Unlike successful startups like Trulia and Zillow that facilitate purchases between owners and buyers, Withco actually takes on the liability inherent in owning the real estate themselves
WithCoast year, when the owner of European Medical Massage & Spa in Shillington, Pennsylvania decided to sell her company, she had an immediate potential buyer. Her employee Linda Roll, a first generation mother of four, was eager to take over the 22-year-old institution. The only problem: Roll didn’t have enough capital to buy the building in addition to the company.
“My parents ran a grocery store in Brooklyn for years until the day they got a phone call from the new landlord of the building,” explains Song, whose parents had immigrated from South Korea. “A developer had just purchased it and decided to double the rent. We lost the business in a matter of weeks.”
“This idea sits at the intersection of real estate and finance. This is very much a technology and data business.”Part of Song’s pitch to investors is that his company is bringing sophistication to a historically unsophisticated area of the real estate market. On the buying side, they approach local landlords with “data-driven offers” that promise both speed and liquidity in the closing process.