Morris’s hiring represents the latest expansion of the real estate crowdfunding platform’s executive leadership core.
SAN FRANCISCO–RealtyShares, a leading online marketplace for real estate investing, today announced the hiring of Simon Morris as its new Chief Product Officer. In this role, Morris assumes responsibility for overseeing technology and product development as the pioneering fintech company continues to grow its real estate crowdfunding platform.
“I chose to join RealtyShares because I’m interested in the dream of what this can be,” Morris said. “I’m very impressed with the group of people who are here and the passion they have for what they’re doing. The opportunity to build a data-driven platform to scale is very exciting and technology is an integral part of that vision.”
Morris comes to RealtyShares with nearly two decades of leadership experience under his belt. Most recently, he served as the General Manager of BitTorrent Media, leading several divisions of the peer-to-peer file sharing platform. During his tenure with BitTorrent, he also acted as the Vice President of Marketing and Products, Vice President of Data Science and Senior Vice President of Products, User Experience and Data. Prior to that, he filled similar roles with Openwave Systems and Verisign. His extensive background in tech makes him especially well-suited to tackle the demands of his new position.
RealtyShares CEO Nav Athwal views Morris’s hiring as crucial to the company’s strategy for tech and product development moving forward. “RealtyShares has been fortunate to partner with amazing investors in Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures and General Catalyst Partners. The next phase of the company will focus on three main strategic imperatives – strong underwriting and credit decisioning, diversification of capital across institutions and individuals, and achieving scale through technology and product. Simon, with his experience leading product, data and UX, will be key to us achieving this third objective.”
Over $150 million has been invested with RealtyShares since its inception, spread across more than 330 investments. Earlier this year, the platform announced a $20 million Series B funding round, with the goal of broadening its scope in several key areas, including tech, product and marketing. RealtyShares continues to face unprecedented demand for its services, precipitating the need to add to its executive lineup, according to Athwal.
“RealtyShares is not a real estate company but rather a technology and data company. Over the last year we’ve hired an amazing engineering team led by our Chief Technology Officer Gene Linetsky and including high powered data scientists. We wanted to hire a chief product officer that could fit well within the mission of building the leading online real estate investment marketplace by utilizing data intelligently and Simon’s experience was very appealing. In short, he was a perfect fit.”
For more on Simon’s move to RealtyShares, check out his blog post on the RealtyShares Blog.
