I met Russel who [04:01] engineering products through just the personal connections in London. So Im completely there with you. 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. Well, today's guest noticed that experience and wanted to improve it. And for you I guess personally and professionally because I think they both come together, so how has your leadership and management skills changed over the time from leading the company of lets say four to ten folks initially to a company of over a hundred employees? Alejandro: Got it. And investors love that story because its easy to believe that you can continue to do that. How much respect is there? For me, its Zumper, an apartment rental platform. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. So Id say your first month you spend like getting first, second, third meeting. Youre supposed to try six things that dont work. A lot of that is in the bank. For me, its Zumper, an apartment rental platform. So the series B, weve done story now look at how quickly the renters are growing on the platform. They are brilliant about. Thats just part of the game. Your job as the CEO and the founder is to convince your investors of the reason to do this. [06:54] the early days and it worked where there was just all hands to the pump. At series A, you got to show product market set in a sub vertical. But was drawn in to it just to solve a problem as I think so many entrepreneurs are. Alrightee. I mean your job moves from doing jobs in the first few years. Two sided marketplaces are so difficult. In terms of investors, I guess two comments. anthemos georgiades net worth; wedding max minghella wife; private beach airbnb california; antique english double barrel shotguns; tuscany faucet cartridge removal; primeweld cut 60 machine torch; glendale, az setback requirements. Anthemos Paul Georgiades has been associated with one company, according to public records. So Id say your first month you spend like getting first, second, third meeting. And we were talking about the $46 million round which was the C round, C as in cat and basically what you were talking about I mean what Ive seen is that you guys have shifted a little bit the strategy. So I saw NEA, Kleiner Perkins, Graylog, Andreesen Horrowitz, just to name a few. 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. Got it. You just get to this kind of motion of you all feel the same and you kind of pull in the same direction. Anthemos Georgiades CEO at Zumper United States 4K followers 500+ connections Join to view profile Zumper Harvard Business School Websites Websites Company Website http://www.zumper.com Company. And then when I moved out to America, Russel was software engineer at Google and I had no technical background so I basically hit up my network for anyone with a technical background living in the US who might be interested in joining and Russel and I really hit it off and he was the perfect cofounder. Your email address is 100% safe from spam! Township Of Ocean Police Department. It is ultimately the culture. Well, Anthemos, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show. Likewise. Likewise. How did you find these investors? Theyre both incredibly smart as are my executive team who are also like critical to fundraise where Ill go in and sell the vision often alone. Got it. 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. But oh we must have had like 20 persons or 20 people say not now or later. I kind of looked through in Crunchbase which connections I have into which fund. As CEO, Anthemos has raised $39.2 million in venture capital from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Goodwater Capital, Breyer Capital and Foxhaven Asset Management, including a Series B round in Oct. 2016 when many start-ups were struggling. You know its interesting that you mentioned the chicken and the egg. You rarely have enough data to make the absolutely correct decision and I think a lot of businesses fail especially start ups when they dont make decisions fast enough and in business schools, the case study methods taught me how to feel confident in making decisions without perfect information and how to use data to kind of then review once youve launched, whether it was right or wrong. So what I wanted to ask you here is in terms of on boarding lets say this type of, because its a different beast, you know type of investors so how does the approach from evaluating an investor that is a VC, an angel or an angel group shift towards evaluating a potential strategic corporation that is looking to become part of your cap table? So what is the best way, Anthemos, for people that are listening to reach out and say hi? 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. Got it. Well, Anthemos, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show. 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. Get 5 free searches. We want investors who look at $100 million in revenue as table stakes but they wont agree to a billion. 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. 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. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. ! Zumper CEO and co-founder May 2012 Board and Advisor Roles Number of Current Board & Advisor Roles 1 Anthemos Georgiades is the Board Member at Zumper. In the early days, youre going to need to take all the capital you can get. Got it. Every company is completely different and theres no gold standard. So M&A are strategic [33:48]. Alejandro: Got it. Anthemos Georgiades: Oh yeah, on the seed round back in 2012, we had probably five investors come in to the seed round so we kind of had five yeses who put in small checks. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. 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]. I learned more from you than you learned from me, and then your job as CEO is to do kind of two or three things, that is to continue to advance like the vision and the mission of the company and keep everything strategically aligned. And it is the culture that keeps people here, not the compensation or anything else. Now we have supply so the six months curve at the series B was all about users and millions of monthly users and then at the series C it was much more revenue curve. Yes, weve raised $90 million in capital including a series C that we just closed three months ago. In the early days we love the exposure to Silicon Valley investors. To give you odds, at the seed stage and the series A stage of growth cuts, all about supply side where a two sided marketplace chicken an egg, on day zero you have no renters and no landlords, how do you solve that? What are some tips for successfully navigating the rental market from a renter's perspective? I say like in the first pitch to the day the money wires, theres always been around like a minimum of three months. 