Feb 16, 2022
Summary: In the
sixth episode of season eight, Louisa hosts the first Propcast on the Italian PropTech market.
She is joined by
Giorgio
Tinacci, Founder & CEO
and
Fausto Maglia, Chief
Product Officer at Casavo
to hear about their journey of
founding Casavo in 2017. We'll learn about how the product enables
the residential community to buy and sell quickly, conveniently and
simply. Giorgio talks us through their series C raise back in March
2021 and they discuss how they've adapted their product and their
marketing for different European markets.
Resources:
Companies Mentioned:
Key Insights From This Episode:
- The
Italian PropTech market has been growing rapidly since 2018, the
number of PropTech companies operating in Italy has been doubling
year by year. - Louisa
In Europe, it's a sellers' market. -
Giorgio
- It was a
hyper-growth journey and it still is. - Giorgio
- Digitalisation
in real estate is really green. - Giorgio
- I was always
keen on investing in human capital before technology and business.
- Giorgio
- It's important
that new technologies can lead to a disruptive innovation or a new
market. - Fausto
- There are a lot
of existing technologies that should be applied to old problems. -
Fausto
- 20 years ago you
had to go to a travel agency if you wanted to go to Japan. Today,
you can book a ticket with your smartphone. That is the level of
simplicity we are looking for in real estate. - Fausto
- The next three
to five years will lead to a substantial change in the real estate
market. - Fausto
Keywords: PropTech, Italy,
Real Estate, Europe
About Our Guests:
Giorgio Tinacci
graduated with a degree in
International Management from Bocconi and Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology in 2015. He then joined BCG, where he worked
for 2 years focusing on digital transformation projects in banking,
insurance, and industrial goods. Giorgio left BCG in September 2017
and founded Casavo, the leading digital residential platform in
Europe.
Fausto Maglia, is
currently Chief Product Officer at Casavo, after leading the
Marketing Team in the first phases of the company growth. Fausto
has a very variegate background, with the tech world as a constant,
as he has been part of product/tech teams in startups and large
corporations in the travel, telecommunications, and real estate
industry.
About Casavo
Casavo is a digital residential platform that is
redesigning the experience of selling and buying homes in Europe
leveraging proprietary technology in each step of the transaction
process. Whether you want to sell or buy a home, Casavo makes it
simple, fast and convenient, providing the best solution for your
needs. Casavo offers integrated home-related services, providing a
turn-key experience with an inclusive approach towards real estate
operators (brokers, contractors, banks. etc). Founded in 2017 by
Giorgio Tinacci, Casavo currently operates in Italy (Milan, Rome,
Turin, Florence and Bologna) and Spain (Madrid and Barcelona),
rapidly expanding into other European markets thanks to the work of
an international team of over 300 people and the support of
top-tier global investors. As of November 2021, Casavo has carried
out more than 2,000 transactions for a value in excess of €600
million.
About Our Host
Louisa Dickins
https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisa-dickins-ab065392/
Louisa started her career in
property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising
her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career
in recruitment. She now is a Director at LMRE, who are a specialist recruitment firm driven
by PropTech and recruitment professionals, and Louisa oversees
their 5 core areas. Louisa co-founded LMRE and provides a
constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real
estate. Louisa is also on the board of Directors at UK PropTech
Association (UKPA).
About LMRE
www.lmre.tech
LMRE believe there is a better
way to recruit. LMRE focus on a more comprehensive, client led focus
delivering exceptional talent to the place at the time. They are
passionate about the industry and passionate about people's
careers. LMRE spend time with each client to become and an
extension of the business, and their transparency and core values
help them grow with the sector. LMRE simplify recruitment and
innovate with our clients and evolve the people driven, PropTech
community.
Timestamps:
[3:20] Tell us more about your
journey: you have founded Casavo and studied globally. You've
worked at one of the leading consultancies, Boston Consulting Group
on digital transformation. Where did your passion for residential
tech come from?
- I grew up in a small village close to Florence
with a family of small entrepreneurs. My passion for real estate
and entrepreneurship came from my
dad.
- During my studies abroad I met several startups
and I joined some of them as an intern.
- After my studies, I knew I wanted to be an
entrepreneur but I hadn’t found that big opportunity yet so after
working for 3 years in consulting, I was looking at what was
happening in the residential markets globally and in Europe and
there hadn’t been a lot of innovation over the last 10 years so I
decided to found Casavo.
- I had a passion for the intersection between
the real estate world and the technology world.
[5:15] Fausto, you started out
in the marketing world and have now moved over to product as the
CPO. Can you tell us a little about the product as well as how you
made that transition and if you have any tips for people looking to
make that transition?
