Strike, the online estate agency, has been selected to join Tech Nation’s Future Fifty programme.
The company, which says it sells homes for free, is joining the growth programme with a view to empowering and connecting tech companies across the UK, ‘helping them to grow stronger and faster through peer-to-peer learning and in-depth masterclasses’.
Well-known firms such as Monzo, Bulb, Deliveroo and Zoopla have previously been part of the programme, while this year’s cohort sees Cazoo, what3words, Tessian, Wolf & Badger, and others join alongside Strike.
Strike says its selection comes off the back of an £11m funding round and a huge jump in market share in the north of England.
The service launched in Yorkshire and the North West in June 2019, followed by Nottingham and the North East in 2020. More recently the company expanded into the central region and has announced plans to go national by early 2022.
Strike customers can control and manage the entire process of moving home via its mobile app, with the digital-first agent creating a new, simple way for people to buy and sell.
Sam Mitchell, CEO of Strike, said: “We’ve always had a powerful, disruptive ambition and viewed ourselves as a tech company first — and our inclusion in Tech Nation’s Future Fifty programme is recognition of that.
“We’re excited to follow in the footsteps of so many other innovative and groundbreaking companies who have changed the way we think and live. Just like them, we’ve never been afraid to disrupt the industry we’re in and we believe it is one that it is long over-due some changes.”
Gerard Grech, CEO of Tech Nation, added: “The companies selected to join this year’s Future Fifty programme are a shining example of the UK’s entrepreneurship, innovation and resilience.
“Based across the UK, nurturing the growth of these scaling late-stage tech companies is critical to future proofing the UK’s economy.”
The graveyard is starting to fill up with estate agency businesses that can’t and possibly never will make a profit. With stock running low, losses in already loss-making firms will deepen as we draw closer to Christmas.
If a business is haemorrhaging cash by giving everything away, it can only be a matter of time before the flow of investment gets slower and slower and eventually the investment will stop altogether.
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I totally agree AlwaysanAgent, though its cash burn rate has always been at fever pitch from day one, its last financials at companies house are a case study in how not to scale up a business, without investors with deep pockets it would have gone the way of Emoov (1) Tepillo, Hatched …. insert the name of six other onliners who have ceased trading or have never ever made a penny profit. In fact looking at the recent financials of Strike and its ability to burn through multi millions with little sign of ever obtaining an EBITDA rating (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) and the fact like many online models which bit the dust in the past, as they had only the thinnest veneer of tech, I am genuinely amazed that Tech Nation which is hugely sponsored by Government funding has decided to allow them on the programme.
Strike’s freemium model, based upon referral income, is in no way a tech business based upon AI and ML, which Tech Nation itself states are, ‘now key foundations for many new platforms; in fact, in Europe 378 deals were completed within ‘Big Data’ companies in 2020, and 91% used AI and ML. The other vital technologies for innovation are robotics and drones; augmented reality and virtual reality (AR and VR); Internet of Things (IoT); and blockchain and cryptocurrency’.
My whole life’s work is immersed in tech startups, scale ups and increasingly tech companies on their exit journey, and it is the innovation at the base tech level that adds the value to the end client and the business. Endless rounds of cash injections to support projects that have a fundimentally flawed MVP, with little capital investment in ground breaking tech are never going to scale up.
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You talk a LOT about your work with tech companies, care to give us some company names? Perhaps some that most of us have heard of.
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