A trio of Tampa Bay serial entrepreneurs have unveiled their latest venture: a smart home platform aiming to disrupt the apartment industry.
"It's been a lot of fun; it's very different this time around where we each have success under our respective belts," said Steve Fiske, co-founder and chief product officer of iApartments. "We're able to go in and know exactly what to do."
iApartments was founded in 2019 and born out of the three co-founders' experience working in the industry. Fiske is a founding partner of Unikey Technologies, which operated in the smart home industry. He also an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Tampa Bay Wave, a local startup incubator. iApartments CEO Dave Magrisso is the founder of Valet Waste, which is now known as Valet Living. Rounding out the team is Mohammed Syed, the company's co-founder, CTO and former technology partner at AutoWeb.
"It's worth noting the reason why we flew under the radar is that there were incumbents, in my opinion, who had not figured it out," Fiske said. "They're growing at all costs, and quality is the last thing they looked upon. We are growing ours and starting off with better technology."
The three men created software and hardware solutions to help apartment residents on the front end and apartment complex owners on the back end. Users can access smart locks, smart thermostats and other modern amenities typically only seen in homes.
On the software side, the technology allows the building owners to monitor leaks and humidity, which can help mitigate water, mold and mildew damage. And because of the hardware on the front end, apartment employees have less reason to go back and forth on the property — things like HVAC orders and unlocking doors are taken care of with the system. The company also recently launched self-guided tours.
“Many of our clients don’t have the capital or the budget to invest in an [expensive] intelligent apartment program,'' Andrew Livingstone, executive managing director of Greystar in Tampa, said in a statement. “This product is a really intriguing option. We’re finding this [iApartments] system really works well right out of the box."
iApartments has plans to roll out in over 200,000 total committed units in the next few years and has roughly 40 full-time employees, with another five expected to be hired by the end of the year.
It has also recently hired a chief revenue officer, Scott Stamilio, who previously worked at ePremium, which specializes in renters insurance.
“I am more thrilled than ever about our timing and position in the market,” Magrisso said in a statement. “Our combination of world-class service and a robust platform built to scale to millions of units will serve us well as we strive to be a household name synonymous with quality and a leader in the smart home or intelligent apartments market.”
The company has closed an eight-figure seed round with undisclosed investors that are "mostly strategic," Fiske said, adding the majority of the investors own or are affiliated with apartments. They are shooting to close a Series A funding round by the end of the year.
