INTERVIEW: Anthemos Georgiades, CEO and co-founder of Zumper

27 September 2018

Gordana Davila

Property Portal Watch had the pleasure of interviewing Anthemos Georgiades, CEO and co-founder of Zumper.

Launched in 2012 and based out of San Francisco, California, property portal Zumper was conceived due to the frustration experienced by Georgiades and other Zumper team members during the process of searching for, applying and signing the contract of rental properties, in the UK, as well as in the U.S. Whilst attending business school in the U.S., Georgiades noticed that the process of searching for and renting an apartment was quite antiquated and cumbersome, so he decided to plant roots in the Silicon Valley, and he co-founded Zumper.

Having already raised a whopping US$90 million in funding, we asked Georgiades about Zumper’s steps in raising funding, and what advice he could give other companies who are in the same situation. Georgiades stated that the company’s approach was to have a narrow scope of what they were working with. Giving Zumper’s first seed round as an example – US$1 million – he said that the company conducted a very small test in one market only, seeing whether renters would use digital forms via their smartphones instead of paper ones to try leasing an apartment. Zumper found that this was the best use of the initial seed money, instead of doing a big launch of the product. Georgiades added that this is the approach the company takes with each round of capital raised… they test small markets out first, before going further. Narrowing the scope and focusing is critical at the early stage of a company.

Initially, Zumper began like any other classic search website, but about a year ago the company introduced the second half of the portal, which is intended to make Zumper as easy to use as a hotel rental website. Along with booking a tour of the property, Zumper allows the user(s) to pre-qualify and even enables them to leave a deposit for the apartment they are interested in, which literally takes it off the market. This is what differentiates Zumper from other portals.

Currently, Zumper is available in the U.S. and Canada, where users can search over a million listings each month. The portal claims it sees 8 million visitors in an average month, with one-quarter of a million landlords using the platform to connect to them.

When asked what one thing he would have done differently were he to start Zumper all over again, Georgiades stated that he would have ignored the competition more. Georgiades added, that when the company established itself in the Silicon Valley, it was so easy to get distracted by the competitors and all they were up to when they should have been laser-focused on what Zumper had to offer, which was and still is so different from what is on the market. In the early stages of Zumper, the company found itself building and launching way too many products when it should have focused on one or two at a time. They were trying to do too many things with too small a team. They have since learned that applying their energy to just a few, but well-developed products are the way to go.

As far as what’s next for Zumper… the company is planning on using the latest capital raised to continue optimizing its current services for renters and landlords, and of course, its ongoing expansion across North America as a one-stop-shop booking platform, not just as a search engine.

The above article was originally published here.