Start-up Society #60: The NBA Finals Issue II — Milwaukee vs. Phoenix 🏀

Welcome to the 60th edition of Start-up Society! This is a weekly blog that promotes nationwide entrepreneurship and highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.

Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here!

Today, we are continuing our NBA Finals series. The Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Phoenix Suns in a nail-biter over the weekend, giving them a 3–2 lead. With Game 6 to be played tomorrow night, the Bucks have a chance to win the series and earn their first NBA Championship in 50 years. Will they do it, or will the Suns claw back to tie up the series and force a Game 7?

In the interim, we are excited to cover another start-up each from these wonderful cities. Join us as we uncover two companies changing the way homes are built and stayed in.

Arizona

Mosaic

HQ: Phoenix

Founded: 2015

Total Employees: 42 (on LinkedIn)

About the Company

• Mosaic is a construction technology company focusing on homebuilding. The company serves as a turn-key general contractor for medium-sized homebuilders while also providing a software platform to automate and streamline the construction operations.
• Mosaic provides technology-enabled construction and related services to homebuilders, allowing them to offload their construction management needs.
• In addition, with MosaicOS, the company provides a tightly integrated construction management platform that manages high-volume construction to enable their partners to build more and better homes.
• The company raised $14.25 million in a Series A round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz in Septemeber 2020. NextGen Venture Partners, Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Brightstone Venture Capital, Thrive Capital, Innovation Endeavors, 8VC, Building Ventures, Slow Ventures, Opendoor CEO Eric Wu, Michael Milstein of Milstein Properties and Emigrant Bank, and SV Angel also participated in the round.

Meet the Team

Salman Ahmad, Co-Founder & CEO

• Salman was born and raised in a construction household in Phoenix, but also has a passion for software and computer science.
• He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, focusing on Programming Language Design for Service-Oriented Systems, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University focusing on Human Computer Interaction, and a BSE in Computer Systems Engineering from Arizona State University.
• He has 20 technical publications and patents in the areas of software systems, programming languages, machine learning, human-computer interaction, and sensor hardware.
• He previously worked with Microsoft developing virtualized datacenter solutions.

Sep Kamvar, Co-Founder & Chairman

• Sep was a professor at MIT, where his lab (a team of computer scientists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, designers, architects, urban planners) focused on social-computational systems that affect the built environment.
• Prior to MIT, Sep led the personalization efforts at Google from 2003–2008 and was a consulting professor of Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford.
• Prior to that, he was founder and CEO of Kaltix, a personalized search company that was acquired by Google in 2003.
• Sep is the author of three books and more than 40 technical publications and patents.
• He holds a PhD in scientific computing and computational mathematics from Stanford University, and an AB in chemistry from Princeton University.

Mervin Singson, CFO

• Mervin brings over 20 years of experience in finance and operations with both public and private homebuilders.
• Prior to joining Mosaic, Mervin was VP of Corporate Finance at AV Homes, and CFO of B2R Partners, a joint venture focusing on build-to-rent homes.
• Mervin earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

Ray Gonzalez, EVP of Operations

• Ray brings over 30 years of operations experience in homebuilding and residential real estate.
• His strong operational background and well-rounded experience includes executive leadership roles at private and public homebuilders, including Taylor Morrison, Pulte Homes, and many others.
• Before Mosaic, Ray served as National Vice President of Operations for BB Living.

Ron Gonski, VP of Business Operations

• Ron previously held roles in systems and software engineering at several large aerospace companies and as a corporate real estate attorney at Fennemore Craig, a leading Mountain West law firm.
• While in law school, Ron started a software company that created mobile scheduling applications for airline employees, which he later sold.
• Ron obtained his JD from Harvard Law School and his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.
• Ron is an active member of the Urban Land Institute’s Arizona chapter and is an original member of the groundbreaking “ULI 2D” neighborhood mural project initiative.
• The Arizona Business Journal named Ron one of the top 10 Millennial leaders in commercial real estate in 2017.

Max Leiserson, VP of Technology

• Max is a former Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, where his lab focused on developing computational methods for analyzing cancer genomes.
• Prior to that, Max was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research, New England. Max holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Computational Biology from Brown University, and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Tufts University.

