How Dwelly Is Rebuilding The Rental Market With AI

[00:00:03] What happens when three people shaped by the intensity of Uber and Getz turn their attention to one of the most overlooked corners of the housing market? Well, today I'm joined by one of the co-founders of a company called Dwelly, an AI-powered rental platform that is buying and improving letting agencies across the UK. And on the surface, this is a story about property operations and automation.

[00:00:33] But if you look underneath it, you'll find a much bigger conversation about how AI could change traditional service businesses from the inside out. So my guest today will share a few lessons from ride hailing, scale, speed, operational discipline and customer experience. And how all these things are now being applied to long term rentals. We will talk about how AI is already changing maintenance workflows and property management.

[00:01:03] And what this all could mean for landlords, tenants and the wider services economy. So if you've ever been hearing the phrase AI roll up and wondering what it actually means in the real world. This conversation brings it to life in a way that feels practical, ambitious and very timely. But enough scene setting for me. Let me introduce you to my guest now. So thank you for joining me on the podcast today.

[00:01:32] Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Thank you. A pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. My name is Dan Lifshitz. I'm one of the co-founders of Dwelly, the AI-native platform for long term residential lettings and property management. And not only that, I was doing a little research on you. You are you and your co-founder both came from ride hailing giants like Uber and Getz. So I've got to ask, we'll talk about the future and what you're doing now.

[00:02:00] But I've got to go back to your origin story there. What experiences from high growth environments like that? Did any of that experience from those times shape your thinking when you first looked at the rental market? And what's the story there? I feel like there's almost a story on its own right there. Oh, absolutely. And I think that, to be honest, the story goes, I would say, even beyond that. Because I think that all actually we are three founders and kind of two of us being at Uber and kind of I've been at Getz.

[00:02:28] And I think that we've all been super, super excited and passionate by two things. I think by kind of highly scaling businesses, number one, and by technology that can enable and maybe to some extent disrupt the real physical operational world, number two. And obviously with the appearance of the mobile phones and apps and everything, I think that the first massive conduit of like, I think, tech enabling the operational business was obviously the taxi industry because like one of the largest industries in the world.

[00:02:57] So I think that in a very disconnected manner, we all made decisions to, I think, join the party back at the time when I think Uber was expanding pretty aggressively in Europe. And I think that Getz was like effectively starting to open its international markets. I think we correspondingly ended up leading different markets across Uber and Getz. So effectively, I've been fiercely competing with each other for some period of time.

[00:03:24] It was somewhere in the range from 2014 until 2018, 2019 when we've all been there. So kind of good old hustling crazy days when effectively growth at all costs and effectively market grab and all the things. And you're absolutely right that I think it taught us a lot of things. I think that not just it taught us a lot of things on the personal front, such as like,

[00:03:47] what is it about scaling the high speed and kind of high effectively, highly operational complex, but high velocity businesses that obviously kind of Uber and the likes and Getz pretty much are. But I think at the same time, what does it mean to build an operational rigor in tech enabled and technological businesses? It's also a lot about, I think, the pace at which you do that and 24-7 type mentality and kind of never switching off.

[00:04:17] That from the, I think that just the personal standpoint, I think from your mental consciousness is definitely not a great thing. But I think in terms of the business results, there's definitely something that drives the results. So kind of not that we learned a lot of things on the personal front, but I think we also learned a ton of things on the professional front, meaning how it is to kind of enable and I think transform huge existing operational businesses with the appearance of technologies, number one.

[00:04:44] I think number two, obviously, how to do that in the industries where the baseline of the technological adoption is not particularly high. And obviously in the historic taxi fleets and taxi stations, it hasn't been really technological companies where I think that most of the taxi ordering and dispatch and everything for the driver still was done kind of manually, effectively semi-manually or kind of riders picking up the phone and kind of calling the nearby taxi station to order a taxi, right? Or a cab.

[00:05:10] And I think that number three, it taught us also a lot how to kind of be building businesses in highly fragmented marketplaces where the kind of fragmentation happens on both sides, on the demand side and the supply side. So if you talk about the taxi, it was on the rider and the driver's side. If you talk about the long-term residential rentals, then in fact, it's on the tenant side and the landlord side. So in general, I think that the kind of long-term residential rentals ticks very similar boxes to that ride hailing.

