In 2013, Dominic Anzalone decided to forgo completing his senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater to launch his company, Rent College Pads, an online platform for finding college housing that he created as a class project his junior year.
Initially, growing the business was a struggle. While his friends were starting their careers with nice-sized salaries, he was barely clearing a few thousand dollars in revenue.
But instead of seeking outside dollars from investors, he bootstrapped operations. He waited until he had about $1 million in revenue until he searched for outside capital, and in 2016, the company sold some equity, securing $1.5 million from the Wisconsin Super Angel Fund.
“That’s kind of the Midwest model,” he said. “You have to have revenue, whereas on the west coast, once you get to $50,000 in revenue or a certain amount of users, you’re raising a large amount of capital. That doesn’t really happen here.”
Since 2016, Rent College Pads has brought its rental housing platform to 106 universities in roughly 28 states, the 29-year-old founder and CEO said.
The Milwaukee-based company experienced a three-year growth rate of 980% between 2015 and 2017, good enough for the No. 514 spot on the 2018 Inc. 5000, a list of the top 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. The percentage growth ranked seventh among Wisconsin companies and third in the Milwaukee area.
In 2017, the startup reported full year revenue of $2.8 million. Revenue has since increased 100%, year over year, Anzalone said, and more than two million students are finding housing via the platform, including almost every UW System school and the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
The bulk of the universities and colleges using the platform are in the Northeast, followed by Midwest, the west coast and the south. While international expansion is possible down the road, Anzalone wants to dominate business in the U.S. first.
Recently, the company launched a new version of its site with updated features for finding a roommate and mapping applications to calculate walk times to class. The company is currently leasing about 8,000 square feet in downtown Milwaukee, the same building where years ago, Anzalone paid $10 per month to rent a single desk inside a co-working space. He now has more than 30 employees.
Over the years, Anzalone has fielded several questions about why he chose to keep his business operation in Wisconsin. Staying in Milwaukee, he said, has been beneficial to growing his business.
“It’s been good for us,” he said. “Office space was affordable. You start hiring people and start growing more and more roots in the city. All the tools that we’ve needed have been in Milwaukee, from raising money, to office space, to talent and to advisors. Being centrally located in the U.S. so you can get around, that’s worth a lot, actually. If I was to be in San Diego, which I’ve looked at, you would lose a whole day flying to New York.”
Anzalone has also been asked, on numerous occasions, if he’s planning to sell the company. That’s not in his current strategy, he says. He said he wants to build Rent College Pads into a $100 million per year company.
“Eventually, there will be some kind of exit, but we currently have a long runway to go,” he said. “We’re not looking at it in the immediate future. It's more of being obsessed with growth right now.”
