I am thrilled to announce my latest investment — Renew. Renew is a platform designed to modernize the lease renewal process and improve retention rates for property owners.

Most of you reading this are either currently renting your living space from someone, or renting space that you own out to a tenant. Almost anyone over the age of 18 has been a renter at some point in their lives. You are also likely in agreement that the logistics of renting can be extremely unpleasant — from every side of the business. Renters renew leases every year, and yet there's no technology to support that process. No online renewal! No way to compare prices! Are we really still answering mail from the post office? Why does renewing your lease have to be so hard? Property managers don’t have it easy either, often chasing a renter down in order to confirm their commitment to renewing. Meanwhile, property owners are unlikely to hear from former renters once they’ve left their space.

Renting is a nearly universal experience of adult life, which is why I am so excited to announce our latest investment in Renew.

At its core, Renew is a platform that helps a renter renew their lease. They are by extension targeting three groups of users. First, renters - they go through the renewal process every year with very little technology involved in the renewal itself. Second, property managers - they have to send thousands of physical renewal notices in a haphazard manual manner and the industry norm is 50% churn of renters. Third, property owners (known as institutional operators, that own 100s of thousands of units in their portfolios) - they have a hard time retaining renters and once a renter decides to leave they will lose them to another operator, there are very few effective retention tools for them (despite being in an ecosystem that is among one of the most interconnected!).

Rob Hayden and Kevin Murphy have been entrenched in the rental industry for years, they originally met as operators at Jetty building out the business development, sales and go to market teams. This is a co-founder duo that inherently understands their end users, their pain points and determined that renewal was the best entry point to capture renters' lifecycle.

We have been looking into ways by which software can automate or make existing workflows more efficient. Over the last few years I have led investments in horizontal workflow automation companies and we are now looking for more verticalized software approaches, making specific industries more efficient like, Renew for the real estate ecosystem. Renew’s integration into a property manager and owners’ workflow, is making them more efficient in being able to understand their occupancy rates and in the long term be able to more accurately forecast what their revenues could look like from each unit.

We are excited to lead Renew’s seed round of funding and are fortunate to work closely with Rob, Kevin and the entire Renew team, see more on behind the deal below!