The Miller brothers looked at the $300 trillion global real estate market and asked: why can a 22-year-old buy $10 of Tesla stock on Robinhood but not $10 of an apartment building? Fundrise lets anyone invest in real estate for as little as $10. They manage $3.3 billion from 400,000+ investors. The catch: real estate is not a stock. You cannot sell it instantly. When rates spiked in 2022 and investors wanted out, redemptions were restricted. Fundrise is pioneering something genuinely important — democratized access to real estate — but the product's biggest limitation is the asset class itself.
Founded
2012
HQ
Washington, D.C.
Total Raised
$300 million+
Founder
Ben Miller, Dan Miller
Status
Private ($1B+ AUM platform)
Website
fundrise.comTHE ORIGIN STORY
Brothers Ben and Dan Miller founded Fundrise in 2012 in Washington, D.C. Ben had a background in real estate development and was frustrated that ordinary people could not invest in the same real estate deals available to institutions and wealthy individuals.
Fundrise was one of the first platforms to use Regulation A+ (a provision of the JOBS Act) to offer real estate investments to non-accredited investors. They started with individual real estate projects and evolved into diversified eREITs and interval funds.
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO
Fundrise lets anyone invest in real estate starting with as little as $10. The platform pools money from hundreds of thousands of individual investors and uses it to buy, develop, and manage real estate assets — apartments, industrial properties, single-family rentals.
Fundrise charges management fees (roughly 1% annually) on invested capital. The company manages over $3.3 billion in assets and has 400,000+ active investors.
It is essentially a private REIT for the masses.
THE PRODUCTS
Fundrise eREITs (diversified real estate funds), Fundrise eFunds (build-to-rent), Fundrise Innovation Fund (venture capital), Fundrise Income Fund (real estate credit), Fundrise iPO (direct investment in Fundrise itself)
HOW THEY GREW
Democratize real estate investing. Fundrise aims to be the Vanguard of real estate — offering low-cost, diversified real estate exposure to everyone.
They expanded from equity real estate into venture capital (Fundrise Innovation Fund), credit, and build-to-rent housing. The strategy: become the default platform for alternative investments that were previously only available to institutions.
THE HARD PART
Liquidity. Real estate is inherently illiquid — you cannot sell a building in seconds like a stock.
Fundrise investors can request redemptions but there are limits and delays. During the 2022-2023 period when interest rates spiked, many investors wanted out and faced redemption restrictions.
The tension between offering "accessible real estate investing" and the fundamental illiquidity of real estate assets is structural.
MONEY TRAIL
Seed
2012 · Led by
$38M raised
Series A
2014 · Led by
$31M raised
iPO
2021 · Led by
$100M raised
WHO BACKED THEM
Mostly crowdfunded from its own users. Institutional investors include Renren, Guggenheim Partners
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