W.illiam Reeve is what he calls a “classic accidental landlord.” The serial entrepreneur had no intention of renting out his flat in central London, but had to leave shortly after climbing the first rung on the property ladder. “I got married while I was there, and although I thought it was the perfect place, it turns out a compromise needed to be made,” she says.
Instead of keeping it as a pied-à-terre, the apartment now offers Reeve insight into its clients’ needs on the Goodlord online platform, which is designed to help letting agents, landlords and tenants reduce the administrative time dedicated to renting.
The difficulties for England’s 11 million renters have arguably never been more acute or high-profile, with official data showing last week that the average rent outside London had hit another record. The property sector is under pressure to demonstrate that conditions are improving for tenants amid the new government’s push to improve tenants’ rights and greater scrutiny of the industry after the death of two-year-old boy Awaab Ishak. mold in a rental property.
Meanwhile, homeowners are selling over fears of a tax rise in next week’s budget, with some even saying they are sorry. More vilified than serial killers..
Reeve, who has led the company since it flirted with collapse in 2018, came to the sector with a striking career. The sale of his first technology business in 1999, IT industry analysis firm Fletcher Research, fueled a series of investments and roles in startups that achieved successful “exits” for investors at healthy valuations.
These included co-founding travel company Secret Escapes and serving on the board of Zoopla. He also chaired the wealth manager Nutmeg and the snack brand Graze, sold to JP Morgan and Carlyle respectively. Along with a group of tech luminaries, he co-founded LoveFilm in 2002, which was sold to Amazon almost a decade later in a deal that valued it at £200 million.
At Goodlord, it may finally strike another big deal as it moves closer to profitability after a tumultuous first decade. The focus is on capturing the market around people moving between tenants. “Moving house is a huge stress point that we can hopefully reduce. “There are a lot of decisions that have to be made that have financial consequences, which means a lot of companies are trying to take advantage of that moment,” says Reeve.
It does this by offering everything from help for tenants changing broadband and energy contracts to providing an audit trail (particularly tenant references) for landlords. Goodlord’s goal is to attract professional real estate agents as clients, “to help make life easier and keep track of things.” It has “a steady pace” of potential new services to consider, from collecting some rental payments to tracking inventory. The platform is used by around 250,000 homeowners and more than 500,000 renters each year.
“We’re trying to turn complicated things that everyone finds stressful and tedious, like filling out a long insurance form, into something you can do with a single click,” he says.
The company, based in east London, showed promise after Richard White and Tom Mundy set it up in 2014, but a disastrous technology upgrade left it perilously close to extinction when Reeve was asked to help six years ago.
He quickly identified that his technicians were disconnected from the base, who were housed in a nearby office above a strip club, emptied by layoffs. To draw attention to the division, he placed a double bed in the boardroom and called a company-wide meeting. “My argument was that I want that side of the business and that side of the business to start being practically as intimate as being in bed together.
“The kiss of death in my world is when you find out about the IT team’s report to the CFO. I am the complete opposite: the technicians sit at the table. Everything happens through them.”
Now, he says, relentless fundraising has put Goodlord on stable footing, but in recent years several “obstacles” have appeared for owners: tax changes made by George Osborne in 2016 to try to deflate the purchase market for rent, which then went up. interest rates and, finally, the tenant (reform) bill, which he calls “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” The long-awaited bill will end no-fault evictions and ban blanket rental bans to benefit recipients or people with children and pets.
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“Homeowners look at the bill thinking, ‘I was fed up (before), I’m not making much money, my mortgage costs have skyrocketed, I’ve been told I have to invest in environmental issues and now you’re telling me.’” that I have to let people with pets into my house. You know what? I’m done.” What you’re doing is making landlords angry and that’s going to make the market a tougher place for renters.” Reeve says the effect has been that some smaller owners are selling their properties to larger companies.
He thinks rent controls are a “terrible” idea, adding: “It seems like a panacea, but it only makes things worse… the market (as it is) may be unsatisfactory, but it is the least unsatisfactory of all the alternatives. You have to be careful not to tilt everything in one direction.”
As a teenager, he was a “computer geek” and quickly learned a lesson about market uncertainty. At the age of 16 he developed a game called Pipelineset on a North Sea oil platform. While preparing for launch, the Piper Alpha disaster killed 167 workers on a platform in 1988 off the coast of Aberdeen. The game was rebooted on a space station and was a success. But a “money-motivated” Reeve avoided the industry, taking a job at IBM and building a career dominated by technology.
Reeve has made more than 50 investments in his career, including merchant banking firm Tide, careers site Adzuna and small gig specialist Sofar Sounds. Could Goodlord be the next big deal for the outlet king?
“We’re in no hurry,” Reeves says. “We’re in the fundraising woods.” He adds that “exits are usually created from opportunities”, when an agreement is preferable to a commercial association with complementary companies. “Those opportunities may well happen.”
CV
Age 51
Family “Australian wife and family, British father, American mother, Anglospheric extended family. “No children.”
Pay “It’s quite difficult to say because a lot of it is in stock options, the value of which is very difficult to calculate.”
Education degree in Engineering, Economics and Management from the University of Oxford, where he obtained a scholarship.
last vacation A week in Kefalonia with his family from the UK.
The best advice you have ever been given. “To be more ambitious.”
The biggest professional mistake “I had a couple of opportunities to move to the US, first to study and then by selling my first business to a Boston-based company, but I didn’t do it. “It may have been a mistake, considering the advantages that American technology companies have and the valuations they achieve.”
Overused Phrase “‘To be honest,’ I don’t say it a lot, but saying it even once is too much. I’m always honest!”
how do you relax “Listening to music, mainly old-fashioned pop/rock/dance music, being near water, and going out to eat with friends, almost anywhere.”