Arlington fintech startup RealAtom is rolling out a new tool for commercial real estate lenders — and closing in on a $2.5 million round ahead of a larger raise it’s planning within the next year.
The 5-year-old startup has spent the past few years growing its software-as-a-service marketplace, which connects prospective borrowers with commercial loans. That offering handled more than $6 billion in commercial loan applications in 2020, $10 billion in 2021 and could double that this year, said co-founder and CEO Yulia Yaani.
But now RealAtom is introducing another side of its platform specifically for banks, agencies and life insurance companies. The business is beginning to sell that product to commercial lenders, which then make a portal available to their customers. Then those customers can apply for loans through the portal — upload documents, collaborate with colleagues and complete checklists at each stage of the process.
It’s a model that exists in residential real estate and other industries, but hasn’t yet taken off in the commercial space, Yaani said. But the Covid-19 pandemic drove demand for digital solutions, she said, “and that’s what people are looking for.”
RealAtom, now with 13 employees, would use the new funding to hire up. The plan, Yaani said, is to add around seven people on the tech side and another handful for sales, nearly doubling the startup’s headcount. “We’ve been steadily proving our go-to market strategy, now we have no doubts about it,” she said. “Now we can capitalize on that.”
The $2.5 million would build upon a prior $4 million raised to date — and precede a larger Series A round within the next 12 months, Yaani said. But importantly, she said, the company isn’t raising more now because it’s already seeing customers converging, and that is translating to revenue. It comes after focusing on developing the platform, with $200,000 in 2021 revenue and a target of between $1 million and $1.5 million in 2022 revenue, Yaani said.
The goal for this year is to convert as many lenders already using its marketplace into paid customers — and community banks and credit unions already represent 65% of RealAtom’s users, Yaani said. And because many commercial lenders don’t have any such technology solution to offer their clients, the opportunity is massive, Yaani said. “That’s why we see a huge potential to grow really fast.”
Yaani debuted RealAtom in 2017 with co-founder Masha Sharma, also its chief technology officer. Both are serial entrepreneurs with multiple startups under their belts. Sharma has more than two decades of tech experience and previously worked as a consultant for several other local ventures. Yaani has an MBA from Columbia University and a 15-year career in commercial real estate, which she notes is a male-dominated industry. She’s also running the Ukrainian Help Hub, a new nonprofit helping Ukrainian refugees flee to Denmark to escape the war with Russia.