[00:05:37] So like huge business, one of the largest household expenses in the world, very, very, very labor intensive business still, even kind of these days. And I think that adoption of technologies kind of is quite limited across most of the kind of agencies and highly fragmented, effectively same two-sided marketplace where you have millions of individual kind of tenants on one end, you have millions of landlords on the other side. So effectively kind of some consolidation can help you to increase efficiencies and in general, start providing better level of service.

[00:06:06] So a lot of parallels for sure. And I think partly that's what inspired us on the journey we're on at the moment. And one of the things that I love about your story when looking back is that you were almost competitors across different continents before building something together. So what was it that brought you into that same room? And what was it that convinced you that, hey, this was the right problem to solve? Actually, kind of, I think that this is a very good question.

[00:06:32] And honestly saying, I wouldn't be thinking about ourselves much as competitors per se. Yeah. I mean, yes, we've been in competing businesses, but I think that rather sometimes it's maybe kind of not very obvious insight and observation. But I think that you actually end up sharing a lot of trades because I think that, yes, we're working in kind of vis-a-vis directly competitive companies, but we're both working, all three of us in high-scaling tech-enabled organizations.

[00:07:01] And I think that not everyone makes a decision to go for such a journey. So meaning that there is something shared that we have that kind of brings us there. I think number two, we obviously all share a very huge passion for invention. We share the desire to try to provide the best level of service to the customers. We share how we're running things, meaning kind of based on numbers, based on data, try to do the kind of data-driven decisions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that these are all the things that brought us to be kind of where we are.

[00:07:31] And I think the second thing that unites us is I think that, yes, you might have been on the competitive sides, but in reality, I think within each business, you usually know who are the people that are exceptional, right? And I think that usually everyone knows that because you talk to someone within an office and usually in every office, there is like one, 2% of people that are just like kicking it, right? And everyone knows that they are the best.

[00:07:56] And I don't want to say that we've been the best, but I think that definitely there was some reputation around us that we've been noticed at least. And I think that you get to know those people usually from the kind of thousand miles away. So I think that that's why we've always been on the outlook of each other. And I think we remained in touch for some period of time. And whenever we all happened to be in the UK and I think that reconnected and started thinking, is it a good time for the next venture? Then it was like almost by default, like why not to do something together?

[00:08:26] Because I think that you have a very, very high opinion of each other and impression. And especially so being on the competitive sides, you might have observed how the other people behave whenever they are kind of, you can appreciate how well they're doing because like if they outbeat you and effectively the competitor wins, then I mean, okay, these are really strong people. So I rather want to be with them, for example, kind of next time and not be kind of effectively against them when we do something. And what we're talking about here, of course, is Dwelly.

[00:08:55] And I don't want to leave anybody behind here. So for anyone listening that are hearing around what you've created here for the first time, my understanding is it's for independent letting agency owners who want to exit smoothly, profitably and on their terms. Tell me more about the company. What makes it different from everything else out there? And if there's a story behind the name, tell me more about what you've created here. Yeah, no, sure. I think that the story behind the name is pretty straightforward.

[00:09:22] I think that we started the business closer to the end of 23 when ChatGPT and AI was just booming. And I think that we just asked ChatGPT what would be the best name for the business that has to do with long-term residential rentals. And we're like, well, it sounds cool. Let's go for the Valley. Two years after we're meeting Rachel Reeves at number 11 and the Valley is like effectively all across the boards. I'm like, okay, maybe we should have been a bit more calibrated with regards to selecting the name,

[00:09:49] but probably it's already a bit too late to change anything. And probably the costs of doing any backward thinking decisions would be too high. But anyways, it is where we are, I think, already right now. But with regards to who we are, what we do, how you can think about us, I think that the long-term residential rentals is an example of the industry where effectively kind of you have a variety of different customers that you're serving. Obviously, kind of your end customers is the landlords that rent the properties out,

[00:10:18] it's the tenants, it's the maintenance contractors that come into the properties to kind of do the works and like fix the issues and everything. And effectively, these are our core end customers that we prioritize. And then I think the open question that you have is like, how can you effectively grow your customer base in the most efficient and scalable manner? And this is the point where structurally, because of the fundamental reasons that the landlords don't switch between agencies often,

[00:10:46] just because usually it's you just start working with one agency. And because it's almost like your wealth management style business, you just prefer to stick with the same agency for some period of time. So hence, it makes organic acquisition of landlords where you go and put the kind of Google marketing or billboards or kind of office spaces to acquire landlords one by one. It becomes pretty hard and pretty slow. And that's exactly where the point of acquiring existing agencies and effectively in the way of doing so,

