SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Wreno, a cutting-edge proptech platform that trains and connects workers and trade partners with institutional real estate companies, today announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau with participation from Fifth Wall, Owl Ventures, NFX, among others. The round’s angel participation also includes senior management from top single-family home institutions, as well as founders such as Vikas Choudhary from Porter and Alexey Dubov and Sam Ruben from Mighty Buildings. The company has raised a total of $6.1 million to date.
This investment will allow the company to continue to scale into new markets across the US, leverage new technologies, develop new service offerings for customers, and further enhance the platform’s existing machine learning capabilities.
Wreno was founded in 2021 by Charlotte Schell and Mark Barton, two former Zillow employees with extensive experience in business and real estate. Currently based in Arizona, the company works with some of the country’s largest institutional real estate companies across five states already, connecting them with skilled workers and trade partners to help maintain, repair, renovate, and evaluate tens of thousands of homes.
Currently, the US repair and maintenance workforce is declining at an unprecedented rate, despite the fact that by 2030 the top ten institutional homeowners alone are expected to spend $3.2 billion dollars a year on renovation, routine maintenance, and home evaluations. The shortage of the workforce has resulted in costly delays and unfulfilled projects, representing a significant pain point for institutional homeowners.
Wreno is addressing this underserved market by skilling new labor supply and leveraging machine learning along with end-to-end software solutions to provide faster and more accurate home evaluations and data collection at scale. The platform also optimizes fragmented local trade businesses to provide adjacent repair, maintenance, and renovation services.
“The average US home is 37 years old today. With an aging workforce, the labor supply in this industry shrunk by 38% since 2018. As a result, every 1 out of 3 jobs in home maintenance and management are getting delayed. It was clear to us that increasing utilization of existing workers and skilled trades is no longer enough,” says Wreno co-founder Charlotte Schell. “With a unique business model, we are opening previously inaccessible job opportunities to fresh labor supply, while also utilizing technology to allow more people to complete tasks that would normally be considered ‘skilled’ or ‘semi-skilled.’ We are the first technology company that tackles this societal issue from the root.”
“The rapidly-growing iBuyer, REIT, and proptech markets have been constrained by labor. Wreno’s end-to-end platform opens up labor supply for those companies while bringing efficiencies and improved customer experience to the market,” says Isabelle Phelps, Partner at Lerer Hippeau. “Wreno upskills gig workers and uses technology to provide faster and better estimations and services, pulling together the right mix of software and vendors to support repair and maintenance for businesses at scale.”
About Wreno
Wreno is an end-to-end home evaluation and maintenance service platform for iBuyers, REITs, and prop tech companies. Using the latest in ML and computer vision, Wreno upskills gig workers to provide faster and more accurate home estimations and data collection at scale, while also optimizing fragmented local trade businesses to provide much needed repair and maintenance services. Wreno’s full suite of technology also allows real estate companies to more efficiently recruit, onboard, train, and deploy their own internal home evaluation professionals and vendors at scale. www.wreno.io
About Lerer Hippeau
Lerer Hippeau is an early-stage venture capital fund based in New York City. The firm’s portfolio contains more than 350 leading consumer and enterprise companies, including Guideline, MIRROR, Blockdaemon, K Health, Allbirds, ZenBusiness, and Thrive, among others. The Lerer Hippeau team is made up of experienced operators who invest early and stay in founders’ corners forever. https://www.lererhippeau.com/
