rent apartment berlin

hello, today we interview a real estatestartup it's called 123 makler and moritz, one of the founders, is sitting next to me hey there moritz, tell me something about yourself how did you start 123 marker and why? we kind of had the idea of starting 123 makler two years agowhen like there had been a rather drastical change and how agent feeswould be paid and by whome they would be paid and so we kind of dug deeper into themarket and understood that like the real estate markets

it's gigantic, it's enormously big andthere's actually very little transparency and almost nothing had beendigitalized and so understanding the process of marketing your property wehave kind of looked at it as there is in eighty percent of the cases you have aseller, an agent and a buyer and the parts between agent and buyer is verymuch taken over by the simple companies like immosscout24 however the link between seller and agent there's nothing yet, so we kind of startedtaking over the online marketing for real estate agents, started in junelast year and screwed to now 3000 companies

that we do the online marketing for. sobasically what we do is we look for customers online, forward them to thethe correct real estate agent, the one that they would feel most comfortablewith and get twenty percent of their fee once the deal has been finalized so it was really like seeing a market opportunity in a market that was really big but where there was really no one. how didyou contact the first, to the first agents what we had, this wasreally cold calls that we did so actually was me like calling up thefirst people and finding out how they feel, how they would feel about such aproduct

because agents do know that more andmore services are being looked up online yet they have really big problemslike attracting customers online, right? so they really felt great about ourservice and this was really than a, of a market proof of us and with agentswe always had a very good like we always had really goodconversion rates and obviously offering a product that is first free and onlyperformance-based and did you get rejected by some agents and what did they say? well of course i did! at the verybeginning we had been rejected by especially like bigger, likeespecially like the bigger premium

houses but that just took some monthsreally, until we like true to the point where we are now for them to enter that. i meanthey don't want to, obviously like we just offer like additional customers andyou don't really want to leave out like a chance on getting your nextrevenues which on average for a brokers is like 10000 euros so there's some realmoney involved in this and yeah i mean they sort of changed the attitudes towards us as they saw that we are true and when did you get into the real estate business and with whom did you find a company so, i had always been quite attracted toproperty like coming from like really a family

and whose like more indevelopment and so i had pretty much taken jobs in all parts of likedeveloping and marketing properties so i had seened like quite a lot, i wasactually working as a construction worker for some time and so, we, it was meand three friends from like who i went to school with, who sort oflike all had complimentary skills and features and yep that's how we gotit ok, cool and what were the biggestchallenges from the idea, did you sit together and thought like there's thething that can be changed and what was this process and how long did it take toactually find the company

well, i did actually take quite a long time soto really get like focused on a bit to find the right business model to findsomething that had a market fit that would take a while so we had, we did, lookat like various things you could do in this process actually when we like wanted to start, we had a whole different idea of what we wanted to do, sounderstanding what, how the market works, what would fit andwhat wouldn't kind of was a challenge for us and definitely took some months how did you test it or whatcould you tell other

people out there how they could imaginethat they could develop their business model well i guess, i mean, aiming for veryearly marketed, very early market tests that definitely helps and you reallydon't have to have a product to, you don't have to have a product topitch it to someone, right? so what we did we didn't really have anything developedbut we were pitching like the business model to agents and looking for amarket fit like before we even started so this definitely helps, right? liketrying to get your first customers and ask how i feel about it it's definitely a way you can go

what's so special about it? is it proptech? yeah, or the real estate industry,there are some big ones like airbnb or different ones.would you call yourself like the airbnb for real estate agents? i mean, yeah, you could sort of say that we are like a, so we are an open marketplace modelbasically where you find your, the best agents in germany and so airbnbis a marketplace too so you can compare it to industry respect and generally about like prop tech it's real estate is the very biggest, thesingle bigges sector in our economy however it is very, it is largelyundigitalized, so only like a few

companies really made proper advances togo into the market and have been successful in doing so so there is really a huge potential stillon, like, how property is being traded how it's being sold. there is still like a lot ofpotential in the market; it is like incredibly big do you think that virtual reality or keyless entry in flats or buildings will change something in this area? i mean, i guess like, i'm not a hundredpercent sure, like, i guess a little change in newbuilts, but i mean likelooking at a building for example, right, like six percent of the property here islike our beautiful altbauten and bringing in technology there, like,that you actually feel i guess it will

