Steadily, an online insurance agency for landlords, raised $27.8 million in a Series A funding round that will be used to further scale the product.
The new investment was led by Matrix Partners and Zigg Capital, with participation from Vesta Ventures and existing investors Peak State Ventures, Nine Four Ventures and Next Coast Ventures.
The latest round brings Steadily’s total funding to $31.6 million, adding to the $3.8 million round it announced one year earlier.
Steadily has two offices: an Austin office for its product and engineering teams and an office in Overland Park, Kansas, for its operations team. Seven of its 35 employees are based in Austin. The company plans to hire 25 people over the next year.
Steadily founder Darren Nix has significant experience in the insurtech industry.
During his time at McKinsey, he worked with large carriers of auto and homeowner’s insurance. Later on, he went through the Y Combinator accelerator with an auto insurance comparison service he co-founded.
“[Insurance] was my bread and butter 15 years ago,” he said. “When I insured my first rental property, I just expected that, given the amount of time that elapsed, that this category would be online. I was shocked to find that it wasn’t.”
Instead, Nix found the process was outdated, time-consuming and expensive.
With Steadily, landlords can get an insurance quote online in minutes without going through an insurance agent. If a customer needs assistance, sales agents are available via phone, email or text.
By automatically filling in data points such as property size and year of construction, Steadily’s mobile-first platform reduces the time needed to purchase insurance from days to minutes. The service is available in all 50 states.
Coverage options are also personalized to customer needs, with insurance options for all property types, including single-family rentals, fix-and-flips and short-term rentals.
Nix said most Steadily customers only own one rental property. Most likely, they are “incidental landlords” who moved from one property to another and decided to rent out the old property instead of selling it.
“They expect to be able to manage everything that they do digitally, with the option of talking to someone when they want to,” Nix said. “As opposed to calling someone locally, waiting a few days and then they take you out to dinner. That’s just not the expectation that folks have these days.”
In the future, Steadily plans to offer internet-enabled devices that can help prevent water damage, which Nix said is the most preventable type of property damage a landlord can control.
For example, if an upstairs residents’ washing machine is leaking onto the floor, Nix said, it’s important to fix the problem before it causes mold.
“The difference between somebody having $3,000 worth of damage for their rental property, versus $30,000 of damage is probably a week or two,” he said.
Steadily is currently running a pilot project with 500 customers, testing out flow meters on pipes, as well as small hockey puck-sized devices that beep and text the landlord when flooding is detected under sinks or washing machines. Nix hopes these devices will reduce the volume and severity of insurance claims.
Dave Eisenberg, a partner at Zigg Capital, said in a statement that he is excited to see Steadily disrupt the real estate industry, which he said has been slow to change.
“Modern consumers are demanding better user experiences and Steadily delivers here with an intuitive and thoughtfully designed insurance offering,” he said. “With multiple smart integrations, Steadily enables landlords to thrive in today’s emerging digital real estate ecosystem”.
