Lyvly, a community platform which seeks to help landlords and renters find and manage shared living accommodation, has received $4.6m in Series A funding from VC firm Mosaic Ventures.
Additionally, the company has announced that Greg Marsh, the co-founder of onefinestay, will join the company as chairman and investor.
Lyvly will use the money to scale up its London operations and expand its product, marketing and sales teams.
To date, the startup has partnered with Loft, Food Envy, and Laundry Republic to provide additional community experiences.
Philip Laney, co-founder and CEO of Lyvly, spoke about the fundraise: “A lot of the housing sector doesn’t care for tenants, and they become more like commodities. Whereas we are creating genuine communities around rental housing that allow people to get a lot more out of their life. We have seen a huge movement towards building communities in almost all industries aside from housing. And we believe community should start at home.
“The rental experience for young people in cities is stressful and unpleasant. People are also being forced to live further and further out just to be able to afford a decent home. We’re changing this. We also provide a service that makes life easier to manage and living with people a joy.
“We’re so excited about this investment as it will enable us to continue our rapid growth. We already have an incredible team and advisors and will be expanding this further. We are recruiting recruit some of the best developers, marketers and sales staff to help us bring our service across the UK and Europe,” he added.
Lyvly was co-founded by Philip Laney, Dario Favoino and Siraj Khaliq. Laney and Favoino have more than a decade’s experience in real estate investment and property management at Deutsche Bank and Realstar.
Khaliq was an early engineering hire at Google in 2001, and one of the founding engineers for the Google Book search project. He then went on to become CTO and co-founder of Silicon Valley startup Climate Corporation, a company which pioneered the use of machine learning in farming and was later acquired for over $1.1bn in 2013.
Simon Levene, partner and co-founder of Mosaic Ventures, went on to comment: “Long-term residential rental is a multi-billion dollar asset class where business model innovation is overdue.
“Leveraging community for shared living offers such potential. Lyvly provides a platform for renters to be matched with great properties and flatmates, taking care of logistics and much of the hassle. Landlords win too, with happier tenants/fewer voids and a better property management service,” Levene said.
Marsh said he was delighted to be involved with Lyvly “at a pivotal stage in its development”.
“Co-living is a powerful innovation in the residential real estate market, and with Phil at the company’s helm, I believe Lyvly will be the company which leads the development of that new category in the UK and beyond,” he concluded.