00:00:01 · John Reynolds, Din Bisavak
[00:00:01] S0: Hello, and welcome to the Tech.eu podcast. My name is John Reynolds, the host. This week, we have, another cracking episode, and we are joined by three founders to discuss a subject that some of you will know and others might not called AI roll ups, which is a buzzy term, which we'll go on to discuss after we have introduced our three founders. So we are joined by Din Bisavak, the founder of the German real estate startup, Buena, which is backed by Google and Harry Stepping, 20, VC. Konstantin Schroeder, founder of Arbeo, which is focused on vacation rental management roll ups. And Dan, Lifshift, founder of Dwelly, which automates and acquires local letting agencies in The UK. So we've got loads and loads to get through. I think a good starting point, if we can go around the room and just... I'm gonna be quite, vigilant on this. Just kinda give me a one minute overview of your your startup and the size of it. So let's start with you, Din, please. [00:01:04] S1: Sure. Buena is on a mission to become the one stop shop for homeowners starting with property management today. So the first step is to make actually owning the residential real estate simple by providing the best possible property management service to homeowners. And now we are working on vertically integrating more services like financial services, insurance, brokerage, and so on. [00:01:30] S0: Okay. And what's the what's the size of the team? [00:01:32] S1: So the size of the team is around 350 people today across Germany, across, like, 16 or 17 offices. [00:01:40] S0: Okay. Konstantin?
00:01:40 · John Reynolds, Constantin Schröder
[00:01:40] S0: Okay. Konstantin? [00:01:42] S2: Yes. So with Arbeo, we are building something same but different. We're focused on the property management space, but on the vacation rental side. So Arbeo builds a platform for homeowners that have holiday homes and basically helps them to manage everything that happens during the stay of a guest that starts from guest communication to pricing and revenue distribution, laundry cleaning, so every... Everything that's really on the ground when holiday homeowners rent out their apartments to guests. And we basically build a platform that helps owners to manage all these things in one place, in one app, and see a very big market, especially in Europe for property managers that are struggling to scale, that are struggling to really provide fantastic quality to homeowners. So we go ahead and buy these companies and then put our tech on top to distribute as quickly as possible. That's what we do. Based in Berlin. [00:02:37] S0: Come. [00:02:37] S2: Sorry. We're based [00:02:38] S0: --. [00:02:39] S2: On. Sorry. We're based in Berlin, roughly 75 people in the team. And we are also active in in UK. We're active in Austria, but our headquarters is here in Berlin. [00:02:52] S0: That's great. That's very concise. And finally, Dan?
00:02:52 · John Reynolds, Dan Lifshits
[00:02:52] S0: That's great. That's very concise. And finally, Dan? [00:02:56] S3: Thank you, John. Dwelly is UK based lettings and property management AI first platform. We grow by acquiring and partnering with traditional letting agencies to effectively core goal being elevate its level of service. After a series of acquisitions and partnerships, we kind of aim to consolidate and dominate to a significant extent around the £10,000,000,000 UK lightings market. So kind of quite a huge and one of the largest household consumer expenses markets. And using AI post acquiring and partnering with the businesses, we streamlined the entire lighting lifecycle for all parts of the ecosystem, tenant, landlord, contractor, from finding a tenant to collecting rental property management, the full spectrum while enhancing the user experience. We're around slightly more than 100 people at the moment, and with a few more acquisitions coming through, should be approaching 200 by the year end.
00:03:55 · John Reynolds, Din Bisavak
[00:03:55] S0: Okay. No, that was brilliant. Very concise and disciplined. So there's obviously commonality between the the three of you. So you're all playing in the the real estate property services area. You're all European, and you're all kinda so called AI roll up. So let... I'm gonna come with you of a definition of an AI roll up, and then you can kind of dispute if I've got this completely wrong. So, it's kind of a buzzy term, and my definition is you're effectively leveraging AI to reinvent traditional businesses. So, the idea is you identify opportunities to buy mature, perhaps people intensive businesses, scale them through the... Through AI, then use improved margins to acquire other businesses. So you're effectively, I guess, using generative AI to transform low margin businesses into high margin software. So it's kind of like a modern day private equity, play. So perhaps, Din, you can tell me I've got that completely wrong. [00:04:52] S1: I think it was completely correct. [00:04:54] S0: Right. Okay. Well, what's your... If... I mean, can you kind of give a bit more color? How would how would you define AI roll ups? And why why are they so buzzy at the moment?
00:04:54 · John Reynolds, Din Bisavak
[00:04:54] S0: Right. Okay. Well, what's your... If... I mean, can you kind of give a bit more color? How would how would you define AI roll ups? And why why are they so buzzy at the moment? [00:05:04] S1: I think they are so buzzy, because they attract... Like, if you compare it to starting a traditional company where kind of your first problem is to find product market fit with an AI roll up, you typically start in an industry that already exists with a service that already exists. So you kind of save yourself the entire... I build a product, and I need to find the audience and sell my product to that audience. Mhmm. So you start a step later, I would say. However, I think that one step later is actually the really hard one where already have a running business, typically a very low margin business, as you say, and then you have to kind of go in there and really transform it from the bottom up. So you have to retrain people to new processes. You actually have to build a product that makes them more efficient and measurably so and repeatably so. So I think in general, AI roll ups are, you know, you build a very good product that takes an industry and improves the efficiency of everyone participating in it, and then you go and acquire those businesses to actually leverage the product. [00:06:15] S0: How many how many businesses have you acquired today? I mean, did you start off as an AI roll up or have you kind of pivoted?
00:06:15 · John Reynolds, Din Bisavak
[00:06:15] S0: How many how many businesses have you acquired today? I mean, did you start off as an AI roll up or have you kind of pivoted? [00:06:22] S1: So the company history is a bit complicated, but we pivoted to AI roll ups three and a half years ago. And over the last two and a half years ago, we have acquired 26 businesses. [00:06:35] S0: Right. Okay. Konstantin, can you talk us about the the virtues of being acquisitive, being an AI roll up than kinda compared to organic growth? And just give us a give us a bit of history of ABO too.