Eric Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Opendoor, a website created for people who would like to buy, sell, or trade in their home. Opendoor claims to simplify the process and make the biggest financial transaction most people make in their lives more certain and less stressful.
Early life and education
Eric Wu was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wu’s mother, a social worker, raised him and his two sisters after his father died when he was only four years old in Glendale, Arizona.
Eric Wu attended the University of Arizona in 2001 and spent his college scholarship money and his free time establishing an impressive real estate portfolio that involved approximately 25 properties. In 2005, he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics.
Early career
Wu spent a lot of time learning to write computer code and build websites in college and, with those skills, he co-founded RentAdvisor.com in 2008, a platform where people could post reviews of landlords and neighbourhoods for renters trying to figure out where to live. RentAdvisor was formerly known as RentWiki, Inc. and changed its name to RentAdvisor in March 2012. The founding team includes the founders of ApartmentGuide.com, Rentals.com, and RealEstate.com. They raised $10+ million, and have more than 4,000 paying clients. In October 2013, Apartment List acquired RentAdvisor.
In September 2009, Wu also founded Movity.com. It aggregated and analyzed geo-data. Movity compiled the nation’s largest database of crime and worked with other datasets including noise, commuting times, school boundaries, and home prices. The founding team was from Stamen Design, Expedia, and Bing; and in 2011, Trulia.com acquired the company.
At Trulia, Wu was the head of the geo and social products, and led the location, social, and consumer product development. The following year, Wu co-founded Opendoor, a website that offers an online home-selling service that aims to streamline the sales process down to a few days.
Opendoor
In March 2014, Eric Wu co-founded Opendoor, along with Ian Wong, Justin Ross, and Keith Rabois. Their mission is to make residential real estate liquid, transforming the traditional sales process by making it manageable to buy and sell real estate online. Opendoor is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Funding
On July 7, 2014, Opendoor raised $9.95 million in a Series A funding round, led by Khosla Ventures. The following people have participated in the funding round – PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Former YouTube and Facebook CFO Gideon Yu, Eventbrite co-founder Kevin Hartz, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Yammer co-founder David Sacks, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, Angelist’s Naval Ravikant, Box CEO Aaron Levie, Initialized Capital’s Harjeet Taggar, Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian, Former Twitter vice president Elad Gil, Blippy co-founder David King, Angel investor Mike Greenfield, Flixster co-founder Joe Greenstein, Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever, Facebook vice president Dan Rose, Path’s Dave Morin, Trevor Traina, Resolute Ventures’ Mike Hirshland, Caffeinated Capital’s Ray Tonsing, Felicis’ Aydin Senkut, True Ventures’ Om Malik, Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner, Crunchfund’s Michael Arrington (who disclaimer: founded TechCrunch) and SV Angel.
On February 26, 2015, Opendoor raised $20 million in a Series B funding round, led by GGV Capital, along with Khosla Ventures, the Mack Family, Thrive Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Sherpa Ventures, Haystack Fund, and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom. Glenn Solomon, GGV Capital managing partner who has led investments in Successfactors, Pandora, Zendesk, Domo, Nimble Storage, and Square for GGV, joined Opendoor’s board of directors.
On October 14, 2015, Opendoor raised $80 million in a Series C funding round by Khosla Ventures, Access Venture Partners, SVB Capital, GGV Capital, and prior investors, to support their Dallas-Fort Worth launch and increase into other markets. Access Industries, owned by billionaire Len Blavatnik, led the funding round; Access valued Opendoor at about $580 million.
On December 1, 2016, Opendoor raised $210 million in a Series D funding round, led by Norwest Venture Partners. Its valuation is about $1.1 billion on a post-money basis. The startup is looking to expand the usage of its marketplace platform with the new capital for buying and selling real estate to 10 cities. Other investors, including NEA, Khosla Ventures, GGV Capital, Access Industries, FifthWall, Lakestar, SVB Capital, Caffeinated Capital, and Felicis Ventures participated in this round.
On June 13, 2018, Opendoor raised $325 million in a Series E funding round, led by General Atlantic, Access Technology Ventures, and Lennar Corporation (the leading homebuilder in the U.S.), with additional participation from new investors Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, 10100 Fund, and Invitation Homes (a leading property owner of homes for lease in the U.S.). Existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, NEA, Lakestar, GGV Capital, and Khosla Ventures also participated in the round. The company has also secured $1.5B in debt financing beside the equity capital.
On September 27, 2018, SoftBank Investment Advisers’ massive Vision Fund invested $400 million for a minority equity stake in the company, with one of its five managing directors, Jeff Housenbold, taking a board seat. The round takes Opendoor’s total funding to somewhat more than $1 billion, the vast majority of it raised in the last six months. It had alone closed on $325 million in a June round that produced its total equity funding at the time to $645 million. Opendoor has a valuation of $2 billion.
On March 20, 2019, Opendoor raised $300 million in this funding round and a valuation at $3.8 billion. This latest round included existing investor General Atlantic, with participation from the SoftBank Vision Fund, Access Technology Ventures, Hawk Equity, Lennar Corporation, Fifth Wall Ventures, SV Angel, Norwest Venture Partners, NEA, GGV Capital, Khosla Ventures and GV, along with other, unnamed investors.
Opendoor has raised $1.3 billion in funding over 7 rounds, with some $3.0 billion in debt financing for buying properties.