Sequoia leads $13M investment in Aalto, an online marketplace that lets homeowners sell directly to buyers
If you’ve ever sold a house, you know what a pain it is to go through the process of listing, showing and negotiating the sale of your home.
It’s so much of a pain that many people put it off as long as possible because they don’t want to deal with it. The result is fewer homes on the market, which exacerbates existing housing shortages in already tight markets such as the San Francisco Bay Area.
In an attempt to help address the problem, one startup called Aalto has built out a new kind of homeowner marketplace. It’s a private one that doesn’t rely on the MLS, and gives sellers more control of how and when their homes are listed, shown and sold. Today Aalto is emerging from stealth and announcing that it has raised $13 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Background Capital , Defy Partners , Maple VC and Greg Waldorf — the first investor at Trulia — also participated in the financing, which brings Aalto’s total raised to $17.3 million since its 2018 inception.
