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The past year has been a series of quick moves for rental marketplace app RadPad: they graduated from Amplify and have raised three seed rounds bringing their total amount raised to $2 million.
Their most recent round of $1 million, announced this week, was led by existing investor Deep Fork Capital. Also participating are new investors Brian Lee of ShoeDazzle and Michael Huffington, who founder Jonathon Eppers (pictured above) said is a “huge mentor” to him.
“Michael’s invested heavily in making some really great independent movies and but I think he's always had an interest in technology too,” Eppers said. “He actually approached me about RadPad and the rest just went from there.”
Lee and partner Richard Jun jumped on board after connecting with RadPad through existing investors. RadPad is one of the first investments out of their new BAM Ventures fund. The $1 million boost will be used to move RadPad into a new office, hire more engineers and expand the platform to a few more cities.
Right now, RadPad has launched in over a dozen cities including their biggest markets of Chicago, LA and San Diego. RadPad woos apartment seekers and property owners by providing both a web and mobile platform that stands out with its photo-based interface.
“We've worked hard to build a solid foundation that helps renters and landlords easily use RadPad to meet and then easily go offline,” Eppers said. “We're very interested in building a platform where both renters and landlords can use to complete the entire rental experience.”
Just last week, the team even further simplified the renting process by launching real-time messaging so that all communication between prospective renters and property owners can happen in one place.
These seemingly small changes will make all the difference for RadPad as it takes on competitors like Craigslist, West Side Rentals, Trulia, Apartment List, LiveLovely and Zumper, Eppers said in November: “I used to believe this is a space that multiple users can play in, but now I’m convinced that two or three will survive.”
