Propify

/ Startups / By

Founders: Ben Keller, Nickolas Johnson & Remen Okoruwa
Founding: 2022
Mission: Connect all owners, operators, & renters with their property data
Employees: 6 & 80% Local
Workplace: In Office, Flexible, or Remote
Stage & Capital Raised: Seed & ~$3M raised
Investors: Y Combinator, Prudence.vc
Key Customers: HappyCo, Level
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): <$50M
^ this is a useless number. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!

Propify is “Plaid for commercial real estate”, building unified API software for property managers and property technology companies. Founded in 2022 by Ben Keller, Nickolas Johnson & Remen Okoruwa, this early stage team graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 class on a mission to create the easiest way to integrate in Proptech.

Ben & Remen worked together at HubSpot and teamed up with Nick to originally work on an idea called Rentdrop. Their first foray into serving the real estate industry, they spent a year tackling the digital payments problem between landlords and tenants. Their software helped facilitate a cleaner payment process and they made progress but, through that first year building Rentdrop, they obtained a deeper insight. As a payment platform, the biggest roadblock to the company’s growth wasn’t the quality of their payment app experience but rather the distribution limits of their various property management integrations. 

Rentdrop wasn’t integrated with the software that property managers were already using like Yardi, RealPage, Buildium, etc. They had a great rent payment mobile app but these were mission critical integrations. And all Proptech founders have a similar problem. Distribution is holding them back from growth. 

As they reflected on the payment app they’d built using Plaid, which had itself previously democratized payment access, could there be a similar product to build for the property technology space? A little fix up, a flip, and Propify was born.

Their API acts as a universal translator for properties, residents, units, vendors, general ledger, etc. They track all of these data objects so users can pull data out and put it in back in via the same consistent model. This standardization speeds up the integration process for technology vendors that need to access all this data. 

Over the past year the team has built out 8 software integrations including RealPage, Entrata, & Buildium and plan to get to 10 by the end of 2023. They believe they’ve already reached critical mass in supporting the majority of the most popular multi family rental management software platforms. 

Propify is a B2B SaaS tool, sold through monthly subscription, with additional charges for high usage. Their average deal size is five to six figures and they’re already on track to hit seven figures of ARR by the end of 2023 from almost $0 at the start of the year. The team has grown to 6 full-time employees. 

Remen cites Y Combinator as massively impactful, teaching him and his cofounders the mindset & skills needed to build a fast-growing startup while also giving them access to an amazing community of founders. “We wouldn’t be where we are today without YC.”

Operators to Know:

Key Roles To Be Hired:

  • More roles coming soon!

If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:

  • What are the key milestones Propify is looking to achieve in 2023?
  • Could you share some details about the competitive landscape and positioning? 
  • Which proptech channels are most advantageous or disadvantageous to company growth?
  • What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2H 2023?

We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Propify you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more property managers into the digital age. All multi-family aficionados applaud your efforts. See you around town!

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