Venn co-founders Or Bokobza (left) and Chen Avni outside Venn HQ in New York City.
Life at Venn
The Life at Venn app is the operating system for your neighborhood. Equal parts toolkit and road map, it provides dozens of ways for people to better connect to their neighbors and neighborhood.
Venn Gatherings
On a recent spring day, Venn Neighbors in Brooklyn gathered for an outdoor plant class led by a Venn Host and featuring a local business.
NEW YORK and TEL AVIV, Israel, June 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Venn, the world’s only platform and experience company focused entirely on neighborhoods, is today announcing that it has closed a $60M Series B round, bringing the company’s total funding to $100M, following the close of its $40M Series A round in 2019. The round was led by Group 11, with significant participation from Pitango, Hamilton Lane, and Bridges Israel. After experiencing 1,200 percent growth in 2020, Venn will direct this funding to support substantial investments in recruitment, new business, and US operations. This will include filling dozens of new research and development positions across the company’s international product engineering team, building out Venn’s business development efforts as partnerships with property developers continue to grow, and expanding capabilities with local businesses and services to create new opportunities for neighborhood participation.
Venn’s mission is to create a sense of belonging for people in their homes and neighborhoods. In communities from Brooklyn to Tel Aviv, Kansas City, and Berlin, Venn has deployed its world-class technology platforms, physical and virtual spaces, and local programming and expertise that combine into its seamless Neighborhood as a Service, or NaaS, offering. According to Venn’s 2020 Annual Impact Report, Venn Neighbors who participated in two or more of the company’s local programming and events were 90 percent more likely to remain in their neighborhoods and put down roots, resulting in better business for property managers and local businesses. In fact, in 2020, Venn saw a 37 percent reduction in people leaving their neighborhoods and a 20 percent increase in people moving in. Venn will expand to five more cities in the US in 2021 as it continues to generate momentum and adoption.
“Loneliness was an epidemic long before COVID-19. Over the past 30 years, it’s become easier to connect with strangers around the world than our neighbors around the corner. Remember when we used to be able to walk down the street and run into our friends? Or go to the grocery store and be greeted by name? We’ve lost touch with something elemental and vital for our lives and progress: the idea of ‘Neighborhood.’ This is the problem that Venn was built to solve,” said Or Bokobza, Co-Founder and CEO, Venn. “We are using the power of community to build better neighborhoods for neighbors, property developers, and local businesses alike, and our work is more important now than ever before.”
While Venn’s goal has always been to combine the feeling of belonging that a true neighborhood provides with the cutting-edge technology of tomorrow, the challenges of the past year accelerated demand for Venn’s offering and pushed the company to scale its business model to establish more relationships directly with property developers. This combined B2B and B2C approach played a significant role in the company’s extraordinary growth. Venn’s Neighborhood Platform enables more active communication between property developers, landlords and residents, and provides an unprecedented level of service and participation through Venn’s trained community managers and local, custom events. The result is a $120 increase in net operating income (NOI) per unit for property developers due to increased resident retention and demand.
“Over the years in our neighborhoods, we’ve learned that individual and community levels of loneliness and connection are highly accurate predictors of people’s likelihood to stay and put down roots. And we’ve learned that Venn can support three behaviors to improve people’s sense of connection: real-life social links between neighbors; support for the local economy; and civic/community service,” said Chen Avni, Co-Founder and CPO, Venn. “Ultimately, a neighborhood is made not by people who move there, but by the people who stay. We’re in the business of making people want to stay and participate in their neighborhoods long-term.”
“You don’t need data to know that people crave connection, but Venn’s numbers speak volumes. People want to live in communities that make them feel that they belong, and Venn has found a way to achieve that through its technology, expertise, and experiences,” said Dovi Frances, Managing Partner at Group 11. “We aren’t just investing in a business–we’re investing in people–and we’re honored to lead this round with Venn as it continues to fulfill its mission.”
For information about Venn, please visit www.venn.city.
About Group 11
Group 11 is a leading venture capital firm that invests in revolutionary software companies that are redrawing the landscape of the financial services industry. As fintech continues to gain momentum and disrupt the traditional industry value chain, Group 11 has positioned itself as a partner of choice to provide capital and guidance to entrepreneurs who are creating the world’s next generation of financial services industry leaders. Among Group 11’s marquee investments are category-defining FinTech companies Tipalti, Next Insurance, TripActions, Sunbit, HomeLight, and Papaya Global to name a few. To learn more about Group 11, please visitwww.group11.vc.
About Venn
Venn is the world’s only platform and experience company focused entirely on neighborhoods. Merging best-in-class digital products, trained community experts, inviting physical spaces, and custom events, Venn promotes real-world connections between neighbors and neighborhoods. Our goal is to create Belonging for Neighbors and stronger business for our Partners.
Founded in 2017, Venn operates in neighborhoods from Brooklyn to Tel Aviv, Kansas City, and Berlin, with thousands of units under management for dozens of partners. The company has raised $100M in venture capital from top-tier investors and is expanding aggressively around the world.
Photos accompanying this announcementare available at
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bdaf8ded-25eb-4449-addf-c232e9242014
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/807b3dcc-6bef-49c1-80bb-b61ffcc58840
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0cbafac2-932a-46e7-8f07-a8e75ff5a983
CONTACT: Contact information: Amelia Vereb Detty Avenue A Communications amelia@avenueacomms.com
