About Greylock
Greylock Partners invests in entrepreneurs that focus on consumer and enterprise software companies.
- 📌 Menlo Park, California, United States
- 👥 101-250
- 📊 Venture Capital
- 🌟 Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Private Equity, Seed, Venture
- 🌐 www.greylock.com
About Ribbon
Ribbon Home is a real estate platform that allows users to sell and purchase products by sharing a unique showcase link.
- 📌 New York, New York, United States
- 👥 101-250
- 📊 Debt Financing
- 🌟 Private
- 🌐 www.ribbonhome.com
Our Investment in Ribbon
In 2005, armed with a downpayment and consistent paycheck thanks to my employment at Google, I bought my first apartment with a financing contingency.
I loved that place, and put so much blood, sweat, and tears into its renovation that you would think I would have been more sentimental when choosing its next owner eight years later.
This being San Francisco, however, I had four or five offers within a few days of putting it on the market, and when my realtor lined them up in order of preference, there was one that set itself apart with two magic words: all cash.
Simplifying the Home Buying Process
New data suggests 61% percent of starter homes — homes meant for first time home buyers — are now purchased this way.
This frustrating characteristic is also ever present in the case of the move-up buyer — who cannot afford to purchase their new home without selling their current home.
It hardly seems fair to think the me of yesteryear couldn’t afford to win in today’s market, but as they say — money talks… and cash screams.
Today, I’m proud to announce our Series B investment in Ribbon, a financial technology company helping to rebalance the playing field for home buyers and sellers, while securing the likelihood of the transaction for realtors at the same time.
We believe Ribbon is unique in its win-win-win approach for all three of these constituents, and that’s evident in their volume of business driven by agents growing by 25% on a month-over-month basis, with these realtors’ total deal volume eclipsing $12B annually.
Impressive Growth and Expansion
Ribbon dramatically simplifies the home buying process by enabling homebuyers with an all-cash, guaranteed-to-close “Ribbon Offer” to present to home sellers.
Buyers are pre-approved for a purchase and home valuations are completed within 24 hours, making the offer experience fast, transparent and predictable.
If a homebuyer can’t close with a mortgage on time, Ribbon will buy and reserve the home on behalf of the homebuyer and lease it to them for up to six months.
Sellers and realtors also benefit from the process, which ensures a guaranteed, stress-free experience.
To-date, homebuyers working with Ribbon have increased their chance of having their offer accepted by 10X, saved an average of $10,000 in cash discounts and received a 100% on-time closing.
We led Ribbon’s original Seed financing round almost two years ago, and since then, Ribbon has proven its value and expanded tremendously — currently operating in eight markets across four states — Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, Atlanta, Charleston, Greenville, Memphis and Knoxville — and plans to extend its coverage to 20 markets across ten states by the end of 2020.
In the last year alone, Ribbon has expanded their deal flow by an order of magnitude and now has more than $1 billion in consumer buying power on its platform.
Impressive Growth and Expansion
Beyond just the idea, the team behind Ribbon is also world class, and I should know — Wei Gan, Cofounder & CTO of Ribbon, was an instrumental part of team TellApart from our early days through our acquisition by Twitter.
As a graduate with a highly sought after computer science degree from Duke, Wei proved himself to be more than just an engineer: he excelled in recruiting, pulling 10% of that year’s Duke CS class with him.
His Cofounder and CEO of Ribbon, Shaival Shah, is also an extraordinary talent and the definition of founder-market fit: a fintech exec whose family has been involved in real estate investing for decades.
The team that Shaival and Wei have assembled is awesome, hailing from backgrounds in LendingClub, Zillow, and Invitation Homes.
Collectively they oversaw the purchase and sale of over 20,000 homes as part of building these industry-defining companies.
Conclusion
We are honored to be in business with this team and excited to double down on our original investment as Ribbon furthers its mission of creating a level playing field and improving the experience for consumers and realtors in the home buying process.
You can read the rest of “Why we invested in” collection here:
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