Ed Walters, VP of Growth

• Ed was previously a general partner at Tamarisc Ventures, one of the first venture capital funds focused on the intersection of real estate and technology, and a former vice president of business development for Bode, a tech-enabled hospitality management company.
• Prior to those roles, Ed worked as an investor at Morningside Group, a private equity and venture capital firm with offices in Asia and the US.
• Ed holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MSc from the University of Oxford, and a BA from Trinity College.
• He is vice chair of the Urban Land Institute’s New York Real Estate Technology and Innovation Council and serves as a board director for Breezeway, a property operations and services technology platform.

Yonatan Cohen, Architecture and Design Lead

• Yonatan is an architect and urbanist. He previously served as a researcher for the Social Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab where he developed platforms for urban interventions.
• For more than a decade Yonatan led design for high-profile commercial and civic projects in the US, EU, the Middle East, and China.
• Yonatan received a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a B.Arch from Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem.
• Yonatan was a visiting teaching fellow at the MIT Department of Architecture and is the co-curator of the Israeli Pavilion at the 2020–2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

The Start-up Society Assessment

• With its unique tech-first approach, Mosaic blends expertise in homebuilding efficiency and digital transformation to create the world’s most scalable homebuilding operation and to empower homebuilders everywhere.
• Across the country, home supply is decreasing and pricing is rapidly increasing. Mosaic is uniquely positioned to work with homebuilders in an effort to address this demand.

Go Deeper

Investing in Mosaic

Tech startup inks $100M deal to help build 400 homes

Wisconsin

Frontdesk

HQ: Milwaukee

Founded: 2017

Total Employees: 150+

About the Company

• Frontdesk is enhancing the overall travel experience by offering unique suites. Apartments are an amazing opportunity to provide this home-like experience and the company bridges the gap between the guests who are looking for apartment-like stays and the apartment owners who are looking for secure and professional management companies to diversify their income stream and tenant base.
• The company operates in 28 cities with over 500 serviced apartment suites. It recently had to lay off 35 of its 241 workers as a way to conserve cash during the coronavirus pandemic.
• More than 60,000 people have stayed as guests since the company’s founding. On a per-unit basis, the company has been profitable from day one, pouring every dollar net profit back into the company.
• To date, Frontdesk has raised more than $9.5 million. The company most recently raised $6.8 million of Series A venture funding through a combination of debt and equity from Stormbreaker on April 28, 2020.

Meet the Team

Kyle Weatherly, Co-Founder & CEO

• Previously, Kyle earned his B.A. in Political Science and History and M.P.A. in Non-Profit Management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002 and 2006 respectively.
• He took over and ran his family-run medical device business from five employees to 120 employees. He eventually exited and sold to a German-based conglomerate. He has managed growth before in the exact phase we are in today at his previous company.
• He has previously worked in the hospitality and travel industry for the past seven years, planning strategic directions of product and engineering teams with a strong engineering and tech background.

Jesse DePinto, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer

• Previously, Jesse earned his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2013. He founded his first company, Voxel Metric, in 2012 and ran it as CEO until 2014.
• He then spent over 3 years in product management at two different companies before joining Frontdesk in 2017 where he has served a variety of roles including CTO, Chief Growth Officer, and Chief Product Officer.

Sarah Privitar, Chief Growth Officer

• Sarah started her career at Frontdesk in 2018 as a Guest Experience Specialist, during the launch of their third city.
• She worked her way up to Chief Growth Officer over the course of three and a half years, now responsible for leading the teams who do everything from onboarding to ensuring partner success.

The Start-up Society Assessment

• Frontdesk was founded out of the experience of the Kyle and his wife had after staying at 50 Airbnbs across the world. Kyle saw the opportunity to merge the two worlds of real estate opportunity and hospitality demand by leveraging technology to enable complex operations.
• A genuine birth to a company looking to solve problems in the economy that Airbnb manifested primes the company to succeed from an ideation standpoint.

Go Deeper

Short term rental company Frontdesk raises $6.8M, hopes to rehire employees

Rev Up: FrontDesk expanding to 15 cities with corporate rental model

Frontdesk CEO appointed to UW System Board of Regents

Thank you for reading this article! Feel free to leave a comment, clap, and follow. Stay tuned for next week’s write-up, posted every Monday at 5 AM ET.

Authored by Arteen Zahiri, Rumeer Keshwani, and Elham Chowdhury