[00:11:16] primarily buying its landlords customer bases really is one of the pretty known go-to-market approaches that I think some of the private equity back consolidators are already pursuing for some period of time and not just in the UK, but across the globe in general as well. If we talk about the UK then such as Dexters or Foxton's or Leeds Romand or Lomond or some of the other consolidators, private equity back consolidators,

[00:11:43] where I think that our core difference is that we're a tech company in the heart and in the mind. So meaning that the core of what we do is effectively developing and building the technological platform that aims to achieve two things. That aims to, number one, provide the best level of service to the customers, being the kind of landlords, the tenants, the contractors, and at the same time to streamline the processes as much as you can streamline them with all the AI and the companies of the technologies in the 21st century.

[00:12:12] Where I think that this is where the biggest difference versus us and some of the private equity, call it consolidators, where in reality they don't develop almost any internal technology or internal solutions whatsoever, but rather rely on some of the off-the-shelf technologies out there that sometimes might be not fit and best proper to the existing businesses just because they don't allow to achieve some of the degree of customer-level excellence that you wish to achieve sometimes.

[00:12:41] And you casually mentioned at the beginning of your answer that that journey took you to 11 Downing Street, talking with Rachel Reeves, etc. What happened there? What was that about? We've been, I mean, very privileged and proud to say that, but that a few, I think around a month ago, a few weeks ago, we've been selected as part of Future 50 tech program in the UK, the program for the most promising future technological businesses built in the UK.

[00:13:08] And as part of that program, it usually selects 50 companies per batch a year of the most promising Series B, Series C startups in the UK. The previous participants of such being Revolut, Wave, Monzo, Starling. So I think most of the things deliver, most of the things that we as a consumer see us in our day-to-day is it has to do with technology. I think that this company has been part of this program. So it's really a huge testament for, I think, belief of what is kind of going forward. And I think in our case,

[00:13:37] especially as we're dealing a lot with traditional service businesses, I think that this closeness to the government is really important for us. So being privileged to be selected as one of those 50 companies in the batch and as part of the welcoming program, usually it's either Keir Starmer or prime minister or the minister of finance, in this case, kind of the chancellor, obviously doing the welcoming speech. So we were privileged to be there and to see them live. It's incredibly cool.

[00:14:07] And not only that, it's also grown into one of the top 15 rental agencies in the UK in just two years. So what were the early decisions or bets that you made that made that kind of growth possible? Because again, it must be a story here. And I think it's incredibly valuable to other founders that might be listening anywhere in the world. Tell me more about that journey. Yeah, no, it's been a hell of a journey for sure.

[00:14:33] Because from making the first acquisition even slightly less than two years ago, buying the first agency called Lime Property in a beautiful city called Hull, where we packed our stuff, took our wives, took our kids and moved to Hull and spent slightly more than a year in Hull, I think until kind of something around 16 or 17 months to build out the full technological platform, the product, so that we can reuse it on all the other upcoming acquisitions of an agency.

[00:15:00] So I think that obviously it goes with some skin in the game for sure. And we've spent very memorable time in Hull, I have to say. I think that our wives keep missing it once we're back in London these days. So yeah, kind of been quite a wild ride. And we've kind of a bunch of acquisitions that were completed after that. And I think that we announced nine acquisitions to date, bringing us already to around 10,000 managed properties, slightly more than 10,000 managed properties across the UK.

[00:15:29] That makes us, yes, kind of one of the top 15 largest rental platforms. So this is a great position to be in. But I think on one end, really excited about everything we achieved already. On the other end, we realized that we're just starting. So many, many more cool things to come. And quick shout out to everybody listening in Hull there. And I love how you spent time there and embraced it there and not forgot about it now you're in London. So kudos to you for that as well.

[00:15:56] And for many people listening, I think the idea of an AI-powered roll-up will still be quite new to some people listening. So how do you explain exactly what that means in simple terms? And why do you believe this model is gaining real traction now? Yeah. It's a great question. I think that this model sits to some extent on the conduit of the two worlds, because I think that traditional service businesses are in general,

[00:16:22] I think, great at providing good level of service to the customers. And I think having very, very sticky, very long-term relationships with the customer base for the years to come. But I think that sometimes what these businesses are not as great at is adopting the most cutting-edge latest technologies that exist out there. And that's exactly what historically I think the tech-first venture-backed company has kind of historically been the best at.

