We are delighted to add a venture with as much potential as Homeday to our existing portfolio. Homeday solves a relatable and real market inefficiency, namely the typical difficulty involved in trying to find a suitable estate agent in a highly fragmented and under-digitalised market. Earlier this year we published an article highlighting the fact that we “invest in great teams, not great pitch decks”, and the Homeday team strongly convinced us, besides their pitch deck. The young venture created by Steffen, Dmitri and Philipp — the former founders of Simfy — hits many of the sweet spots we look for in a start-up. So what are Homeday’s sweet spots exactly?
Great team
The great importance of the team and its dynamic for the whole venture can be expressed as follows: Steffen’s strategic and savant mind, Philipp’s uncompromising capability for development and Dmitri’s intrinsic understanding of numbers all give the Homeday founder team the necessary diversity to focus on building up the company’s core pillars. Meeting this entrepreneurial trio for the first time, it quickly became apparent that they all contribute equally towards their single vision of digitalizing real estate transactions and raising overall efficiency in the market. Having gained vast experience in scaling up Simfy — a music streaming service — they know what it takes to build a healthy and organically growing company according to that singular vision. By no means however does this suggest that Homeday is overly humble — their ambition of providing strong real estate agent matching using a proprietary algorithm is only the first step in that direction.
Solid business model
Of course having an impressive business model within a massive market helps! In Germany alone the total revenue agents receive from commission deals is estimated at around € 6.8 billion, while in the 10 most attractive markets the figure is as high as € 55 billion. Homeday has already gained great traction within the German market and as their business model caters to the needs of both property owners and estate agents they are in a position to capture a good portion of the market. In a nutshell: Estate agents are more than willing to share some of their commission for a qualified lead that fits their previous sales experience. At the same time, property owners seek a reliable and trustworthy means to sell their properties. Homeday excels in catering to these needs.
Hidden Potential
Homeday’s foundation lies within a deep-seated data-structure which allows them to understand market behavior, identify trends and innovate. This continuously growing data-structure offers a multitude of use cases and allows Homeday to offer a wide range of services and turn itself into an ever more vertically integrated platform. Homeday’s property valuations, which stem from the analysis of real estate transaction data, are just an initial step towards this direction. And this product alone has become an impressive measure to generate leads and support property owners in their endeavors.
As mentioned earlier the individual characteristics within the founder team complement each other, leaving a lot of room for further innovations!
With their positive and confident attitude they fit perfectly in our people first mentality. We are sure they know what it takes to transfer these qualities into building a healthy and happy organisation.