take a very long time and plus it's quitequite expensive in a market where most people rent, this reallylittle advantage to like, putting, like, technologyin it and about virtual reality how that will change property is something ireally don't know i believe that generally people will really like thisis going to be a huge thing and i could picture that and like i don't know 30 to40 years people will largely live in like virtual reality, right? and howthis will change living , i don't know could you imagine that realestate agents would put 360 camera inside a building that you canmake like a virtual?

so, basically i don't really believe thatthe marketing order, like, selling process of property will ever happen online not at asignificant extent at least because people have to feel the property so noone ever would, that i know, and i wouldn't, personally i wouldn't do it inany, by any case and would i ever buy a property online? i mean it is, after all it's going to bea huge investment and so, like, it like, even the smallest apartment doesn'tcome cheap and buying something without really seeing it without like feeling it,i mean you have to go, like, i think like this, you know, buildings have a vibe thatyou have to experience sort of

you have to go inside, you have to, like, just experinece it, and you can't ever put htis online, i think so i think it will help people, it will,you know, help people to like get a very good impression what it is and that it will definitelydo, so it will definitely help in marketing property but eventually youalways have to be there before buying it ok, and so you started in berlin why did youstart the company in berlin and did you live here and the other founders? so, i had been living here all ready for since a couple of years and we started, so two of us actually moved here, to berlin, and the reason being that you have a

very good environment and so you havegood developers which is obviously key to any tech company, right, you need goodpeople and berlin is a city that attracts developers that attracts creative people so that was a huge plus and then obviously you have anetwork of business angels of people in that environment and that kind offastest growth so it's i think i would it's a huge, i mean, it's a hugequestion the way actually find a company because like you can make up for notfinding the right people if you set it up in a place that likeis the force and self environment

and you could easily translate your platforminto another internal language do you have any plans to scale inanother or nearby country or something? so, i a business model like this is very straightforward and easily, relatively easily scalable so we're going to go to austria and switzerland this year and then plan on extending to other majoreuropean markets mid next year, so i mean this is after all like one advantage ofhaving like a digital platform and it is quite easilyscalable, expandable and how did you find your people?

how did you find them, did youjust write out like job postings or what kind of developers do you have? so yeah, that was in the beginningwe had focus on really finding the best people so we interviewed a lot and westarted with one developer and really having someone you can rely on andwho writes good code is like vitally important, really of vital importance, because it's really hard to pick up like if you start like working withfreelancers or with whoever it becomes really hard to further developon the code bases and so that's something that we tookhuge, that we put huge focus on

on finding the right people and initially ithink we had 20 to 30 interviews with people that would, like, that we thoughtwould fit and eventually it was just the other eventually it was what, one, that we reallyhad a good feeling with and then, did you start to pitch to investorsand did you find anyone from the real estate industry or? yes, so weare backed by really the major players and in both like in both agencies so we have the biggest premium agenciesbehind us and obviously also like people from the real estate business and peoplethat sort of like merge the two like real estate and tech and with ourbusiness model that is very like this

that is quite scalable. it wasrelatively easy for us to find money and generally you have to say, that you know - in prop tech, you have people, that i used to like, other sums of money so like 500 trends in tech will get youfar away but in property, like people that are used to dealing property, it's one apartment and they have 200 ofthem that they would do within a single project so you know like the there's a huge difference in how peopleperceive the money between the two so what is a lot to the tech industryisn't necessarily the stuff you need so much

yeah. do you think it's easierbecause in in germany there are more real estate investors than techinvestors compared to like silicon valley or whatever and do you think it'seasier to start in in this business than as a purely tech company? i guess, i think so, yeah. so it's morelike i mean what we do is basically we provide a very like a very transparentservice to people and this makes it it's really you can grasp it, but it's verylike its people can understand the business model people can see the platform and this isi think quite important when you want to attract investors for them to understandwhat you really do. and so the