[00:16:49] And I think that the AI roll-ups almost serves as like trying to build the conduit of the two worlds, where you're going and effectively acquiring traditional, existing, usually service businesses, but effectively not for the sake of buying the business itself, but primarily for the sake of getting the access and the distribution to the end customers, through which you're then trying effectively to deliver the product that you're building. And then effectively, so one arm of yours is buying this business,

[00:17:18] I think the other arm of yours is building this effectively kind of tech-first, and in our case, kind of AI-first tech stack and platform, that then you kind of effectively, through your distribution of buying the businesses, aim to deliver to the end customers. I think the challenge, if you put it as a comparison, why not, for example, to go and just sell this technology to these businesses? Why do you need to buy them? I think the answer is quite often a lot, if not like all of these service businesses,

[00:17:46] I think being quite traditional and maybe kind of not as forward-looking sometimes in terms of adopting some of the cutting-edge technologies. So sometimes it's not just about how to adopt the technology, but it comes along with some of the changes in the operational processes that you need to introduce vis-a-vis to adopt these technologies. Because like it's very, very often where it's not just simply about inputting the kind of AI-first agentic system, and that's kind of it, but it's a lot about reviewing your existing workflows,

[00:18:14] rethinking how you're running these workflows, how does it impact the roles and responsibilities of the teams in these businesses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And if you're trying just to kind of sell into these businesses, where often you will just be facing what's some natural kind of, in a way, resilience, I think, and lack of desire of the teams to go through some of the, maybe a little bit more risky and a bit more radical transformation of the internal businesses, just for the sake of adopting some technologies. But I think that if you control both of them kind of in-house,

[00:18:43] effectively it allows you to, I think, tweak some things on the operational front, tweak some things on the technological front, but then you can kind of put the end customer being kind of, again, the landlord, the tenant, and the contractor as the kind of centerpiece of whom you're trying to serve. I think it's to some extent, I don't know if a good analogy here would be or not, but like, let's say Apple also was always aiming not just to be purely a software company and not to be a hardware company, but effectively to try to build both hardware and software were all under one roof to try to kind of provide

[00:19:12] the one unified service to the end customer, right? And I think that they've known to be the company that I think pretty much excelled at providing the pretty outstanding level of service to the end customers with all the products that they've built, including iPhones, Macs, kind of AirPods, and the others, because the fact that they control the whole kind of internal, both hardware and software end-to-end within one company, and they're not relying on their contractor or some other one to wait until they tweak some things so that they can get the full potential of the kind of technology that they're building.

[00:19:40] So I think some sort of similar philosophy is happening here. And looking at your journey here, another thing that really stands out to me is you're also backed by General Catalyst, which has been actively exploring roll-up strategies recently. I've seen a lot about that in my newsfeed. So how has that partnership influenced how you scale, acquire, and think about that long-term value creation as well, which is another massive part of what you're heading towards here? Yeah, no, 100%. I think that General Catalyst

[00:20:10] has been an absolutely amazing partner, and I think that we could have not wished for any better partner on this journey. I think that they have effectively been one of the first large institutional investors that I think made a huge bet on the kind of AI roll-ups as a new sort of almost investment asset class or category. And I think that we're pioneering this strategy first in the US, and then I think that across the globe as well.

[00:20:39] And I think that it very much coincided in time because I think that, if I remember the dates correct, they raised the inaugural first AI roll-ups fund somewhere kind of around end of 2024. And I think that we started effectively and got going and incorporated the business in end of 2023 and made the first acquisition in the beginning of 2024. So I think pretty much at exactly the same time when I think there was a growing understanding that AI roll-ups do make sense as like as a new investment category,

[00:21:09] as an asset class, and that growing amount of investors will start looking into that. Then effectively, there were kind of valley guys that kind of packed their stuff, rolled up their sleeves, took their wives, moved to Hull, and already for kind of almost close to a year been kind of building the technology and effectively working vis-a-vis alongside the first business being acquired to kind of to be shipping this technology and AI enabling effectively and transforming the business kind of inside out. So I think it was just, we happened to be,

