Placester, founded in 2011, provides an all-in-one marketing toolkit for real estate professionals including lead-capturing websites, lead management, email marketing, marketing automation, analytics, MLS integration, natural language search and 24/7 support. The platform aims to help professionals grow their businesses online and via mobile with eye-catching visuals and integrated tools. The company employs more than 170 people across Boston and Chicago. Placester has expanded via acquisitions, buying RealSatisfied and OpenHomePro in 2016. Financially, the company has raised $100M in total funding to date. It intends to use new capital to continue developing and enhancing its toolkit. Placester offers a platform for real estate agents and brokers that provides websites, listing integrations, marketing automation, and specialized CRM solutions. The company has forged alliances with all regional multiple listing services (MLSs) in the U.S. and uses that data to power its services. Placester reports that one in five U.S. real estate agents uses its platform and has signed clients Keller Williams and RE/MAX, representing over 200,000 agents. Financially, Placester recently raised a $27M Series C, bringing total funding to $50M after a $15M round earlier this year. CEO and co‑founder Matt Barba said the company raised again quickly because it is at an inflection point and the new capital will enable rapid expansion. The company plans to use the funds to build mobile apps, improve real estate search and information sharing between agents and buyers, and to invest heavily in customer service and marketing. Placester provides a marketing platform for real estate professionals with property listing integration (through MLS), lead management, Facebook advertising and Google AdWords. The company is led by Matt Barba and Frederick Townes and is based in Boston, MA. It currently serves over 100,000 real estate professionals and plans to use new funding to expand its team. Placester closed a $15M financing and has raised $22M to date. The company intends to grow headcount from 50 to 100 employees in the next year. Two NEA partners will join the board in conjunction with the financing. Placester offers maintenance-free WordPress websites for real estate professionals that include setup, hosting and MLS fees and use the company’s technology to retrieve and update MLS data. Its sites are SEO-optimized and mobile/tablet-friendly. The company also built a publisher platform that provides consumer search, real estate inventory information and related ad products. Placester powers over 70,000 real estate professionals’ websites and reaches a broader community of more than 100,000. It is expanding via publisher partnerships, including an initial nationwide deal with Hearst to integrate Placester into local papers. Founded in 2009 by former real estate agent Matt Barba and a Techstars Boston graduate, the company has grown revenue and customer acquisition roughly 20% month-over-month for the past 12 months. Today the team is 34 people and is hiring across engineering, sales and marketing with the expectation of reaching the low 40s by year-end. Placester provides a freemium, maintenance-free website builder for realtors, enabling agents to launch WordPress-based, SEO-optimized, mobile-friendly sites in minutes with built-in MLS search. The company built its own technology to retrieve and update MLS data on the fly and currently covers about 85% of U.S. MLSes. It reports tens of thousands of realtors on the platform, with hundreds converted to the paid product (launched ~5 months prior) and user growth of roughly 20% month-over-month. Paid users pay $45/month for MLS search, search-indexed listing pages, premium themes, and phone/email support. Founded in 2009 by Matt Barba with co-founder Frederick Townes, Placester graduated TechStars Boston in 2011 and now operates with a 16-person team. The company plans to use new funding to add more themes, expand MLS coverage toward 95%, and launch a formal partner program to open the platform for third-party builders.

Total raised

$100M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Series D

Latest activity

Mar 2017