Knock, on a mission to make trading-in your home as easy as trading-in your car, announced the closing of $400 million in Series B equity and debt financing led by Foundry Group with participation from existing investors RRE Ventures, Corazon Capital, WTI, and FJ Labs, and new investor Company Ventures. Foundry Group Partner Seth Levine joined Knock’s board of directors. With this additional financing, Knock plans to continue its nationwide expansion and accelerate the development of the proprietary technology behind its unique Home Trade-in platform — the first-ever.
“At Knock we believe the only way to revolutionize the real estate industry is by addressing both home buying and selling, given 71% of consumers are doing both at the same time, which is why we’re creating a marketplace solution with our Home Trade-in platform,” said Sean Black, Co-founder and CEO of Knock. “As we celebrate the success of the Trade-in with this latest round of funding, we are excited to have found investors and partners in Foundry Group, which has successfully helped other marketplace companies like Rover and Havenly scale platforms that transform traditional industries for a better, technology-powered consumer experience.”
Led by founding team members of Trulia like Black and Co-founder and COO Jamie Glenn, Knock launched in 2015 to bring greater certainty, convenience and cost-effectiveness to the home buying and selling process, which it has accomplished through its Home Trade-in platform. This additional funding will enable the company to buy more new homes on its customers’ behalf before representing them in the sale of their old ones on the open market.
“At Foundry we love working with passionate founders who are on a mission to fundamentally change an industry. The Knock team is exactly that — combining years of experience in real estate technology with a fundamental drive to change the way consumers buy and sell homes,” said Levine. “This is an unstoppable combination that we believe will transform the outdated real estate industry.”
Knock has experienced rapid growth since its founding, launching in five markets: Atlanta, GA, Charlotte, NC, Raleigh-Durham, NC, Dallas, TX and Fort Worth, TX. Along with its market expansions, the company’s headcount has multiplied in the past two years to 100 full-time employees distributed across 15 states. The engineering, product and data science team comprises one-third of the employee base, demonstrating the company’s commitment to developing a truly technology-centric solution.
As a result, Knock announced a number of revolutionary product advancements in the past year alone, including its unique predictive home search tool Knock Deals. Fueled by this tool, Knock also released its inaugural National Knock Deals Forecast, a first-ever predictive study of home price outcomes for on-market listings across 45 top U.S. metros, driven by the company’s proprietary data science and machine learning-based algorithms.
“By combining our platform technology with national machine learning-driven housing insights and the real life, in-home experiences of our team as we grow across the U.S., we’re bringing a level of transparency to real estate that will enable a more certain, convenient and cost-effective experience for home buyers and sellers,” said Glenn.
This latest round of funding brings the total equity and debt raised by Knock to over $600 million. In January 2017, the company announced its Series A round led by RRE Ventures with additional funding from Corazon Capital, Redpoint, Greycroft, Correlation Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and FJ Labs.
ABOUT KNOCK
Knock (www.knock.com) is the first online Home Trade-in platform, a revolutionary new approach to home buying and selling that makes it as easy to trade-in your home as it is to trade-in your car. Launched by founding team members of Trulia.com, the company uses data science to price homes accurately, technology to sell them efficiently and a dedicated team of Licensed Local Experts to guide consumers through every step of the process. Knock’s top tier investors include RRE, Foundry Group, Redpoint, Greycroft, Corazon Capital, Correlation Ventures,Great Oaks Venture Capital and FJ Labs. The company has offices in New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Dallas and Fort Worth, with several more on the way.
ABOUT FOUNDRY GROUP
Foundry Group is a venture capital firm focused on investing in technology companies and the next generation of venture capital fund managers. In addition to providing the necessary venture capital to get a company up and running, Foundry Group is committed to leveraging its experience in starting and growing companies, expertise in the technology industry, and network of relationships to help great entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies. Foundry Group is based in Boulder, Colorado, and invests in companies located across the United States and in Canada. For more information, visit www.foundrygroup.com.
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