Openland Grabs $2.25M Funding

Today, Openland launches its professional messenger for the real estate industry, designed to streamline communication between owners, builders, investors, lenders, tenants, brokers and local officials. Openland's vision is supported by a new funding round of $2.25M from a group of 30 investors, including, Gagarin Capital, Sinai Ventures, Soma Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, Rainfall Ventures, and Y Combinator.

To deliver a new building, developers go through market research, deal sourcing, due diligence, contracting, financing, permitting, construction management, and leasing. The actual on-site construction work typically takes less than 50% of the total timeline, while the rest is spent in back-and-forth communications between all involved parties, using email, phone, in-person meetings, and actual physical paperwork. The communication costs lead to longer timelines and reduced outputs of the industry, ultimately driving real estate prices up and limiting global economic growth.

"In recent years, messaging apps have transformed personal and workplace communications. Now it's time to do the same for business-to-business interactions. A professional messenger for real estate has the potential to dramatically accelerate sourcing, negotiations, and closing workflows," said Openland CEO and co-founder, Yury Lifshits. "We look forward to templatizing and automating every routine interaction in real estate project lifecycle."

The key features of Openland are channels, listings, and cross-organizational chats. Users join channels based on their interests and role in the industry, post offerings/needs to channels, and message each other directly to qualify opportunities and work on transactions. The radical simplicity of Openland's user experience motivates users to share opportunities earlier and circulate them wider than before.

"Vertical messaging platforms are taking over customer service, sales, recruiting, and community management. The real estate industry is rapidly catching up with enterprise technology trends and is ready to embrace professional messaging," said Jason Freedman, Peak State Venture Partner and Openland investor. "With the launch of Openland, it will be exciting to see all key stakeholders collaborating in one place."

Openland's executive team has a proven track record of building highly successful messaging platforms as its CTO and co-founder, Steve Korshakov, is the former lead engineer at Telegram. He is also the author of open-source messaging platform, Actor.im. Yury Lifshits, Openland's CEO and сo-founder, is a former data scientist for Yahoo! and Caltech. The company graduated from Y Combinator in Winter 2018.

About Openland
Openland is a professional messenger for the real estate industry. It makes it easier to do market research, source deals, and work on transactions. Openland's key features (channels, listings, chats) are built to streamline communications between all stakeholder groups in real estate, including owners, builders, investors, lenders, tenants, brokers and local officials. Openland was founded in 2017 in San Francisco and graduated from Y Combinator in Winter 2018. The company is led by CEO, Yury Lifshits, a former data scientist for Yahoo! and Caltech, and CTO, Steve Korshakov, a former lead engineer at Telegram and the author of open-source messaging platform Actor.im. For more information please visit https://openland.com.