Property businesses are among those that have made the shortlists of a ‘pitchathon’ to Sir Richard Branson.
The 19-hour marathon is a Guinness world record attempt. It consists of 160 businesses each making three-hour live pitches today and Wednesday.
The ‘people’s vote’ opens on Thursday, with the next stage being competitive workshops with 40 of the businesses.
Six then go through to the finals with £1m to play for in prizes.
The shortlist includes start-up No Agent, which bills itself as the future of lettings. The business says it will eliminate all fees and charges for tenants, and save landlords an average of one month’s rent a year.
eMoov is listed in the growth section, having come 19th out of the 160 qualifiers after a vote-off last week.
According to its pitch, eMoov expects to start making money in 2018 and intends to take 10% market share by 2020.
It says of other markets: “The USA, Europe, Australia – you name it, they’re all in sight.”
Comments (12)
This is a link to eMoovs original financials pitch document – http://bit.ly/eMoovFin
To hit the income projections made in 2015 for Jan – Dec 2016 (£6,624,800) eMoov need to have been listing circa 928 new customers every month (at £595 including VAT).
In the past 6 months, according to data from GetAgent.co.uk eMoov have listed just 302 per month on average (1,812 total). This is 3,755 short of where they need to be.
eMoov have also been running a Spring campaign offering a 33% discount on fees, equivalent to £120,000 in discounted/ lost income over a two month period on current results.
If eMoov continue at the current level of performance (a simple 6 month annualisation), they will be around £4.5 Million short of projected target by the year end.
Don’t forget all of the low quality new build stock they are listing which I assume is on their no sale no fee product. They are selling next-to-none of these so will be bringing in very little income from these.
According to its pitch, eMoov… intends to take 10% market share by 2020.
Just a quickie here on the above statement
They currently have somewhere between 2642 (Zoopla) and 4260 (own website) properties.
According to homedotcodotuk there are something like 482,000 ‘unique’ property listings (not including multi-listings, apparently).
Assume that 10% of eMoov’s properties are listed elsewhere and you establish that they currently have somewhere between 0.49% and 0.79% market share.
Guess they’ve got some catching up to do…
Anyone care to hazard a guess why there is a 61% difference between their own website and the portal(s) they list on?
Or – just make it up. Might as well – seems the done thing these days.
Go on – best answer gets to hand out the pencils… ;o)
Although it is deleted from the Crowd cube I managed to find reference to the projections for 2018, far from the company beginning to make money by 2018 this is what they reckoned last October
“eMoov is forecasting turnover in 2018 to be in excess of £39m largely driven by growth in the online sector, a new lettings proposition, upselling and global expansion.”
I have an incredible idea, Mr Quirk – might be worth looking at…
1. Start the ball rolling by hyping yourself up as some kind of industry commentator;
2. Get people to bankroll you for a few months by telling them whatever billshut floats their particular boat;
3. Spend waaaaay more than you can ever hope to bring in;
4. Repeat the process from Stage #2.
Oh. Someone obviously beat me to it.
Raise other peoples money, increase market share by a fraction, ask for more money, stay the same….rinse and repeat. Emoov is going nowhere. The only online receptionists with a chance are purple tricks, if they dont make it work, then there is no hope for this model. I agree with nextchapter above, they are all gradually edging up the fees and will have to in order to have any hope of making money. They are also realising that having a “local expert” isn’t fooling anyone. Before you know it they will start getting high street offices!
Odd. Russell was telling investors the call-centre model was doubling it’s market share from a claimed 5% baseline several years ago. The 5% market share claim (along with many other claims and stats’) was untrue then and remains so.
Russell has since distanced himself from his own original business model and statements about local knowledge being worthless in the hope of attracting more money from more people who don’t have a thorough enough understanding of the property market to do proper due-diligence.
I’m all for innovation but I have yet to see any of Russell’s claims that stand up to basic scrutiny.
I’m all up for innovation, technology and change but have emoov missed the boat? I think everyone should respect the fact that emoov CEO has been working hard to push forward an idea to change an industry and to keep that vision, passion and determination for almost 7 years is not easy! The thing that bugs me I suppose is the constant PR campaigns and the reasoning behind why investment is needed. First private investors, then crowd funding campaign for money from the public and now Richard Branson. I wish they’d just gone down the same route as purple bricks. Private investment and then stock market, it feels less like a con that way. To conquer the UK they will still needs millions and millions of pounds, to conquer Europe and the world 100s of millions! Emoov are prepping for a stock market float I’m sure, so the CEO and it’s investors can start finally seeing some sort of return in 5 years time. I predict price increases amongst all online agents over the next 5 years and it’s funny how they are now reverting back to hybrid Estate Agents. But still. Good luck
Not so much “missed the boat” in this instance it’s an old trawler that’s tied up along side the quay with a hand painted sign “trips around the bay” (Cheap…. trips around the bay) (Cheapest trips around the bay) (why pay more? trips around the bay) ( Like Uber but for trips around the bay)
Sounds more like a ‘Lieathon’ either that or Quirk is actually King Canute!
“emoov expects to start making money in 2018 and intends to take 10% market share by 2020”,,,, And my dog expects the best cushion to have a litter of puppies.