WilmerHale is proud to announce that its client RentLingo, a promising startup based in Menlo Park, CA, was selected as a winner at DEMO Fall 2012. RentLingo Co-Founders, and current graduate business students at Stanford, Dan Laufer and Byron Singh were chosen out of 77 presenting companies for having the best AlphaPitch—a category that recognizes students from some of the country’s top colleges and universities for outstanding pitching of their innovations in alpha stage.
RentLingo is an online apartment referral service that uses social networking to help landlords find tenants and to help renters find a place to live by providing apartment listings as well as related recommendations and possible roommates or sublets.
After the DEMO event Laufer commented, “Winning at DEMO was thrilling, but we are really blown away by the traction we’ve already seen on our site. RentLingo has clearly tapped into a desire for users to find more trusted and personalized information. We are empowering apartment managers and owners to both proactively develop a positive online reputation and attract residents through the social graph in a completely unique way.”
The team expects momentum to continue as they launch a service for multi-family communities later this month.
According to TechCrunch.com, RentLingo has a “unique angle that could be powerful at scale.” This is something that WilmerHale Partner Glenn Luinenburg, RentLingo’s legal counsel, believes as well.
“I thought this was a winning idea the first time I read the business plan as a judge in the Stanford Graduate School of Business startup pitch-off, a competition that RentLingo also won,” said Luinenburg. “We immediately approached the founders about becoming a QuickLaunch client. Dan and Byron have done a fantastic job turning this entrepreneurial idea into a reality, and we are very proud to be representing this promising new venture.”
The WilmerHale QuickLaunch Program—for companies that qualify—has two parts: one focuses on giving startups the critical guidance and legal advice they need to get off the ground and gain a competitive advantage, without the need to worry about cost; the other enables startups to continue to get the advice they need as they begin to grow their businesses, while helping them manage their cash.
Luinenburg is one of more than 100 corporate lawyers across WilmerHale’s offices who work with entrepreneurs to establish, grow and protect their businesses. The firm’s Palo Alto office represents clients in the technology, energy and cleantech, and life sciences sectors, and has developed a notable practice within the startup community. WilmerHale’s Emerging Company Group has roots in Palo Alto, Boston and New York and is committed to playing a critical role in these startup ecosystems. The firm’s lawyers have represented hundreds of entrepreneurs and offer top quality legal counsel and business guidance to early-stage companies through the firm’s involvement in several incubators, university entrepreneurship programs and startup organizations.
DEMO conferences, produced by IDG Enterprise in conjunction with VentureBeat, focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations. For more than 20 years, the DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as a launch pad for many successful companies.