• Rubik, a proptech startup founded in Kosovo, closed a $3.5 million funding round led by Silicon Valley-based Ulu Ventures.
• South Central Ventures, AAF Management, ERA’s Remarkable Ventures Fund, Green Egg Ventures and former Trulia and Zillow board member Greg Waldorf also joined the round.
• The New York-based real estate startup was founded in 2017 by entrepreneurs Amar Sehic, Krenar Roka and Tommaso Montagni.
The inspiration for Proptech startup in Kosovo Rubik came for the three co-founders as they had witnessed the massive appetite of institutional investors for this niche, as well as the bottlenecks inherent to investors trying to allocate institutional capital into single-family rental (SFR) . SFRsh are single-family residences primarily owned and operated as rental properties.
Therefore, Rubik’s solution leverages machine learning (ML) to provide financial data on all single-family homes, allowing real estate investors to instantly find properties that match their investment criteria.
Previously, Sehic, Roka and Montagni worked together on various other projects involving analysis and sourcing tools for the SFR space.
“By collecting and analyzing data across entire markets, Rubik’s technology is able to identify homes that match each buyer’s specific purchasing criteria and are not currently on the market. The startup’s model is to bring these off-market homes to their market, without taking ownership, and allow institutional investors to then purchase the assets in a streamlined manner and with full data transparency,” the company said in a press release.
Since launching the marketplace in 2021, Rubik has successfully completed over $12 million worth of single-family home transactions and counts 20 of the largest SFR buyers in the country among its clients.
Develop engineering and other product expansion initiatives
The Kosovar proptech startup now plans to use the funds to increase its trading volume in current markets by further developing its core data and analytics platform and expanding its engineering, sales and support teams. marketing.
“With the capital and partners we have recruited, we are well positioned to take advantage of the coming changes in the real estate market and leverage our early market lead in this area to become the go-to investment platform for institutional single-family homes. investors,” says co-founder Tommaso Montagni.
For lead investor Ulu Ventures, Rubik brings a modern solution to real estate industry.
“Their platform can help reduce transaction friction, better match supply and demand, and provide liquidity to owners looking to exit,” said Clint Korver, co-founder and CEO of Ulu Ventures.
Additionally, Korver says, this approach will also modernize a practice that has relied for too long on a network of independent service providers and a lack of consistency in transactions.