- TripleMint uses a powerful listing search website and marketing platform to feed leads to its agents, which the startup pays based on commission and customer satisfaction.
- The company has adopted some traditional brokerage business practices while retaining a core focus on technology.
- It plans to expand out of New York City, having raised a total of $7 million to date.
The most successful venture capital-funded brokerages tend to shed some experimental business practices for more traditional techniques, while retaining a core focus on innovative technology.
TripleMint fits this model to a T.
The New York City-based brokerage recently closed a $4.5 million Series A funding round after three years of tinkering.
‘Immense’ growth in 2016
In April 2015, TripleMint told Inman it was on pace to close 1,200 transactions in 2015, after growing revenue by 500 percent from 2013 to 2014.
David Walker, TripleMint CEO
TripleMint doubled its agent count to 55 and grew “immensely” in 2016, though CEO David Walker declined to provide specific numbers. The company plans to expand to “key metropolitan markets” in the future, but TripleMint spokesman Jesse Kent wouldn’t name any candidates.
TripleMint, which has raised a total of $7 million to date, uses a powerful listing search website and proprietary marketing platform to feed business to its agents, so they can spend more time serving clients and less time drumming up leads.
It also offers a “concierge moving service” that features discounts on movers, gyms and other vendors, saving clients cash. Clients work with a single agent supported by a brokerage-wide team, including “experience managers,” marketing specialists and a research and development unit.
Compensation models
Like some other hybrid brokerages, TripleMint has migrated towards a more traditional compensation model.
It originally paid agents salaries, benefits and bonuses based on customer satisfaction, touting this as a way to remove the pressure that agents who work on commission can feel to close quickly.
But now agents only work as contractors, earning most of their income from commissions, but also some from customer satisfaction-based bonuses, according to Walker.
“This is best for ultimately motivating our agents to provide the best experience for buyers and sellers,” he said.
That tweak followed others, including a rebranding (from Suitey to TripleMint) and the scrapping of commission rebates.
In another nod to the traditional industry, TripleMint brought on Eric Barron, the former CEO of a local Keller Williams Realty brokerage, as chief revenue officer about a year ago.
Part of TripleMint’s secret sauce has been a proprietary marketing platform that can match buyers and sellers and provide forward-looking market insights, according to Walker.
“What the client should have is some kind of proprietary advantage and that’s what we’re providing, where we can go and find more buyers through our own systems and through our data science,” he said.
The funding round was led by DN Capital, with participation from investors including Summit Action Fund and b-to-v ventures, TripleMint said in a press release.
