Month: August 2017
Sandalphon invests in Truss’ Series A
Truss Raises $7.7 Million Series A Round
Investment Will Drive Market Expansion, Product Development and Customer Experience
CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Truss, a Commercial Real Estate (CRE) tech platform, today announced the close of a $7.7 million Series A round led by Navitas Capital. Additional investors include Hyde Park Angels with a board seat to Jeffrey Hammes, Chairman of Kirkland & Ellis and a board observer role by Meredith Mendes, COO and Executive Director of Jenner & Block. Hyde Park Venture Partners is reinvesting after the initial seed round. With the latest funding, Truss has raised over $9 million in total capital.
Truss was created to solve a crucial pain point in the CRE industry: the office search process for companies needing space under 10,000 square feet. Truss will use the investment for additional market expansion, product development and improving the customer experience using Matterport’s best of breed 3D touring technology.
“There is a huge unmet need to help streamline the leasing process for small tenants and landlords. Therein lies the opportunity for Truss, which is uniquely positioned to provide content, context, and transparency – leveraging a technology-based listing and brokerage platform,” said James Pettit, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Navitas Capital. “We are excited to watch the team at Truss solve the challenges that small tenants and landlords have been facing when it comes to finding and leasing office space.” James Pettit will also be joining the Board of Directors.
This funding comes after two successful launches in Chicago and Dallas.
“With this latest round of funding we are able to further refine our solution and bring it to more places,” said Tom Smith, Co-Founder, Truss. “We’re excited to overcome the hurdles that startups, SMBs and other tenants looking for smaller office spaces have had to face.”
“Efficiency hasn’t yet been addressed in the commercial real estate industry,” said Peter Wilkins, Managing Director, Hyde Park Angels. “CRE is now ripe for disruption. Given the overall economics and the team’s previous success, we believe Truss is in a great position to drive market adoption and traction.”
“We are excited to provide Truss with additional capital to help them realize their vision of simplifying real estate transactions for growing businesses. Truss’ experienced management team, differentiated market approach and product vision are truly compelling to us and we look forward to working together,” said John Hoesley, Group Head of Technology Banking, The PrivateBank. The PrivateBank is providing venture debt financing for the transaction.
About Truss
Truss simplifies the process of finding and leasing office space. Its web and mobile platform enables businesses to go from search to lease with ease. More information about Truss and how to lease office space is available at www.buildtruss.com.
Contacts
Elisco Communications
Kate Elisco
312-480-6780
kate@eliscocommunications.com
Sandalphon invests in Kin Insurance’s Seed round
Kin Insurance Launches Modern Home Insurance, Announces $4.0M Financing
Online InsurTech startup, Kin Insurance, offers better, faster, more transparent home insurance in the state of Florida.
CHICAGO, IL (PRWEB) AUGUST 01, 2017
Kin Home Insurance, the company that has built home insurance from scratch so that customers can get the best insurance entire online, in minutes, launched today in its first state, Florida. Since Kin is built on modern technology without paper and legacy IT systems, and does not rely on local brokers for distribution, Kin also provides a better value – more insurance for less money.
Kin was founded in 2016 by financial technology veterans Sean Harper, Lucas Ward and Sebastian Villarreal, who have previously built and sold financial technology businesses to Groupon, Insight Venture Partners and Avant.
Along with the launch, Kin raised $4.0M from top venture capitalists including Commerce Ventures, Omidyar Network, 500 Startups, Chicago Ventures and Portag3 Ventures, as well as top angels including founders and alumni from other top tech companies such as Avant, Square, Capital One, Linkedin and Facebook. “Insurance is a huge part of the economy that hasn’t seen much tech innovation. We are excited to back such an experienced team solving big problems in a giant industry,” said Dan Rosen, founder and Managing Director of Commerce Ventures.
Kin can provide a seamless and instant customer experience because it plugs into every available data source about each house. Historically, insurance companies have relied on the homeowner and the insurance agent to provide information about the house, which is inconvenient for the customer but also that data isn’t very reliable.
“Even if users liked filling out long questionnaires about their houses, most people don’t really know what condition their roof is in, or the replacement cost of their house. As techies with big data experience, we can quickly plug into new data sources and build models that really understand the home a lot better than the owner or an insurance agent” said Lucas Ward, CTO of Kin.
By starting from scratch and cutting out unnecessary costs, Kin can provide a better value to the consumer while still building a profitable business. “94% of homeowners insurance is still sold through local brokers and agents but only 24% of people under the age of 40 actually want to buy that way, and these are the people who are now buying the most houses. There are more insurance offices than fast food restaurants, which is unnecessary and adds a lot of expense and results in higher prices for the consumer,” said Sean Harper, CEO of Kin Home Insurance.