Announcing Sundae’s $80MM Series C Financing

Today we’re announcing an $80 million round of Series C financing — a milestone that will help us bring our mission to more homeowners across the U.S. through our worry-free and hassle-free alternative to predatory “cash-buyer” wholesalers.

It’s a big day at Sundae. I’m excited to share that we recently closed $80 million in Series C financing that will help us accelerate growth and our mission to help homeowners get the best outcome when it’s time to sell a house that needs some love.

This funding is significant not just in size, but in terms of the incredible investors who’ve put their faith in our mission and progress as a company. We’re honored to be supported by Fifth Wall, the largest venture capital firm focused on technology-driven innovation for the global real estate industry, and by one of our prior investors General Global Capital, who saw our momentum and co-lead the Series C. We’re grateful for our other investors who participated in this round including Frank Rotman at QED Investors who led our Series A and B rounds last year, as well as Wellington Management, Susa Ventures, Founders Fund, First American Financial, Prudence Holdings, Crossover VC, Intersect Capital, Gaingels, and Oberndorf Ventures.

We started Sundae in 2018 and launched in 2019 to help sellers get a fair price when they don’t have the time or resources to invest in repairs and cleaning to get their home market-ready. For too long, sellers in this position have been taken advantage of by predatory wholesalers who make a quick profit by re-assigning the contract to a property investor. Our goal is to displace wholesalers who exploit desperate or uninformed sellers and lock them into a contract which they turn around and assign to a property investor at a steep profit. The tens of thousands of dollars in lost equity that goes to a wholesaler could mean the difference that would have allowed the seller to pay off debts, or have enough money to retire.

By introducing Sundae as a marketplace that connects sellers directly to hundreds of vetted local property investors, we’re cutting out the predatory middle man through a transparent, reliable and competitive offer process that ensures homeowners get a fair price and keep more of their equity. We call it a better way to sell. We believe that bringing transparency, empathy and a fair way to sell off-market has fueled our growth and will be the driving force of our continued success. Our lead investor at General Global Capital Aemish Shah summed up this sentiment well. “Doing well by doing good is a core principle that Sundae exemplifies through its marketplace” said Shah. “We are excited to support the management as it continues to foster this culture internally and for homeowners throughout the country.”

We’re thrilled to announce that several notable celebrities from film, music and sports have also joined as investors in this round. Our sellers and buyers are avid fans of these notable investors, so we’re honored to have their support as we look to raise awareness and establish Sundae as the category defining brand for homeowners and property investors alike. Here are just some of the notable individual investors who participated in our Series C:

• Will Smith, award-winning artist and Actor/Producer, from Dreamers VC
• KYGO and Palm Tree Crew
• Richard Seymour, three-time NFL Super Bowl champion, of 93 Ventures
• DK Metcalf, NFL All-Pro of the Seattle Seahawks
• Matt Chapman of the Oakland A’s
• Alex Caruso of the Los Angeles Lakers and NBA World Champion
• Aaron Gordon of the Denver Nuggets
• Solomon Hill of the Atlanta Hawks
• Kelly Olynyk of the Houston Rockets,
• Isaiah Thomas, NBA All-Star
• Klay Thompson, three-time NBA Champion & Gold Medalist, of the Golden State Warriors
• Hassan Whiteside of the Sacramento Kings
• Andrew Wiggins of the Golden State Warriors
• Weston McKennie, 2020 US Soccer Player of the Year and Juventus midfielder

In addition to helping sellers, our two-sided marketplace serves the needs of real estate agents working with those sellers, and investors looking for properties they can buy in order to grow their business. For investors, we help with the difficult task of finding these properties, and offer an online platform at investor.sundae.com where they can view available properties and make offers. Once an investor signs up to join the marketplace, we vet them, and grant them access to the full inventory of properties with detailed information including photos, floor plan, 3D walkthrough, and a 3rd party inspection report.

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Since raising a Series A and Series B in 2020, we’ve seen a rapid expansion, from four markets in California at the end of last year, to now operating in 14 markets across California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Colorado and Utah and more opening soon. Sundae is now ranked #1 in market share across established CA markets and quickly gaining share in new markets, driven by word of mouth and positive reviews which we’ve also seen in our Net Promoter Score tracking which is consistently above 80, which is considered world class. Our current markets include:

1. San Diego County
2. Riverside County
3. San Bernardino County
4. Los Angeles County
5. Sacramento County
6. Atlanta Greater Metropolitan Area
7. Tampa Bay Greater Metropolitan Area
8. Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area
9. Jacksonville Metropolitan Area
10. Oakland Metropolitan Area
11. Dallas Metropolitan Area
12. Houston Metropolitan Area
13. Denver Metropolitan Area
14. San Antonio Metropolitan Area

More markets are coming soon. Thanks to our recent financing, we’re well positioned to continue hiring across new markets. We also plan to use the funds to continue investing in our online marketplace platform and digital tools for sellers and buyers, and building brand awareness to reach more homeowners and qualified property investors across the country.

Much of our growth starts with expanding our team of City General Managers and local market experts who reflect the diversity of the communities we serve in major metros across the U.S. With our distributed footprint, we’ve also fully embraced a remote work culture, even for teams that are typically centralized. That means all of our teams including Engineering, Product, Data, Finance, People, and Marketing are empowered to hire new team members in any U.S. location.

I’m grateful for all of the people who’ve been part of the Sundae journey over the last 2.5 years. Our people, values, and culture are the primary reason for any success we’ve seen and will be even more crucial as we look to aggressively expand. If you’re driven by making a positive impact in people’s lives and want to support our mission, we’d love to hear from you. You can check out our open roles at sundae.com/careers.

Josh Stech

Co-Founder & CEO, Sundae