Daniel Correa, principal at JLL Spark, is one of our top 50 Rising Stars in corporate venturing for 2025.
Daniel Correa is proudly passionate about an industry few would consider very flashy: real estate.
He is a principal at the CVC arm of global real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, JLL Spark, where he aims to bring innovation to an “inherently stubborn” sector that has been late to adopt technology.
Corporates, he says, are like the navy. They rule the seas. The nimble and disruptive startups, on the other hand, are pirates. “I find it a really gratifying balance to be in corporate venture capital where you’re in the middle. There are over 60 startups that I view as innovation pirates in our portfolio and they’re out there changing critical aspects of this industry, and through Spark they’re collaborating with the navy. I think that’s great to be a part of.”
JLL Spark manages an evergreen fund that has made about $425m of investments to date, across property tech startups that relate to commercial and institutional real estate.
Correa says, given that real estate has already been a historically lucrative industry despite little in the way of tech innovation, the prospects for efficiency gains are very enticing.
“You have to be investing in an industry you are passionate about. Gratification comes from how it ties into the business areas you care about”
“It’s exciting to think that nearly every aspect of the real estate value chain remains subject to technology disruption. This involves everything from design, construction, underwriting, lease-up, acquisition and disposition, and finance for what is a heavily leveraged asset class.”
He has particularly high hopes for technology at the intersection of finance and real estate transactions, and believes early adopters such as JLL could really benefit from the efficiency gains.
“A lot of [real estate transaction] data is fragmented. Over the years, dozens of companies have built hyper-specific datasets that can now be aggregated through AI models,” he explains.
Correa, who comes from a family involved in the real estate business, stresses to people entering CVC that they should find sectors they are fundamentally attracted to.
“You have to be investing in an industry you are passionate about. Gratification comes from how it ties into the business areas you care about.”
See the full list of Rising Stars 2025 here.
