About a year after proptech company iApartments launched from stealth mode with three of Tampa Bay’s serial entrepreneurs behind the wheel, the company is hitting a growth spurt.
iApartments has doubled its head count from 2021, up to 40 full-time employees — with half of those being local — and roughly 80 contractors.
It also is nearly tripling its office space with a headquarters expansion. It has space in downtown Tampa, spanning 2,100 square feet in the Fifth Third building. However, it added a 5,300-square-foot space at Sweetwater Business Center at 5501 West Waters Ave. That space will be a mix of office and warehouse and can accommodate roughly 25 additional employees. The Sweetwater space has a five-year lease with the option for further expansion.
“It was just getting room for growth which is a little tough downtown,” Fiske said. “But also, we have a hardware component, and we had been using [outside] warehouse space. So, it made sense to combine the office and warehouse space just for efficiency.”
Another Tampa-based startup, Smart Meter, had a similar move in August — it also kept its space in the Fifth Third building and expanded to the Sweetwater location.
Fiske said for iApartments, the growth across its physical space and employee head count can be attributed to the market and to the founders’ due diligence before launching the company. Fiske and his two co-founders were entrepreneurs before launching the venture. iApartments CEO Dave Magrisso is the founder of Valet Living, and Mohammed Syed was a former technology partner at AutoWeb.
“We’re somewhat of an anomaly, but also not; my partner has done this before and having that experience and the right connections, we’ve built a business and product that the market needs,” Fiske said. “So, it really solves all the pieces of the equation and turning the ‘no’ into ‘yes’ is a big thing.”
Like many other sectors, the Covid-19 pandemic fast-tracked the multifamily industry’s technology adoption, which has also benefited iApartments.
“Multifamily was notoriously behind the times, tech-wise, but the last few years, they’ve caught on,” Fiske said. “The space as a whole is really quick to make up for it, so now we see a lot more properties with CTOs and adopting it in a much more meaningful way. So, we have our work cut out for us.”
The company plans to focus on the apartment space, with Fiske acknowledging they purposefully included “apartments” in the name of the company to show their laser-focused commitment.
“We’re called iApartments for a reason,” he said with a laugh. “The multifamily space, in general, has a very low market penetration number, so there’s still quite a bit we can do focusing on the U.S. alone. One thing we really do our best on is focus — focusing on multifamily and the U.S. is something we’re marching dead ahead on.”
