The nine lives of Remine

Andrea Brambila writing for Inman News

Remine investors drop company’s valuation, hold founders’ feet to fire

“A year after raising $30 million, real estate tech firm Remine is whipping up another round of funding, but on terms that indicate the company’s valuation has plunged and its investors are holding the founders’ feet to the fire.
In a term sheet obtained by Inman and confirmed as authentic by Remine, two of Remine’s previous investors — New York-based growth equity firm Stripes LLC and Canada-based boutique investment firm Ayrshire Real Estate Technologies LP — have agreed to invest about $4 million and $2 million, respectively, in Remine as part of a Series B round in which Remine hopes to raise a total of about $14.1 million from new and existing investors by or before May 30.”

Losing control of the company you founded can’t be a great feeling. These guys are in a really tough spot. But you can see some of the issues in the response from Remine’s CEO Mark Shacknies about the use of the new funding.

“to fuel our growth and expansion of our MLS front end, SSO [single sign on], add/edit, and transaction management platform. “

From their product page, I count 8 different products. Perhaps a bit of focus might help them turn the corner to making money instead of the current cycle of laying people off and needing to raise more.

But, unlike some, I’m impressed they have been able to raise any money at all during this environment. Especially if you include past issues, like the original debacle of trying to poach a CoreLogic employee and only to have that employee go back to Corelogic, the switch in business models (twice, three times?), 2 layoffs rounds, the failed portal attempt, Zillow pulling their API access and their system be compromised by a hacker. It seems they have nine lives. So if they are able to close the existing Series B round the total amount of funding Remine has captured would be around $64 million dollars. Those aren’t RPR numbers, but still. The patience of their investors is remarkable.

The industry needs companies like Remine. The big traditional vendors need an upstart to keep them on their toes. The question is whether Remine’s current leadership has the character, resolve, and most importantly the confidence of their current team to pull this off.

If they can’t execute, if they have any further blunders, I fear there will be another round of layoffs, but this time it will consist of only 3 employees. I hope that never happens.