Viva Benefits announces $2.2 million pre-seed fundraising round

AUSTIN, Texas – Viva Benefits, which was co-founded by former Rio Grande Valley teacher Michael Barnes, has announced a $2.2 million pre-seed fundraising round led by Chingona Ventures.

Viva Benefits is a network of affordable housing partners that helps renters access essential benefits like health, education, and financial wellness. 

Chingona’s motto is: Investing in the founders of tomorrow at the beginning stages of today.

Samara Hernandez, founding partner at Chingona Ventures, said the new funding will accelerate Viva’s mission to make renter benefits mainstream and help bridge the 40X wealth equity gap between renters and homeowners.

“We are excited to invest in Viva because the founding team understands the real estate and property technology market and Viva has a clear path to scale,” said Samara Hernandez, founding partner at Chingona Ventures.

With the cash infusion, Hernandez has become a member of Viva’s board of directors.

While Chingona has led the fundraising effort, additional investors include Graham & Walker, Techstars Ventures, Altari Ventures, Everywhere Ventures, Vitalize Angels, and Atlanta Technology Angels. Notable angel investors including PadSplit CEO Atticus LeBlanc, and Bob Simpson, founder of the Multifamily Impact Council. 

In an interview with the Rio Grande Guardian, Barnes, Viva’s CEO co-founder, said the median net wealth for a renter is approximately $10,000. He said this compares to $400,000 for the median homeowner.

“This is primarily due to home equity. Viva addresses the 40X disparity by empowering housing partners to offer life-changing renter benefits,” said Barnes, a former classroom teacher turned software engineer.

“We are ready to help make renter benefits as commonplace as employer benefits, and for our housing partners to reap the same rewards employers do – from increased retention to reduced expenses.”

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Barnes explained that Viva enables renters — including primarily diverse, low- to middle-income families — to access essential benefits such as health, education, and financial wellness. He gave examples such as telehealth, virtual tutoring for kids, cash back in a high-yield savings account, and pre-qualification for grants to buy a home.

“This helps renters to stay healthy and happily employed, so they can pay their rent, maintain a stable home, and build wealth to make forward progress on their personal goals, like homeownership.”

Barnes said Viva’s data has been gathered from multiple housing partners since 2021. He says it shows that by providing benefits, renters can increase housing partners’ Net Operating Income (NOI) by up to 9%, through increased retention, and reduced costs from turnover and bad debt.

Barnes says he gives a lot of credit to Teach for America, which he used to be part of.

“Being a classroom teacher, when you poured your heart and soul into a community like Edcouch-Elsa, down the street where I started…  when you pour your entire mental, emotional, sweat into creating impact at a local community level, you know that going out and talking to venture capitalists, talking to bank partners, learning about lending, that that stuff is actually not as hard as it seems.”

Barnes said the key is being committed.

“We are committed to saying, something doesn’t feel right about a scenario where renters pump a trillion dollars of capital into the housing system each year, and they feel like second class citizens, and they feel like they’re on the losing end of what we have found is a 40X rent to wealth equity gap,” Barnes explained.

“The median renter in America has $10,000 in net wealth, and half of renters have less than that. The median homeowner has $400,000. Our obsession was, how do we avoid in the modern marketplace, this thousand-year-old binary choice of rent versus own, and create new pathways for people to make financial progress and improve their lives.”

According to a Viva press release, the group has scaled from 3,000 to 24,000 renter households in their network, an 800 percent increase in growth.

More information from the press release:

About Viva Benefits Examples may vary by community, but include: 

•            Access to a 24/7 virtual doctor

•            Access to a bilingual virtual tutor for kids

•            Access to a fee-free high-yield savings account

•            Cash back programs to help renters build emergency savings

•            Access to grants worth $5,000+ to help with the transition to homeownership.  

Viva’s unique approach allows housing partners to bundle and deliver a custom package of employer-grade benefits directly to renters, while also providing a data dashboard to verify the return on investment (ROI).

Impact and Reach Currently, Viva works with 12+ B2B housing partners and serves more than 24,000 families across Texas, Georgia, Massachusetts, and other states. Additionally, Viva is ready to scale nation-wide.  To accelerate broad access to renter benefits, and to enable housing partners to test the product today in any U.S. market, Viva introduced a free consumer-facing productwith a foundational set of benefits available to all U.S. residents. The consumer website even features an innovative map showcasing over 1 million affordable housing units nationwide, with filters for specific benefit offerings.

Revenue Model and Partner Benefits Viva’s revenue is driven by SaaS license fees from housing partners, which include multi-billion-dollar apartment owners as well as non-profit organizations and public housing authorities. Housing partners can see an increase of up to 9% Net Operating Income (NOI), and as rental property financials improve, property values see significant corresponding appreciation.

Founding Team Viva’s mission-driven leadership blends technical and civic expertise, with a track record of building products for millions of Americans. CEO and co-founder Dr. Michael Barnes, a former classroom teacher turned software engineer, draws from his experiences balancing budgets as both a renter and landlord. The Viva team started evaluating resident innovations in 2021 by buying a set of experimental apartments in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, before developing software to scale and serve larger communities. Barnes previously achieved a successful exit as a social impact founder in the K-12 education sector, showcasing his commitment to empowering underserved communities.

Editor’s Note: For more information on Viva Benefits and its mission to close the 40X renter wealth equity gap. visit https://vivabenefits.com.

Editor’s Note: Click here to read a previous Guardian story on Viva Benefits.

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