Spruce Secures $8 Million in Series A Round of Financing

Spruce is directly involved in its local service partner companies' logistics and operations, who use Spruce's proprietary workflow management system to scale their businesses.

FREMONT, CA: Spruce, the leading provider of lifestyle services to the multi-family industry, announced $8 million in Series A financing. The round was led by Houston-based Mercury Fund and included participation from Sweat Equity Partners. Since Spruce's last round of equity funding in July 2019, the company has expanded into nine markets and has over 760 properties, with 230,000 units on its platform.

"Spruce is changing how people live in their homes," said founder and CEO Ben Johnson. "Today's apartment community is a vibrant micro-economy for services and goods, and Spruce efficiently channels these interactions into a single marketplace. This Series A will expand our offerings to more residents and properties as well as continue our national roll-out."

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As part of the funding round, Spruce added Steven Pho, a seasoned marketplace executive with successful exits at Favor and RetailMeNot, to the board of directors. Pho expressed his enthusiasm in joining the team, saying, "Spruce has an amazing opportunity to quickly and cost effectively reach a mass market through their partnerships with national property managers. This unique channel strategy differentiates Spruce from their competitors and enables them to rapidly achieve scale and density in new markets."

Andrew White, President of Sweat Equity Partners, will also join the board of directors. In his career, White has started and exited several businesses, ranging from fintech to industrial services. "Spruce is building a valuable platform focused on delivering outstanding home services under the unique requirements of the multi-family segment," said White.

Earlier this year, Spruce announced a full line of sanitization and disinfection services for partner properties. These services relieved onsite property teams of the burden of disinfecting common areas such as leasing offices, amenity spaces, and high-travel access areas like hallways, elevators, mail, and package rooms.

"Spruce has perfected their market model and built a best-in-class team. Their resilience and growth during this unprecedented time have impressed us, and we are excited to continue on this journey with them," said Blair Garrou, managing director at Mercury Fund.

Spruce is the managed services layer that orchestrates the hundreds of service interactions every day in apartment communities. Residents can access a wide array of services, such as housekeeping, chores, pet care, laundry, and dry cleaning, through the Spruce app. Property managers benefit from greater resident engagement and improved workflows. And the local businesses that work with Spruce benefit from the economies of scale provided by large communities.

All service professionals who represent the brand undergo background checks, meet insurance requirements, complete comprehensive training, demonstrate scheduling processes, and meet high quality-control standards. By serving high-density multi-family communities, Spruce's service provider partners can reduce their average job cost by more than 50 percent.

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