Rocket Internet-backed Dutch-German startup Nestpick has received $11M (€9,9M) to digitize the entire rental process of homes. The series A funding comes from VC’s Rocket, Mangrove and Enern.
Started in Rotterdam as a service for international students and expats, Nestpick now is for just anybody looking to find rental space. It also offers landlords an efficient and hassle-free renting process.
“Tenants can book with us and receive confirmation in less than 48 hours with one click instead of hundreds of e-mails, calls, and scheduling conflicts”, founder Fabian Dudek told TechCrunch.
“Instead of that process, imagine walking through a new neighborhood that you love in any country, and being able to book your next home straight from your phone entirely online,” he said. This suggests renting without actually seeing the place beforehand, something that can be quite tricky – but it saves a lot of time and money.
Nestpick has had some trouble with this in the past, and recently it was forced to cut staff (link’s in Dutch) after growing to quick. Just like people are sometimes scammed IRL (which happens in The Netherlands with students especially, due to bad tenants), it was done digitally as well. The funding is helping to make the whole rental process more transparent as well.
Mature funding
After receiving two undisclosed amounts of seed funding, Nestpick now scooped up $11M in series A. For Dutch standards, this is good news, as the average series A funding typically doesn’t exceed 1 or 2 million euro or so. Of course, Nestpick is based in Germany now. But it’s good to see this kind of money was raised – making this amount much more mature. And with mature I mean much more like in Silicon Valley.