[00:21:38] I mean, for purely for our luck and coincidence, but we just, I think, happened to be a little bit before it became a mainstream topic. So obviously, kind of we've just been lucky to be there at the right time. And I think that obviously, yes, since then the journey was pretty, pretty phenomenal, I have to say. General Catalyst as a fund in general, kind of obviously maybe doesn't require that much of an explanation, but one of the largest venture capital funds in the world with like, I think close to 25 or even slightly more than that billion

[00:22:07] of capital under management. So kind of huge and one of the largest venture capital investors in the world. And I think the, one of the most being looked up to in a way. And I think that the type of companies that they backed and I think that the type of outcomes that they've built with the likes of Airbnb and Stripe and a bunch of others, I think does allow them to really dream big and kind of shoot for the huge outcomes. And I think that inspiring with this kind of global vision and thinking about how can you be, okay,

[00:22:37] kind of it's clear how you guys can build a billion dollar business, right? But how can we together build a 10 billion business, a hundred billion business, right? And kind of inspiring us to think bolder and more ambitious and kind of go faster. I think that this is where they definitely been a huge, huge supporter on our journey. So to those listening, big thanks to General Catalyst guys in case if they come across this podcast. And I suspect we will have a mixture of people listening, of founders

[00:23:05] and business leaders and also tenants and indeed landlords. So I'd love to bring to life everything we're talking about here with a very real example. So let's say we have a tenant that reports something fairly typical like a broken toilet. What actually happens behind the scenes within your AI system and how that differs from a traditional agency workflow? Yeah. Traditional agency workflows have like, they differentiate

[00:23:35] a lot. So that's why I think that I'll provide a bit of a unified, aggregated experience that most of the tenants go through today whenever they have, as you mentioned, the kind of toilet leak or something. I think that very often you will write to your property manager. Property manager usually is like working on 100 to 150 properties that they have in their portfolio under management concurrently. So that implies that they have at the moment

[00:24:04] at every single point of time like a few hundreds of requests of such nature that they're dealing with. And obviously kind of for you as a property manager it's pretty impossible to keep everything just in your memory and in your mind just because as much is going on and put aside that a part of managing the kind of the toilet leaks you also need to kind of make sure that you're diligent with compliance and with kind of upcoming Rent-Is-Right Act and the regulation and the other things. So kind of more and more you start having more and more just like mundane admin that you need

[00:24:33] to take care of rather than just kind of fixing the kind of toilet leaks, right? So kind of we hope to believe that most of the kind of property managers would pretty imminently kind of pass this message over to the contractor even though yet sometimes you might just simply miss it in your inbox because your inbox usually is a mess and then kind of the job might be sitting there for some period of time even if you pass this job to contractor. I mean contractors are always kind of also a type of people that kind of very often are on the road

[00:25:03] and they are riding and driving and something so they also might miss things, right? And effectively kind of what you need as a property manager to happen is that the contractor would reach out to the tenant they would agree on the date of the appointment and then kind of the thing would be solved effectively, right? But unfortunately for you as a property manager not that you've just might potentially have missed the kind of the email communication and maybe there were some clarifications that the kind of contractor had been pinging you about after they received the request. Another problem is that whenever you send the request

[00:25:32] over to contractor you're kind of flying in the dark about has the contractor ever reached out to the tenant? Yes or no? Did they agree on the appointment? If yes, then on which day did they agree on the appointment? And this all happens for you effectively out of the system out of visibility and you don't know what's going on. And I think this is one of the problems that exists in the current world today because like property managers genuinely from what we've seen and I'm sure I can hold to believe that this is the case if you just look at like the majority

[00:26:02] of the population they're genuinely amazing people that genuinely care about providing an outstanding level of service to their end customers. But I think that there is just a ton of basic mundane admin under which you bury it every single day that just restricts you from being on top of all the things because just as much is going on at every single point of time. And then whenever some of the communications hasn't happened then whenever you don't know what's going on it's not very I would say rare when what happens

[00:26:31] is that you pass the note to contractor should the contractor try to call the tenant and doesn't kind of for example reach the tenant or they kind of even if they kind of called and agreed on the appointment it was for example kind of slipped or forgotten or something and then let's say kind of three weeks has elapsed and you're as a tenant writing to the property manager saying guys I mean my toilet is still leaking like are we going to do something about it or not right and I think that this is a very unfortunate experience that I think quite a few of the tenants and to some extent the landlords as a result going through

