Online homebuying and selling startup Offerpad has appointed a new chief technology officer: Gint Grabauskas, previously chief tech officer at Vixxo, an asset management and analytics company.
“I’m a tech geek at heart,” Grabauskas, told Inman. “With what I know about how modern software is built, I can go very deep and bring that here to Offerpad.”
Prior to his job at Vixxo, Grabauskas was the vice president of engineering at web hosting platform GoDaddy. In his new job as Offerpad CTO, he’ll be in charge the company’s entire tech stack, from its consumer-facing desktop and mobile products, to IT, help services, and back-end servers.
Gint says he wants to speed everything up for consumers and will hire more tech talent as competition in the online homebuying, or “iBuyer” space, heats up (from the likes of fellow startups Knock and Opendoor, and larger companies including Zillow and Redfin).
“As a consumer, I want to remove all friction from the entire home listing transaction,” he said. “I will enable that via a world-class platform that runs fast and can be mobile-first if you need it.”
Over the last year, the three-year-old Offerpad has seen significant change: it announced $150 million in new funding in May (equity and debt), rebranded in June, and co-founder Jerry Coleman (formerly of Invitation Homes) stepped down as Offerpad’s co-CEO in July, leaving his fellow co-founder Brian Bair (a top agent according to Real Trends) to reign as sole chief executive. According to the company, it grew its employee base by 15 percent in the month of August, including hiring new chief operating officer and chief of staff Rahim Lakhani.
The company launched in Arizona in 2015 and has since expanded to Atlanta, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Orlando, Phoenix and Tampa, with more unspecified market expansions said to be coming in 2019.
