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Startup life, at least for those startups that make it, is made up of many more good days than bad ones, especially once the company is a bit more mature. In today’s column, which is the second in a two-part piece to close out the #StartupLife series for 2019, we will look at some PropTech founders’ very best days.
Raising big bucks
Funding isn’t just the fuel that gets startups to the next stage in their lives, and without which they wouldn’t survive. Especially in the early rounds, it is the strongest validation of their business model that the founders have.
Hasan Basri Tosun, founder of wind and solar energy startup IBIS Power, told me that getting a 2.5 million Euro grant from the EU Commission, which enabled his company to place the very first full-scale PowerNEST (the renewable energy device that is the company’s flagship product) was his biggest high to date.
Flo Technologies is a leak protection software. Co-founder Gabe Halimi told me he had the best day of his life when he signed his Series A term sheet, for more than one reason. “I signed the term sheet for our $7.5 million Series A funding round in the hospital about two hours before my twin children (a boy and a girl) were born! That was the high of all highs!”
David Jacobs, co-founder of UK online agent Yopa thinks the best day at the company was when they closed their Series A £16m funding round led by Savills. “It was a validation of our business model and a real coup to get such successful industry incumbents believing in what we were doing, there were a few sore heads the next day!”
Nick Romito, founder of commercial real estate leasing platform VTS told me that, despite there being so many great days, he also feels that his best day was when the company raised its Series A funding. “We had worked for 3 years and poured everything we had into VTS, including our own money and that from our friends and family. We had no institutional capital since we’re New York City-based not a Silicon Valley firm. So, reaching a point where a world-class VC investor wants to give you $7 million and show that they believe in you, your team and the vision was incredible. I genuinely wept like a baby. The Series A was the fruition of all the hard work we had put in and it was a truly amazing day.”
Product breakthroughs and breakneck growth
A founder treats his or her startup more like a child than a business, and when that child does well it makes for some very proud parents!
Mike Bristow, co-founder of property peer-to-peer lender CrowProperty shared that his best day was when the company funded a £925,000 project on its website in 9 minutes and 51 seconds. “That epitomized what we were starting to really believe – that we’d built a trusted brand and a marketplace which we could scale.”
WheelMe is a Swedish autonomous wheel startup. Co-founder Atle Tiemes was a proud parent of the tech he created on the day that, for the first time, he was able to instruct his autonomous wheels to move around just using his voice via Alexa speakers to tell them where to go.
Maciej Markowski founder of spaceOS, a tenant app provider, is more generic. To him, the best day was when he felt the company’s development process “finally clicked”, once they were able to put together the right technical team.
Connell McGill, co-founder of commercial real estate data platform Enertiv told me that “One memory that comes to mind was the excitement we shared the first time we were able to see the real-time data from a sensor we designed and built ourselves. We had no prior experience in hardware development, so this was a big deal at the time. We had a moment of realization that no one had ever really looked at this data before, especially not for the purposes of capturing every piece of equipment in a building to streamline its operations.”
Happy clients make for happy founders
You can’t make it in the long run without building a happy and loyal customer base, no matter how much money you raise. It makes perfect sense, then, that for many PropTech founders their fondest memories are about client satisfaction.
Intrava is an integrated property management platform. Co-founder Nikolai Narvestad told me his happiest day was when he interviewed their longest standing client for a case study. He shared that “When you’re a startup you have doubts about your product all the time, and sometimes you get negative feedback that reinforces those doubts. But when you learn that a company with 200 employees have built their business around your product, called it invaluable, and couldn’t imagine operating without, you get a pretty good feeling.”
Markus Asikainen, co-Founder of Exquance Software, an investment management and property valuation platform is pretty honest. “We love revenue and successfully winning clients over anything. Definitely the best moment for me was when we signed our first large client deal. After all the hard work and negotiations, when you finally hear that the client will go with you, is an indication that what you do is meaningful.” Ardalan Khosrowpour, co-founder of construction risk assessment platform OnSiteIQ agrees. “We signed one of the largest NYC developers as our first client and saw that as our green light to go after the big fish in our market.” Bruno Acar, founder of multifamily platform HomeBeat.Live echoed their words, hailing his first large corporate partnership as a truly spine-tingling moment.
A team that is more like a family
Startups begin with a tiny team of true believers who often work around the clock for little or no money to make their dreams come true. These teams are more than just a group of business associates. They struggle and suffer together, so when they eventually succeed together, it’s that more rewarding.
Gbuilder is a building information management (BIM) based solution to digitize a homebuyer’s customer journey. Founder Harry Majala can’t put his finger on a single great day. He says that “It has been a ‘no vacation’ push for years now. Day after day we push forward as a team, and then there are moments, usually without warning when we suddenly clearly see what we are doing and realize how far we’ve come. It just makes me so happy and proud of our team.” Simon Vaughan, director of student-focused lettings platform Studenttenant.com agrees. “The best day or days are when the whole team is together. You can feel the excitement in what we are trying to achieve and everyone feels part of something because we have the same goal.”
WhyHotel operates pop-up hotels in multifamily buildings during the lease-up phase. Co-founder Jason Fudin told me that, “I’ll never forget the phone call where my co-founder, Bao Vuong, agreed to take the plunge and turn our business idea into a fully realized business venture together. It wasn’t just a solid startupper day, it was a top 10 day in my life!”