Hum Client Spotlight: SetSchedule
Our Client Spotlight series features business leaders, entrepreneurs, and company executives from high-growth companies who have successfully fundraised via Hum’s Intelligent Capital Market. Each Q&A will discuss why they started the company, challenges they faced in scaling, and why they chose to partner with Hum.
Udi Dorner is the COO at SetSchedule, an American technology company disrupting the real estate industry by leveraging SaaS and consumer cloud communication products, artificial intelligence, and autonomous business flow applications to eliminate the struggle behind establishing a connection. Since inception in 2014, SetSchedule has helped facilitate 3.5 billion transactions between real estate agents and home shoppers.
In this Q&A with Hum Managing Director Everardo Gomez, Udi discusses why he and co-founder Roy Dekel started the company, why they decided to raise capital when they did, and how they leveraged Hum’s ICM to secure funding.
Q: What inspired you and fellow co-founder Roy Dekel to start a company aimed at revolutionizing the real estate industry?
A: The reason Roy and I partnered was due to Roy’s need of finding a new innovative way of marketing his Real Estate business. He was tired of all the wasteful lead generation companies that take your money and leave, so he was looking for something new and innovative. So we got together, and with a marketing background, we were able to come up with a simple strategy that allowed us to scale lead generation in a much more efficient way. After we proved to ourselves that we could successfully push leads through these marketing efforts, we took the idea to a brokerage in Santa Monica and presented the idea to agents and a few of them wrote us checks. That’s how SetSchedule got started.
Q: What were some early challenges you faced as you scaled SetSchedule?
A: Great question! Like all companies, scaling stems from streamlining processes and frameworks. Basically, how can we automate tasks currently handled by people? The biggest challenge we overcame was providing the opportunities to agents through technology. What put SetSchedule on the map was the development of the Referral Radar, a lead marketplace for agents. From there, we built ecosystems, such as a CRM tool, the Research Center, and an Open house interface tool to support it. The first one is always the most challenging.
Q: What led you to your most recent fundraise? Why was it important to receive funding at this moment in your company’s growth?
A: Fundraising at the right time is important to any organization. You want to jump in at the right time. What led us to fundraise was our consistent growth. Over the past 4 years, we’ve had a steady growth line both financially and operationally and we felt it was time to drop a catalyst that would create a steeper line. From there, we then invested the resources in growing our products.
Q: How were you introduced to Hum?
A: We were looking for a nontraditional form of investment capital and one of our board members who was connected with the Hum team recommended we look into the Intelligent Capital Market as an efficient method to fundraise.
Q: What was it like working with the Hum team and Intelligent Capital Market platform?
A: It was great! We are a very fast moving team and we generally work with companies that are of the same mindset. Pretty early in the process, we realized that the team at Hum has the same thinking. This gave us the comfort level we needed to pull the trigger. Once we did, we were very quickly talking to the right investors and were able to secure debt financing.
Q: What are your thoughts on fundraising platforms like Hum’s helping companies more easily connect to investors, making the fundraising process more efficient and transparent?
A: It’s extremely important for companies that have outgrown their current financial model and are in need of new capital funding. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have to do it on your own. You don’t! With Hum, we were able to partner with the right investors at the time we needed it most and we look forward to continuing our partnership together.
This testimonial may not represent the experience of all clients and is not indicative of future performance or success.
