Real estate tech provider Placester is switching up its leadership. Health tech executive Omar Hussain is taking over as CEO from co-founder Matt Barba, who will now focus on product and technology as CTO.
“Placester represents a unique opportunity in an industry that is undergoing massive technological transformation,” Hussain said in a statement. “Matt and I share a common vision of a more connected, efficient, human-centered and technology-enabled real estate market. Placester is well positioned to capitalize on the technology trends impacting the industry.”
Placester builds mobile-enabled real estate websites for brokerages and agents, offers lead management tools and email marketing, and provides libraries of blog content for agents. The National Association of Realtors offers Placester sites as a free benefit to members.
The company raised $50 million in a Series D funding round in March, bringing its total funding at the time up to $100 million. Placester says that more than 550,000 brokers and agents use its technology.
Hussain joins Placester from the healthcare IT security company Imprivata, where he served as president and CEO for 14 years. That’s a different background than outgoing CEO Barba, who co-founded the company with experience as a real estate agent.
The company tapped Hussain as its next leader in large part for his product experience, Placester Vice President of Industry Relations Seth Price told Inman in an interview.
“What we’re going to see, and Omar has clearly articulated his mission, is to increase the quality, speed and velocity of innovation,” Price said. “Over the next year, agents will see all of our focus now on R&D surface in tools they’re using so they can be better connected and have tech enable them.”
Agents should expect Placester to debut new products in the next year and connect those products to outside tools, Price said.
”I’m thrilled to partner with Omar Hussain as we reinvent how Placester enables real estate agents and brokers to efficiently use technology to help their customers buy and sell more homes,” Barba said in a statement. “Omar is a product-focused CEO with a proven track record of scaling fast-growing businesses. His experience bringing innovative technologies to the healthcare sector to drive productivity correlates precisely with the digital transformation consumers are expecting of real estate today.”
