Straight from Romito: Details on Blackstone’s $3.3 Million Stake in VTS
CREtech Blog
View the Space continues to attract blue chip investors, including Blackstone Investment Unit. We had the honor of chatting with founder and CEO, Nick Romito to discuss the big news. Read about Blackstone’s $3.3 million stake in VTS here or here.
Both VTS and Nick were winners in our 2014 Real Estate Tech Awards:
Best CRE Tech Mobile Apps of 2014
Most Innovative CRE Tech CEO/Entrepreneur
How did your relationship with Blackstone come about?
The relationship originally started through Equity Office Properties which is owned by Blackstone. EOP was one of the early adopters of VTS and quickly rolled out the platform in New York, Boston, and other markets. While using our product to manage the leasing for a few different markets they started to look at the greater CRE Tech space with the belief that one platform would be the new standard for landlords and brokers. Their feeling was that there was clearly a void that needed to be filled around real-time data and that one single platform would help drive endless efficiencies to everyone in the space, a platform that could connect this very decentralized market. They then began digging into VTS and a few other platforms for the one they believed to be the future.
How much have they invested and how will it be used?
They invested $3.3 Million
How big is VTS today? Who is using the platform?
VTS is 47 people today and we're looking double in size by the end of the year. We now have 5 offices nationally and have over 5,000 users currently on the platform with over 1 billion square feet being managed by the top landlords and brokerage firms in the world.
What are some of the new initiatives your are most excited about?
We're constantly evolving and pushing out new products for our users. We're a few weeks from relaunching the entire platform and that is really our focus right now. With that comes a ton of new functionality, a sexy look and feel, and lots of other bells and whistles. We've also just officially made the switch from View The Space to VTS. The URL is now VTS.com and there's a new experience there as well. I would definitely recommend checking it out!
Are you contemplating any new funding rounds?
We're not right now but we're also in the middle of some additional growth planning so we'll see...