[00:27:01] that leads eventually to the results and this is average statistics across the UK it's not made up it's just like factual figures that average property management request resolution time across the UK sits in the range of around 45 to 50 days I think that on average it's around 48 days obviously they range by the criticality and obviously if you have like really a flood going on in your property then it's going to be resolved with the urgent kind of ticker and would be done usually kind of immediately but if you talk about the kind of more simple whatever door handles

[00:27:31] being broken or I don't know window kind of doesn't close or something like that then easily it can be ongoing for two months for three months for four months because like average is on average months and a half I think this is the status quo and this is something that again being as a tenant ourselves and being as a landlord we clearly have seen an opportunity to kind of to make it better put aside that you can obviously provide just a much more digital first and I think that much more at your fingertips products to the end customers would it be the tenant would it the landlord I mean we're

[00:28:00] living in very digital era where today you can order almost everything by the phone right starting with a kind of cap talking about food and any other services cloth something else and I think that the level of standards across the kind of digital collaboration with technology I think has increased in lots of the industries but I think in property management as we just described it still remains kind of to some extent quite fragmented and sometimes kind of a little bit still non kind of analog and non-digital and I think that not that just you can

[00:28:30] provide visibility to the end customers about what's going on kind of your just state-of-the-art kind of tenant and landlord portals where you can see all the kind of jobs status being locked on which stage of the process there are we assessed it with the contractor is on the way it's being resolved it's being fixed we're waiting for the quote so that you can provide visibility to every party about kind of where they are on resolution of this job according kind of across the process but I think more importantly the system can ensure that nothing would be

[00:28:59] slipped and kind of lost between the cracks so for example if you are a tenant you're writing to your property manager about the specific problem what we can do on the backhand is that we effectively already have pre-mapped which kind of contractors in which geographical area for which type of the job are the preferred contractor on the level of the individual property and the landlord can also impact these criteria with regards to this is my preferred contractor with this contractor I don't want to do anything anymore because last time the quality has been poor price been high or

[00:29:29] something like that so we have pre-mapped this already so meaning that whenever we receive the request we almost instantly can tag it along to the right and relevant contractor then the system will be having visibility because we'll provide an individual mask phone numbers of the tenant to the contractor so hence we can see if the contractor ever has reached out the tenant and if they called or not in case if they don't call then again the system without any kind of personal effectively human envelope or anything would start

[00:29:59] pinging the contractor to just say hey please call please call please call kind a few times it would keep taking the contractor to get in touch with the tenant because we have visibility and we can see it because it's all running through the system if it ever happened or not and then obviously if they did speak to each other and they agree on the appointment then effectively through some speech to text and text to text you can extract and understand on which day the appointment has been agreed and what has been the context of the appointment and everything so a lot of the things in the

[00:30:29] current world and especially with the help of AI you can effectively streamline and to make sure that nothing is slipped between the cracks and then in case something doesn't happen only then you escalate this job to the intermediary human person to get in touch and resolve a bit more complex mediation problem and that would allow at the status quo we already

[00:30:59] reduced the total maintenance time by around half effectively so from something around 48 days on average across the UK to somewhere in the range of around 25 days 20 to 25 days and we clearly see that there is a further opportunity to rim it down to around 7 to 10 days and

[00:31:30] I to 1 to apartments with much higher quality which is a huge shift there so what does that mean for people working in these agencies at the moment and how are their roles evolving because everything's changing at the moment and what are you seeing here how's that space evolving yeah yeah I would say that I think that we're not getting to a thousand properties per one person

[00:32:00] just yet but I think that we clearly see that there is a path towards that however we obviously do already increase the throughput of the people by factor of three factor of four so we're increasing it significantly and I think that having said that what happens with the role of the people is yes their focus of attention does change but it becomes much more of what I think the people actually were coming in this industry to

[00:32:30] do in the first place and this being spending much more time with the customers to really build a much deeper long lasting relationships with them so I think that the above mentioned example that I've provided you don't need a person to provide the phone number of the contractor and then make sure that the contractor contacts the tenant and make sure they agree on the appointment and be this middleman running around the things and trying to align to calendars and

[00:32:59] intermediating between the two things you end up having to

[00:33:51] to ask has the problem been resolved yes or no and then provide for example the confirmational works done together with the pictures and with the quoting of the works it's not very sophisticated process it's just basic admin work that should you take it away from some of the people you actually do free up their time to actually be much more on the sales people be much more on the front

