There has been a change at the top at online agent Yopa.
Co-founder and former CEO Daniel Attia has become chairman. He founded the business in 2014 at the age of 23.
He has now been succeeded by Ben Poynter, who was the chief financial officer.
A new chief financial officer has yet to be announced.
A spokesperson for Yopa told us: “Dan remains actively involved in running Yopa and they are working closely together to continue to drive the business forward.”
The change at Yopa follows a similar move at HouseSimple, when founding CEO Alex Gosling became president. He was replaced by Sam Mitchell, former head of lettings at Rightmove, who took up his role in January.
Like other online start-ups, both Yopa and HouseSimple are expensively backed.
HouseSimple is backed by Carphone Warehouse founder Sir Charles Dunstone and his business partner Roger Taylor.
Yopa’s backers include LSL who poured £20m into it last September; Savills who invested £16m in 2015 plus part of a £15m funding round last year; and the Daily Mail and General Trust.
Other online firms which have seen significant management changes include easyProperty and Tepilo.
Comments (12)
Yopeless
Thing is, none of these wealthy individuals or indeed the ivory towered corporate decision makers appreciate how expensive this business is, cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, less resource less resource less resource, you can’t live particularly well in this trade generally at most levels as is, too busy earning a living to make any money
This is now looking like it really is the beginning of the end. Burning through the investors cash will accelerate if the no sale no fee model replaces the upfront model. I suspect that the ‘LPE’s’, in the absence of a retainer, will start to look for employment elsewhere and very urgently. It seems that the cash burn, ever reducing sales volumes, increasing suspicion of the vendors asked to pay upfront, has created a lurch to try and play on a level playing field with the full service agents.
No disrespect intended but, if the LPE’s were that good they would have set up their own agency or be in a comfortable job with an existing employer. Therefore, the future is looking less rosy in the hybrid garden and they may all go this way and then just go?
If I was the person at LSL who sanctioned the £20m investment I would probably be looking over my shoulder and not have too many personal belongings left in my desk over night. Yopa would have only had to list 23,837 properties or sell 13,300 no sale no fee properties to make this amount. Very sound financial judgement. By Yopa that is!! How do you justify such a spend to your shareholders? Perhaps Alison Platt was giving out advice.
An action indicative of someone completely out of touch with the market and the industry imo. Ali Pali was and I think so are the majority of the senior management at most of the corporate agents. On an office by office basis, none of them get anywhere close to the performances of the best independents. Size and economy of scale helps keep them in the game.
At what point do all these investors look at the bottomless pit of money and say enough is enough?
The pay win or lose, online listing only, brigade will only make a dent so far into the market, which they are doing now, but without making a profit and by spending huge amounts of backers cash.
Once they have dug in as far as they are going to.. then the fun starts. Their cheapness no longer cuts the mustard, they are competing with each other and they are all cheap. Why pay pb £850 when Doorsteps will do it for £99 ? Falling fees just when you are making chuff all anyway. Nah, not for me thanks.
The disruptors are disrupting themselves.
Keep it up.
I sometimes think, the reason firms like Savills invest in these businesses is to confirm to themselves and the industry that they don’t work.
So we should be grateful to Savills for testing the market for others.
I also believe Yopa will would make a great Ice Cream brand name #random….. lol.
They are a pain. They help start on the market as well which has cost estate agents millions . can u believe it’s 4 years sinceà they promised to kill rightmove. ALL agents outside london need to open in london for free and get rid of these parasite overpaid commercial agents who dabble in sales.
So many unrealistic investor subsidised fees to try and destroy small local family supporting businesses…..in order to make already rich people more money than they can possibly spend in a hundred lifetimes!!!
So many Titanics. So many deck chairs.
Who is Daniel?. His dad a hedge fund manager or is he a tech genius? I see they set up and pivoted straight away after realising customers aren’t as stupid as they hoped. Where is the online industries honour?