Hospitality expense management startup Topkey raises $5.2M
Summary
These property managers handle everything for owners, from maintenance to restocking abodes with toilet paper, resulting in heavy paperwork, lost time, and human error, says CEO Jonathan Sukhia. Managers are also usually managing properties for multiple owners at any given time.How it works: Topkey seeks to address the issue by offering credit cards that automatically lodge expenses and makes it easier to tag who guest or property owner ultimately owes which expense. Topkey syncs those flows with the property managers accounting software, and also offers bill pay services.What theyre saying: "Anecdotally, talking to a lot of [property managers], anywhere between 10 and 20% of those expenses just dont get allocated back and theyre eating the cost," says Sukhia.How it makes money: Topkey currently makes the majority of its revenue from subscriptions, but also earns some from interchange.Of note: Sukhia was most recently the head of global management company partnerships for the hotels group at Airbnb.What were watching: Topkey sees the ability to be a financial center for a wider group of property managers in the long term. Some of its customers already use Topkeys software to manage properties outside of short-term rentals, taking care of parking lots and pools for Homeowners Associations. Nitra, an expense management startup focused on physicians, raised $16 million in funding last year from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Pantera Capital.