Real estate companies have raised USD $11 billion?

VC-backed real estate companies have raised nearly $11 billion this year, up about 22 percent from a year ago.

That surge is being fueled by a number of trends like low interest rates, a red-hot construction market, and government spending, but the center of this proptech surge is the flood of institutional money into real estate, writes Kevin Lynch of Maschmeyer Group Ventures.

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The legal world’s sometimes glacial pace does not obviously lend the industry to being disrupted by new technologies—but venture investors seem to be betting big on exactly that. So far this year, legal tech companies have already seen an all-time high of more than $1 billion in VC investment, Crunchbase data shows. We speak with industry insiders about why the staid legal sector is finally adopting new technologies, and the sorts of startups securing investment.

For startups in fundraising mode, flattering pitch deck presentations are probably still OK: Feel free to play up the size of your target market and talk a lot about your highest profile customers, investors and advisers. But keep the internal performance numbers real or you might end up entangled in a fraud suit with the SEC like Manish Lachwani, former CEO of once high-flying software startup HeadSpin.

TCV (Technology Crossover Ventures) has been investing in private and public technology companies for the past 26 years. The firm was one of the first investors in Netflix and Zillow, but perhaps more notable than the success of its early bets is its penchant for playing the long game with its portfolio companies, some of which it continues to invest in after they’ve gone public. We speak with general partner Neil Tolaney about growth stage investing, the firm’s new $4 billion fund, and what TCV is investing in this year.

Restaurant payments and software provider Toast began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, while Freshworks, a provider of customer engagement software, raised more than $1 billion in its Nasdaq debut. Shares of both companies surged in their first day of trading. In other news, document automation software provider PandaDoc said its valuation hit $1 billion in a new funding round.