A new prop-tech firm has ambitions to be the TripAdvisor of student rentals.
The Cardiff-based student start-up launched last month and has 200 properties reviewed on the site already.
Co-founders Sebastian Walker, CEO, and Robert Stevens, COO, believe that their venture offers something different from the prop-tech companies that are looking to break into the industry.
“What we found when we researched our competition and spoke with potential customers for their product, students looking for properties, was that they didn’t feel they offered any more value than using a more generic house-finding platform such as Rightmove or Zoopla,” said Mr Walker.
“Re-inventing the Zoopla wheel but with a ’student-facing’ interface wasn’t enough. There was also a lack of choice and availability as those sites faced the chicken-egg issue of users first or properties.
“A platform like ours gives the end user extra choice and insight, and a comprehensive choice of properties because the properties we have data for are available year round and include user contribution.
“At its crux – there wasn’t a platform that offers the real-life insight into what it’s like to live there, along with a comprehensive choice of properties – that’s what we’re building and that’s what makes us unique.”
Mr Walker says the idea came to the pair, who met in 2014 while studying for a music degree at Cardiff University, when they were in the pub.
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“We were talking about how it was ludicrous that you spend so much money on housing, for most people their largest expense, yet there was less information on what it was like to live somewhere than say a £10 toaster you might buy on Amazon,” Mr Walker said.
“It was born out of the need and desire to give more transparency on both sides as to what a property is like.”
So far they have spent around £30,000 on the business, and this, Mr Walker says, has largely been paying wages of developers and on marketing.
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“We’ve been lucky to receive grants and support from a number of local universities and Santander Universities – Cardiff Uni, Bristol and others – which have funded a lot of our placements,” Mr Walker said.
“We have a large number of marketers who are split by the cities we are in or plan to launch in, and they work on a part-time basis.”
Moove plans to launch in Bristol, Bath, Swansea and Exeter in September, in addition to Cardiff.
Mr Walker anticipates that following the completing of the company’s pre-seed funding round they should be able to scale growth further outwards regionally, moving northwards across Wales and England.