Rocketreach finds email, phone & social media for 450M+ professionals. Anthemos Georgiades: No. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah, I mean BCG I think you get access to the 23 year olds CEOs who had been working for 40 years and kind of crazy in consulting you take the shortcut in your careers to being in the board room. 1. Youre exactly right. Anthemos Georgiades. So Anthemos, whats the business model here? So I learned a lot from a few companies that I loved, a few companies that I thought are doing crazy things I learned so much. Alejandro: Alrightee. At scale you get to do that and have those teams. Its really built in the dark days of when stuff is really difficult and I think Zumpers culture now is we have a lot of users still remembers and its a testament to those dark days and we never take anything for granted. And so I didnt really think about it too often because this is kind of 15 years ago but then I moved to another six or seven times into an apartment rentals in London, in Boston, in New York and the process is so bad every time, not just in searching but also in actually like getting the apartment. Saying that to your point, we see the deal was a successful and yet M&A is really hard to integrate. Culture is everything and so investing in people making sure I as the CEO spend a lot of time as much as possible with people who dont report to me is absolutely critical and that is ultimately like the fabric on how most companies are run. And at one point I just told one I just feel like I want to step on the egg and shoot the chicken because it was so repetitive. Its a good question. Its so hard to get marketplaces liquidity so correct, the beautiful thing as you know is when you have it, it took us three years to get to that, it just runs and you just grow naturally when you have both sides but its so hard to get to it. They may not understand marketplace as well as you but they may be able to bring a brilliant way of thinking about how to bring the supply on [30:20]. And so I finally just gave in and thought no one is going to build this. They were [sexy 23:47] company and really fantastic fundraisers but the rounds just take a long time, due diligence take a long time. I think just up front boundaries before you close the round is super important. He remains a huge Tottenham Hotspur fan, and wakes up painfully every Saturday morning to tune into the live English soccer games. Ckg1 Ckp1 - Ckg1a63-100 Theyre struggling to kind of grow their audience because they didnt have enough listings whereas Zumper at the getgo we had a lot of unique landlords on the platform that no one else had. So you kind of just have to [25:29] but just to be clear yeah, we had far more nos than yeses at the seed round. Got it. Two sided marketplaces are so difficult. So I think as your company matures, you look for investors that have something that you dont have and so for us, were not yet doing $100 million in revenue. So you know I think Axle Springer very used to appraising companies that match their scale. Alrightee. Unluckily weve made some phenomenal early hires so the company that have all scaled to leadership roles, thats fantastic for retention because those people know that we could have hired from outside but we bet on them and it worked and so Zumper is a place to build theyre career not somewhere else. So our CFO is fantastic and what he was able to bring to the series C was real credibility where I meet the investors, get them excited about our vision and our story and then they spend hours with the CFO on the second or third meeting digesting our historical financial as were talking about where were headed. It was not something Ive really ever thought about before. And investors love that story because its easy to believe that you can continue to do that. Got it. anthemos georgiades net worth. Were very clear with Axle Springer that we have a lot of consumer scale so a lot of people use our platform on a monthly basis but were still building the [21:55]. Alejandro: Just out of curiosity, Anthemos, like how many nos did you get for example on your seed round if you have to count it? And then at business school, I think the single biggest thing I learned through the case study method which is how they teach it at Harvard Business School but I think its true. We want investors who look at $100 million in revenue as table stakes but they wont agree to a billion. Well, Anthemos, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show. So watching board members from the early investments are [19:38] who now runs Good Water but was originally Kleiner and then Eric [19:42] from Kleiner and theyre both experts at product market set. Shalin Amin Chief Experience Officer. That is where your focus is and even though you kind of missed doing some of the stuff and the weeds and my team continue to tell me to get away from the weed and continue to [36:12] the 50,000 set, you have to let it go and trust your team to do a better job than you were doing. So what was that process like you were talking about, yes, your network of Harvard but can you share with us like what was that process of landing Kleiner on your seed round? Your job as the CEO and the founder is to convince your investors of the reason to do this. So it was never I want to be an entrepreneur journey. Got it. One Lesson Led This Entrepreneur To Raise $90 Million From The - Forbes Yeah. Your job is to raise capital and your job is to kind of hire and retain the best talents. He discovered that the marketplace doesnt work for renters, and the idea for Zumper was born with the goal of evening the playing field and increasing transparency in the marketplace. Zumper - Contacts, Employees, Board Members, Advisors & Alumni - Crunchbase At Zumper, based in San Francisco, he leads the company in its mission to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. Likewise. Saying that, in the early days you kind of need to bring on all the capital that you can. Hes raising money now. And so I wouldnt be too pressured. Im so glad I did it. So paradoxically, I dont