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Venture Capital News: Opcity Raises $27M in Series A

2017-05-10
AUSTIN, TX, Real estate technology company announced its Series A financing of $27 million.
Opcity, the real estate technology company improving residential real estate's consumer experience by matching top agents with qualified home buyers and sellers in real-time, today announced its Series A financing of $27 million. The round was led by Silicon Valley-based Icon Ventures, with participation from artificial intelligence-focused Georgian Partners, and Texas-based LiveOak Venture Partners. Tom Mawhinney of Icon Ventures will join the Opcity Board. Opcity plans to use the funding to rapidly scale its workforce and establish an award-winning culture to expand its footprint to real estate brokers nationwide.

Opcity's technology platform identifies transaction-ready buyers and sellers in the growing haystack of online real estate inquiries and delivers them to top agents through brokers in real-time with no upfront cost. Using proprietary data and applied analytics, Opcity's unique technology and matching algorithm converts online inquiries into transactions, increasing the conversion rate by three to five times the industry average.

"The home buying and selling experience for brokers, agents and consumers has historically been complex and at times extremely frustrating," said Ben Rubenstein, CEO and Founder of Opcity. "Our goal at Opcity is to simplify this process and to generate a more efficient ecosystem by matching home buyers and sellers with the right agents in real-time and then optimizing their experience every step of the way. We also take on all upfront costs, which ensures we're completely aligned with the brokers, their agents, and the consumers, as we do not get paid until a transaction successfully closes."

Opcity initially launched in a handful of markets in 2016 and has since scaled quickly due to brokerage industry demand for its service. Today, Opcity works with over 350 brokerages and more than 4,000 agents on the platform, spanning franchised brands including Better Homes & Gardens, Keller Williams, ReMax, Century 21, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, and the leading independent brokerage companies.

"Opcity is one of the most compelling marketplace businesses we have seen, with the opportunity to transform the real estate industry while creating a win/win with all their constituents," said Tom Mawhinney, General Partner at Icon Ventures. "Opcity has the total package of an incredible team, product, and business model."

Opcity is the second startup for Austin-based Rubenstein, whose success and experience in founding and growing Yodle (acquired by Web.com in 2016 for $342 million and a consistent winner of Best Places to Work) has helped drive early execution and rapid growth for the company. Rubenstein's track record and Opcity's ability to scale spurred interest from top-tier investors and allowed them to close the largest Series A in recent Austin history. With this fresh investment, in addition to expanding into new markets, Opcity will further scale the business across its matching platform, and hire the staff necessary to execute demand for its services by brokerages.

Learn more at www.opcity.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

ABOUT OPCITY

Opcity is modernizing the real estate industry by matching top agents with qualified home buyers and sellers in real-time. Using large proprietary data sets and applied analytics, Opcity's unique technology and matching algorithm turn online inquiries into transactions, drive increases in conversion by three to five times the industry average, and give brokers centralized insights into agents' pipelines for the first time. Based in Austin, TX, Opcity is a fast-growing company tackling some of the most exciting challenges in the way people buy and sell homes.

ABOUT ICON VENTURES

Based in Palo Alto, California, Icon Ventures is a technology venture capital firm specializing in mid-stage investing in companies with great entrepreneurs, compelling business models and strong momentum in their respective markets. Icon Ventures has had the privilege to invest in market-leading companies such as Aster Data, ClairMail, FireEye, 41st Parameter, Infinera, MoPub, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint and Teladoc. For more information about Icon Ventures visit http://www.iconventures.com/.

ABOUT GEORGIAN PARTNERS

Georgian Partners is a thesis-driven growth equity firm investing in SaaS-based business software companies exploiting applied artificial intelligence, security first and conversational business. Founded by successful entrepreneurs and technology executives, Georgian Partners leverages our global software expertise to be able to directly impact the success of companies. For more information, visit www.georgianpartners.com.

ABOUT LIVEOAK VENTURE PARTNERS

LiveOak is a $109MM Fund based in Austin, TX and was founded by Ben Scott, Krishna Srinivasan, and Venu Shamapant (all formerly of Austin Ventures). While many of LiveOak's investments begin in the early stages, LiveOak is a full lifecycle investor focused on technology and technology-driven service companies based in Texas. With over 16 years of successful early stage investing in Texas, the Founders of LiveOak have helped entrepreneurs create industry-leading companies, such as Spatial Wireless (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), Navini Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems), LifeSize Technologies (acquired by Logitech), Mavenir Systems, and StackEngine (acquired by Oracle). For more information, visit www.liveoakvp.com
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