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I mean I think at seed round its like an [26:02]. So I guess in just to like follow up on that, what in your mind and obviously in what youve seen creates really that magical relationship between cofounders? Over time, its great to be able to bring in your team. So we solved it to the first two years purely by getting landlords on board through various kind of product strategy and so our growth cuts for the first two years that we raised the [27:41] were purely about landlords and listing. We saw it would take three to six months to integrate Pat Mapper and their backend that engineering project we worked really hard and quickly just over a year to integrate so we underestimated like how much work was required to integrate them by 3x. I was really impressed when because its not hard, its almost impossible to land VC such as Kleiner Perkins on literally your first financing round, the seed round. We raised like a million dollars in seed money, that was running out so we tried various things that didnt work and I think the fabric of our culture that is still true today when we have a hundred people is built in the dark days and those days where your stuff is not working, your users arent growing, and how you look at your teammates and how you guys turn up on a Monday morning after a really crappy week the week before where maybe someone quit or maybe the metrics went south. So Im completely there with you. One is I wouldnt be too pressured about it too early. It was just purely hustling my network for six months to find people who are really great cultural fit but also have very different skill sets to the one I have. At Zumper, based in San Francisco, he leads the company in its mission to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. Zumper CEO & Co-Founder Anthemos Georgiades makes renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel, shares insights on monetizing marketplaces, diversifying r. He discovered that the marketplace doesnt work for renters, and the idea for Zumper was born with the goal of evening the playing field and increasing transparency in the marketplace. So Id say your first month you spend like getting first, second, third meeting. Whats your story and most importantly, how did you get started with the entrepreneurial bug? Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More. At series A, you got to show product market set in a sub vertical. Got it. So lets talk about Zumper here. And I mean its quite a few cofounders. Not really actually. Alejandro: So I guess like I have one thing to follow up on this. "These markets had a huge net migration from New York and California, and they have held up," he says. It was like $46 million. So we have several million users using our platform every month now which is great and next year we wanted tens of millions of users a month and were poised to doing that. So M&A are strategic [33:48]. For me, its Zumper, an apartment rental platform. You look at your cofounders and you know that they understand that and that theyre not freaking out, that is where you build real institutional culture and then you try and grow that across the team. You can filter down by city and . Really good strategy to differentiate the demographics and were super happy with how it went down. So you acquire not long ago Pat Mapper and how did this come together? Alejandro: Alrightee. So we want to be the first ever kind of full stack rental platform for long term leases and we monetize that two ways. To give you odds, at the seed stage and the series A stage of growth cuts, all about supply side where a two sided marketplace chicken an egg, on day zero you have no renters and no landlords, how do you solve that? We saw it would take three to six months to integrate Pat Mapper and their backend that engineering project we worked really hard and quickly just over a year to integrate so we underestimated like how much work was required to integrate them by 3x. Got it. The other large investor in this round [20:05] scale so once you have product market set, how do you scale that? And were just a little earlier than obviously a public company so our gross is spikier. As CEO, Anthemos has raised $39.2 million in venture capital from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Goodwater Capital, Breyer Capital and Foxhaven Asset Management, including a Series B round in Oct. 2016 when many start-ups were struggling. It seemed crazy that the real estate industry wasnt moving towards on demand. We envisioned a world in which a renter can find apartments, book in [tour 10:18], turn up the [10:21] and if they want to take the apartment pre-qualify, leave a deposit and book the apartment. You just get to this kind of motion of you all feel the same and you kind of pull in the same direction. Alejandro: Just out of curiosity, Anthemos, like how many nos did you get for example on your seed round if you have to count it? Of course. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. In the early days you as the CEO you are the fundraiser, you are the effective CFO, youre the head of sales and you kind of have to do the whole thing. Then behind the scenes, Zumper will close the transaction with the landlord and set the renter up with kind of rent payment. Your job is to raise capital and your job is to kind of hire and retain the best talents. How flat is the company? You start to build depth and management structures. It is not closely married to [14:55] and thats where its still on [14:58] I think Silicon Valley has a long way to go where when I got my first introductions to VCs to Kleiner, to Andreseen, to Graylock, to NEA, it often came through my graduate school network where someone was like, Hey, this guy is leaving HBS. rex harrison audrey hepburn relationship. We want investors who look at $100 million in revenue as table stakes but they wont agree to a billion. Got it. