Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Have you done any of these integrations?

Omri Dor: Generally yes.

Sramana Mitra: At what point in your evolution did integration start to happen?

Omri Dor: I would say that’s a part of the never-ending product-market fit search. You start your work in New York. Then you start to leave. What do you find? Larger landlords and property managers use different software that requires integrations. They will say, “I will not work with your product unless you’re fully integrated.” You keep finding these blocks. Do you change your product or go after a different market?

Sramana Mitra: You had to do a lot of integration to keep building on this.

Omri Dor: Our integration is pretty deep.

Sramana Mitra: What else do you want to discuss? What else is strategic?

Omri Dor: One of the best things that we did and that I am proud to say is that I set the tone there is and put a focus on company culture. This happened at a stage when the company was growing. We were trapped. All decisions go up to the founders. Things happen far away from you. At some point, it became an issue that we identified. I have since taken off all my hats and put on a new hat.

Some people thought we were building completely different things. We had to align on the company’s mission and vision. People also had different opinions on market strategy. We had to align. Beyond that, there are also the company values. What is an appropriate way to be a team member at this company? It can be very simple things. If you send me an email, how quickly should I respond? In some companies, it may be okay not to respond.

Sramana Mitra: I hate this culture of not responding to emails. When I first started in the industry, this was not part of the culture, but now, it is.

Omri Dor: There was a theme here. I created a deck and called it Communication Patterns.

Sramana Mitra: Culture is one of the things that you emphasized. Other than that first round of financing, what other financing have you raised?

Omri Dor: We raised a Series A two years after the seed. That was a $15 million round. Then we raised a B round two months ago. That was for $35 million.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you now? What are the metrics?

Omri Dor: I’m happy to say that we consistently convert 70% of renters. Any building we work with, 70% of renters choose to go deposit-free.

Sramana Mitra: How many serviceable units do you have?

Omri Dor: We grew 3x last year and we grew 3.7x this year. Growth has been good.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of industry trends, this kind of deposit management, what percentage of your TAM uses something like this? How mature is this market?

Omri Dor: You can look at a landlord that has a single renter using some insurance solution. That landlord has the solution ready. When you look deeply, you’ll see few renters take it. There are a lot of companies in the space. They’re all admirable. We think that when we work with a building, we convert all the renters. The fact that there is a landlord out there that has a couple of renters who took some insurance product, that doesn’t mean that the market has been tapped.

That being said, I think 10% of the TAM has been taken. The industry is fragmented and there is a lot of different caveats. For instance, in some classes of properties, landlords take small deposits. They take $300 deposits. For every segment, we need to understand what we’re doing. We also feel that there is a huge issue with the security deposit process which is burdensome.

We built a platform that handles both normal security deposits and deposit-free renters. In that space, we are the only player. You also got to think about your competitive differentiation. If all your competitors are doing the same thing, maybe you can find another space.

Sramana Mitra: Wonderful story. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Israeli Founders Building a FinTech Venture: Omri Dor, Co-Founder and COO of Obligo
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