Worldwide First – Professional Real Estate Software “In the Clouds”

The developer of the leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for real estate sales, Propertybase GmbH, has successfully closed their first financing package. Based on their early success and profitable track record, Propertybase has secured investments from Bayern Kapital and Neuhaus Partners, while start-up investor High-Tech Gründerfonds will support the company as lead investor.

Propertybase is the first company to develop a complete front-and-back-office sales, marketing, and service application for real estate brokers and developers, using the “Force.com” cloud-computing platform by Salesforce.com. As a web-based subscription service, Propertybase requires none of the large up-front investment typical of software infrastructure, making it easy for customers on any budget to get started.  And as an entirely cloud-based application, Propertybase takes care of all the technical details, freeing its users from the costs and hassles normally associated with IT maintenance.

Success Right Out of the Gate
Propertybase has clients in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Australia with references such as Daniel Island (the leading lifestyle community in North America), Dubai World Central (Developer of the world’s largest airport community), Mubadala (Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi), and more. Michael Wenglein, Founder and Managing Director for Products and Services at Propertybase says: “The business model is so economical that we were able to start the company with our own private capital, and we immediately started making profits with the first pilot project 18 months ago.”

Max-Michael Mayer, Founder and Managing Director for Sales and Marketing, sees the new investment capital as the way to accelerate the company’s already rapid expansion into international markets: “Right from the start we were winning over customers in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Australia. Now all of these early customers are enthusiastic references for us as we expand globally.”

Propertybase offers its users everything one expects in a full-fledged CRM system, such as contact management, activity coordination, and front-and-back-office administration.  But then it goes further, adding industry specific features, such as offer and contract preparation, sales commission tracking, a web-based property sales module, and finance management designed specifically for realtors, real estate developers and property investors like banks and insurance companies.  These industry-specific features allow real estate companies to run their entire sales, marketing, and administrative processes with Propertybase, avoiding the expense and complexity of integrating several stand-alone applications.  With additional marketing tools like email campaign management and worldwide publishing to leading realty platforms, Propertybase has become the complete solution for any real estate company.  And to ensure that they never miss important information, Propertybase users can choose to have all this information pushed to their desktop, iPhone, or Blackberry in real time.

First European Financing of a Salesforce.com ISV Partner
Propertybase GmbH was among the first European companies to recognize the potential of the Force.com platform and to become an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) with Salesforce.com. Following several Silicon Valley start-ups, Propertybase is now the first European company to raise venture capital for a product based on Force.com.

“Apart from the excellent product itself, we were won over by the team’s business experience and obvious skill with the Software-as-a-Service technology,” says Markus Kreßmann, Senior Investment Manager with High-Tech Gründerfonds. Investment Manager Thomas Manitta of Bayern Kapital, says, “We see great potential for this company and we believe they are ideally positioned to expand globally in this segment.” And Paul Jozefak, Managing Partner at Neuhaus Partners, who normally specialize in late-stage capital, adds, “We believe this is the right product for the marketplace, and we didn’t want to miss out on being part of this innovative approach right from the start.”

About Propertybase
Propertybase is the leading real-estate CRM solution built entirely on the Force.com “software as a service” platform.  That means it exists entirely “in the cloud” and requires almost no IT investment or development from its users. Propertybase offers real-estate-specific sales, marketing, and after-sales tools, and provides a complete front- and back-office application for real estate developers, brokers, and agents. It integrates smoothly with any website and can exchange data with leading real estate portals everywhere.

Contact
Propertybase GmbH
Max-Michael Mayer
Leonrodstr. 68
80636 München
Tel.: +49 89 12224620
pr@propertybase.com
www.propertybase.com

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapital is a Bavarian venture capital company and was founded as part of the “Bavarian Future Initiative” as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the LfA Foerderbank Bayern (Bavaria’s development bank) at the end of 1995. Overall, Bayern Kapital now manages a fund volume of 190 million Euro. Bayern Kapital invests principally in small and mid-sized companies with a strong growth potential in key industrial technologies. The investments are mainly concentrated in the information technology, measuring and control equipment, medical technology and pharmaceutical industries.

Contact:
Bayern Kapital GmbH
Thomas Manitta
Ländgasse 135 a
84028 Landshut
Tel.: +49 871 923250
Fax: +49 871 9232555
info@bayernkapital.de
www.bayernkapital.de

About Neuhaus Partners
Neuhaus Partners GmbH is one of Europe’s leading venture capital groups. It primarily invests in IT companies. Since its foundation in 1998, 53 investments have been made – Neuhaus Partners was the lead investor in 47 of these. Track record: two IPOs, eighteen trade sales, three buy-backs, ten insolvencies. Neuhaus Partners is now investing from its third generation of funds.

Contact
Neuhaus Partners GmbH
Thomas Preuß
Jungfernstieg 30
20354 Hamburg
Tel.: +49 40 3552820
Fax: +49 40 35528239
Preuss@NeuhausPartners.com
www.NeuhausPartners.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
High-Tech Gründerfonds invests venture capital in young, high-opportunity technological companies implementing promising research results in an entrepreneurial manner. The start-up companies are planned to lead their R&D projects to the production of a prototype or a “proof of concepts” or market launch by means of the seed financing of up to 500k EUR. The High-Tech Gründerfonds has a fund volume of around 272m EUR. Investors of the public-private partnership are the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology, the KfW bank group as well as the six industrial groups BASF, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Robert Bosch, Daimler and Carl Zeiss.

Contact
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Markus Kreßmann
Senior Investmentmanager
Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2
53175 Bonn
Tel.: +49 228 96568500
Fax: +49 228 96568550
m.kressmann@high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de