New funds and talent to boost RealAdvisor's momentum

RealAdvisor was co-founded in June 2017 by Joan Rodriguez and Jonas Wiesel, together with Olivier Plan. Frustrated by the lack of transparency in what, for many, is the largest purchase or sale of their lives, the co-founders launched RealAdvisor.ch with an online appraisal tool – giving access to information normally reserved for real estate professionals to the public. RealAdvisor’s vision is to help people make better decisions when buying, selling, renting or financing property.

Last year, RealAdvisor acquired IMAGO and integrated its team and technology. “Given our ambitious objectives and the focus on growing our revenue streams, the decision to acquire IMAGO for their start-up experience, including technology from their previous PropTech venture, has been key in allowing us to start accelerating our momentum.”

IMAGO was the result of a pivot from the service formerly known as PapayaPods. PapayaPods was launched in 2015, by co-founders Aaron Pitts, Adrien Stucki, Alex Just, Jakub Riziky and Elliot Pitts. The objective was to digitize the rental process for private landlords, from sourcing tenants, to processing rental transactions. Having realized the product was a bit too early for the industry, in 2017, the company closed the service, and repositioned themselves by transferring their learnings in product development and company building to corporate innovation teams. The driver for the team, has always been to create transparency in the real estate market. The repositioning to IMAGO allowed the founders to gain time and experience, ready to get back into the PropTech industry.

Driven by the same passion

“Having heard of, and known a fair amount about RealAdvisor.ch already, when they approached us to collaborate in mid 2019, we at first thought that we would be able to support them as we had been doing with corporates” explains Alex Just, former CEO. “After a few meetings with both Joan and Jonas, things became very clear. Their passion for solving problems in the real estate industry was driven by the same one we had, creating a fairer market through transparency.” Moving forward with the acquisition and joining forces to help RealAdvisor on their mission was the logical step for both companies. 

The transaction was closed in the late summer of 2019, for an undisclosed amount. Before the acquisition RealAdvisor has closed a CHF2 million seed round led by a seriel entrepreneur. Four of the IMAGO founders started as full time employees, bringing RealAdvisor's team to a total of 27 people. Aaron and Elliot Pitts taking on leadership roles in the technical teams, leading and building up products key to the company's strategy. Jakub Riziky has joined as the head of product, supporting the CTO, Jonas, in managing the products, UI and UX designs as well as requirements and Alex as the COO, supporting the team in operations, as well as the development of new products and services, focused on generating revenues with existing customer traction. 

A year to grow and consolidate

2020 will be an important year for RealAdvisor, as it looks towards solidifying its market presence in Switzerland, and building up a stable and durable revenue base, whilst increasing the speed at which it releases improvements and new products. A focus being on bringing transparency to the property financing business with a new online tool for buyers scheduled for release mid-year. The company offers an aggregator of real estate information and services. Using the power of the web it centralizes all property listings, online valuation services, real estate agents and lenders in one place; providing an unprecedented level of transparency for the real estate market.

(Press release / ES)