Home builders can always use a little help marketing their properties, and iNest figured it could use the Internet and a 1% cash back program to entice consumers. Helped by some very smart marketing (via Randy Pickard, formerly of Peapod) they quickly expanded throughout the U.S. and hundreds of major builders. $3B in gross sales and $31MM in rebates later, they're the leading player in new construction real estate online.
Andy was the COO at Morningstar until 1997 when he left to start iNext. Previously, he held a post at Quaker. Randy was Director of Electronic Marketing at Peapod and at P&G before that. Jeff came from Bid4Real where he was co-founder and COO. Incidentally, it was a Divine-funded online real estate marketplace that included as Directors, Gian Fulgoni (IRI, Comscore) and George Garrick (IRI, Flycast, wine.com, Comscore($), SurePayroll($), his own G2 Ventures). iNest was acquired in 2004 by IAC to extend the reach of its real estate and financial sevices units (LendingTree, ServiceMagic, GetSmart, RealEstate.com).
Dimensions: 50 people x 9 years x $NDA
Funding: Origin Ventures, Dodi Ventures, Open Prairie, Garage.com
Customers: Consumers, Home Builders
Location: Chicago [Bloomingdale] + www.inest.com