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. So in the first two years, Zumper is now [07:52] $90 million in capital. And were just a little earlier than obviously a public company so our gross is spikier. 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. When you look your cofounders, your team in the eye and you know theyre ready to go and theyre resilient and they come back in to build and try the next thing and youve kind of worked out together this is part of the game. Georgiades founded Zumper after his own . You know marketplaces and liquidity is king like you were pointing to finding what you need in the shortest period of time because otherwise theyre going to go elsewhere. Im the CEO and Ive always felt that it was my responsibility to do the fundraising. 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. Could you meet him? And so whereas that doesnt guarantee any success we obviously have to have really good numbers and a really good story to tell them. Got it. So tell me your story a little bit here, Anthemos. So you acquire not long ago Pat Mapper and how did this come together? It was incredibly difficult. So we want to be the first ever kind of full stack rental platform for long term leases and we monetize that two ways. And your cap table I mean as I was reviewing I just felt as I was looking at the Oscars of Silicon Valley, the red carpet. So I guess for a marketplace or lets say for the people that are listening to us like what kind of metrics do you think for the most part if were talking about hyper growth companies, like they should be a little bit more mindful about? I think Id say forget everything you think you know and everything, your education [38:28]. Great question. And [14:42] in Silicon Valley is married to [graphics 14:43] mostly in terms of great companies just break out and succeed [agnostic 14:48] as to where people went to college or if they came from a wealthy or poor family. I mean I called it like a cheat [33:33] my team. I was also doing, Ive been doing marketplaces for I think like 10 years now and I remember in the last company, I would go and meet with investors and they kept asking me for the chicken and the egg. 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. And then as we looked at the C round, Axle Springer are fantastic good example [19:59]. Rear mounted 3" standard exhaust port, and 2" standard air intake Exterior dimensions of unit are 24" wide, 26" deep, and 40" high with mounted controller. Alejandro: I love it. Got it. How do you scale like 20 million in revenue to 200 million in revenue and we didnt need the more product set investors because we already have fantastic people at that. Based in San Francisco, Anth leads the company in its mission to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below. How do you scale like 20 million in revenue to 200 million in revenue and we didnt need the more product set investors because we already have fantastic people at that. Please subscribe to unlock this content. For Zumper's Georgiades, many Florida markets, such as Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, have been the big pandemic winners. They were super lean team of under five people and its been a great deal for Zumper like we have one backend, one sales team and then two consumer platforms. Got it. Alejandro: Got it. How did you find these investors? Absolutely. I met Russel who [04:01] engineering products through just the personal connections in London. 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]. How autonomous can people be at the junior levels? Since 2012, Georgiades has grown Zumper to over 200 employees, 178 million annual visits, and raised $178 million in venture capital for the company. We both wanted to be entrepreneurs. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. Retention is something I think about every day. So one is weve always promoted within so whenever we needed a role, we always prefer to promote someone instead of hiring from outside. With a diverse background that includes consulting for Boston Consulting Group and serving as Economic Advisor and speechwriter in the 2010 British Election, Anthemos founded Zumper in 2012 after his own terrible rental experience. We envisioned a world in which a renter can find apartments, book in [tour 10:18], turn up the [10:21] and if they want to take the apartment pre-qualify, leave a deposit and book the apartment. The one unifying theme in every fundraising Ive run is momentum. Alejandro Cremades leads the vision and execution for Panthera Advisors as its Co-Founder and. And so I finally just gave in and thought no one is going to build this. You always have more nos that more yeses in fundraising but it was ultimately about just hustling my network as much as possible. Your job is to raise capital and your job is to kind of hire and retain the best talents. Youre exactly right. And investors love that story because its easy to believe that you can continue to do that. So for Zumper our vision as I mentioned was to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel and so instead of going in with just an idea, I built like a really crappy version of the end game that I wanted to build. How flat is the company? So I guess for a marketplace or lets say for the people that are listening to us like what kind of metrics do you think for the most part if were talking about hyper growth companies, like they should be a little bit more mindful about? It is your job not just to do the day to day but once or twice a year you should be doing stuff that has a completely linear outcome where one day youre doing you know 3 million users a month and the next day youre doing 5 million users a month. 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 cofounders are difficult especially if youre not technical as really hard to find a good technical cofounder but the great thing is once you do and it takes a long time, they are able to attract the next generation of talent in to the company and thats how you kind of build your engineering team out. Anthemos Georgiades: Its part of the game. Terms & Conditions! So the series B, weve done story now look at how quickly the renters are growing on the platform. Youll get terms sheets and yeses hopefully quicker than that but this process takes a while and as the money increases and a few rounds become more complicated, it can take more than three months as well. So it doesnt always work out and I think thats fine. So yes, we have a great cap table. Thats just part of the game. They were [sexy 23:47] company and really fantastic fundraisers but the rounds just take a long time, due diligence take a long time. