Brooklyn rental and roommate startup Nooklyn raised $825,000 in a round of seed funding, the platform announced Friday.
Nooklyn lets users search available rooms, apartments and roommates in Brooklyn. Users can search for an available room in an apartment or match with potential roommates to try to find an apartment together.
“Our mission is to fix the experience of finding apartments,” CEO Harley Courts said in a statement. “We’ve found great people who share our mission and the desire to build a lasting company.”
The firm Patoma, which specializes in Brooklyn multi-family developments and some early-stage tech investments, led the seed round. Other real estate developers contributed to the investment, the startup said.
Nooklyn plans to use its seed funding to expand from Brooklyn into Manhattan and expand its engineering, design and data teams to turn its platform into an end-to-end leasing product. Right now, the platform offers Nooklyn Apply to apply for apartments; Nooklyn Pay, its payments platform; and Rooms & Mates, its roommate-finding social network. It’s also launching Nooklyn Stay, which lets residents pay rent online.
Nooklyn launched its current online platform in 2015 and says 49,000 renters use its platform every month. More than 250 agents work for Nooklyn, the startup says.
“We’ve spent the last two years building a digital leasing platform, now we’re going to start opening up the platform, so anyone can post an apartment or room and find renters or roommates,” Nooklyn Chief Financial Officer Moiz K. Malik said in a statement.
