After reaching minimal record at the beginning of the pandemic, the mortgage rates began to rise in 2022 and have not decreased significantly since then.
With 30 years Mortgage rates Moving to more than 6.5% today (they were as low as 2.49% in 2020!), Buying a house is simply not so possible for many people.
A Denver -based startup is out to help change that. Founded in 2022, Multiply the mortgage Originally it was proposed to help technological employees access some of the values of their capital compensation, while their employers were still private.
But curiously, the founders, Michael White and Gautam Gupta, students of Square, OpenDoor, Dordash and Uber, observed that most employees were using their liquidity offers for the purchase of homes and related expenses.
“Housing property has become increasingly out of the reach of many Americans, and we do not expect interest rates to fall to the levels we saw in 2020 never again,” White told Techcrunch.
Then, in July 2024, the startup altered the course to offer a mortgage benefits program that helps employees of their associated companies, which include the tastes of Anduril and Ramp, navigating the purchase of a house.
Today, Multiply offers employees 1: 1 with mortgage advisors, education education sessions around the housing and financing purchase process, as well as discounts for mortgage interest rates of up to .75%. The startup works with a network of 15-20 lenders to access interest rates with discount.
For companies, says CEO White is obvious, since they do not incur costs and what he described as “low administrative overload” to offer the program.
“We are really creating the mortgage category as a benefit of financial well -being,” he told TechCrunch. Traditional lenders are effectively their main competition, he said, but the startup aims to differentiate itself through an approach to financial well -being through employers in addition to their discount rates.
His pivot attracted the attention of the firm risk capital firm Kleiner Perkins, who has just leaded his $ 23.5 million series A, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. Boxgroup, A*, mischief and workshop also participated in financing, which has the total financing of the company since its start from 2022 to $ 27 million. The company refused to reveal to what valuation this new round was raised.
Kleiner Perkins's partner, Mamoon Hamid, said “attracting and retaining the best talent is an approach to each large company, and providing competitive benefits and compensation programs is the participation of the table.” He believes that Multiply stands out because it is directly associated with employers and automates the background processes that require a lot of time.
In particular, the Gupta co -founder is also a general partner of the investor A*, who led the seed round of $ 3.5 million multiply in early 2022. He began working on the concept of Multiply With White at the end of 2021 before the couple founded the company in early 2022.
Multiply currently operates as a runner and is licensed to cause mortgages in 19 states. It also has corridor partners in 26 additional states plus the district of Columbia. In a few months, the startup plans to make real loans.
Help people finance their homes
Since its pivot, the company has helped more than 100 people to finance their homes, White said.
Employees can log in to Multiply's web application through your company's email address. Once they are validated as employees, you can configure meetings with advisors and then access your online application, transaction board and education curriculum.
Multiply Shops your network of lenders on behalf of employees, finds the lowest rates and then apply their own discounts. White said Multiply can offer discounts in the sense that it has automated the process of origin of the mortgage instead of a “very traditional work process”.
“On the technology side, we are building the workflow automations and the tools driven by ai to take much of the human work of the back office and make people involve significantly more efficient,” he explained. “That leads to a lower cost structure for us, and we can transmit those savings in the form of lower mortgage interest rates.”
Multiply is not the only company that adds potential lenders. Others like Landingtree do it too. But White states that the biggest difference between Multiply and Landingtree is that the latter is more a self -service market to find lenders and compare them. Multiply's model is more conserved that is also combined with reduced interest rates, he added.
Currently, Multiply has 25 employees.
He plans to use his new capital to continue investing in the construction of his mortgage origin platform, as well as expanding his team of company mortgages and associations of the company. Today has 23 company members, which include a combination of public and private companies in a variety of industries.
Multiply earns money by earning the Mortgage Origination Commission.
(Tagstotranslate) Kleiner Perkins