A flat-sharing website has raised £1m from investors in just four weeks, including from estate agency veteran David Pollock, and has also achieved 85th place in a new list of top 100 start-ups in the UK.
Ideal Flatmate, which launched some 18 months ago and is now said to be valued at £3.75m, is backed by David Pollock, who founded Greene & Co, in London – the firm made famous by a TV fly on the wall estate agency documentary series, and which went on to be sold to Countrywide.
Pollock, together with Edd Read, co-founder of Graze, has now joined Ideal Flatmate’s advisory board.
The business, which has now raised a total of £1.25m, was founded by former flatmates Tom Gatzen and Rob Imonikhe.
Flat-hunters are asked 20 questions about their living habits to find a match. Future flatmates can then message each other and search for their home together.
Currently only operating in London, the pair came up with the idea following years of becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of options for finding flatmates after searching through current listing websites.
The last year has seen the site become one of the busiest flatsharing sites in London, with particularly strong backing from professional landlords using the platform.
Some 2,000 properties are currently being added to it each month.
The additional funding will allow Ideal Flatmate to accelerate its business plan to expand outside London, fast-track its recruitment of key hires, significantly grow the user numbers and advance the implementation of machine learning into the platform.
Pollock told EYE that Ideal Flatmate is not itself a letting agent, and does not cut out letting agents.
He said: “It’s more like a Rightmove or Zoopla. It can be used by agents or landlords to advertise whole flats for people to share, or for a tenant to rent out their spare room.
“It uses an algorithm (a little like a dating website) to put people together who have similar likes. This way they are happy to share a flat and avoid all those disasters of someone moving in and then out again a week later.”
https://startups.co.uk/startups-100-2018-definitive-ranking-top-uk-businesses/
Comments (5)
airbnb
I call BS.
No one has ever heard of these guys.
If they ‘add 2000 properties every month’ we would have known. All I know is that they have some PR background which allowed them to avoid any tough questions..
And Pollock – he pulled a good one on Countrywide with the sale of G&C, and has been walking around trying to pitch all sort of ideas with his developers friends. I have zero trust with either one of them
Hi – I can categorically state that we are now seeing more than 2,000 NEW properties uploaded to the site each month in London alone. This comes from a mix of live-in landlords, professional landlords and letting agents.
Feel free to browse the site and count the properties added in the last 30 days if you doubt this!
As one of the founders, I’m very happy to answer any ‘tough questions’ you might have – feel free to drop me a line at tom@idealflatmate.co.uk.
I wouldn’t doubt that you are “seeing more than 2,000 NEW properties uploaded”. I just seriously doubt that they are either real or valid. Feels very dodgy, and very much like OTM’s surge of viewings before their IPO.
Just had a look at your website – no wonder you have “2000 new listings” – same property can be relisted again and again and again, with a single button.
Good luck to any agent who thinks of using another untrusted platform