David Young
New York-based Enaia, which runs a SaaS platform for commercial real estate brokers, has closed a $1.7 million seed round, raising the amount from Ohio’s Heartland Ventures and Miami-based LAB Ventures.
Founded in 2020 by former CBRE executive David Young and startup coach Eric Marcoullier, Enaia aims to bring CRE brokers left behind by legacy technologies their “iPhone moment.” Its cloud platform brings industry insights and analytics to the brokers, helping them navigate deals.
“Brokers are the CRE industry’s most important stakeholder, performing the strategic, hands-on work that gets deals done for their clients,” said Young, who has held senior positions in companies such as L&L Holding, Jamestown and Truss Holdings. “Without them, the industry doesn’t function, yet there’s a misconception that ‘brokers will never use technology unless their clients make them.’”
Young also attended an eight-week program for entrepreneurs run by the Day One Fellowship, and a course in Real Estate Finance and Investment Analysis at New York University’s School of Professional Studies.
Marcoullier, based in Denver, Colo., has “mentored dozens of Techstars companies, starting with the very first class in Boulder,” according to his LinkedIn profile. He also participated in Techstars programs in New York and Seattle, Wash., and the Western Union and Sustainability corporate programs.
“Enaia is turning the commercial real estate market on its head by building the first truly agent-first software platform,” Marcoullier, who studied journalism at the University of Florida, said when the startup was in its early stages. “Our CRM (in closed Alpha) provides complete privacy control with ad-hoc teams around individual accounts and deals and provides complete data portability when they move.”
Enaia says its customer relationship management and insights platform rescues brokers from painfully old technologies with Excel sheets at its center, and helps brokers “find and organize prospecting data and manage deals in seconds.”
With Enaia’s technology, “brokers can safely collaborate with select teams, strategize with broker partners, and store data for their entire career — no matter where they work.”
