Digital Brokerage SquareFoot Raises $16M in Series B Round
By Nicholas Rizzi November 6, 2019 9:00 am
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SquareFoot, the New York City-based proptech firm aiming to streamline the office leasing process, raised $16 million in a Series B round led by DRW Venture Capital, the company announced today.
The company plans to use the new funds to help expand to other cities including Washington, D.C., grow its brokerage team in New York, and continue building out its online platform, including a recently launched product offering involving flexible leasing options, Jonathan Wasserstrum, the CEO and co-founder of SquareFoot, said.
Other investors in the latest round include existing backers Triangle Peak Partners, RRE and Rosecliff.
SquareFoot closed on a $7 million Series A last year and its latest fundraising brings the total amount raised to more than $29 million. Wasserstrum declined to disclose SquareFoot’s valuation following the Series B round.
The company, founded in 2012, uses its own technology, online platform and a brokerage team to lease office space to tenants. It currently has a team of about 55 employees working out of its New York headquarters at 115 West 30th Street in Midtown.
“We noticed that growing companies really were struggling as related to them finding or transacting or occupying their office space,” Wasserstrum said about the firm. “SquareFoot is solving those three issues.”
In February, SquareFoot picked up the office-sharing marketplace PivotDesk for an undisclosed amount, the New York Business Journal reported. PivotDesk runs an online platform that lets companies with excess office space offer it short-term to tenants. Wasserstrum said some of the new funding will go towards “revamping” PivotDesk.
“It hadn’t been given a lot of TLC that it needed to be given in the last couple of years,” he said.
The firm also announced plans in July to expand to Washington, D.C., and Wasserstrum said the new funding will help those efforts along with several more cities.
“Growing businesses are often constrained by balancing their financial risk with strategic operational planning, and no area is more challenging than leasing the right office space,” Kim Trautmann, the head of DRW VC, said in a statement. “SquareFoot is disrupting this model by giving companies the flexibility to make the choices that are best for their businesses, whether that’s access to a very short-term lease or a desire to secure space for tomorrow’s needs while monetizing it in the meantime.”
