Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades
Since launching in 2012, Zumper has been actively pursuing more corners of the rental listings market, and its latest announcement shows its appetite is only increasing.
The San Francisco-based rental website just announced $17.6 million in Series B financing, up from the $6.5 million in Series A it claimed in March 2014.
This comes hot off Zumper’s announcements of an upcoming service that will help renters with the leasing process after finding an apartment or broker, and updates to PadMapper, the rental website with Canadian markets acquired by Zumper in February.
“Both brokers and landlords have been asking Zumper for even higher quality leads, and the new service we will launch in January 2017 will deliver this very thing,” Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades said.
“Our Series B was raised to execute against this plan, as well as to scale our core Zumper and PadMapper platforms to even greater audiences.”
At the start of next year, Zumper will launch a new service that sits above its search platform, Georgiades says, though the specifics of its functions weren’t disclosed.
PadMapper, which appeals to college students and a younger demographic, will keep the same interface, but users can now sign in and save properties under the same profile on either website.
Future updates include a “Post a Pad” option for its iOS and Android apps, which will be geared toward consumers who want to list their homes. To protect both sides of the transaction, the upgraded Post a Pad includes an identity verification process.
According to Zumper Director of Strategic Marketing Devin O’Brien, the Series B money will be used to improve PadMapper and Zumper’s existing technology and marketing, most of which began before the latest round of financing, he says.
O’Brien says no future acquisitions are in Zumper’s plans after the PadMapper purchase, but he does expect Zumper’s full-time staff to grow from around 35 to 50 within the next year.
The Series B influx brings the website’s total funding to $39.2 million, according to the announcement. Combined with PadMapper, Zumper claims 40 million unique visitors find an apartment per year between the two websites.
According to the announcement, this round of funding was led by Breyer Capital and Foxhaven Asset Management, as well as existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Goodwater Capital, xfund, Scott Cook and Marcus & Millichap.
O’Brien believes the investor confidence in Zumper stems from influential names that were onboard early in the process, such as Breyer Capitol’s Jim Breyer, who is known for his early and sizable investments in services such as Facebook and Spotify.
“Getting him as a lead investor for this brand was pretty big for people’s confidence,” O’Brien said.
“We had a marquee name leading. The amount of capitol is important, but so are the names attached to it.”