CRE Simple Announces Seed Investment

CRE Simple, Inc., the first company to transform Commercial Real Estate (CRE) financing through the use of intelligent technology that integrates with the entire CRE ecosystem, today announced a series seed investment led by Grand Ventures and Fin Venture Capital, with participation by Darkknight Ventures, Sandolphon Capital, Duke Angel Network, and other private investors and leaders in the CRE industry. CRE Simple has also been named as one of six companies accepted to REACH Commercial, a strategic growth accelerator operated by Second Century Ventures, the venture capital arm of the National Association of REALTORS�®.

CRE Simple is reinventing CRE financing with capital and software solutions that create a more efficient and transparent lending process. CRE Simple's technology-driven approach automates the complexity involved in commercial lending. By connecting the dozens of parties involved in the CRE deal workflow and managing over 1700 steps in each transaction, CRE Simple accelerates processing times by up to 10X while allowing capital partners to dramatically reduce their cost of lending.

"I've worked in enterprise fintech for 14 years and it's incredibly challenging to change the way businesses collaborate and communicate. We believe the CRE Simple team has the potential to reinvent CRE financing through connected platform technologies – and introduce the future of Commercial Real Estate," said Tim Streit, Founder and General Partner at Grand Ventures.

The U.S. CRE lending market is worth more than $3.2 trillion1. Despite being a major engine of economic activity, the sector has lagged behind in creating efficient and digitally connected processes for brokers, borrowers, and capital providers alike. The information required to market, quote, and close a transaction is distributed across multiple parties, compromising accuracy and security, and negatively impacting the borrower experience. These inefficiencies result in excessive origination costs that are shared by every participant in a transaction.

Until now, the CRE lending market has been limited in its ability to harness the power of technology to standardize and streamline the lending process, from quote-to-payoff. CRE Simple's OneSource platform creates an efficient and transparent CRE lending process for every stakeholder. By creating a personalized experience and workflow for every participant in a deal, CRE Simple brings predictability and automation to a currently manual, error-prone, and complex process. The OneSource platform is purpose-built to manage loan origination, applications, credit file creation, processing, underwriting, closing, and servicing. OneSource is used by CRE Simple lending experts and others to reduce costs and provide a faster and superior borrowing experience.

"We invested in CRE Simple because it is providing SaaS technology solutions to the commercial real estate market, driving scale and efficiencies in asset and transaction management across external service providers, brokerages, and capital partners," said Logan Allin, Managing General Partner and Founder of Fin Venture Capital.

"We are thrilled to partner with a diverse set of funds and industry leaders that share our vision to transform the commercial real estate market and deliver the efficiency opportunities of modern technology-driven financing," said Brian Thompson, Co-Founder and CEO of CRE Simple.

"Financing is the backbone of the commercial real estate industry, offering rich opportunities to apply technology to reinvent the market," said Laura Millichap, Co-Founder and President, Strategic Accounts of CRE Simple. "Data accuracy, intelligent automation, and market networks are required to deliver more efficient transactions. We are excited to be working with strategic investors and partners to simplify commercial real estate market," added Millichap.

Proceeds from the round will allow CRE Simple to accelerate growth by adding sales, marketing, and product development resources. The investments will also position the company to capitalize on strategic relationships and opportunities to expand its lending and SaaS footprint across the CRE ecosystem.

About CRE Simple

CRE Simple is reinventing CRE financing with capital and software solutions that bring speed, certainty and transparency to every CRE transaction. CRE Simple empowers every participant in a CRE transaction by providing access to standardized and digitized data, workflow, and documents, while intelligently coordinating communication across every stakeholder.

Using the OneSource platform, CRE Simple's capital solutions business enables financing partners to accelerate origination and processing, dramatically reducing the cost of lending while providing a modern experience for the borrowing community and their distribution channel.

CRE Simple's OneSource platform is also currently available on pre-release basis to select mortgage brokers to enhance team efforts, streamline lender management, develop their brand, and increase the lifetime value of their clients. Brokers using the system also get integrated access to CRE Simple's capital solutions, providing them exclusive access to competitive capital in the market.