Bridgeton Holdings is rebranding its non-bank lending platform in a move aimed at spotlighting the company’s tech focus, Commercial Observer can first report. The rebranding coincides with $6 million of new seed funding led by Tishman Speyer Ventures and AlleyCorp.
The lending platform, which was founded late last year as Bridgeton Capital, will now be known as Erithmitic as it looks to expand its vision of creating expedited short-term commercial real estate loans guided by analytics. The lender has executed roughly $150 million in deal volume in the last few months and, with $200 million in credit lines from banks, is targeting $500 million in new originations over the next year.
“We wanted to make sure to highlight the fact that we are very much a tech and tech-enabled and data-science-driven organization,” said Solomon Garber, the lending platform’s co-founder and chief revenue officer. “We have an amazing pipeline of deals, and we have the full stack team not only from a data engineering standpoint but also from a team standpoint that rivals the debt funds, and we’re going to make a splash in both cases.”
The $6 million seed round spearheaded by Tishman Speyer Ventures and AlleyCorp also includes investors Unpopular Ventures, the founders of NuBank, Capsule and La Haus as well as partners from venture capital firms Ribbit Capital and Camber Creek.
The Company’s new brand identity as Erithmitic includes a new website and an expanded team with experience from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Microsoft. Half of the employees are software engineers and data scientists working to enable the lending team to source, originate, and underwrite loans using the workflow suite within their proprietary technology. Erithmitic has offices in Manhattan and San Francisco.
Atit Jariwala, Erithmitic’s co-founder and CEO, said technology plays a central role in the entire origination process, with programs built by engineers designed to foster communication with brokers and borrowers about updated pricing. He said the data process creates more comfort with deals it tackles by uncovering analytics trends with different markets and property sectors rather than having a loan committee like traditional lenders.
“We also have tools to allow our folks to close loans quicker so it’s not this manual process of calling the appraisal, calling the engineers, calling the surveyor. It’s kind of a seamless process, and it’s immediately happening so that we can quickly close a loan,” Jariwala said. “That’s gonna be a big competitive edge.”
Borrowers are also able to interact with the platform post-closing to view performance data of their property, neighborhood or region.
The Erithmitic platform is led by two veterans of the commercial real estate space in Garber and Jariwala, who bring different perspectives to the table. A career CRE lender, Garber has originated over $4 billion in transactions across institutional debt funds and banks. Jariwala has shined as a real estate entrepreneur amassing a $2 billion portfolio under Bridgeton Holdings while owning and operating more than 50 hotels, dozens of office buildings, industrial parks and multifamily buildings across the country.
Erithmitic is taking “a barbell approach”, according to Garber, with more aggressiveness on multifamily and industrial, but is also treading carefully since seeing signs of possible cooling off in both sectors. Garber said he is also bullish on hospitality due to high visitor volume of late in tourist-oriented hotels coupled with owners being more sophisticated since the COVID-19 pandemic in how they are managing expenses.
Garber said Erithmitic’s data-driven approach positions it well to confront the market headwinds ahead. With a pipeline of more than $2 billion, he has big goals going forward.
“In the next few years we expect to be a multibillion-dollar annual originator,” Garber said. “But just as important if not more important is how we build ourselves as a tech- and data-driven organization, because that’s the mode that attracts the capital.”
Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.
