Last time we discussed the very early days. From mid-2008 to 2010, RentHop used co-founder Lawrence Zhou’s apartment to write code on nights and weekends, while the founders held day jobs at Traxis Partners, D. E. Shaw & Co., and Two Sigma Investments. The doormen must have assumed we were dating, given all the late nights when I would leave the apartment, looking disheveled from a long hacking session.
Grand Central Tech – Urban Tech Hub
In 2013, RentHop raised a seed round from Two Sigma Ventures, one of the first investments TSV made in the PropTech and Big Data space. Floored and Canary were also part of their early portfolio, and all three companies shared offices, first at 96 Spring Street then 101 Avenue of the Americas.
Within two years, the office was full of startups from all kinds and sizes. One of the best things about Two Sigma Ventures is their willingness to invest in a large range of company stages, and a wide range of check sizes. You can be two founders with a prototype, or a borderline private equity deal – as long as your company is engineering innovative solutions using data analysis and machine learning, they should be on your list.
RentHop grew to 9 employees during our time at Two Sigma – but sitting next to us, delivery company Homer Logistics raised $8.5 million and quickly expanded to over dozens of executives and employees. When Homer outgrew the space, CEO Adam Price moved the company to Urban Tech Hub at Grand Central Tech, and was kind enough to carve out space for us to sublet. Adam is now CEO of a publicly traded company after selling his startup, and we took over the GCT space!
Not at All Like WeWork
Urban Tech Hub brings together a unique community of invite-only startups focusing on unique problems and opportunities in dense cities such as New York – transportation, logistics, infrastructure, clean tech, and big data, and space allocation are focus areas – thankfully RentHop and RealtyHop tick many of the boxes! We will discuss our current offices more another time!
