Today, SafeChain announced that the company has secured $3 million in funding. Led by Columbus-based NCT Ventures, with participation from Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Aspect Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Pete Kight (founder of Check Free), Social Capital, Rev1 Ventures, Loud Capital, and Fintech71 (a Jobs Ohio accelerator). With investors from Ohio, Illinois, Washington DC, New York and California, the raise completes one of the most geographically diverse and experienced syndicates for a seed stage company in the Midwest.

Tony Franco, CEO of SafeChain, said, "We're excited about the strength of the syndicate and believe being able to choose our partners offers us a unique advantage in the market. We know we've just made it to the starting line and now the real work begins." SafeChain gained momentum for the round after concurrently completing two successful accelerators and winning the Rise of the Rest pitch competition, run by Revolution, an investment firm led by AOL co-founder, Steve Case and best-selling author JD Vance.

Steve Case commented on the round, saying, "We are proud to partner with other national and regional investors to support SafeChain. It's incredibly exciting to see promising and disruptive ideas come out of areas that are underserved by the venture community. Blockchain is set to revolutionize many sectors of business and SafeChain is leading out of the Midwest."

Purchasing real estate today is an inefficient and paper based process that often requires 30 days and up to a dozen different entities to complete a transaction. In addition to inefficient processes, there was over $1 billion in attempted wire fraud in the US alone last year according to the FBI. SafeChain's beachhead product, SafeWire, solves this problem using a unique multi-factor authentication mechanism. This is just the first step in SafeChain's vision; the company's goal is to use blockchain technology to facilitate 30 second real estate transactions.

SafeChain will use the funds to expand the sales team, develop additional products, and execute on customer partnerships. In 2018, they also plan to launch a title industry consensus group to explore difficult technical challenges related to blockchain.

"SafeChain's intellectual approach paired with a world class development team positions them well to execute and deploy blockchain technology towards a valuable use case," said Calvin Cooper, NCT Ventures. "We're excited to support Tony and his team as they partner with the title industry to transform how real estate is bought and sold."

About SafeChain

SafeChain makes real estate transactions safer and simpler. Built by real estate title experts in collaboration with banking technologists, SafeChain tackles the inefficiencies of the buying and selling process from the inside-out to help title companies, mortgage bankers and realtors decrease costs and deliver a better experience for customers. Leveraging the most advanced technologies, including Blockchain, SafeChain increases the speed and security of closings to deliver faster transactions and better consumer confidence. For more information visit safechain.io