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Real estate tech company Goby’s story is quite typical for a tech startup: it started out as an energy and sustainability consultancy six years ago and then started making software to solve its own problems.
Goby’s product, on the other hand, is quite innovative in its niche: the SeaSuite platform helps commercial real estate firms track sustainability, ensure compliance with ordinances, Energy Star and LEED certifications, and report energy, water, waste and utilities stats to stakeholders. The idea for the SeaSuite software came when the Goby team realized “just how much data we were collecting” from consulting projects, CEO Chris Happ said.
“Our clients were tracking the same piece of data in about 40 spreadsheets,” Happ said. “There was no aggregation, no cross-reporting. As a consulting organization, we could help clients save tons of time by capturing this data once - and the value we get from generating these cross-platform reports and analysis is huge.”
Although the SeaSuite platform began back in 2009, Goby is just now going through a big part of its transformation from a consultancy to a software company by raising a $500,000 funding round from an engineering firm this week.
The Chicago-based REach Accelerator program, which is put on through the strategic investment arm of The National Association of Realtors called Second Century Ventures, also is helping Goby to “shed their old mentality and the consulting mindset” through its current class, Happ said. The REach program, which ends in November, is also essential to Goby because the company is becoming increasingly commercially focused through NAR’s commercial real estate network, Happ said.
Thanks to reach and to the recent funding, Goby expects to add over five team members to its 35-person team in the next month. After that, even more hires will be recruited for the company’s SeaSuite team (the consultancy team will likely remain flat, Happ said).
With a beefed up team, Goby will expand the data-tracking capabilities of SeaSuite by increasing access to big data sets from utility providers and real estate facilities. Big data is the main focus for Goby, not necessarily a pretty software design, Happ said: the 700 customers currently using SeaSuite just want to know the essentials about their buildings’ compliance and efficiency.
“People get too enamored with features, when in reality our customers just want to know: a) what is good, b) what they should possibly to look at, and c) what is a red flag,” Happ said. “We want to help them re-simplify.”
