Lifestyle service provider spruce raising 26 million and the series
B round led by sweat equity partners and through its
app spruce offers housekeeping and pet care residents at more
than 2300 select department communities across the U. S
. Well, along with the funding rounds, Bruce
today is announcing that it's tapped a new Ceo and
he's joining us now the newly appointed Ceo of Spruce
, Stephen faux as Stephen. Congratulations. It's good
to see you and give us some more details as
to the direction that you're taking this company. Perfect
. Well thank you christian for having Having me on
. This is a very exciting day for spruce to
announce our financing is a testament to the team that
the that they put in and also the faith of
our investors really a validation of our company and support
going forward. So really happy to be here today
. Founded back in 2016 based in austin texas.
What's the demand that you've seen Steven for this company
? Especially as we're trying to make our way into
a post pandemic world. Yeah. You know,
we're we're definitely entering that phase but I think what
we've been focusing on is really about value that we
provide. So um you know, I think the
tea leaves would suggest that there's um some economic recession
coming our way and I don't have a really crystal
ball to see what that's gonna look like. But
what I can refer to is sort of what's happened
here at Spruce over the last couple of years during
the pandemic. We doubled down during the pandemic and
really continue to build our product. And we we
saw the we started seeing the results of that in
2021 we grew triple digits. Um and we're seeing
the same result going to 2022. So going from
strength to strength. So super proud of that.
And so I think the key to that is really
continuing to provide value for our customers. It's a
service and product that they're looking for and we're gonna
continue to do that. What are some of the
apartment communities as steven that you currently serve and ones
that you're targeting in the future? Sure. So
we're currently in 18 markets now 600,000 units. Our
goal is to get that to about 1.5 million units
over the next couple of years. Um And these
these buildings are in selected cities and states that we're
targeting, they're mostly class B. Class A.
Class A plus buildings. Um usually about calling 150-200
of units plus a very large multi family communities.
We've also expanded into short short term rentals as well
as you know, it's a very growing piece of
hospitality these days and require home cleaning services as well
. I know your company also recently launched what it
calls a new full service short term rental turnover solution
. What exactly is this? Yeah. So this
is where we partner with a lot of the big
short term rental owners um naturally. Um so these
are property owners who own these short term rentals throughout
the US. And one of the biggest pain points
for them as you can imagine is making sure they
get consistent quality service for each one of their units
. So if someone's coming in on a sunday or
moving out on a sunday at 11 a.m. And someone's
moving in by five, they need to make sure
that that property has a high level of bar in
terms of what the quality of service that needs provide
. And they're turning to us because of the quality
we provide and the national reach that we have.
And so that's a very small but growing piece of
our business that we're going to continue to focus on
. I will recently raised a lot of money.
So certainly momentum behind your company, Stephen 26 million
in a series B round led by sweat equity partners
. How are we gonna use that money to grow
? Uh two folds, one people, you know
, I mean, I think people are what make
this work and we're gonna continue to double down in
terms of our headcount. So a lot of it
around, product engineering, sales, and marketing,
uh we want to continue to invest in our people
to build the service and quality service, quality service
that we want in the product that we want um
into expansion as I alluded to earlier, we're in
about 600,000 units right now. We want to get
that about 1.5 million the next year and a half
or so. Um that's really can continue to expand
our reach and really build a really quality service and
products. So we do see companies Stephen Apple,
I guess, being the latest one announcing that they're
they are planning to slow hiring in this current environment
, um unclear whether or not we'll have a recession
, certainly an economic slowdown underway as prices rise perhaps
in the next few years. We could see a
recession, but it sounds like regardless your company with
this new fresh funding is looking to hire up and
expand. Is that the case? That is that's
right. You know, we find this as we're
in a very good position in terms of we're well
capitalized, continue to take market share and continue to
grow and we're gonna continue to do that. All
right, we're gonna leave it there, Stephen,
faux congratulations, stevens, Ceo of Spruce, We
appreciate coming on the show