think the core DNA of a companys culture is built at ski tracks or offsite. In the early days you as the CEO you are the fundraiser, you are the effective CFO, youre the head of sales and you kind of have to do the whole thing. So Anthemos, theres always a first time and you know I guess this is the first time in the history of the DealMakers Show that Im able to interview someone that has been involve on the M&A but more on the buy side. Budget in my opinion perhaps should be allocated to something else. He had actually interviewed me for a job at a different consulting firm and we stayed in touch. Yeah. I didnt think that either of them originally. For us, I think they fully understand the entrepreneurial journey and were really excited to have them on board. The one unifying theme in every fundraising Ive run is momentum. Its hard. Anthemos Georgiades. Were incredibly grateful for everything she did and she remains kind of shareholder in the company. Your second month you spend getting term sheets and documents signed. Zumper has 7 current employee profiles, including CEO and co-founder Anthemos Georgiades. I was really impressed when because its not hard, its almost impossible to land VC such as Kleiner Perkins on literally your first financing round, the seed round. Anthemos Georgiades is the co-founder and CEO of Zumper, the largest startup in the rental industry, used by more than 26 million renters last year alone. How did you find these investors? Were going to charge you per lead or for the smaller landlords we charge them if theyre [11:15] for the transaction. Alejandro: Got it. This pellet stove is a good heating solution for a smaller rather than a . Great question. And even though that sounds so obvious six years later, people just werent doing this in 2011, 2012 and we created a bunch of data that overwhelming shows the renters wanted to be applying for apartments from their phone. It was at the time Pat Mapper example almost the same size on consumer but now Zumper is much bigger but we called it like a cheat and your job as the founder is to identify like vertical cheats where overnight you become bigger than your competitors. Alejandro: Got it. We both wanted to be entrepreneurs. The other large investor in this round [20:05] scale so once you have product market set, how do you scale that? Member profile: Zumper's founders - Anthemos Georgiades and Russell Zumper which is a little bigger in terms of audience now caters more to urban professionals moving within cities. Yeah. Of course. Anthemos Georgiades CEO and co-founder. In many instances, really acquisitions are great to either feel growth on the company itself, either on the product or perhaps by adding a great talent, but unfortunately many M&A transactions fail really on the integration side of things. Never thought Id be an entrepreneur. Anthemos was an undergrad at Oxford when he noticed how problematic renting an apartment . And were they like obviously now youre opening here the cap table to a different breed and I guess when that happen probably at a strategic level lets say from a board perspective or something you know, maybe you receive some type of recommendations whether it was with this corporation or with other corporations as to what perhaps to look for and what to avoid. And it was just [22:11] during the process that its a startup, were at growth stage but not to expect to be able to predict our courses like that public company again. You know its interesting that you mentioned the chicken and the egg. I mean if you could give some kind of like tips you know both fronts it would be really fantastic. There was no book [01:41]. It was just purely hustling my network for six months to find people who are really great cultural fit but also have very different skill sets to the one I have. My friend have had to camp out overnight outside the property management office to get access to the new apartment and this is [01:09] you know things coming online, you can order a cab via phone, you can book a hotel online. Township Of Ocean Police Department. Fantastic. Hello, everyone, to the DealMakers Show. It was kind of [31:51] as early as we did to buy another stock up that was kind of four years in. So you acquire not long ago Pat Mapper and how did this come together? And to be fair, some of these 20 did indeed come back later to invest but in Boston and I pitched all of the east coast investors first because I was on the east coast and they were straight nos. And so when you think about AB testing frameworks, you think about how many started [03:43] that is a [03:44] grad school taught me. And as you know as and your listeners know, youre going to get a lot of nos on the way. Its really built in the dark days of when stuff is really difficult and I think Zumpers culture now is we have a lot of users still remembers and its a testament to those dark days and we never take anything for granted. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. And so back to your point, yes, we want investors who are supportive of the fact that we didnt try to monetize the platform for the first three years because it would have created a barrier to entry. So I guess what was the timeline of this C round compared to perhaps your seed round of 2012? Alejandro: And did you diversify this responsibility with the other cofounders or was there one of you guys that has always been leading the chart on the financing side? So I guess what was the timeline of this C round compared to perhaps your seed round of 2012? E1031 Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades on monetizing - YouTube It has to be me and thats how I started the company six years ago after business school. A lot of it was completely bottom up. We didnt go that route because I have the network but if I didnt have the network and some people have the network and still do it, they are really good cheap in to getting scaled quickly. In the early days we love the exposure to Silicon Valley investors. Got it. So I saw for example Axle Springer which is you know more kind of like the corporate.