Realto, an electronic trading platform that helps real estate investors buy and sell interests in projects more easily, closed its latest round of venture capital, raising $4.5 million.
Realto was co-founded in 2021 by CEO Brian King, a former BATS Global Markets executive, and Jeff Kinney, a 26-year financial services veteran with experience raising equity capital for mutual fund companies like Invesco and Goldman Sachs.
Realto's first round of venture capital closed in December 2020, raising $3.5 million from a group led by Gary Fish and JE Dunn Construction.
This second round of venture capital was led by Overland Park-based Firebrand Ventures, with investments from the KCRise Fund and other unidentified contributors.
“It's been really neat to be able to have people right here in our backyard taking part in our growth,” Realto CEO Brian King said. “Several of them have been very helpful just in making introductions, so we’re addressing the biggest audience that we possibly can.”
King said the proceeds will be used to fund growth and expansion, including the hiring of important personnel across the Realto organization. Realto is already making trades of publicly registered, but non-listed securities and wants to expand that business. The next phase of its development is to launch a platform for trading secondary transactions for private real estate investments, targeting sometime in the fourth quarter.
As part of the recent financing, Firebrand managing partner John Fein will join the Realto board of directors. Fein founded Firebrand in 2016. He’s the former director for Techstars in Kansas City, a Sprint accelerator that targeted innovative startups with a strong mobile component. Firebrand focuses on venture capital investments in the center portion of the U.S.
“We’re thrilled to lead this round in Realto,” Fein said in a release. “The team has deep experience building exchanges and facilitating commercial real estate transactions and is targeting a huge addressable market of traditionally illiquid real estate and other alternative assets. The Realto platform is poised to unlock billions of dollars of value for their customers, and we’re very excited to support their growth.”