SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Peak Ventures, an early-stage venture firm, announced an investment in Homie, a Salt Lake City-based startup company trying to revolutionize the real estate industry. This seed round included participation from angel investor, Mike Levinthal.
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Homie is a peer-to-peer marketplace where buyers, builders, and sellers of homes can meet, negotiate, and transact without a middleman or high commission fees. Homie combines revolutionary software and shared economies to make finding, buying, and selling a home easier and less expensive. When buyers and sellers use Homie, they save tens of thousands of dollars in commission fees compared to using traditional real estate agents.
"The Homie platform takes a whole new approach to how people buy and sell homes," said Jeff Burningham, Founding and Managing Partner at Peak Ventures. "We are excited to be backing the Homie team who come with years of experience in the real estate technology space that they can use to solve this big problem."
Two of Homie's founding team members, Johnny Hanna and Mike Trionfo, were co-founders of Entrata (formerly Property Solutions). Entrata is a SaaS company for rental property management, currently at over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Hanna, Homie's CEO, was president of Entrata and Trionfo, Homie's CTO, was an Entrata co-founder and also led development at IBFX and Domo.
Homie's other two co-founders are Matt Thorne and Mike Peregrina. Thorne, Homie's CLO, is an attorney who focused on mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, and emerging growth with Salt Lake City law firms Holland & Hart and Stoel Rives. Peregrina, Homie's CFO, comes from an investment banking and investment background with Mercato Partners and Valtus Capital Group.
"We feel like several factors are coming together to make it possible to launch Homie right now," said Homie CEO Johnny Hanna. "If you look at the success of companies like Uber and Airbnb, you see that consumer behavior is shifting towards on-demand services in a shared-economy model. Real estate is one of the last big markets that hasn't really changed in decades. Our goal with Homie is to do just that by creating a seamless experience that allows people to find, buy, and sell homes without an agent, saving thousands of dollars in commission fees."
The Homie founders have already attracted additional key team members who have bought into the founders' vision for the company. Additional team members include Dan Might, VP of Operations, who was a general manager for Uber, founder of Holodeck, CEO of HRworX and ran operations for Coors Brewing Company and Dave Bascom, VP of Marketing, who was the founder and former CEO of SEO.com and CEO of digital marketing agency, Fit Marketing. Several veteran developers and designers have recently joined the Homie team, bringing total company headcount to 13.
"I've known the team at Peak for a long time and really respect what they've accomplished with their other companies," said Hanna, "we share similar values, which makes it a great fit for us. This investment shows they have confidence that this team can accomplish our goal of changing the way people buy and sell homes."
To learn more about Homie, visit www.homie.com
About Peak Ventures
Peak Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Provo, Utah. Peak Ventures backs talented entrepreneurs going after big markets with exceptional technologies. The thesis is simple: innovation and those who drive it are at the top of the food chain – not the VC. The team is made up of entrepreneurs experienced in the grind of starting, operating, growing and harvesting exciting companies. For more information, visit www.peakventures.vc
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