Zibo, a banking and payment platform for independent homeowners, today announced that it has raised $10.5 million in initial investments to expand its one-stop-shop technique to monetary control of residential rental properties.
“It’s a pretty big trip and we have some of the venture capital partners,” says Chris Hsu, co-founder and CEO of the new company based in Redwood City, California.
Led through Canaan Partners, which has supported a number of fast-growing genuine real estate generation companies, Zibo’s financing cycle has attracted capital from QED Investors, SVB Capital and Khosla Ventures.
Over the more than two months, operating in personal beta mode, Zibo has facilitated the collection of $250,000 in rent for “a handful” of homeowners, Hsu said. Some of the initial capital will go towards expanding Zibo’s customer base through education and awareness, he adds.
Nationally, there are about 11 million homeowners in the country, who jointly own a portion of all rental homes in the country, but about 3 million of them have some kind of software for their finances, Hsu says. Unlike their institutional peers, many family homeowners lack the money bandwidth to invest in genuine and monetary wealth control tools.
“If you communicate with these independent owners, what you can tell is that you spend a lot of time organizing,” Hsu says. “By the nature of having multiple homes in your portfolio, you have multiple bank accounts, other security deposit accounts for building, unit, or tenant. Then they have operating accounts that are connected to where they were given a mortgage.”
Most existing companies serving smallholders only deal with certain aspects of managing a rental business. Zibo, on the other hand, offers a wide variety of functions. Using proprietary algorithms and generation providers, Zibo unifies owners’ monetary records, allowing them to securely link bank accounts and move funds. The platform also stores data to expedite the completion of loan and insurance programs and to help prepare tax documents.
“Zibo’s undeniable and streamlined generation platform [allows rental asset owners to better manage their finances and automate processes that have been automated long ago,” Rich Boyle, canaan Partners’ general spouse, said in a press release.
For Hsu, Zibo is the platform he was looking for as an owner. About 20 years ago, after leaving the U.S. Army, he entered the residential rental market to build a family circle with his wife.
“We’ve had all the weaknesses that exist, adding create my own team in Excel to better manage those homes so they take much less time from a monetary point of view,” Hsu explains.
After a career in the generation industry, Hsu began formulating his Zibo concept as a platform for the “underserved owner” in 2018 when he partnered with the company’s other two co-founders, President Greg Watson (co-founder of Roofstock, a genuine real estate investment firm.) and Rob Bloemker (who co-founded Finance Finance, a lender for homeowners’ real estate investors).
Today, Zibo has 34 employees. With genuine real estate technology, or proptech, gaining ground, the online disruption Hsu expects to get rid of its business is alone in its infancence.
“[We are] at the beginning of a large migration and several years of outdated offline approaches, from record keeping, payments, interaction with tenants and subcontractors, to a virtual world,” Hsu says. “Zibo is at the center of this.”
I discovered my interest, which has now become a passion, for genuine heritage, my first editorial paintings after college. Since then, I’ve covered the housing industry.
I discovered my interest, now a passion, for genuine heritage in my first post-college editorial paintings. Since then, I’ve covered the housing industry from a variety of perspectives, from luxury apartments to buying and promoting a home and market dynamics. My paintings have been published in the Washington Post, U.S. News – World Report, Mansion Global and Robb Report, among other publications. To Forbes.com, I write about luxury residential real estate, as well as emerging trends in how homes are built, marketed, financed, sold and purchased. Contact us with articles to [email protected] concepts and tips and stay with me on Twitter at @DimaVitanova.