Tech Talks Daily
00:14:31 · Dan Lifshits
[00:14:31] S1: Yeah. No. It's it's been a hell of a journey for sure 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, backed our staff, 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 sixteen or seventeen months to build out the full technological platform, the product, so that we then reuse it on all the other upcoming acquisitions of an agencies. 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 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. That makes us, yes, kind of one of the top 15 largest rental platforms. So this is 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.
00:15:46 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:15:46] S0: And quick shout out to everybody listening in the whole 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. 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 and why do you believe this model is is gaining real traction now?
00:16:11 · Dan Lifshits
[00:16:11] S1: Yeah. It's it's a 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, I think great at providing good level of service to the customers. And I think having very, very sticky or 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 that 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 is kinda historically been the best at. And I think that the AI roll ups almost serves as like trying to build a 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. I think the other arm of yours is building this effectively kind of tech first, and in our case, of AI first tech stack and platform. But then you'll 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 we need to buy them? I think the answer is quite often, a lot, if not like all of this service businesses, 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, the genetic system, and that's kind of it. But it's a lot about reviewing your existing workflows, rethinking how you're running these workflows, how does it impact the roles and responsibilities of the teams in these businesses, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
00:18:14 · Dan Lifshits
And if you're trying just to kind of sell into those businesses, very often you will just be facing with some nature 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, effectively, it allows you to, I think, tweak some things on the operational front, tweak some things on the psychological 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 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 software company and not to be a hardware company, but effective to try to build both hardware and software all under one roof to try to kind of provide 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. So I think some sort of similar philosophy is happening here.
00:19:45 · Neil C. Hughes
[00:19:45] S0: 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 Yeah. How has that partnership influenced how you scale, acquire, and and think about that long term value creation as well, which is another massive part of what you're heading towards here.
00:20:07 · Dan Lifshits
[00:20:07] S1: Yeah. No. 100%. I think that General Catalyst has been an absolutely amazing partner, and I think that we could have not wished for any better, partner on this journey, update. I think that, they 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. And I think that it it very much coincided in time because I think that, if I remember the dates correct, they, raised their inaugural first year roll ups fund somewhere kind of around end of twenty twenty four. And I think that we started effectively and got going and incorporated the business in end of twenty three and made the first acquisition in the beginning of twenty four. 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, as an asset class, and that growing amount of investors will start looking into that. Then effectively, they're working on valley guys that kind of packed their staff, rolled up their sleeves, took their wives, moved to Holland 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... Well, 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, kinda 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 would like, I think close to 25 or even slightly more than that billion 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.