $1.7 billion in Series C financing and have reached an agreement to acquire @SPPlusCorp (Nasdaq:SP). Please read our press release for more: metropolis.io/news/metropoli…

Over the next five years, more than $2.5 trillion in commercial real estate debt will mature. By far the highest amount in any five-year period in history. Meanwhile, interest rates have more than 2x'd. 👀 There are many catalysts for change in real estate, this is a big one.

Nobody has any idea what will happen with stock prices, inflation, interest rates, or the economy in 2023.

Formula for startup success: Find large highly fragmented industry w low NPS; vertically integrate a solution to simplify value product.