Seattle-based commercial real estate startup Loantuitive is expanding its workforce.
The startup, which announced a $1.1 million pre-seed round last week, currently has six employees but plans to hit 22 by the end of the year, said co-founder and CEO Dave Siegfried. The whole team is currently based in Seattle, Siegfried said, but the difficult labor market means the company likely won't have all of its employees here as it grows.
"Ideally I would like the team to be in Seattle, but we'll go where the talent is," Siegfried said. "It's so difficult to acquire talent right now."
Loantuitive's technology helps commercial real estate brokers quickly create loan requests with only the key pieces of information. The startup also matches loan requests with appropriate lenders. Loantuitive launched a private preview last year but recently moved into a broader beta test. According to Loantuitive, the company has helped brokers originate over $2 billion in loan requests to date.
Siegfried said Loantuitive currently subleases a desk in the AGC Building in Westlake, but most of the team works remotely. He added the next step would be to get some kind of shared office space and grow from there, depending on where employees are located.
Ascend.vc, Underdog Labs, Revelry Venture Partners and Iterative Venture all participated in the pre-seed round, as did founders from DocuSign and LegalZoom.
Loantuitive is looking to build on the momentum from the pre-seed round, which the company actually closed last year. Seigfried said the startup hopes to secure a $3 million seed round sometime this year.
"Right now we're focused on acquiring brokers," Siegfried said. "We would like to have 1,000 monthly recurring loan requests in the system by July of this year. The raise that we're working toward, the $3 million seed round, that will really provide us with another 18 months to build and launch the marketplace and improve our business model."
