Herndon, VA, April 15, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) today announced that CIT GAP Funds has invested in Arlington, Va.-based 4stay, an online marketplace for student housing that connects students, interns, and professionals with local hosts, roommates, and room providers. 4stay plans to use this investment from CIT to support their sales and marketing efforts, as well as to accelerate their product development. 4stay has partnered with more than 100 schools that are using the 4stay marketplace and SaaS for managing their on and off campus housing needs. The company is also backed by some of the same Silicon Valley investors who invested in Dropbox, PayPal, and Lending Club.
For college students and interns, having a safe, comfortable place to live near campus is an essential part of being able to excel in school. Whether it’s an on-campus dorm or an off-campus apartment, student housing presents many challenges that students must contend with before settling on a location to live. There are 21 million college students in the U.S., and 79 percent of them stay off campus due to the lack of on campus housing. Dorms can be full or too expensive, apartment managers often want students to sign a one-year lease, require a large deposit, it comes unfurnished, and trying to find a roommate to split the cost can be a disaster.
“As someone who has worked in student housing for almost 10 years and lived the pain of many housing challenges, we have seen firsthand the difficulties and frustrations of looking for housing on college campuses. 4stay is solving these challenges by providing an online marketplace to book furnished rooms around campuses. We also provide $100K insurance, host pay guarantee, and zero deposit to protect students, parents, and hosts.” said Akobir Azamovich, Co-Founder and CEO of 4stay.
Faridun Nazarov, Co-Founder and COO, added, “Through our experiences we became dedicated to building a solution for student housing problems across the country. We have created relationships with many U.S. institutions, and formed a number of agreements with colleges and universities, state department contracts, companies, and agencies. We are grateful for the support of CIT GAP Funds, whose investment will help us further the acceleration of our product development as well as help spread the word through increased marketing efforts.”
4stay’s objective is to match the right guests with quality hosts. Users can easily find furnished rooms around campus based on price, distance to campus, and household gender. Product updates on the road map include building features that match users with other residents based on interests, characteristics and lifestyle, and book with local hosts and room providers, such as dorms or student housing companies.
“We have all been there before—once as students and next as parents assisting our children—the student housing process has always been a stressful one. We see the potential for 4stay to make a great impact and simplify these challenges by matching the right guests with quality hosts,” said Marco Rubin, Senior Investment Director for CIT GAP Funds. “We are excited to be part of 4stay’s journey and are confident that their solutions will solve student housing frustrations on campuses all across the country.”
4stay has plans to bring on an additional 500 partner schools over the next 12-18 months. They are raising $3M to expand the team, add 500K listings and expand to Canada and EU. They previously raised a $1M Angel round.
CIT GAP Funds, a family of funds placing equity investments in Virginia-based technology, life science, and cleantech companies, has invested in over 200 high-potential, early-stage companies likely to achieve rapid growth and generate significant economic return. Since it’s 2005 formation, CIT GAP Funds has infused an additional $600M+ of private placements onto the balance sheets of portfolio companies. Funds have come from over 900 different investment sources, with 80 percent including out-of-state and blue-chip funding sources from across the U.S. For more information, please visit https://www.cit.org/.
About 4stay
4stay is a SaaS enabled online housing marketplace that helps students, interns and professionals connect with local hosts, roommates and room providers. Our primary goal is to match the right guests with quality hosts. We ensure that every listing on our platform is real, and do our jobs with passion and enthusiasm. Our founders and employees experienced housing challenges first hand when they were students, and 4stay has many student interns who remind us daily of our core mission: to help students easily find quality housing. For more information, please visit: https://4stay.com/.
About CIT GAP Funds
CIT GAP Funds makes seed-stage equity investments in Virginia-based technology, clean tech and life science companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating significant economic return for entrepreneurs, co-investors and the Commonwealth of Virginia. CIT GAP Funds’ investments are overseen by the CIT GAP Funds Investment Advisory Board (IAB). This independent, third-party panel consists of leading regional entrepreneurs, angel and strategic investors, and venture capital firms such as New Enterprise Associates, Grotech Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Harbert Venture Partners HIG Ventures, Edison Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Intersouth Partners, SJF Ventures, Carilion Health Systems, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, and Alpha Natural Resources. For more information, please visit www.citgapfunds.org.
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