A Note From Esusu’s Co-Founders
Esusu raised a $10 million Series A funding round, led by Motley Fool Ventures with Investment from Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve raised $10 million in our Series A round. This milestone would not be possible without the boundless support of our new investors Motley Fool Ventures, Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, The Equity Alliance, Predictive VC, and notable angel investors. We are grateful for our previous investors Concrete Rose Capital, Global Impact Fund, Impact America Fund, Next Play Ventures, and Zeal Capital Partners for re-investing with us again to advance our mission of dismantling barriers to housing for working families.
With our first blog post, we are excited to share this major growth milestone, how far we’ve come as a company, and where we are going.
What we’ve built at Esusu?
We started Esusu on the premise that no matter where you come from, the color of your skin, or your financial identity, it shouldn’t determine where you end up in life. We were credit invisible when our families immigrated to the United States. As a result, we understand how difficult it is to build financial resiliency, access homeownership, and obtain wealth without a credit score. Today there are over 45 million Americans that are credit invisible and over 70 million with thin credit profiles.
We recognized that for renters, rent is the single largest monthly expense often encompassing 30% to 50% of a household’s income. Historically rent did not count towards credit building. At Esusu, we challenged that premise and built a platform to make rent payments count towards credit to help working families build financial resilience.
Our rent reporting platform captures rental payment data and reports it to the major credit bureaus to boost credit scores, empower residents and improve property performance for landlords. Simultaneously, we help property owners increase revenue, lower evictions, and fill vacancies.
Why raise additional capital?
The pandemic, the racial reckoning, and the broader economic crisis of 2020 urgently reminded us why we needed to scale our platform to help more residents build financial resilience through credit and access to quality financial products.
At the onset of COVID-19, our data told us it would create a housing crisis that would put millions of renters at risk of eviction. Unfortunately, we were right. COVID-19 caused a spike in unemployment, a rise in evictions, increasing healthcare costs, and a decline in financial stability for millions of Americans. In sum, this crisis amplified the critical nature of our mission to keep families in their homes.
To respond to this eviction crisis, we introduced zero-interest housing stability loans to renters facing eviction. This new offer keeps residents in their homes while they get back on their feet and empowered renters with opportunities to build and establish credit.
During these dire times, Esusu saw a massive surge in property owners and renters leveraging our services as we grew to 2 million households across all 51 states. In order to scale effectively, we needed to invest in our team, our platform, and our partnerships to achieve this goal. This led us to open up our Series A round of financing earlier this year and we could not be prouder of the incredible partners we’ve found to join our mission.
What’s next?
Esusu is experiencing monumental growth and traction thanks to the unwavering support of our team, partners, customers, and investors. This Series A investment marks a critical opportunity for us to lean into deeper development of the following areas.
Team Growth
As we prepare for our largest growth phase, we are hiring across many departments, including Engineering, Data Science, Product, Operations, Marketing, Human Resources, Account Management, and Sales.
We are always looking for justice capitalists who embody our mission, vision, and values to join the Esusu Team. If you are interested in joining the team, please see the available positions to apply and reach out to us directly at careers@esusu.org.
Product Delivery
Our top priority remains to build high-quality products that drive resident financial stability thereby improving outcomes for asset managers, property managers, renters, and society at large. We are excited to invest in new technologies, processes, and talent to enhance our platform for our users and partners.
Scaling Impact
Today, Esusu is available in 2 million homes representing over $2.4 billion in Gross Lease Value nationwide. We are the largest rent reporting provider in the U.S. working with 30% of the largest landlords on the National Multi-Housing Council list. With so many families facing eviction and renters hoping to make their rent payments count towards their credit, we urgently need to scale our impact. We look forward to continuing our mission, advocating for financial access, and investing in deeper strategic partnerships and relationships with our customers.
As we reflect on this next chapter in this journey, it is important to express our deepest gratitude to the Esusu Team, investors, partners, customers, and countless others who have made this all possible. We thank each and every one of you from the bottom of our hearts.
As ever, we remain unshakable in our commitment to keeping families in their homes and unleashing the power of data to bridge the racial wealth gap.
Onward!
Wemimo Abbey and Samir Goel, Co-founders & Co-CEOs