Spark, a real estate software company, has acquired Juniper, a homeowner care and warranty service platform, to expand its product offerings.

Since its founding in 2012, Spark has come a long way. The company grew from starting out in a living room to now operating in Yaletown — becoming a major player that caters to developers, brokerages, and marketers in over 100 cities globally. It streamlines the process of selling, marketing, and managing new developments through a suite of tools for CRM, inventory, contracts, marketing, reporting, and more.

“Our core value is being one central hub for as much of the operation as possible,” Cody Curley, co-founder of Spark, told the Vancouver Tech Journal. “The real value there is that there's a single source of truth for everything going well and not going well [...] Tens of thousands of different decisions are made across different teams over a very long time, sometimes in the eight-year range. When you have all those decisions and all that time, small mistakes can start to add up to larger issues, and then eventually, one of two things happens. Either you lose money, or you lose trust.”

As for Juniper, the desktop and mobile platform simplifies communication and operations for builders and homeowners in Canada. Notable features include creating, managing, and scheduling requests, identifying and solving issues without requiring on-site visits, and consolidating all communication, events, and approvals. While the startup launched in 2019, it’s already being used for over 12,000 units and 60 projects by the country’s top developers.

“When you think about how important a pre-sale purchase decision is for a homebuyer, both in terms of how much it costs and the meaning behind that purchase, it's one of the biggest they’ll ever make,” said Chris Miller, founder of Juniper and the former CEO of Invoke (creators of Hootsuite). “So our vision is to create a platform that reflects the value of that purchase. It should feel exciting. You sign on the dotted line and get great communication from your builder [...] There's no ambiguity or unanswered questions.”

Leading up to the deal, the two companies were already working together. Spark received requests for a solution like Juniper from several clients across North America and would recommend them before teaming up. The acquisition was an “obvious” next step for reasons beyond positive customer feedback.

“One of the beauties of the acquisition is that it was very much a feels right and it's working well already as a relationship because we were already partnered,” said Curley. “So the integration was much more of a technical hurdle than a personal one.”

Juniper’s daily operations and platform will remain the same. The only difference being it will now receive the support of Spark’s 38-person team. However, the startup has already been thinking of how it can bring more value to its and Spark’s customers.

“We’re going to really listen to where our customers are sitting, both on the Juniper side that's brought into the mix as well as those that are using Spark,” shared Miller. “There's a lot that we can do. It’s about prioritizing what's first and what will deliver the most value to our customers moving forward.”

What Spark is especially proud of with the news is not only what it represents for both companies but for the city’s wider tech ecosystem.

“It's nice to be able to say not just a Vancouver company bought a Vancouver company but that it's staying within Canada,” said Curley. “For our ecosystem, I think it's pretty obvious right now that if you're exiting or you're being bought by somebody, it's usually U.S. money or some sort of private equity firm. So I think that's a pretty strong hill to stand on.”

Curley added: “There's so much more talent and good product ideas in Canada. We always tend to look over the border to find the next shiny new thing. It's nice to keep it in house for lack of a better term.”

As for Spark’s upcoming plans, the company said it’s always on the lookout for right-fit partnerships like Juniper. It highlighted that it’s open to startups in all proptech categories: new development, construction, finance, legal, and the larger real estate space in general.

"People working within the project life cycle or at any layer of the value chain within new development," added Curley. "We're always looking for things that make sense. Juniper is the first of a handful."

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