Compass Real Estate is an American tech company that is transforming the real estate game. It offers innovative solutions to its agents, provides better services for its clients and if you want further info on Compass and how they can help you, you can find some basic facts here.
They originally had a different name – Compass was founded under a different name, it started out as Urban Compass back in 2012. Since that time, it has grown and evolved into Compass Real Estate.
The name is somewhat deceptive – Compass Real Estate leads people to believe that it is a real estate brokerage but that is not what they are all about. They do the job of a brokerage, dealing in rental properties and they employ agents, but this is just a part of what they do. They are ultimately a tech company producing software for real estate firms and agents. Their software helps to streamline many of the functions that would normally take up a lot of time for agents to carry out.
Goldman Sachs invested in it – When the company was first getting started, it needed financial support to produce its software and established the company infrastructure. Thankfully, several investors believed in this venture, one of which was Goldman Sachs. Other big players such as Thrive Capital and Founder’s Fund together with some individual investors, helped to bring in $8 million in start-up funding which gave Compass the start it needed to ensure its success.
They have earned a distinction for innovation – due to the innovative nature of their company, Compass has earned a place of distinction within the real estate industry. They were the first of their kind to provide this kind of software and they went on to develop mobile apps to support real estate agents in doing their jobs.
Their revenue is built through a commission cut – in the beginning, Urban Compass worked with contracted agents and took a cut of the commission as payment for their services. When they made the decision to build software for realtors in 2014, this changed their entire business model. They earned revenue by establishing contracts with real estate agents and taking a portion of the commissions that their partners earned.
They focussed on rentals in the early stages – in the early days, one of the first ventures that Compass was involved in was the rental industry in New York. If you know anything about the rental system and how things were working just a decade ago, then you know it was desperately in need of some improvements. Renting somewhere in the city was impossible without having to go through pages and pages of advertisements that were completely misrepresenting the properties available.
They earned millions more funding in 2014 – the pinnacle year for Compass was when they made to change to developing software for realtors in 2014. This change in their business model attracted even more investment interest which amounted to another $40 million of funding thus bringing the company to a valuation estimate of $360 million.