William Reeve is what he calls “the quintessential accidental landlord.” The serial entrepreneur had no intention of renting out his flat in central London, but after gaining the first rung of the property ladder, he quickly had to let it go. “I got married while I was there, and I thought it was the perfect place, but it turned out that some compromises had to be made,” he says.
In exchange for maintaining the apartment as a pied-à-terre, the apartment provides Mr. Reeve with insight into customer needs on the online platform Goodlord. Goodlord is designed to help agents, landlords, and tenants reduce management time spent on lettings.
The hardships for England's 11 million renters have arguably never been more acute or high-profile, with official data last week showing average rents outside London once again hitting record highs. The housing industry is seeing improved conditions for tenants in the face of the new government's intention to improve renters' rights and increased scrutiny of the industry following the death of two-year-old boy Awab Ishaq. They are under pressure to prove something. Mold in rental properties.
Meanwhile, landlords are selling amid fears of tax increases in next week's budget. more blamed than a serial killer.
Reeve, who has run the company since it went bankrupt in 2018, enters the field with an impressive track record. The sale of his first technology business, IT industry analysis firm Fletcher Research, in 1999 prompted a series of investments and roles in start-up companies, with investors seeking successful “exits” at healthy valuations. I did.
These include the co-founder of travel company Secret Escapes and a member of Zoopla's board of directors. He also served as chairman of wealth manager Nutmeg and snack brand Glaze, which were sold to JPMorgan and Carlyle, respectively. He co-founded LoveFilm in 2002 along with some of the biggest names in the technology world. The company was sold to Amazon almost a decade later at a valuation of £200m.
After a tumultuous first decade, Good Road is nearing profitability and may eventually land another big deal. The focus is on capturing a market centered on people moving between tenants. “Moving can be extremely stressful and we hope we can reduce it. Many businesses are trying to seize the moment because they have to make a lot of decisions that affect their finances. ” says Reeve.
To this end, we offer everything from helping renters switch broadband and energy contracts to providing audit trails for landlords, especially tenant references. Goodlord focuses on trapping professionals who hire agents as clients “to make their lives easier and keep track of things.” He has a “constant drumbeat” of potential new services to consider, from rent collection to inventory tracking. The platform is used by approximately 250,000 landlords and more than 500,000 tenants each year.
“We're trying to make complex tasks that everyone finds stressful and tedious, such as filling out lengthy insurance forms, a click away,” he says.
The east London-based business had shown promise since it was founded by Richard White and Tom Mundy in 2014, but when Reeve was approached to join forces six years ago, A disastrous technological upgrade brought it dangerously close to extinction.
He soon discovered that the company's technicians had been separated from the general workforce and placed in nearby offices above strip clubs that had been vacated by layoffs. To draw attention to disagreements, he installed a double bed in the boardroom and called a company-wide meeting. “My argument was that I wanted this side of the business and that side of the business to start becoming as close as, essentially, being in bed together.
“The kiss of death in my world is when I find out that the IT team reports to the finance director. I’m the opposite, the technologists have a seat at the table. Everything happens through them. ”
Goodlord is currently on a stable footing thanks to relentless fundraising, but some “humps” have appeared for the landlord in recent years, he says. George Osborne's tax changes in 2016 to chill the buy-to-let market, followed by rising interest rates, and finally the Tenants (Reform) Bill, which he called the “big fat bill” that would break the camel's back. It's called “straw”. The long-awaited bill would eliminate no-fault evictions and ban blanket bans on renting to people on benefits and people with children and pets.
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“Landlords look at their bills and think, 'I'm disgusted.' [before]I'm not making much money, my mortgage costs are skyrocketing, I've been told I have to invest in environmental issues, and now I'm not making anyone who has a pet. say you have to get into the house – you know what? I'm done. 'What is being done is angering landlords and will make the market even tougher for tenants. ” According to Reeve, that has led some small landowners to sell large-scale outfits.
He believes rent control is a “terrible” idea, adding: “It sounds like a silver bullet, but it will only make the market worse.” [as it is] You may not be happy with it, but it is the least dissatisfying of all the options. Care must be taken not to tilt everything in one direction. ”
As a teenager, he was a “computer geek” and quickly learned lessons from market uncertainty. At the age of 16, he developed the following game: pipelineset on an oil rig in the North Sea. In 1988, the Piper Alpha disaster off the coast of Aberdeen killed 167 workers on the rig as it prepared for launch. The game was re-set on a space station and was a success. But Mr. Reeve, who was “all about the money,” avoided the industry and went to work for IBM, building a career centered on technology.
Reeve has made more than 50 investments during his career, including business banking firm Tide, job site Adzuna and small gig specialist Sofar Sounds. Could Goodlord be the next big thing for Deguchi King?
“We're in no hurry,” Reeves said. “We are coming out of the fundraising woods,” he said, adding that “exit usually comes from opportunity” when a deal is preferable to a commercial partnership with a complementary company. “There is a good chance that such an opportunity will arise.”
resume
year 51
family “I'm from the Anglosphere, with an Australian wife and family, British father and American mother. I don't have any children.”
pay “It's pretty hard to say because most of it is stock options and it's very difficult to calculate their value.”
education I completed a master's degree in engineering, economics and business administration at the University of Oxford, where I won a scholarship.
last holiday A week in Kefalonia with my British family.
the best advice he was given “To be more ambitious.”
Biggest mistake in my career “I had the opportunity to move to the United States several times in the past, first to study and then to sell my first business to a company based in Boston, but I did not do so. Given the advantages that high-tech companies have and the valuations they achieve, that may have been a mistake.
phrases he uses too much “'To be honest' – I don't say it often, but once is too much – I'm always honest!”
his way of relaxing “Listen to music – mostly old pop/rock/dance music that’s out of style, being by the water, eating out with friends, pretty much anywhere.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
