Cozy Lands $8.5 Million In Venture Funding

Cozy, a startup that created a platform to streamline interactions between property managers and renters, closed an $8.5 million Series B round of venture funding on Friday (Sept. 2). The round of funding was led by American Family Ventures and included Social Capital, General Catalyst and other investors that took part in the company’s $1.5 million Series A round of funding back in 2012.

Cozy makes it easy for landlords to mange the rental process and alleviates the pain of looking for an apartment and for landlords and renters to interact. According to a report, with the current system, many property managers use their personal email to communicate with their tenants, while listings are spread across a slew of websites. What’s more, almost every interaction between renters and property managers occurs on different platforms or no platform at all.

Cozy, without spending any money on marketing, has 75,000 landlords using its services and 100,000 properties listed on the platform. The company is processing more than $500 million a year in rental payments, which is one of the company’s four revenue streams. It also sells credit reports and background checks. It also has a new express payoffs service that, for $2.99 per unit per month, landlords get automated clearinghouse payments processed within two days instead of five.

“We see people get Cozy set up and running, and we may not see them sign in for a year,” said Gino Zahnd, CEO and cofounder of Cozy, in the report. The CEO noted property management software typically falls into two categories: large portfolios of properties, which represent a quarter of the market, and portfolios of properties with fewer than 20 units, which make up 75 percent of the market. The latter group is what Cozy is going after.