Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
00:09:23 · Dan Lifshits, James Pringle
[00:09:23] S1: Yeah. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you know it better than anyone else. It's a very tough journey. It's a ton of compromises that you're having. It's a ton of life choices that you're making every single time. So it's not that this is the only cheerful path in your life. I think that everyone knows deep down within themselves if they want to try it or not. And if they never try, they would regret it for life. So I think that for these people, the only recommendation would be to go and try. I understand that there are some monetary limitations. One might have not enough runway to kind of to do the things or some other things. I think the only meaningful thing is worth trying. And especially whenever you have less commitments in life, go for it. That's my honor. [00:10:01] S0: Yeah. And Dan, Tweli isn't just an AI company. You're an AI company with a roll up model as well, which is really interesting. And I think 2025 was described as the dawn of AI roll ups, but you founded Dwelling in 2023. So what was it that gave you the belief that the venture market would also catch on with this model that wasn't new, but has really come into vogue in the roll up model is not new, but obviously AI roll ups is. So how did you get the confidence that the VC market would would really get it and buy into this model going forwards?
00:10:01 · James Pringle, Dan Lifshits
[00:10:01] S0: Yeah. And Dan, Tweli isn't just an AI company. You're an AI company with a roll up model as well, which is really interesting. And I think 2025 was described as the dawn of AI roll ups, but you founded Dwelling in 2023. So what was it that gave you the belief that the venture market would also catch on with this model that wasn't new, but has really come into vogue in the roll up model is not new, but obviously AI roll ups is. So how did you get the confidence that the VC market would would really get it and buy into this model going forwards? [00:10:36] S1: Yeah. That... That's an amazing question and a journey, really. And, I mean, you're saying 2025 is the year of year roll ups. Let's see what 2026 is gonna be. I think that is just starting, to be honest. But, I mean, it hasn't been Maybe the decade [00:10:49] S0: of rollouts. Maybe the decade of rollouts.
00:10:51 · Dan Lifshits
[00:10:51] S1: As with all kind of a bit of a hypothesis, but that do have certain proofs in the pudding, I think it's like five, seven years away that is just starting. And I think that that's what we're gonna experience in the next... Until 2030, at least, if not even longer than that. Because there's fundamental value being created. And whenever it's created, then kind of it's a big categories that can be reshaped and redefined. So hence, I believe it's with us for long term, honestly speaking. But talking about 2023, a short answer, it was rough. A bit of a longer story, It was the only meaningful way how to reshape that specific industry, because exactly of having an experience of building a tech enabled letting agents already once, we learned the hard way that acquisition of landlords, and this is effectively your two sided marketplace, you have a tenant, you have a landlord, and you are kind of a service company acting on behalf of both to some extent. But it's not about finding the tenants. This is all this business is about. Finding tenant is comparatively easy peasy. You just post the property on the likes of Zoopla that you guys, both of you know really well, and kind of other classifieds. And obviously, kind of this distribution problem has been solved by lots of other smart people like Alex Chesterman and many more. But it's all the question about how to acquire the landlord. And growing landlord organically is hard because effectively, the structural reason of the market that the landlord switch between agents is very, very rare. And that's what we learned the hard way in the previous business, that effectively, the only meaningful way to grow is not an organic growth. And then when we regrouped and started thinking other ways to overcome the limitation of organic growth, then that's where we came across such a beautiful world called... Known as roll up that, honestly, I didn't know until end of twenty twenty three, kind of no joke. And that's where we had an idea that why not we try to merge the best of the two worlds.
00:12:36 · Dan Lifshits, Hector Mason
We like building tech first business, but growing as effectively just customer acquisition cost, because the way you can look at it is tactical go to market where rather than acquiring customers one by one, it's buying customers in a bulk by buying the existing incumbents and effectively preserving their customer base and highly recurring managed subscription books of customers that they have. As simple as that. And we thought it's brilliant. VCs didn't exactly think this way. You guys know it better than anyone else. I think both Red Bus and Episode one passed on us and not just once, on a bunch of occasions. And you're not alone. Think that we got rejected by close to... We only thought [00:13:12] S2: that we would have loved to invest in it. It's the balance sheet stuff that was the issue for us. I... Not true, but... You guys are...
00:13:12 · Hector Mason, Dan Lifshits
[00:13:12] S2: that we would have loved to invest in it. It's the balance sheet stuff that was the issue for us. I... Not true, but... You guys are... [00:13:18] S1: I mean, not kind of keeping any any hard kind of truth on that. I think that as earlier stage investor, you obviously need to be sure that later on investors would kind of back it up as a story. Because obviously, if you're the last investor investing at venture style valuations, where the next round would come at fundamentals of the business, then effectively, it's not going to work for you. Right? So effectively, it's about kind of in a way believing to the story that story would continue growing. And I think that whenever you don't see the proof of the later stage investors already doing this sort of strategy, you have no other way rather than either just like in a way saying we're the smartest and we see that this wave is going to come. So let us jump on the ship right now and hope that it's gonna happen or just stay away. So I mean, it's just how the world works, and this is fine. I mean, don't keep anything bad to that. But you
00:14:05 · James Pringle
[00:14:05] S0: guys... There's also something in that way. You've almost turned what was potentially your biggest weakness from fundraising into probably your biggest strength by all of the VCs who weren't quite sure if the roll up model would be the right thing. And maybe some had LPAs that don't allow them to invest in that type of model and things like that. You've now gone well, actually this is, you know, you that whole narrative is exactly why you are doing well is because it is your biggest strength. It's like, no, this is the only way this is gonna succeed because anyone who's invested in any prop tech business that targets landlords, pretty much everyone's failed because they are the hardest customer profile to get to. They are private. They're behind shell companies. They're they're they're literally the hardest people to target. So you've turned you've turned your biggest weakness into your biggest strength. And I think that's a great lesson for any founder listening who's getting any sort of pushback is to try and think about why am I doing it like this? Why why is this the model that's right?