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. 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. Had worked in politics. Now my cofounders were phenomenal in bringing them to meetings. Like many of our most successful entrepreneurs. Had worked in politics. And so as you mature you look for a different kind of investor and that naturally tends to happen. Anthemos Georgiades is CEO/Co-Founder at Zumper Inc. See Anthemos Georgiades's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. Then behind the scenes, Zumper will close the transaction with the landlord and set the renter up with kind of rent payment. At Zumper, based in San Francisco, he leads the company in its mission to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. Dave Costantino Staff Engineer - Backend. So for Zumper our vision as I mentioned was to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel and so instead of going in with just an idea, I built like a really crappy version of the end game that I wanted to build. I think the startups end up wasting a lot of cash that could really extend runway but thats a different conversation. The most important thing is to surround yourself with an amazing support group because it is so much harder to build a company than I thought it was and the emotional resilience you need to get through the dark days and come back to the bright days even now is what [38:54] just get harder like yeah, we have more revenue now but with that there are people [38:58] and like huge revenue targets we have to attain and so the most important thing is surround yourself with a network of family, friends, mentors, peers, your team, your investors, whoever is an emotional crutch for you where you can take from them but also maybe get back to them as well when theyre having a tough time, thats the single most important thing is look after your mental health because it is lonely and it is stressful and if youre able to kind of be resilient you have a great outcome but it is really hard on some days to push through, so build that around just [39:35] and you can be happy while running your company. Got it. So Zumper is the vision for the company is to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. So we bought them. We have like four people at the company for the first year or maybe five for the first year and so theres so much to do and theres so little time and few resources that you actually theres no real intellectual whiteboarding session that you do to carve out rose. So all good companies have multiple offers on the table. Keeping good lines of communication open can solve many landlord/tenant problems. Rental listing startup with more than 26 million users. Alejandro: So Im completely there with you. So for the business, Anthemos, how much capital have you guys raised today? 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. It looks better for investors and it makes your life easier. Not really actually. He had actually interviewed me for a job at a different consulting firm and we stayed in touch. It is ultimately the culture. Got it. Vishal Makhijani President & COO. How flat is the company? The second one is have a vision and a mission that people agree with and we all wanted to [37:13] this vision make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. But was drawn in to it just to solve a problem as I think so many entrepreneurs are. It just really helps to divide and conquer like that while I was meeting new investors again. I think its easy not to set those expectations and get caught in the relationship where neither side is being clear on what they expect. I think if you set these expectations from the very beginning that are super important. To give you odds, at the seed stage and the series A stage of growth cuts, all about supply side where a two sided marketplace chicken an egg, on day zero you have no renters and no landlords, how do you solve that? So strategically that was a good marriage where they had a great consumer brand and we have really fantastic supply side inventory. There was no book [01:41]. Prices can change quickly! Really good strategy to differentiate the demographics and were super happy with how it went down. We saw it would take three to six months to integrate Pat Mapper and their backend that engineering project we worked really hard and quickly just over a year to integrate so we underestimated like how much work was required to integrate them by 3x. So we bought them. Got it. 77% of you were interested in a @zumper flex living pass 1.5 yrs ago Since then we - Added 500K+ flex listings - Launched a search UX for flex rentals We're now launching an MVP of Zumper Pass - a one & done subscription. 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]. No. Saying that, I have connections through both business school and previous people that have gone through BCG venture capital and most of your listeners and entrepreneurs will know so much of this is about like getting warm introductions to VCs so I did have a couple of cheats to get in through the network or through the BCG network. So one is weve always promoted within so whenever we needed a role, we always prefer to promote someone instead of hiring from outside. Its not about the ski trips and any of that you know. So I guess lets say we had the opportunity to put you in front of your younger self, Anthemos, in 2012 before you were to close that seed round, what would be that piece of advice that you would give to your younger self with everything that youve learned having this journey ahead of you? Rocketreach finds email, phone & social media for 450M+ professionals. But I guess you were saying then here the shift, kind of like shifted more from like growth of users perhaps retention to more kind of like deep revenue growth. 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. Got it and before we actually dive in to the journey here, so consulting and. And so I finally just gave in and thought no one is going to build this. 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. At college in the UK, Ive had like multiple [00:58] renting apartments. Of course and I agree with you there, Anthemos. I grew up in London. So how did you meet your cofounders? It is not suppose to be easy. It has to be me and thats how I started the company six years ago after business school. Your second month you spend getting term sheets and documents signed. It seemed crazy that the real estate industry wasnt moving towards on demand.