Colleen – an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform optimizing payment collections for multifamily real estate business – recently announced that it has raised $3.5 million in Series Seed funding. This funding round was led by Wilshire Lane Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm backed by Morgan Properties (the third largest NMHC multifamily apartments owner in the U.S.), with participation from Skybox Capital, owner of residential companies Magnolia Capital and National Home Rentals. Having identified value in Colleen, Morgan Properties, Magnolia Capital, and National Home Rentals are also existing customers.
The company is an AI-powered, integrated platform solution built to optimize rent and debt collections for multifamily apartment managers and residents. And exiting stealth mode with a customer pipeline of over 2.5 million units, Colleen will use the funding round to scale its go-to-market organization and accelerate investments in product, engineering, and data science.
According to NMHC, about 20% of multifamily residents are expected to be late in paying rent. Property managers with Colleen reduce unpaid rent by over 30%. Utilizing AI and automation to engage residents proactively, Colleen takes in to collect rent and handles collections across the entire resident journey. And with Colleen, property teams save time by 80% and increase operational efficiency, helping multifamily businesses save millions of dollars on uncollected payments.
Colleen is considered a trusted integration partner to leading property management software companies, including Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, RentManager, and ResMan, and automatically syncs resident and property data for simple, centralized access to payment forecasting and analytics.
This funding round comes amid a period of significant growth for the company. Launched in 2021, Colleen has doubled employee headcount within the last year, and is actively hiring across sales and customer success divisions in the U.S.
KEY QUOTES:
“Helping residents stay current with their rent payments, while ensuring that their apartment communities are operating at peak efficiency, is top of mind for our operators. Using their proprietary Generative AI modules, the Colleen team has paved the way for a new breed of innovative solutions that will help better serve our industry. We’re excited to be partnering with Colleen to make a difference for property managers and their residents.” Demuyakor joined the Colleen Board along with the raise.
— Adam Demuyakor, Founder and Managing Partner at Wilshire Lane Capital
“We have experienced positive performance and have been impressed by the productive level of engagement between our residents and Colleen. Colleen has been an exceptional partner, and we are encouraged by the impact they will make.”
— Jason Morgan, Principal and President of Special Situations at Morgan Properties.
“The real estate industry faces a huge collection challenge that can be mitigated with an innovative AI stack. We are excited to lead the space with Colleen by providing a reliable platform that helps our customers improve bottom line while streamlining what used to be time-consuming manual processes.”
— Itamar Roth, CEO at Colleen
