How This 26-Year-Old Rescued A Failing Real Estate Startup—And Landed $58 Million From Google Ventures

Forbes

3 days ago

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Din Bisevac and his team at Buena. Photo by Daniel Farò
Two years after Din Bisevac joined German real estate startup Buena as a product designer, the company—which was focused on leasing properties—had burned through $14 million. A shutdown seemed inevitable.
But on Thursday, Buena announced a $58 million Series A round led by Google Ventures, with backing from 20VC and Stride. It's the first raise since Bisevac stepped into the role of CEO in 2021.
'The original business model was kind of rent arbitrage. They would rent apartments at below market and try to rent them out above market,' the Under 30 Europe alum told Forbes . 'I spent the first year just restructuring, finding a good deal with the existing investors and basically pivoting the company.'
Today, Buena has reinvented itself as a Berlin-based software startup offering property management tools for landlords. The platform works with property owners to automate everything from listing properties and managing viewings to vetting tenants and coordinating maintenance, right down to scheduling a handyman or janitor. As of June, it's managing more than 60,000 apartments across Germany and has hit $25 million in annual recurring revenue.
Most of Buena's clients are private individuals—your typical apartment building owners—but the company has recently begun working with institutional investors managing hundreds of units.
'Property management just has a terrible, terrible brand in Germany. No matter which owner or tenant you ask, everyone will tell you they hate their property manager,' Bisevac says of the inspiration for the pivot. Still, with many clients used to the old-school way of doing things, he adds: 'We wouldn't position ourselves as this mainly technology company in front of our customers because it's a bit too abstract for them, and frankly just doesn't matter too much.'
Bisevac may have been thrust into the CEO seat, but he's no stranger to entrepreneurship. Before 'content creator' was even a term, the now-26-year-old was one of Germany's earliest YouTube child stars, hosting a Jimmy Fallon-style talk show on his channel. By age nine, he'd launched his own clothing brand, which he says gained traction with his followers. After his parents made him quit the online fame, he built a Shopify site for the business. Soon after, a local IT firm hired him as a product designer, at just 13 years old, and he began homeschooling.
He might regret stepping away from his internet stardom given the recent boom of the creator economy, but Bisevac is putting those same storytelling skills to work with Buena. His goal: make property ownership accessible to the younger generation—something like Robinhood for real estate.
'Our generation invests in ETFs, stocks, crypto, but we're missing the residential real estate part in our investment portfolios because we don't know how to do it,' he says. 'The broader vision with Buena is to become this end-to-end platform for people where you come to us to find an apartment you like, you buy it through us, we finance it for you, we manage it for you.'
For now, the new funding will fuel expansion across Germany, with plans to land in the U.S. next, where the housing market is valued at some $50 trillion.
More next week,
Zoya, Alex and Alexandra Can A Chatbot Be Your Therapist? Casper's Neil Parikh Launches A New $93 Million-Backed Startup To Try
Daniel Cahn (left) and Neil Parikh (right), cofounders of Slingshot AI. courtesy of slingshot
Neil Parikh's first startup, Casper, made sleep as easy as clicking a few buttons and getting a mattress delivered to your door. Now he wants to make getting therapy just as accessible. Parikh's latest venture, Slingshot AI, launched a chatbot that's designed to replicate the experience of talking to a human therapist. Can it work, and why not just use ChatGPT, if so? Find out more here. On Our Radar
-It's been six months since tens of thousands of federal employees began losing jobs due to DOGE budget cuts. What was meant to streamline the government and increase efficiency quickly turned into confusion and chaos across many federal agencies. "DOGE started to make itself known, it became a very strange, paranoid, alienating experience," Egan Reich, who resigned from his Department of Labor position in April, told Business Insider. "It became clear they really wanted people gone." He's not the only one with bitter feelings. ( Business Insider )
-Are we living amidst the second coming of Tyler Haney? The Outdoor Voices founder and 2016 Under 30 Retail & Ecommerce alum—who was ousted in 2020 and went on to build two other companies: TYB, a web 3 platform; and Joggy, a sports drink—is seemingly back in the drivers seat. The startup deleted all TikTok and Instagram posts and now follows just one Instagram account: @ty_haney. ( Inc. )
-Gen Z is looking for community, and they know the office is one place to get it. While it's true that only 6% of the young cohort prefers to work from the office all the time (only millennials are more opposed, with just 4% preferring in-office), they're actually the most likely to want to come in at least sometimes . 71% of Gen Zers say hybrid is their ideal environment. The loneliness they feel while WFH, plus the inability to learn from more experienced coworkers, appear to be major reasons. ( Gallup ) One Minute with Autumn-Kyoko Cushman
We're bringing you the scoop on a new Under 30 community member. Up this week: 2025 Under 30 Healthcare lister Autumn-Kyoko Cushman, cofounder of ShiftRx—a digital marketplace that connects healthcare facilities with clinicians to fill staffing gaps.
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How did you get the inspiration for ShiftRx? My cofounder and I were burned-out clinicians. I spent five years in the Navy as a nurse, working 12-hour clinical shifts during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eventually, I left and began researching cancer clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health. After that, I thought I was ready to leave healthcare until my mom was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. Even with my healthcare connections, advocating for her as a patient was a nightmare. That experience made me realize how broken the system really is and I got pissed off.
I quit my job, liquidated my savings, and roped in my best friend Leann, who was working as a pharmacy tech at CVS at the time. We knew someone had to address the staffing crisis, and we thought, 'Why not us?'
What's one lesson you would go back and tell yourself when first starting as a founder? You are capable of doing anything. It is definitely rooted in delusion. Leann and I genuinely believed we could fix healthcare as two 27-year-olds. The older you get, the more you realize that no one really knows what they're doing. We didn't have all the answers, but we had passion—and that was enough to start.
What's one thing you can't live without? My assistant Ashley. I love her—she's so freaking funny and keeps me sane. I stole her from another company five years ago, and she's by far my most valuable employee. When I'm in and out of meetings, working 100- to 120-hour weeks and barely sleeping or eating, she's the one taking care of me. She's the lock screen on my phone. I just love her. I also can't live without my AirPods.
What does a day in your life currently look like? I get out of bed, make my bed, go on a 30-minute walk, and then do a 45-minute run—usually while calling Ashley, who briefs me on my day. Then I get on the phone with my cofounder. I like taking calls while running because it keeps me running longer. After that, I make breakfast and head into the office.
I try to front-load all my meetings between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.—I'm usually in 40 to 60 hours of meetings a week. I do my deep work between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. with a brief intermission for dinner. I end the day with stretching and 20 to 30 minutes of reading—whether it's a book, article, newsletter or clinical research paper.
What's your favorite AI tool? I'm addicted to Superhuman, which is basically AI for emails. The instant intros and predictive text features are fantastic.
What's something on your bucket list? I'd love to swim with orcas. There's a Norwegian university that runs expeditions studying how orcas interact with humans in their natural environments, and I'm desperate to go. I could talk for 30 minutes about how intelligent and fascinating they are.
Who is someone—dead or alive—that you would love to have coffee with? Anna Wintour. She's such a trailblazer and forward thinker, taking Vogue from the print to the '.com' era. She's also just a genius, setting these cyclical fashion trends that move with the times. She's not in my industry, but I think it's so cool to learn from people that are incredible operators in their own industries.
What does ShiftRx's next chapter look like? The next chapter looks like fixing healthcare operations, improving patient outcomes, and automating tasks clinicians shouldn't have to worry about. We're stepping into the next phase of AI-native applications to improve the patient experience—making sure clinicians can focus solely on patient care.