Lily Liu
- CEO and Co-Founder at Pinata
GetLatka interview
How Pinata Reached 600 Property Managers and Raised a $13M Series A in 2022 (Interview with CEO Lily Liu)
Lily Liu (CEO and Co-Founder of Pinata) spoke to Nathan Latka on May 10, 2022.
Pinata figures from the interview
- Property Manager Customers (2022)
- 600
- Series A Raised (2022)
- $13M
- Seed Round (2020)
- $3M
- Team Size (2022)
- 20
- Engineers (2022)
- 8
“Rent is a pretty antiquated industry. Renters don't get anything back for their on time and in full rent payments. Unfortunately, with each on time rent payment, you're not building credit, You're not building points. You're not getting anything back for that good renter behavior. And so we're really flipping the model and saying, hey, renters should be building credit. That should be reflected on their credit reports, and they should be getting more back when it comes to everyday savings, cash back, points, etcetera.”
“So we actually have a multisided marketplace. We make money from property management companies that pay us a recurring subscription fee monthly. We also make money from a small amount of money from brands participating on the platform. So these are brands that are providing our renters usually something for free or at a rate that you can't see elsewhere online.”
“It starts at a dollar per unit per month. Now that price will vary based on the actual product offering that they want to expose to their renters and the unit size. So if you're a mom and pop like myself and you have under 20 units, you're not gonna get a much better rate than that.”
Bio
Lily has pioneered using tech to modernize real estate and government. After a tenure in Mayor Bloomberg’s office, and founding govtech startup PublicStuff, she's now revolutionizing rent with proptech company Piñata.