Divvy upgrades with Divvy.com
Property tech firm beats out other firms with the same name.
Proptech had a healthy 2021, with vast amounts of funding flooding into the industry. As stated by Crunchbase, venture-backed firms in the real estate and proptech space raised nearly $21 billion.
Short for property technology, proptech can be defined as the usage of technology and software to disrupt traditional practices of real estate markets.
Home buying firms, in particular, have thrived, thanks to consumer interest driven by low-interest rates and the desire for more space. The likes of Knock and Orchard flourished in 2021, raising hundreds of millions of dollars between them.
Another firm that had a prosperous 2021 is Divvy, a real estate platform that facilitates rent-to-own home purchases. Divvy raised $200 million in Series D funding last year, followed by a $735 million debt financing round, bringing its total funding amount to $1.2 billion raised since launching in 2017.
Divvy’s war chest is mainly used to acquire homes outright, which are then rented back to its clients while helping them save the money needed to become mortgage-eligible.
The service is popular. As stated by Bloomberg, more than 750,000 people have applied to Divvy since it launched in 2017. It also works with a network of 25,000 real estate agents across 16 US cities.
Following a successful 2021, the firm hopes to continue its growth in 2022. It has started the year well by acquiring its exact-match .com domain, divvy.com.
Logmein, Inc., a remote access software firm, owned divvy.com until early February. The domain then transferred to Google’s registrar, in a move spotted by Jamie Zoch on Twitter.
Divvy.com now redirects to DivvyHomes.com. The domain is an essential upgrade for the firm, valued at $2 billion last year. Last year’s funding certainly helped make the upgrade possible, and there is some speculation that Divvy may look to go public this year via a SPAC merger, which will allow the capital-intensive Divvy to raise more funds.
We’ve previously seen Hippo and Archer acquire their exact-match .com domains months ahead of going public. Could Divvy follow the same pattern?
It’s surprising that divvy.com was available for buyout, though. Divvy is a popular brand name, with one other Divvy, in particular, a likely candidate for acquiring Divvy.com.
Utah-based expense management solution platform Divvy raised $417.5 million in funding between 2017 and 2021 when Bill.com purchased it for $2.5 billion in cash and stock. This Divvy still operates on GetDivvy.com.
What’s perplexing is that the expense management platform Divvy and Logmein, the former owner of divvy.com, had a powerful connection that could have been used to acquire the divvy.com domain long ago. Divvy’s current Chief Revenue Officer is the former sales and marketing director of Logmein.
