December 15th, 2011

VerticalResponse Buys Social Media Marketing Technology Startup Roost

roost

VerticalResponse, which provides self-service digital marketing solutions, has acquired Roost, a privately held social media marketing technology company based in San Francisco.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. → Read More

June 21st, 2011

Roost Reinvents Itself As A Super-Easy Social Media Manager For Local Businesses

The real estate bust wasn’t kind to Roost, which started out as a real estate search engine. But CEO Alex Chang took the $8 million he raised in late 2008 and convinced his investors to back him down a completely different path: a service for creating and managing social media marketing campaigns for local businesses.

Roost relaunched in the middle of last year, first going after the 25,000 real… → Read More

December 9th, 2008

Real Estate Search Engine Roost Closes An $8 Million B Round

The economy is in the hole, and real estate is in an even deeper hole. What better time to invest in a real estate search engine? Shasta Ventures just led an $8 million series B financing in Roost, a real-estate search engine that is grabbing data from MLS listings (actually from something called the IDX, or Internet Data Exchange, which is a close proxy to MLS listings). As a result, Roost… → Read More

August 22nd, 2008

How Accurate Are Listings On Real Estate Sites?

Earlier this week in a post comparing real estate sites Trulia and Zillow, I suggested that the most important success factor for these sites is how comprehensive they are. The more listings the better because home buyers want to go to one place to find every home on the market. They want a single dashboard from which they can filter down the choices. But just how comprehensive are these sites… → Read More

January 31st, 2008

Redfin Continues To Shrink The Real Estate Market

Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman has stated that he likes startups that shrink markets – “We love investing in technologies and business models that are able to shrink existing markets. If your company can take $5 of revenue from a competitor for every $1 you earn – let’s talk!” And while he isn’t an investor in Seattle-based real estate startup Redfin, I’m… → Read More

January 22nd, 2008

Real-Estate Search Engine Roost Launches With Full MLS Listings

Just when you thought the real-estate bubble had burst and the economy was going to hell, here comes another real-estate search engine. Today we see the launch of Roost, a real-estate site inspired by the lean look and feel of travel search engine Kayak. In fact, two of Roost’s board members and lead investors from General Catalyst Partners are also on the board of Kayak. Roost was founded… → Read More