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. A lot of that is in the bank. Whats your story and most importantly, how did you get started with the entrepreneurial bug? Saying that, if you do have multiple term sheets the second point is of course, like before you get to liquidity, revenue is irrelevant and if revenue gets in the way of bringing either the consumer on to your platform or the supply side person on to your platform, you should not be trying to charge. So yes, we have a great cap table. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. Everyone filling gaps where they could and it [07:02] fulfilling gaps in to where youre skilled and so I think the most obvious thing to do for that is to hire people with very different skill sets to you that allows you to never really have awkward overlap and egos because everyone is kind of skilled at something very unique. So it was never I want to be an entrepreneur journey. I mean at the end of the day, building and scaling companies especially when youre at the early stages is all about survival and its all about learning to be with each other behind the trenches and really going to war and having each others backs. So the series B, weve done story now look at how quickly the renters are growing on the platform. It is not suppose to be easy. And were they like obviously now youre opening here the cap table to a different breed and I guess when that happen probably at a strategic level lets say from a board perspective or something you know, maybe you receive some type of recommendations whether it was with this corporation or with other corporations as to what perhaps to look for and what to avoid. Everyone filling gaps where they could and it [07:02] fulfilling gaps in to where youre skilled and so I think the most obvious thing to do for that is to hire people with very different skill sets to you that allows you to never really have awkward overlap and egos because everyone is kind of skilled at something very unique. It is not closely married to [14:55] and thats where its still on [14:58] I think Silicon Valley has a long way to go where when I got my first introductions to VCs to Kleiner, to Andreseen, to Graylock, to NEA, it often came through my graduate school network where someone was like, Hey, this guy is leaving HBS. Make sure tenants understand why things are . The second one is have a vision and a mission that people agree with and we all wanted to [37:13] this vision make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. Fantastic. So one is weve always promoted within so whenever we needed a role, we always prefer to promote someone instead of hiring from outside. And your cap table I mean as I was reviewing I just felt as I was looking at the Oscars of Silicon Valley, the red carpet. So thats how Zumper got started. Vishal Makhijani President & COO. It was incredibly difficult. All of it is going to be important and it will come out at the right stage. Were very clear with Axle Springer that we have a lot of consumer scale so a lot of people use our platform on a monthly basis but were still building the [21:55]. So watching board members from the early investments are [19:38] who now runs Good Water but was originally Kleiner and then Eric [19:42] from Kleiner and theyre both experts at product market set. Got it. In many instances, really acquisitions are great to either feel growth on the company itself, either on the product or perhaps by adding a great talent, but unfortunately many M&A transactions fail really on the integration side of things. How many landlords did we have on the site? So M&A are strategic [33:48]. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. So how did you meet your cofounders? How autonomous can people be at the junior levels? So we solved it to the first two years purely by getting landlords on board through various kind of product strategy and so our growth cuts for the first two years that we raised the [27:41] were purely about landlords and listing. Yeah. They are the two ways that Zumper currently monetizes them and there are two folks that [11:35]. After that, it changed to more consumer. We both had ideas to be entrepreneurs but neither of us have the guts to actually go for it. Im so glad I did it. Got it. Got it. So we bought them. You shameless have to mine your network and I think all CEOs and entrepreneurs have to find that edge of how did they meet one of these investors, how did they meet someone that knows them. When you look your cofounders, your team in the eye and you know theyre ready to go and theyre resilient and they come back in to build and try the next thing and youve kind of worked out together this is part of the game. Im so glad I did it. Of course. A lot of it was completely bottom up. They may not understand marketplace as well as you but they may be able to bring a brilliant way of thinking about how to bring the supply on [30:20]. It was kind of [31:51] as early as we did to buy another stock up that was kind of four years in. Yeah. For us, I think they fully understand the entrepreneurial journey and were really excited to have them on board. They wanted to close apartments like they book a hotel and so took the status of like 35 different apartments we leased using the technology in San Francisco to VCs and said, Hey, were really going to rebuild all of this but heres some data that shows this really can work at scale, and thats how we raised the first million dollars from some of the names that you mentioned. I met Russel who [04:01] engineering products through just the personal connections in London. Yeah. So Anthemos, theres always a first time and you know I guess this is the first time in the history of the DealMakers Show that Im able to interview someone that has been involve on the M&A but more on the buy side. Alejandro: Got it. And so back to your point, yes, we want investors who are supportive of the fact that we didnt try to monetize the platform for the first three years because it would have created a barrier to