SquareFoot, an office space search company, announced today it has raised a $16 million Series B led by DRW VC. 

Existing investors, including Triangle Peak Partners, RRE, Rosecliff, and some senior real estate executives, also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total funding to more than $29 million.

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As Jason Rowley wrote at the time of the company’s $7 million Series A, New York-based SquareFoot aims to streamline the office location process “by offering a suite of tools to help stakeholders…discover and refine their requirements, and ultimately receive a set of commercial real estate listings that meet those needs.”

In addition to the initial search process, SquareFoot also lets prospective tenants view availabilities, schedule tours, share documents, and communicate with in-house brokers.

History

SquareFoot co-founder and CEO Jonathan Wasserstrum notes that before he went to Columbia Business School, he worked at JLL, a large commercial real estate (CRE) industry brokerage.

“I learned a ton about the market and industry, and, equally important, I learned what the big guys do well, and less well,” he told me. “Big companies do some things extremely well with more resources available, but I also saw a gap in the market as it concerned smaller companies with potential to grow.”

So when he graduated from business school in 2012, he founded SquareFoot with the goal of providing transparency to commercial real estate spaces that was similar “to what people were used to for residential listings.” As mentioned above, the company also offers a team of in-house brokers who can help and negotiate on behalf of SquareFoot clients as they conduct their transactions.

SquareFoot has also added a third arm to its business, which offers flexible office leases, a market segment that is seeing increased demand. (In October 2018, for example, we covered flexible workspace operator Knotel’s $60 million raise).  To help it enter this market, SquareFoot acquired PivotDesk, a Boulder, Colo.-based office-sharing marketplace, in February.

Looking ahead

When it comes to revenue, SquareFoot has grown 100 percent year-over-year over the past two years, according to Wasserstrum. It’s also doubled its headcount to 60 people compared to a year ago today. So far, the company has completed more than 1,200 deals, he said. Customers include mattress retailer Casper, grocery delivery service Instacart, and on-demand workspace marketplace Breather.

SquareFoot plans to use its capital infusion on product development and innovation and to expand into new markets.

“We’ve done work in most of the top 20 markets already,”  Wasserstrum said. “We’re looking forward to planting flags more formally and taking our show on the road.”

In July, we talked with the CEO about his choice to locate SquareFoot in New York City, which is increasingly the headquarters city of choice for proptech (short for “property tech) and other real estate-related companies. Read more about that here.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias