A hidden third of the housing market, and the founder trying to surface it
About one in three single-family homes for sale in America is new construction. Most of them never appear on the listing sites where buyers actually look. They sit in builder databases, scattered and unsearchable, which means the fastest-growing slice of supply is also the hardest to find. Dan Hnatkovskyy built a company around that gap.
Jome, the Austin startup he leads as CEO and co-founder, aggregates that scattered new-build inventory and puts it in one place, filterable the way buyers think - by price, by builder incentives, by nearby amenities, even by air quality.
Hnatkovskyy - his given name is Bohdan - was born in Lviv, Ukraine. He studied at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and later earned a master's degree at UCU Business School. Before real estate, his instincts ran toward e-commerce: his first venture, Preenster, was a shopping recommendation project in Ukraine. The pattern that would define his career - organizing messy information so people can make better decisions - was already there.
Real estate came next. He built Brainify, sales automation software for property developers, and it was there that he met Sofia Vyshnevska, who would become his co-founder. Brainify was sold to a strategic investor in 2018. For a lot of founders that is the finish line. For Hnatkovskyy it was a starting gun.
"Put the buyer first. You will develop a reputation for bringing value to those with the most to lose."
Dan Hnatkovskyy, Authority MagazineBuilding through the worst possible conditions
In 2020 he founded the company that is now Jome, originally launched as Propertymate.ai and later renamed NewHomesMate. The timing was brutal. A pandemic. A recession that chilled the housing market. And in 2022, the full-scale invasion of his home country, which put members of his own team directly in harm's way.
He kept the team together anyway. Through those years he tripled headcount while supporting Ukrainian staff, and the business grew roughly 30 times in revenue over two years. That combination - human loyalty under pressure and steep commercial growth - is the part of the story that funding announcements tend to skip.
The money did not come easily either. By his own account he heard more than 100 rejections before eventually raising from over 40 backers. His advice to other founders carries the weight of that experience.
"Try one more time. You can do everything right, yet it still goes wrong."
Dan HnatkovskyyForbes recognition, and a name that means home
In 2023, at 27, Hnatkovskyy was named to Forbes' first-ever Austin 30 Under 30 list - recognition earned not on a pitch deck but on the growth the company posted through those headwinds. He is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council.
In December 2024 the company closed a $9.8 million Series A led by Geek Ventures, bringing total investment to roughly $16.5 million, and rebranded as Jome. The name is deliberate. Pronounced like "home," it is meant to capture the joy of walking into a new place for the first time. The product is organized around three ideas the company calls Find, Buy, and Enjoy - search, guidance through the purchase, and a Buyer's Care program after the keys change hands.
Hnatkovskyy is unusually disciplined about scope. Where many founders chase adjacent opportunities, he keeps narrowing: new construction only. That focus is why Jome now lists close to 90 percent of available new-build inventory across 16 markets including Austin, Denver, and Miami, and has helped more than 100,000 buyers since 2020.
The bigger bet
Ask what he is really after and the answer is bigger than a marketplace. He talks about making homeownership a commodity rather than a luxury - the belief that if you make the invisible supply visible, you make homes more attainable. For a founder who left one country in crisis to build in another, the ambition and the personal history are hard to separate. His stated aspirations reach past housing, toward global access to education and, plainly, peace.
None of it is finished. Jome is still early, the housing shortage is enormous, and a marketplace that lists 90 percent of new construction in a dozen-plus cities is a long way from a national utility. But the through-line of Hnatkovskyy's career is consistent: find the information no one has bothered to organize, and organize it for the person with the most on the line.