New York, NY - MeetElise is bringing artificial intelligence (AI) to the apartment industry and recently announced a $1.9 million series seed financing round led by Golden Seeds.

Several MeetElise customers also invested, including the second and third largest US residential real estate owners (Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities) and major New York City real estate players (Stonehenge Management and The Durst Organization). Real estate technology venture capital firms Navitas Capital and GroundUp Ventures also invested in the round.

The funding will be used to further automate the leasing process, develop new features, and support MeetElise’s growing customer base.

MeetElise’s first product is an AI leasing assistant named Elise who answers questions and schedules apartment tours 24/7 via email and text messaging. Elise ensures that prospective renters receive real-time assistance and allows leasing agents to focus on in-person interactions rather than answering emails and returning phone calls. Elise already converts 65% more leads to residents than a leasing team alone and is so human-like that renters say “I’m here to meet Elise” when they show up for a tour.

“MeetElise is building AI technology that both increases revenue through a faster and better prospective renter experience and decreases costs by reducing a leasing team’s workload,” said Minna Song, cofounder and CEO of MeetElise. “Our goal is to make AI the status quo in leasing and beyond, and the backing of our customers provides evidence that we’re well on our way.”

“The company impressed us with the customer traction they have built to date,” according to Jo Ann Corkran, Managing Partner of Golden Seeds and General Partner of the Golden Seeds Venture Fund.  “The team is identifying and tackling well-known industry pain points with their state-of-the-art use of AI.  Golden Seeds is delighted to be leading this round of funding for MeetElise.”

“We were willing to be early adopters of AI-enabled lead management because we believe it is the future, and will both enhance the renting experience and create operating efficiencies.  We invested in MeetElise because we had confidence in their product and team to get us there and be responsive to feedback along the way,” explains Kurt Conway, SVP of Brand Strategy & Marketing at AvalonBay.

Kristin Hupfer, VP of National Sales at Equity Residential says, “As we have done in the past, we are pleased to invest in technology that we think will change the business. Our leasing teams using MeetElise quickly adopted the tool based on its consistency in response quality, ability to follow up, and the ability to schedule appointments. These teams have experienced a significant reduction in time spent managing new lead traffic. They now consider their AI leasing assistant a part of the team.”

“MeetElise made our dream a reality - we are now able to respond to our customers anytime, any day, any hour,” said Chairman and CEO of Stonehenge Management, Ofer Yardeni. “We couldn't have done it without their amazing technology.”

 

About MeetElise

MeetElise was founded by engineers from MIT and the University of Cambridge with the mission to use AI to make the housing industry more efficient and create more housing opportunities for everyone. MeetElise is headquartered in New York City.

For more details about MeetElise, please email Brandon Hundley at brandon@meetelise.com.