Steven Pho has seen Austin cleaning services startup Spruce grow from his position on the company's board for the past two years, a stint that included an $8 million series A funding round. Now he's taking the reins as CEO just as the company announces a $26 million series B.
Pho has held executive roles at Austin-based on-demand delivery startup Favor — which was acquired by H-E-B during his run there as chief financial officer and chief operating office — and Austin-based digital discounts company RetailMeNot, which went public during his time there as a vice president of business development.
Pho is taking over at Spruce Services Inc. from founder Ben Johnson, who becomes the company's president.
"I love seeing so many companies going from seed stage to going public," Pho said. "I'm very confident Spruce is going to be one of those companies that successfully navigates the evolution of a growth startup."
The new funding round was led by led by Houston-based Sweat Equity Partners. Others in on the deal included SoftBank Corp., Mercury Fund, Fitz Gate Ventures, Seamless Capital, Raven One Ventures and New Age Ventures. As part of the deal, Manish Narula of SoftBank will join Spruce's board as an observer.
Spruce has now raised $40 million since its founding in 2016.
The company's app offers housekeeping, chore, pet care and laundry services to apartment communities. It works with 2,300-plus apartment communities across several markets nationwide. The startup most recently expanded services to Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota, as well as Jacksonville, Fla.
It's also building out short-term rental housekeeping services.
Both the apartment services and short-term rental markets are already crowded with service providers, but Pho said Spruce differentiates itself with efficiency in operations.
"A lot of what you see out there are very local, very regional, and it's really more mom-and-pop servicing in narrow areas of the cities that they operate in," he said. "We're coming at it from a very different perspective. One of our big objectives is that we want to make our our partners, our home service partners, a lot more efficient. For them, idle time costs them money, and it's also really painful to go from unit to unit, place to place going upstairs and carrying all your cleaning supplies. Our pitch with our vendor partners is that we want to make you a lot more efficient, and that, in return, keeps them obviously busy, but they make more money."
The new funding will help Spruce double its team to roughly 100 full-time employees, Pho said. The company left its Austin offices during the pandemic and now operates remotely; about 60% of its team is based in Austin.
"We'd love to keep everyone together if we can, even if it's just to grab a coffee," Pho said. "But I think the reality of the world right now is that everyone wants to work from home. So we'll continue to look for hiring the best people out there. And if they happen to be in Austin, that'd be great."
