Commercial real estate has many moving parts – parts that need to move in unison to ensure that functions such as purchasing, renovation, move-in, leasing, and management are handled efficiently. While there are countless vendors that can help commercial real estate property managers, owners, and developers handle these tasks, ensuring that liability and risk are managed properly is a key challenge. Jones is a vendor marketplace and liability management platform designed for the commercial real estate industry to handle the process of selecting, working with, and maintaining relationships with suppliers. These vendors play a pivotal role in servicing a building and Jones makes the process of managing risk and vendor selection seamless by leveraging technology to streamline the vendor approval process, cutting the process from an average of 12 days to 2.5 days. Clients include leading commercial real estate organizations like Rudin Management, JLL, and Sage.
AlleyWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Omri Stern to learn more about making vendor selection and liability management more efficient for the commercial real estate market, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $20.5M, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised a $12.5 million Series A led by JLL Spark and Khosla Ventures. Strategic players including Camber Creek, Rudin Management, DivcoWest, and Sage Realty also joined the round. All of our major Seed investors doubled down too, including Hetz Ventures, MetaProp Ventures, Ground Up Ventures, and 500 Startups.
Tell us about the product or service that Jones offers.
Jones is a commercial real estate startup. Our trusted vendor network makes it easier for tenants and property managers to hire vendors, ensure compliance, and limit liability. As you can imagine, building managers and property owners have significant liability concerns, and as a result, everyone who enters a building to do a job needs a certificate of insurance. But in practice, this is a source of frustration for all involved. Our platform acts as a single source of truth for compliance data, solving the approval process end-to-end. Rather than 12 days lead time for approval, Jones processes an insurance certificate in under one hour and achieves approval in 2.5 days, all with 99.9% accuracy. The platform also doubles as a trusted vendor marketplace, so we can make hiring easier for property managers and tenants alike.
What inspired the start of Jones?
I got a first-hand look at this problem and how it was holding back progress in a prior role. For too long, the commercial real estate industry has been held back by a burdensome compliance process that’s more focused on who can’t come into buildings than on how to get work done. We’re trying to change that, and focus on who can come into buildings, rather than who can’t.
How is Jones different?
Before Jones, the risk and compliance process had become a major roadblock to doing business due to the strict liability rules that require every vendor entering a property to have certificates of insurance. There was no one system of record, which resulted in an often error-prone, lengthy process that prohibited work from getting done. This is all changing with Jones’s compliance data platform that also doubles a never-before-seen vendor marketplace.
What differentiates Jones is that we have solved the risk & compliance workflow and gained the trust of major landlords in commercial real estate. We cracked into a massive network effect by integrating all the key stakeholders in the ecosystem using our product every day – property managers, tenants, and vendors – who rely on Jones to process thousands of compliance approvals every day.
What market does Jones target and how big is it?
Jones is targeting the property management market. As of now, we have over 6,000 office, retail, industrial and multifamily properties in almost 1 billion square feet of real estate today running on Jones today. This is a mere 1.5% of our total addressable market.
What’s your business model?
Our business model includes a SaaS subscription fee for our real estate partners as well as a variable fee for vendors who unlock new jobs on our network. We’re solving a painful workflow across the procurement value chain in real estate, therefore, there are a handful of new opportunities we’re seeing to capture that value being created in the future.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
With the pandemic coming to end and the US beginning to quickly reopen—especially commercial retail and office spaces—there’s never been a better time to modernize the compliance process. With so many companies and people returning to the office, we’re already seeing the need for this increase.
What was the funding process like?
It was gratifying! We’ve seen a lot of momentum in the industry, and that really translated both to having strategic investors join our round — which was an important vote of confidence — and in getting excitement from the VC community, who saw right away the impact we could have.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Fundraising during a global pandemic was a challenge in itself. I never imagined fundraising over Zoom, but COVID-19 restrictions forced everyone — including VCs and founders — to go remote. While the fundraising process was not exactly what I imagined, I think it pushed me and our team in new and exciting ways.
Fundraising during a global pandemic was a challenge in itself. I never imagined fundraising over Zoom, but COVID-19 restrictions forced everyone — including VCs and founders — to go remote. While the fundraising process was not exactly what I imagined, I think it pushed me and our team in new and exciting ways.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
I think investors are excited by how Jones is creating solutions while also creating new opportunities. Our platform not only automates the insurance compliances process end-to-end but also serves a trusted vendor network. They’re betting on innovation that turns problems on their head.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’re excited to use this new funding to continue to build new functionality into the platform and bring procurement into the digital age.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Use this time to evaluate your mission and objectives. When you don’t have fresh capital, you still have the opportunity to concentrate on your goals and to ensure that your innovations align with them, so that when the next funding comes around, you’re ready to grab it.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We’re going to continue investing in technology themes that make it easy for property managers and tenants to obtain swift approvals for vendors, communicate across their channel of choice, integrate with core systems via an open API, and access a global trusted network of vendors and services for our customer’s portfolio of buildings.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
Bubby’s in Tribeca! It’s our go-to spot for team lunches.
