Commercial Real Estate Startup Jones Secures $12.5m Series A Funding

New York-based commercial real estate startup Jones has just announced raising $12.5 million in Series A funding led by JLL Spark and Khosla Ventures. Other investors named in the announcement were Camber Creek, Rudin Management, DivcoWest, and Sage Realty. 

The company is a marketplace curator for pre-approved vendors for tenants and property managers to locate and hire the right people who've already passed compliance. This new investment brings Jones’ total raised to $20 million. Jones aims to solve the pain point for commercial real estate tenants and property managers needing liability clearance for their associated vendors entering premises.

Vendor approval paperwork typically takes more than ten days, which mires everyone concerned down. The network Jones has built acts as a single source of truth for compliance data, which speeds the approval process and accuracy end-to-end.  Jones CEO and co-founder Omri Stern had this to say via the Jones press release:

"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 excited to use this investment to accelerate our mission to make it easier to get work done while ensuring best-in-class compliance. We're proud to have earned the trust of our clients, who turn to us as the risk and compliance gatekeeper for the commercial real estate industry."

Founded back in 2017, Jones manages certifications and approvals and moves the process to the online environment. The company's tech is aimed at reducing vendor approval times from 12 days or more to only 2.5 days. An added key value proposition is accuracy. Jones claims that their system is 99.9 percent accurate as opposed to about 30 percent using older by hand methods. Omri Stern told TechCrunch:

“In the consumer world, a homeowner expects to go on a marketplace and find a service and hire them. Office managers and tenants can’t get their preferred vendors through the approval process, so we want to provide a similar digital experience that they can consume and use in real estate.”

Jones already serves clients like Prologis, DivcoWest, Rudin Management, Sage Realty, and JLL. The TechCrunch report says the company intends to use the new funds on product development. The company processes thousands of compliance approvals in nearly one billion square feet of real estate every day. Jones is headquartered in NYC and Tel Aviv.