Compass Raises $50 Million in New Funding Round Led by Institutional Venture Partners

Funding Will Expedite Compass's Expansion into New Markets

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Sep 15, 2015, 07:30 ET

NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Compass, a technology-driven real estate platform, has closed a new round of funding, company executives announced today. The new $50 million funding round, led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), comes on the heels of the company's $40 million round in July 2014. Compass's total capital raised to date is $123 million.

The round also included new investments from existing key investors including Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, 406 Ventures, Advance Publications, Inc. (the parent company of Condé Nast), Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express and Marc Benioff, Founder and CEO of Salesforce.com.

"This new funding will enable us to accelerate our expansion into additional markets, bringing our best-in-class technology to new agents and clients. The additional capital will also allow us to build out our industry leading engineering, product and design teams, which is a testament to our company's commitment to long-term growth," said Ori Allon, Founder and Executive Chairman of Compass. "We are excited to partner with Institutional Venture Partners, which has a long track record of success helping disruptive technology companies like Dropbox, Kayak, Snapchat and Twitter scale and become leaders in their field."

"Compass has developed exceptional technology to improve the real estate experience and is led by a talented management team, whose vision and commitment to innovation has quickly established the company as a leader in the market," said Todd Chaffee, General Partner at IVP. "We are excited about their long-term strategy and are proud to partner with Compass as it continues its rapid expansion."

Compass plans to bring its scalable and proprietary technology to additional cities in the coming months building on the company's recent meteoric rise. The company is actively exploring opportunities in markets that include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, the Hamptons, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

Just last month, the company announced its entry into the South Florida market, opening its first branch in Miami.

Allon continued, "Our proprietary data-driven technology enables clients and agents to interact seamlessly, bringing valuable intelligence to the real estate decision-making process. Long term, we envision scaling these highly-sophisticated insights to players across the real estate value chain, expanding our opportunities for future success and growth."

In February of this year, Compass took a milestone step in its national expansion by launching its first office outside New York, in Washington, D.C. Just months after launching the new office Compass has tripled the size of its DC operation and now has over 80 agents, 15 of whom were recognized on Washingtonian's Top Agent List this year. This past April, Compass D.C. was the #1 sales office in the region as measured by dollar volume of properties bought and sold.

"Our unprecedented success in less than one year of operation in Washington, D.C. illustrates the dynamic nature of Compass," Allon said. "By combining our first-class client service, unrivaled technology and our ability to transform data into actionable intelligence, we have quickly become a driving force in the D.C. real estate market."

Meanwhile, Compass has continued to experience explosive growth in New York City, doubling its exclusive listings to over $1 billion, securing $2.5 billion in new development and increasing its agent population by more than 100% this year alone.

"Since launching, our team has created a culture of collaboration, diversity and excellence," added Allon. "This environment has helped us achieve a 100% agent retention rate, a revolutionary trend in the real estate industry, and one that we are extremely proud of."

About Compass:

Launched in 2013, Compass is a technology-driven real estate platform with offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Washington, D.C. and Miami, which combines exceptional agents with best-in-class technology to make the process of buying, selling and renting a home intelligent and seamless.

Named the Mid-Size Business of the Year in 2015 by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, Compass was founded by Ori Allon—who sold his previous companies to Google and Twitter—and Robert Reffkin—formerly Chief of Staff to the President and COO of Goldman Sachs. Compass is the first residential brokerage in the country to offer a proprietary app exclusively for its agents, in addition to the company's integrated consumer web and mobile platforms.

For more information, please visit www.Compass.com

About Institutional Venture Partners (IVP)

With $5.4 billion of committed capital, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is one of the premier later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms in the United States. Founded in 1980, IVP has invested in over 300 companies and 102 have gone public. IVP is one of the top-performing firms in the industry and has a 34-year IRR of 43.2%. IVP specializes in venture growth investments, industry rollups, founder liquidity transactions and select public market investments. IVP investments include such notable companies as AppDynamics, ArcSight (HPQ), Buddy Media (CRM), ComScore (SCOR), Datalogix (ORCL), Domo, Dropbox, Dropcam (GOOG), Fleetmatics (FLTX), HomeAway (AWAY), Kayak (PCLN), LegalZoom, LifeLock (LOCK), Marketo (MKTO), MySQL (ORCL), Netflix (NFLX), Omniture (ADBE), OnDeck (ONDK), Prosper, Pure Storage, RetailMeNot (SALE), Shazam, Slack, Snapchat, SoundCloud, Supercell, Synchronoss (SNCR), The Honest Company, Twitter (TWTR), Zenefits, and Zynga (ZNGA). For more information, visit http://www.ivp.com or follow IVP on Twitter: @ivp.

SOURCE Compass