entry. So you still have to land it and once youre on the door it doesnt matter where you come from you have to have something good. And it is the culture that keeps people here, not the compensation or anything else. Anthemos Georgiades: So Zumper is the vision for the company is to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. Got it. And then as we looked at the C round, Axle Springer are fantastic good example [19:59]. They are the two ways that Zumper currently monetizes them and there are two folks that [11:35]. Yes, weve raised $90 million in capital including a series C that we just closed three months ago. You just cant get spooked. I really enjoyed it and great stuff. And we were talking about the $46 million round which was the C round, C as in cat and basically what you were talking about I mean what Ive seen is that you guys have shifted a little bit the strategy. Its not about the ski trips and any of that you know. Budget in my opinion perhaps should be allocated to something else. I guess the question that I would ask you and perhaps some advice for some of those that are listening, that are building a business that is more around the network effects, the marketplaces, should they walk the other way if the investor is asking too much about revenue early on on the financing cycles? Alejandro: Got it. Yeah. If you guys are Zumper website, you can kind of kind at zumper.com the Contact Us or on Twitter I am just @anthemos, A-N-T-H-E-M-O-S on Twitter and yeah, I respond to people. And talking about hustling the network, was there any because I mean those networks that you have I think the network of Harvard is really fantastic and then you know the BCG as well but is there like any process that you followed to really like leverage the network? We didnt go that route because I have the network but if I didnt have the network and some people have the network and still do it, they are really good cheap in to getting scaled quickly. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. Anthemos Georgiades is the co-founder and CEO of Zumper. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah, I mean BCG I think you get access to the 23 year olds CEOs who had been working for 40 years and kind of crazy in consulting you take the shortcut in your careers to being in the board room. Were incredibly grateful for everything she did and she remains kind of shareholder in the company. So I saw for example Axle Springer which is you know more kind of like the corporate. 1. Zumper CEO and co-founder May 2012 Board and Advisor Roles Number of Current Board & Advisor Roles 1 Anthemos Georgiades is the Board Member at Zumper. Got it. And so I finally just gave in and thought no one is going to build this. And we built this website using an outsource development shop in Europe that just tested one assumption of the end game which was can we get users in 2011, 2012 just as mobile was coming online to apply and close apartments from their phone. So for the business, Anthemos, how much capital have you guys raised today? It was always a man, there is a really tough problem that consumers experience and no one is solving it. So I guess what was the timeline of this C round compared to perhaps your seed round of 2012? They may not understand marketplace as well as you but they may be able to bring a brilliant way of thinking about how to bring the supply on [30:20]. And even though that sounds so obvious six years later, people just werent doing this in 2011, 2012 and we created a bunch of data that overwhelming shows the renters wanted to be applying for apartments from their phone. And for you I guess personally and professionally because I think they both come together, so how has your leadership and management skills changed over the time from leading the company of lets say four to ten folks initially to a company of over a hundred employees? Theyre both incredibly smart as are my executive team who are also like critical to fundraise where Ill go in and sell the vision often alone. Zumper has 7 current employee profiles, including CEO and co-founder Anthemos Georgiades. I know entrepreneurs who spend nine months raising their rounds which is a long time but they got great rounds done. Its just part of the game and it doesnt [24:30]. Absolutely. Theyre struggling to kind of grow their audience because they didnt have enough listings whereas Zumper at the getgo we had a lot of unique landlords on the platform that no one else had. Got it. Get 5 free searches. I think if you hire four cofounders like yourself, thats difficult and luckily we didnt have that problem. Alejandro: Got it. So the series B, weve done story now look at how quickly the renters are growing on the platform. And investors love that story because its easy to believe that you can continue to do that. Were growing very quickly but none of that was true obviously in the first two years. Then behind the scenes, Zumper will close the transaction with the landlord and set the renter up with kind of rent payment. It was just purely hustling my network for six months to find people who are really great cultural fit but also have very different skill sets to the one I have. I didnt think that either of them originally. Alejandro: Got it and before we actually dive in to the journey here, so consulting and business school, this is a few things that I typically hear so from some of our other guests. Theyre struggling to kind of grow their audience because they didnt have enough listings whereas Zumper at the getgo we had a lot of unique landlords on the platform that no one else had. Ill set the first couple of meetings often alone but its been wonderful as weve grown our executive team to be able to bring like our VP of sales, our head of grow, our CPO in to the meetings afterwards when they want to meet the team. Got it. Well, first of all, your point about quashing the egg and shooting the chicken. And so I finally just gave in and thought no one is going to build this.