After $550 Million Exit, 34-Year-Old Gets Funds for Landing
After $550 Million Exit, 34-Year Old Founder Wins Fresh Backers
(Bloomberg) -- Bill Smith believed in his startup so much that he used $15 million of his own money to get it off the ground. Now he’s bringing in others, including venture firms co-founded by Alan Patricof and Starbucks Corp.’s former Chairman Howard Schultz.
Landing, a company offering flexible lease terms to a network of furnished luxury apartments, raised $30 million in new funding, according to a statement Thursday. Patricof’s Greycroft led a $20 million Series A round, which includes Maveron, started by Schultz and Dan Levitan.
Smith, 34, is using the capital to expand into Washington, Chicago, and Boston. Landing’s apartments, which are equipped with custom furniture, equipment-stocked kitchens and an on-call concierge service, are already available in six other cities from New York to San Francisco.
“We’re looking at the cities where mobile professionals want to live,” Smith said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “Our plan is to launch and be live in 30 cities by the end of the year and this capital is going to help us get there.”
Smith sold his last startup, a membership-based online grocery app called Shipt, to Target in 2017 for $550 million. He got the idea for Landing after moving to San Francisco in 2016 and becoming frustrated with hunting for an apartment and dealing with the logistics of setting it up. The new firm charges an annual membership fee.
Abstract Ventures also invested in Landing, which raised a $10 million debt facility, bringing total funding to $45 million.
“Every consumer-facing industry has experienced massive transformation over the last few years, driven by changing expectations around convenience and experience, yet real estate has struggled to evolve to meet the needs of today’s renters,” Maveron co-founder Levitan, said in the statement.
To contact the reporters on this story: Sophie Alexander in San Francisco at salexander82@bloomberg.net;Oshrat Carmiel in New York at ocarmiel1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net
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