Investment for the rest of us: Here’s a cool company that crowdfunds big real estate projects

Realty Mogul, which just announced a healthy $9 million fundraise, itself, wants to make you a — wait for it — real estate mogul!

The startup does something actually cool and mutually profitable: It lets less-rich-than-Trump types get a piece of commercial real estate action.

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So far, Realty Mogul says its platform has been used to fund properties totaling more than $100 million in value.

Backers in this round of funding include Canaan Partners.

“Our goal is to bring the $11 trillion commercial real estate market into the 21^st century,” said Jilliene Helman, CEO and co-founder of Realty Mogul, in a statement on the news.

“Canaan’s backing will help us to enable thousands of investors to have an easy, transparent way to diversify their portfolio into commercial real estate by crowdfunding opportunities previously only available to a select few.”

Using this service, would-be investors can find projects, do research, put their cash into commercial buildings, then keep track of their investments online.

The catch: To become a Realty Mogul accredited investor, you have to make at least $200,000 per year or have a net worth of $1 million.

“Realty Mogul will be the next disruption in a massive asset class just like LendingClub has been for the consumer credit market,” said Hrach Simonian, principal at Canaan Partners and Realty Mogul board member, in the same press release.

Realty Mogul is based in LA and was founded in 2012. This is the startup’s first round of institutional funding.

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