Real estate investment marketplace Yieldeasy’s new $1M raise will support hiring

Yieldeasy, the Philly-area startup behind an alternative real estate investment marketplace, raised $1 million in a funding round that closed last week, cofounder Jeff Gopshtein told Technical.ly.

For the last seven months, the Newtown-based company has been focusing on its pivot from being a marketplace for buying apartment buildings to allowing investors to invest in property loans and participate in real estate debt.

The company’s new platform launched at the end of August. Since then, 300 users have signed up and $70,000 have been invested on the platform from customers, according to Gopshtein.

This is Yieldeasy’s first fundraising round since making this pivot. Gopshtein said the company’s goal was $1.5 million, and it raised a little over $1 million. The lead investor is Somersault Ventures, and “strategic real estate angel investors” also contributed.

“Thankfully we were able to actually go live and get users during the fundraising process and so I think that definitely helped a lot of people get some comfort around the fact that with virtually no resources and money, we were able to actually put this out in the world that actually convince people to start using it,” Gopshtein said. This round lasted about three months, and the company is allowing 90 more days to raise additional capital.

Right now the company is made up of only Gopshtein, his cofounder, and a team of five contracted developers and a contracted marketing person. With the money fundraised, Yieldeasy’s leaders want to grow the team by hiring people who would handle investor relations and sales, including a department head and two to three sales specialists.

The company will also use the funding to grow its online presence through channel partnerships, growth marketing and social media, Gopshtein said, as well as look into hiring a full-time, in-house marketing person or partnering with a growth marketing agency.

Going forward, Gopshtein hopes to grow the company’s investor pool as well as be able to purchase loans, rather than just relying on in-house loans that come from cofounder Kirk Ayzenberg’s lender business, Nextres.

“I think something that we’re able to create is this digitalization of a previously very inaccessible asset class. A lot of people don’t have a way to invest in a real estate loan,” he said. “It’s a very attractive option for people that are looking to grow a fixed-income portfolio or get some exposure to real estate that they previously haven’t gotten.”