HomeCanvasr.com Raises Seed Funding from Their Newly-Formed Brokerage Arm, HomeCanvasr NY, Inc.
Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) October 23, 2015 -- One year after launching the tech-driven real estate listings platform HomeCanvasr.com in 2014 - specializing in pre-market & off-market properties in brownstone Brooklyn - HomeCanvasr (HC) is proud to announce it has raised a round of seed funding from their newly-formed brokerage arm HomeCanvasr NY (HCNY). Co-Founders Steven Szczur and Jonah Landman (Publisher, BKtotheFullest.com) committed over $200K of funding to the seed round.
Sensing "irrational exuberance" and "non-universalizable expectations" from angel investors and venture capitalists in the start-up market, HomeCanvasr decided that boot-strap funding made the most sense at this stage in the company and the overall start-up market cycle. "Every so-called 'investor' in the start-up space is looking for a minimum 50x return in the next multi-billion dollar company. These folks are focused on quantity and not quality of growth, which takes priority over profitability for them in the near-term," co-founder Jonah Landman continued, "The limitations of this approach were self-evident to us." Much like the storied "credit-card round" of funding from successful companies like AirBnB, HomeCanvasr decided to take matters into their own hands. However, no credit was needed in HC's case. "It's crazy to think that these days we're out here earning the same money that we were trying to raise just one year ago," Landman noted, citing the revenue from a handful of real estate transactions done by the brokerage arm HomeCanvasr NY. Co-founders agreed that committing their own capital was the best vote of confidence possible for their start-up, and that earning that capital themselves in under a year in the marketplace was the best possible proof of concept.
"Market response from the launch of HomeCanvasr.com in Brooklyn has been tremendous. Home owners, buyers, and real estate agents alike are hungry for new approaches and new technologies," co-founder Steven Szczur explained. "Forming a brokerage arm allowed us to meet the needs of our consumers by having the more active role in the transaction that consumers sought. The brokerage arm also solved the problem of the customary monetization structures inherent in this highly-regulated industry." Working for over 5 years as an unlicensed "finder" and "consultant" - propelled by his real estate blog "BK to the Fullest" - HCNY brokerage co-founder Jonah Landman summarized the virtues of the brokerage arm, "No, I'm not a broker; brother, I'm an owner," mimicking the verses of Jay-Z's "On to the Next One".
Indeed, this HomeCanvasr team is "on to the next one" themselves, launching their new webpage (notonStreeteasy.com) and hash-tag (#notonStreeteasy) this month as guerrilla marketing for their off-market expertise and deal flow on their site. "It's not a website, it's a movement," Landman explained. Seed capital raised by HomeCanvasr will fund tech development for their latest iteration, HomeCanvasr.com 2.0, launched earlier this month, as well as funding their brand and expansion into Manhattan and other markets. "Both sales contracts in Manhattan executed from HCNY came from showing the property to only one buyer each time," Szczur marveled, "illustrating the power of hands-on market expertise blended with tech-fueled match-making." Funding has driven numerous upgrades and added functionality to HC 2.0, furthering the goal post beyond the initial proof of concept achievements of the first iteration.
The principles that drive the success of HC and HCNY are simple: 1) No matter how much money you have, no one can show you every property that's available for sale in NYC. 2) You can't buy what you don't know is for sale, and buyers are hungry for an edge. 3) Properties have and will continue to trade on the pre-market and off-market for many nuanced reasons, particularly in NYC. 4) Homeowners and agents are eager to tap into the demand of qualified, active real estate buyers. 5) the status quo of 6% commissions with 6 month exclusive contracts is old-media's stale answer to the real estate industry whose 21st Century revamp is long over-due. This is the inefficient market climate that propels the success of innovators such as HC and HCNY.
Co-founders Szczur and Landman look forward to presenting some of their latest innovations to web developers and market-makers at the "First Annual HomeCanvasr Real Estate Summit" planned in Cartagena, Colombia later this year.
To learn more about HomeCanvasr, visit http://www.HomeCanvasr.com, stay in touch on Twitter "@HomeCanvasr", or e-mail at info(at)homecanvasr(dot)com.
Steven Szczur, HomeCanvasr, Inc., +1 2016503298, [email protected]
Share this article