Tomo co-founder Carey Schwaber Armstrong is leaving the chief operating officer role at the real estate fintech startup.
Schwaber Armstrong, a former Zillow executive who co-founded Tomo in 2020, announced the decision in a Saturday post on LinkedIn. She will keep her position as board director at Tomo.
"About six months ago, as our volume started to really take off, we realized we were going to need to hire a bunch of people," Schwaber Armstrong wrote in the post. "I was feeling nauseous at the prospect. I know from experience that real estate volume can come and go, so I wanted to do it differently this time around, to do it better."
Tomo didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In a LinkedIn message to the Business Journal, Schwaber Armstrong said the startup "is doing really well, and I’m so glad that gives me the opportunity to step away and get to build from scratch again."
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Schwaber Armstrong co-founded Tomo with Greg Schwartz, also a former Zillow executive. The company originates mortgage loans with little paperwork needed for pre-approval, and it offers a price match if a consumer finds a better deal. On its website, Tomo says it has worked with more than 4,900 homebuyers.
As of January, Tomo had about 25 employees working out of a roughly 9,000-square-foot office in Chophouse Row in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The company had about 75 employees total at the time. Tomo's official headquarters is in Stamford, Connecticut, but the company has said it doesn't use that designation internally.
In her LinkedIn post, Schwaber Armstrong said she is "a tinkerer who loves to invent and experiment, not just a general looking to add another brigade to her army." She added that she enjoys simplifying complicated processes, and she wants to get back to building something from scratch. Schwaber Armstrong said she wants to explore where real estate overlaps with her other passions, notably climate, transit and urbanism.
Tomo renewed its Chophouse Row lease for three years last year. The company raised a $70 million seed round in 2021 and a $40 million Series A round in 2022.
Schwaber Armstrong spent seven years at Zillow before launching Tomo. Her most recent role at Zillow was leading strategies and operations for Premier Agent, Zillow's platform for partner agents. Schwartz spent 13 years at Zillow, where his roles included chief business officer and chief revenue officer.
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