RadPad, a millennial focused mobile rental marketplace, today announced it has raised $9 million in its Series A funding. Altpoint Ventures, which is also an investor in mobile consumer Internet companies Lyft and HONK, led the funding round and Goldcrest Investments also participated. The investment brings RadPad's total funding to date to $13 million.
Since launching in Los Angeles in January 2013, RadPad has rapidly expanded across the US to enable renters nationwide to easily search through over 600,000 apartments and homes, and pay their rent with a credit or debit card to any landlord, via RadPad for iPhone, Android or its Website. Just this month, RadPad hit one million downloads of its mobile applications and last month, renters used RadPad more than two million times to find their new apartment. More than 80% of renters on RadPad are under 34 years old. In addition, RadPad has expanded its growth teams to Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, San Diego, San Francisco, Miami, Houston and Seattle to help renters on the ground at a local level.
'When we started RadPad there was a lot of pressure on us to do what other rental marketplaces were doing and continue to do today - build for landlords. They're the ones paying and when you start a business investors want to see a clear path to monetization,' said Jonathan Eppers, co-founder and CEO of RadPad.
'But we look at the rental market differently. We see it from the side of renters, who often hate this process and have no loyalty to rental platforms. Renting has become a lifestyle and younger people love the convenience and flexibility that comes with renting. Mobile is changing everything in our lives and is opening up opportunities that just didn't exist until very recently. Now just two years into it, we're realizing that our obsessive focus on product execution is really resonating with renters. More renters are using RadPad to find apartments and pay their rent in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC over other very established rental services which have been around a lot longer than us.'
In October of last year RadPad launched Pay with RadPad to enable renters to pay their rent using a credit or debit card to any landlord. Since then, more than $8 million in rent payments have been paid from renters in 46 states. Over 66 percent of rent payers on RadPad use the service every month. In less than 90-seconds, renters can pay their rent with a Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express or Apple Pay directly from RadPad's mobile apps. Apple is currently featuring RadPad as one of the 30 most popular apps in the App Store where you can use Apple Pay.
'100 million renters in America pay more than $440 billion in rent annually and those under the age of 40 make up more than 60 percent of tenants,' said Vadim Tarasov, Managing Director of Altpoint Ventures. 'RadPad uniquely addresses this immense segment of the market with a mobile, visual and increasingly social user experience that is with renters through the entire duration of their home and apartment rental years. Furthermore, it's a great example of a consumer-centric, mobile Internet company that is disrupting an entire market, which has been slow to adopt new technologies.'
'We really took our time to get to know the team at Altpoint before we moved forward with them, which included lots of discussions over the course of several weeks,' added Eppers. 'It was very important to us that Altpoint not only believed in our vision but was also willing to have the patience to realize that what we're trying to do can't be achieved overnight or over the course of several months. We're in this to create something that's massive and that's going to require patience and methodical execution on our part. We're very excited about what the rental market is going to look like in the coming years. It's going to get a lot better.'
About RadPad
RadPad is a millennial focused mobile rental marketplace available on iTunes, Google Play and Website. Born out of the frustration of finding a cool place to live, Jonathan Eppers, Tyler Galpin and Tim Watson launched RadPad in January 2013, and it has quickly grown to become the largest rental search service nationwide among millennial renters. After initially launching in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC, RadPad has expanded its physical presence to San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Houston and Miami this year, and is available to use for all renters across the US. Built in Los Angeles, the company has raised $13M in funding to date from investors including Altpoint Ventures and Goldcrest Investments. For more information visit: http://www.onradpad.com.