A new startup with ex-employees of Facebook, Google

It’s a startup, but a mighty one. Cadre, a 40-person startup has been quietly working out of a plush building in Manhattan since late 2014. Notwithstanding the company’s stealth, Cadre has attracted some top-notch professionals from Silicon Valley giants like Square, Google, and Facebook, all to shake up the real-estate world.

Cadre is a platform where approved sellers post carefully vetted commercial real estate deals—from stores to apartment buildings to offices—for qualified purchasers (from a network of high-wealth individuals) to make real estate investments. At first look, Cadre’s website looks like any other e-commerce page, just that the listings go with a price tag of $50 million or $250 million. Here, the investors can drop $500,000 or more on individual properties. Currently, all of Cadre's listed properties are located in the US, but the startup plans to expand internationally.

The team is led by a 27-year-old former Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Harvard alumni, Ryan Williams, who has attracted a team of high-profile investors and advisors. Over the past year and a half, Cadre has raised $68 million from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Goldman Sachs, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, DST's Yuri Milner, real-estate moguls Jared and Joshua Kushner, and others. Advisors include TPG's co-CEO Jon Winkelreid and SL Green's president Andrew Mathias.

"If you know how to invest in a property, it's probably because you know a fund. But even then, how do you see what's going on with your investment?" Williams says. Typically, wealthy individuals invest in a real estate fund, which then makes all the decisions on which buildings to invest in, without providing many details to the individual. Moreover, the investment is tied down for five to seven years, with no opportunity to sell their interest in the meantime.

Cadre offers an alternative market for real estate where people can purchase portions of a specific building, the same way they can choose a specific company to buy stock in. "Funds are opaque and you don't have a good sense of what's happening underneath the hood," Williams said. "Cadre's mission is to create a more efficient economy where we can connect the world's buyers and sellers in opaque assets that have been inaccessible to many."

For sellers, Cadre is an opportunity to get a deal done relatively quickly and cheaply, but that is if it approved to be listed. Only about 1 percent of the properties Cadre vets actually get listed on the platform. However, Cadre claims that it can charge the sellers 50 percent less in fees, because of its lean overhead.

For investors, it is an easy platform to use, with credible property listed. Once you've found an appealing Cadre property, the investing process is quick.