JLL Spark’s investment in Ren Systems: AI-driven relationship intelligence for high-value sales
JLL Spark’s investment in Ren Systems: AI-driven relationship intelligence for high-value sales
JLL Spark Global Ventures recently led a $3.5 million funding round for Ren Systems, reaffirming not only our intent to back visionary founders building world-changing businesses but also our commitment to tech-enabling our core business and transforming our industry. We were joined in this investment by our partners at Camber Creek, industry-leader ZoomInfo, Contour Ventures. In this post, we share a bit about what led to our investment in Ren and why we’re excited for the future – let’s dive in.
Founded in 2019, Ren Systems has developed an AI-powered relationship management solution that addresses a critical gap in the high-value sales market. While numerous platforms cater to low-frequency, high-volume sales, Ren focuses on empowering professionals in sectors like commercial real estate, wealth management, and executive search – industries where relationships are paramount, and deal values are significant.
Ren’s platform integrates seamlessly with the user’s existing workflows and can ingest data from CRMs, social media platforms, calendars, contact lead lists, spreadsheets, and everything in between to build a comprehensive graph of the user’s professional networks. By leveraging this information and matching it against up-to-the-minute news from over 400,000 sources, Ren can arm the user with actionable, relevant updates about key contacts, facilitating timely and meaningful outreach.
In today’s world where the amount of publicly available information is growing exponentially, it is mission critical to efficiently separate noise from signal and create meaningful opportunities from that signal.
That is precisely why commercial real estate is a perfect fit for the platform as this industry epitomizes the value of strong relationships in driving success. JLL’s core transaction businesses and 250-year track record are built on the strength of our people and their relationships, and Ren offers a powerful tool to further unlock this capability. The potential for API integration into JLL’s core systems could drive widespread adoption by other business lines, improve retention, and reinforce our market-leading ability to provide unparalleled service to our clients.
Our investment also aligns with broader industry trends towards AI-powered sales tools. ZoomInfo, the market leader in sales enablement, has partnered with Ren to integrate its technology into its ZoomInfo Copilot platform, making it available to its global customer base of 35,000 businesses. This integration underscores the growing importance of “signal-based selling” in the evolving sales landscape.
Ren Systems has already demonstrated significant traction, with over 5,000 sales and business development leaders in finance, commercial real estate, and professional services using its relationship intelligence platform. The company’s rapid adoption within JLL, even before our investment, speaks volumes about its value proposition, and we’ve only just scratched the surface of use cases within our firm. Amit Koren, JLL’s CEO of Leasing and Capital Markets Technology, said, “JLL was an early adopter of Ren, making relationship intelligence available to its brokers and client facing teams.”
Whether novice or seasoned, sales professionals rely on Ren to build networks and nurture existing relationships. We are excited to further tap into the power of Ren and look forward to using our experience to help evolve its product and expand its market presence.
Written by Ajey Kaushal, Investment Principal at JLL Spark
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