- Before joining Casavo, I had a career in
product and it had been mainly in travel.
- A few months after Casavo launched, Giorgio was
looking for someone in marketing and I had a bit of experience in
that so I decided to start at Casavo in marketing. After 2 years,
it was time for serious and important investment in technology so I
moved over.
- Coming from marketing, I had a lot of
understanding of some dynamics and that would have been harder to
get if I was just a product person.
- What we offer to the markets is the ability to
receive a purchase offer on their property without any kind of
human interactions.
[7:40] Who was your first major
client that you brought on board?
- It's a consumer platform, not a B2B
platform.
- We really understood that in Europe, it's a
sellers’ market so there is no presentation, everything starts from
the seller. We started with a very strong and disruptive value
proposition in order to solve the issue of a very lengthy,
inefficient, and inconvenient traditional selling
process.
- We did so by changing the paradigm; proposing
ourselves to buy the home directly in a matter of days, instead of
going through the whole process.
- Our first clients were the first family who
sold us their apartment in Milan.
[9:25] Let’s talk about your
series C, you raised €200 million led by Exor Seeds. You also have
some other good investors including 360 Capital, Picus Capital and
Greenoaks Capital. What were some of the major challenges when you
looked to raise and how did you go about it?
- There were three key
challenges;
-
- Digitalisation in real estate is really green.
The number of investors that were willing to be the first one
betting on that category were few.
- We started with a very asset-heavy model that
requires a certain level of understanding of the balance sheet
dynamics and the residential dynamics in order to not be skirted by
volatility.
- We are a leading technology company in
Italy, but the ecosystem is pretty underdeveloped if you compare it
to other markets.
- It always starts with the team and with a
clear vision and executing that vision well.
[12:10] Why was the product so
successful in Italy? You have expanded to Spain, what are the
differences in what the buyers and sellers want? Do you have
to change your marketing technique from country to
country?
- We are the first movers with the AVM (automated
valuation for models) so we were the first ones in Italy to provide
free, online real-time valuations of residential
properties.
- We added to that a very strong value
proposition, which was you as a sender can sell immediately to us
and you don't have to look for a buyer.
- The residential stock in Italy is generally
quite old and we propose to customers renovated, nice looking
apartments.
- There are some differences but what we want to
do is to build a European platform, a single platform in terms of
product but of course, there are some local nuances both in terms
of product development and in terms of marketing.
[16:35] How long does it take to
buy a property in Italy?
- In terms of selling a property in the large,
metropolitan cities in Italy, the time needed is around six months.
More or less the same applies to Southern Europe in
general.
[18:30] Do you have some
exciting news to share with us about a potential launch into a
different market?
- We have just launched in our third country,
Portugal.
- We started our internationalisation journey in
the beginning of 2020 in Spain.
[19:40] How have you
managed to grow your headcount over 300 people and what are your
cultural values?
- It was a hyper-growth journey and it still
is.
- My personal mission from the beginning was to
be able to have an impact on the market, be the category-defining
business, but with a strong team and building really a talent hub
within our markets, all sharing the same vision from the very
beginning and being focused on executing on that
vision.
- I was always keen on investing in human capital
before technology and business.
- When you are growing at the speed of light,
launching new products, new markets, you cannot afford processes.
You have to trust people, you have to empower your team and let
them do what they think is the best for the company.
- We have our list of values and we live and
breathe them in every way:
-
- Focus on customers: our customers come first
and we want to create long-term value for them.
- Share the drive to
innovate
- Learn to adapt: continuous, direct, upfront
feedback
[23:15] Is there any advice you
would give to an aspiring entrepreneur?
- Just jump and do it - if you start to analyse
everything and overthink it, it's not going to work.
- Be optimistic - turn challenges into
opportunities
[25:15] What's next for the
Casavo products? Are you planning or developing any new
technologies?
- There are a lot of existing technologies that
should be applied to old problems.
- The challenge is to be able to make
portfolio-based decisions and market-based decisions for our
investments, rather than transaction-based ones and we have to keep
in mind changing consumer preferences that will affect the price
properties.
[28:40] The ‘LMRE’ part, Louisa
asks the guests to talk about:
- Lessons learned in your
career
- Change and self-development are very
important.
- Mention a person, product or
service
- A company in the FinTech industry called
Scallop.
- Rewarding parts of working in the
space:
- To start with no understanding of this
industry, which is very complex with a lot of incumbent players,
very traditional. Thinking about how to solve problems for our
customers within this industry with an out-of-the-box and naive
approach.
- What are you most Excited about for the
future of the space?:
- The next three to five years will lead to a
substantial change in the real estate market and we have the
opportunity to be at the forefront of this change.
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