00:00:56 · Dan Lifshits, Ilia Drozdov, Sebastian Johnson
[00:00:56] S1: Yeah. I think a quick note. It was, I think, £69. So dollars was around nine speed high. Yeah. You're right. You're right. More bringing total, think, to just about 250,000,000 today. [00:01:06] S2: Yeah. But I I think just more and more people kind of understand, and there is kind of a higher conviction that services industries will be significantly shaped by AI, especially kind of in Europe where services is, like, what, closer to probably 70% of GDP. And the impact on these industries can be quite quite quite significant. And I think, you know, the level of service across all of the services industry will be boosted by AI. Amazing. [00:01:34] S0: And for those who don't know, you know, you've you've literally built this AI native service company for residential lettings where you acquire local operators and then you kind of move them onto your shared AI infrastructure. I think when we last spoke, you were at maybe 10,000 lettings. Where are you at today? [00:01:51] S1: I think we just reached the north of 15,000 and with a few more deals that are in the process and going right now, I think we'll be already approaching just above 20. [00:02:01] S2: That's amazing. Yeah, definitely already in top 10 kind of agencies in The UK. And hopefully by the next time we talk, it's going to be top five. But let's see. Fingers crossed.
00:02:01 · Ilia Drozdov, Sebastian Johnson, Dan Lifshits
[00:02:01] S2: That's amazing. Yeah, definitely already in top 10 kind of agencies in The UK. And hopefully by the next time we talk, it's going to be top five. But let's see. Fingers crossed. [00:02:14] S0: And how's it all going? I mean, how's this process going of acquiring more? I mean, I assume the business is doing well given that you are raising such a big round later on. But what's it been like going on this explosive journey? [00:02:25] S1: Yeah. The last last few months that have been busy, but I think that we, I would say, getting quite industrialized in the kind of just the process of acquiring the business, integrating them, etcetera, etcetera. But I think more exciting is obviously all the advancements that you can do with improving level of service, especially with, I think in the last kind of six months with all the multi agentic models and everything that you can bring more. So kind of we learned a lot about the different workflows of the business, kind of having acquired already kind of tens of them over the course of like year and a half ish since we started in middle twenty four. I And think together with multi agentic capabilities, it just allows to streamline things much further, but now to start focusing more and more on growing this business on improving level of service of really providing the outstanding experience to the landlords and to the tenants. So this would be kind of growing and growing focus of what it will be.
00:03:14 · Ilia Drozdov, Sebastian Johnson
[00:03:14] S2: Just maybe kind of add add a little bit on top of that. I think there is a just outstanding enough opportunity for the industry at all to elevate the level of service and to effectively get back to the original proposition where lettings and property managers were closer to the wealth managers for their clients. But as the regulation was pretty much just widening and widening, I think most of the agencies we see in the market, they just ended up being effectively administrators to make sure that you comply with all the regulations, to make sure that property management requests are being resolved, etcetera, etcetera. And I think with AI, when most of these tasks can be significantly automated, people in the office can get the time back actually to do what kind of in the first place made them be dreaming about this profession, to spend more time with landlords, to actually ask more often the very kind of question landlords love most, like, what else can I do for you? Right? Because kind of the compliance and pretty management is dealt with kind of quite quite significantly by AI, and people can can spend more time with the judgment calls, with analyzing the kind of yields for landlords, with analyzing kind of how the property is performing, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. That's amazing. [00:04:25] S0: So are you seeing quick uptake once you once you kind of... Quick improvements once you're kind of bringing them into the business? [00:04:34] S2: Definitely.
00:04:34 · Ilia Drozdov, Sebastian Johnson, Dan Lifshits
[00:04:34] S2: Definitely. [00:04:35] S0: And and is that changing as AI is getting better? As the fundamental kind of like LLMs are improving? [00:04:41] S1: I would say that kind of to to the improvement point, I think we usually see the kind of thing start to change within three to six months since we integrate the business. And then with regards to the capabilities, I think that there are improvements happening for sure with regards to the foundation models. You also can kind of, to be honest, use a lot of outsource kind of the open source these days, obviously, as the models get better and better. But I think that the key thing that you achieve really is just bringing visibility to some of the workflows that before that were just kind of lost and messy and kinda running elsewhere, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, that you just bring to surface. So that kind of before you had to chase a property manager to ask, like, five times, what is the update on my bathroom and all the things. Right now, you can be just on the front foot and be proactive to the tenants, to the landlords with regards to what's going on, etcetera, etcetera. Obviously, kind of with the foundational models getting better, you get this improvements as well. But I would say that a big chunk of it happens just by design or bringing visibility and just, like, identifying these processes by by itself. [00:05:38] S0: And when you talk about kind of the integrating of the agencies, how's that going? Is that happening faster or slower than it was six months ago? Is that going better than it was?
00:05:38 · Sebastian Johnson, Ilia Drozdov
[00:05:38] S0: And when you talk about kind of the integrating of the agencies, how's that going? Is that happening faster or slower than it was six months ago? Is that going better than it was? [00:05:46] S2: I think it's going kind of better than it was. And to a significant extent, actually, it's not just the technology, but also it's around kind of how we how we run these integrations. Because kind of, obviously, probably kind of year ago, half a year ago, there was a little bit of a shock kind of whether AI gonna take all the jobs, etcetera, and people were kind of speaking about this kind of less direct. But I think we pretty much kind of understood spending more time with teams that AI is kind of unlocker of all this kind of free time, and people can kind of spend more time with clients. So once we started kind of talking about kind of exciting opportunities more kind of openly, the integration happens kind of much faster Because actually, this makes the job much more exciting than it was. [00:06:32] S0: And how are the undermen... The underlying fundamentals doing? You you've raised a lot of debt to service the debt. You obviously need to have a very strong business model. How has that changed in the last five or six months?
00:06:32 · Sebastian Johnson, Dan Lifshits
[00:06:32] S0: And how are the undermen... The underlying fundamentals doing? You you've raised a lot of debt to service the debt. You obviously need to have a very strong business model. How has that changed in the last five or six months? [00:06:42] S1: In terms of fundamentals, whenever you buy the business, it's pretty profitable by design itself and obviously with freeing up some time. Some of that you reinvest back into kind of growing the top line and better service and everything. But by design, some people might be leaving the business. Some people might be kind of not fully on board with the kind of a transformation you're doing. So kind of efficiencies by design going up anyways. And it implies that effectively serviceability of the debt and other things only improves over time. Hence, kind of it's it's a very stable business by by nature. [00:07:12] S0: And you mentioned you're now kind of the top 10 Yeah. You know, The UK, ambition is to be top five soon. How much more opportunity is there in The UK market? And how much more do you wanna attack that before you start looking at maybe the rest of Europe? [00:07:26] S1: Yeah. Enormous.