[00:34:21] the customer advocate and I think that be the intermediator for some of the most complex customer situations when you need really kind of a conscious decision maker in between the tenant and the landlord and you

[00:34:51] look ahead into our immediate future if AI roll ups do continue to gain momentum which is where all the smart money is being placed right now how do you see this model reshaping the wider services economy and what should any business leader listening to our conversation today anything they should be

[00:35:21] the future of the world remains very undecided to some extent in that dimension but I think that everyone realizes that as the service becomes a bit more of a commodity service then obviously the next obvious implication that will happen is that the services would start and should start becoming cheaper effectively ensuring that they become much more accessible to the broader audience right so for example kind

[00:35:52] might not know the details of some of the industries and applications that well but I'm seeing obviously also a lot of AI roll-ups activity in the likes of legal space and accounting firms and the others where for example there is an amazing another company let's say called Low Hive that is doing an AI roll-up of low firms in the UK a lot of

[00:36:22] basic law requests do still require kind of a lawyer effectively kind of looking into your case providing some judgment et cetera et cetera and becoming a lawyer is expensive so meaning that kind of getting some advice also becomes sometimes prohibitively expensive should you resolve some of the things with technology and should you make it much cheaper then effectively the price point gets lower and then you can start serving a much bigger audience of customers just because your service becomes so much more accessible right so I think that this is for example

[00:36:51] one of the directions into where this all can go that effectively with that getting more efficient it just ends up with like better customer service and serving more customers eventually because the service becomes more accessible another dimension where it can go is that now that some of the kind of people have more of the time to spend with the customers I think that you have an opportunity to upsell a lot of additional services on top of that so rather than for example than just a property management company why don't

[00:37:21] you for example on top of that also upsell with a kind of rent guarantees and zero deposits and some additional kind of products and fintech offerings to the landlords so that effectively imagine that historically effectively the property managers been rather just like property managers but what if the letting agencies in general move away from just kind of becoming just a property manager fixing the kind of toilet leaks as you mentioned to just becoming much more like wealth manager really looking after the asset of the landlord where

[00:37:51] usually owning the property is one of the most precious assets that you own in your life so then why not the property manager is getting to be a bit more upskilled to become really like a wealth manager just like property focused wealth manager for the landlord where as we discussed the bathroom and toilet leaks and collecting the rent and reconciliation just happens semi-automatically by the system and technology right so I think that there are different directions where it gets laid out and I think the jury is out really but I think that all

[00:38:21] parts of the future are more than possible incredibly exciting times I would urge anyone listening to check you guys out and on that side of things for people that are listening intrigued by everything we've talked about today they want to find out more information connect with you or your founders where would you like me to point everyone listening I think that the easiest way to get me out is LinkedIn to be honest but equally feel free to check out at valley.group at any point of time and I think that you'll

[00:38:51] find all the contact information of ourselves on the website as well awesome well I'll have links to everything you mentioned there and there's so much going on here and I love how you've demystified today how AI roll-ups are reshaping both venture and private markets and the global services economy is also almost on the verge of being rebuilt with AI and so much scope there and I'd be interested in hearing from people listening their takeaways their insights what they're seeing out there at the moment but more than anything just

[00:39:21] thank you for sharing your incredible story really love talking with you today thank you thank you thank you Neil for having me a pleasure one of the things that really stayed with me after our conversation today was this idea that some of the biggest AI opportunities doesn't necessarily come from building something entirely new it can come from taking old messy human heavy industries and rebuilding the operating model around better systems and Dan made a strong case today that this is far more than just cutting

[00:39:50] costs or adding automation for the sake of it the real opportunity here is improving service freeing people from repetitive admin and creating businesses that can move faster while still feeling more responsive to the people that they serve and there's also that bigger question running through this episode if AI roll-ups continue to gather pace across property legal accounting and other service sectors are we looking at a passing trend

[00:40:20] or the early shape of how a huge part of the economy will be rebuilt over the next few years I'll leave links in the show notes so you can learn more but I'd love to know more about what you think is this the future of service businesses or are we just seeing the very first chapter techtalksnetwork.com if you'd like to contact me I'll be over there and please connect with me on social send me a DM there but that's it for today a lot to marinate on so take that away have a little think

[00:40:49] and let me know what you've took away from the conversation today and I will return to your ears bright and early tomorrow speak with you then bye for now