MoveEasy has pivoted before, but its latest change in direction is meant to help real estate agents stay relevant to homeowner clients for the long haul.
After mostly bootstrapping for more than eight years, the Grandview Heights software maker has raised $3.5 million to accelerate already rapid growth.
MoveEasy also announced on Tuesday new distribution partnerships with brokerage companies Re/Max, Howard Hanna and Schmidt Family of Companies, as well as an expanded deal with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.
"We didn’t come from the real estate industry," said founder and CEO Venkatesh Ganapathy. "We were using our clients as our expert advisers. We learned this industry from scratch."
Investors in the round include New Valley Ventures, Breaktrail Ventures, Columbus-based Loud Capital and CheckFree founder Pete Kight. It brings total outside funding to $4.8 million.
Revenue quadrupled in 2020 over the prior year – despite several months with no business in the pandemic – and doubled again last year. Figures are not disclosed, but Ganapathy said it's on pace to quadruple again in 2022.
More than 100,000 real estate agents now use the platform, which expects to add more than 60,000 this year.
Ganapathy launched the business in late 2013 from the former 10X business accelerator in Columbus, graduating with $50,000 in funding and software integrations with 2,000 moving services.
At first it was a tool for consumers to generate quotes from movers and create an online inventory of the load. Three years later, it counted movers and real estate agents as customers, who used white-labeled versions of its software to help households manage all aspects of a move: hooking up internet, transferring utilities, updating mailing lists and licenses, and so forth.
MoveEasy, legally named MoveEZ Inc., had three employees until 2018, including COO Niraj Patel. That's when it switched from signing individual agents as clients to larger brokerages, and adding more get-settled services that homeowners wanted.
Now homeowners can sign up for home insurance through the platform, and shop for such things as security systems, solar panels and the best energy rates. It recently launched a home warranty.
"We started slowly understanding how everything needs to work," Ganapathy said.
Over the past year, the company grew to 62 workers, including the concierge call center at 855 Grandview Ave.
Five years ago, 95% of the business was still moving vans and 5% homeowner concierge. Today it's the reverse.
In each step, Ganapathy listened to customers. That's why the MoveEasy brand fades to the background in favor of the client's: Berkshire Hathaway Forever Concierge, or Century 21 Home Concierge, for example.
Agents populate the system with their preferred local painters, electricians and other vendors, and email the homeowner to invite them to use the free concierge service. Where there are gaps in recommendations, MoveEasy pairs with referral services such as Angi.
The funding will help speed up the latest evolution: Helping the agent stay top of mind long after the move. The concierge is adding services for just about every aspect of improving and maintaining a home. For example, as well as finding a roofer, it suggests how to seek discounts on homeowner's insurance for a new roof.
"We said, 'Why don’t we constantly help them find savings?'" Ganapathy said. "A person doesn’t have to move to use the service."
That way, agents can reconnect with past clients with a concierge invitation. The National Association of Realtors estimates only one in eight homeowners stick with the same agent for the next move.
The software is free to brokerages as well as to homeowners. MoveEasy gets sales commissions from the cable providers and other vendors.
MoveEasy benefits from the network effect, Ganapathy said. The more brokers who use it, the move value for the vendors – who often offer exclusive discounts through MoveEasy, because the homeowners using it have proven to be far less likely to cancel than industry averages.
Berkshire Hathaway and Century 21 signed on Feb. 28, 2020. One week's delay and the deal might have fallen through, Ganapathy said. As it was, business dropped to zero for two months.
With the help of the federal Paycheck Protection Program, MoveEasy kept its dozen employees busy training real estate agents new to the platform, and researching what other features they'd want.
Getting through that interruption was one more step in a long road, Ganapathy said.
"The biggest satisfaction has been, (even though) we were not from this industry, the amount of support we've gotten from strangers," he said. "A lot of people have helped us in a variety of different ways."
