On June 11 at PCBC 2025, Pitchfest will welcome 10 startups to the Innovation Stage to present their housing solutions to industry experts and professionals.
While each finalist has 10 minutes to share their product, the process of selecting these finalists started over a year ago for the Housing Innovation Alliance and Home Technology Ventures (HTV). What started with a few dozen applications in its first year three years ago has flourished into over 100 applications this year.
“We created Pitchfest to be a funnel and a platform for all of these ideas to come in and create a safe space for them to have conversations with established builders and developers in our network. This allows them to learn from each other and provide feedback as they’re developing these solutions,” says Dennis Steigerwalt, Housing Innovation Alliance president.
Steigerwalt along with Chris Langford, managing partner of HTV, invite companies within their network to apply as well as send out a public call to action. Those applications are then processed through a group of industry execs to assess. Langford, who has been investing in housing industry startups for nearly 13 years, says that the majority of good outcomes for startups come from partnerships, enhancements, and even being acquired by the right leaders in the industry.
When assessing the applicants they look at:
- Is the proposed idea truly novel? Has it been seen before?
- Can the proposed solution make an impact on a particular problem?
- Can it be realistically commercialized? Is there a real plan?
- Do they have a complete team to execute the plan?
This year’s finalists revolve around the themes of streamlining regulatory data, generative pre-construction, alternative construction, and housing affordability and attainability.
The 2025 finalists and their solutions are below.
- Adept Materials: aims to revolutionize vapor, humidity, and temperature management through a two-layer coating system.
- Apis Cor: deploys robotic technologies that can be transported to a jobsite for concrete 3D printing.
- Aquaria: pulls water from the air to generate 1,000s of gallons of clean water a month.
- Genia: produces physically valid home designs from floor plans.
- Hamlet: makes local county commissioner meeting data across the U.S. accessible and searchable.
- Nestment: helps individuals learn how to become a homeowner and understand alternative financial products like co-buying.
- Pallet: builds and operates transitional shelter villages for people experiencing homelessness.
- Shovels: allows building permit data to become accessible to everyone.
- Spacial: offers floor plan analysis with code analysis and takeoff lists.
- XyloPlan: gives a data-driven shared view of home wildfire risk with solutions to increase resilience.
Following their pitches, the audience and judges will get to put in their votes. The winners of both the judges pick and audience pick will be announced on June 12 where each will get to share a little more on their solution.