more you can relate to it and obviouslylike selling property is something that most people can relate to or justdealing with property, the easier it actually is to get the peopleon board so i think that had definitely helped here and if you look back whatwere the biggest challenges up to, up to now from the beginning when yousit down and find a business model so one, it was finding good people and ithink eventually what it comes down to when you have a proper business model istwo things: that's money and people, right? so providing a environment that cangrow like this because of the money and then having great people willautomatically really boost

whatever you do and these were i thinklargely the two factors rewards most of all and definitely like were the mosttime consuming to find the two ok, so you're quite in in a good position right now to talkabout how is it to have a startiup or to wake up in the morning, how is your normal work day? but yeah it has become, like, relatively normal i guess you know it's not really like it's it's not really like a year ago when itwas all that we didn't know what was it like when you didn't have really that well ofa planned day

so imagine that, like you wake up what was the first thing that you did? back then you mean? yeah. well, yeah that was really largely the question that you would solve that very day so like you know there was somany things they would have to do like from i don't know, like meeting up with with agents that wanted to like that were sort of interested to likepitching to new people, preparing pitches, you know, i like, that it waslike all really uncoordinated yeah but so it was like a lot of thingsyou know you would have to do and now it sort of becomes more and more, well yeah, a normal job with very

like with long hours obviously but likevery like very well planned and thourughly and you do you enjoy it whenyou stay up late in the office or is there a point where you think.... not so much right now, sonow at berlin it's, you know, like green and beautiful but yeah it's like, i reallylike what to do and it's nice to work with people that you like and respect so what are you most gratefulfor right now? could be anything personalbusiness related? well i guess it would bebusiness-related, so it all went like it

all went really well i mean the platform exists a year andwe've grown to be like the biggest broker platform in europe and so that i'm quite grateful for that you know, they could have been like, itcould have gotten like any other way and there were like sort of like many routesthat would have that could have led to a potentially not so good outcome but that i'm really grateful for and you don't really sometimes you don't really know whythat actually so we had like i think a lot of like we also had a lot of goodlike faith and like it turned out to

be ok ok so the last question is, do you thinkthere's the kind of pattern or formula to become a successful startupentrepreneur? well that i would still have to prove,you know, before i could probably talk about this so no, i guess what like i heardand i just told you this is what someone told me the other day and what ifind to be really true is just like doing things, so you never know whether it'sgoing to be right or wrong, but basically what differentiates you as just like

doing things then must like, the outcome,you can't predict the outcome ever no one can and just like putting like aslike doing as many like obviously focused things right and like thingsthat would correlate to you're like that are on your strategic like pathbut then doing them and i think this is really that just doing things and likepushing things forward is probably what drives you. what was the best book you ever read? like, the best book that i have ever read this called "master and margarita" by bulgakov, that ireally like but some book that i really

like to give to people is called "pooreconomics" it's basically focuses on developmenteconomics and which i think we have a hugeresponsibility for like i mean as many people like, billions of people thatreally have a very very tough life don't know, not knowing, where the nextlike food like,the next meal will come from and it's really because of a hugeinsight and it's like just methodology, like from methodology that behind it andlike is set up like a great read i can recommend it to anyone ok did you have a role model back thenwhen you started, like a pearson who you were

really interested in not really, actually. and today? do youmean like a role model in a sense of i know the person orlike more like generally someone that i if i would be a race driver, i would thinkthat michael schumacher is a great person and he would be my rolemodel to follow yeah, well in this case i sort of do like elon musk, i have to say just like what obviously i think like what he achieved with likewith a broad range, within a very broad range of things from like finding paypal to like shooting rockets

in outter space is quite like,within the time frame that he achieved that i find really cool but that's obviously too far to grasp like to be the properrole model; right? yeah but elon musk is great andwhat was like the most important decision in your whole life? that forged you as a pearson, that you are today? wow, that's a big question too and i couldn't probably possibly put it down to one decisions, honestly, i think, yeah i actually

can't answer this question. could you give any advice to the people watching this? yeah, maybe that what we've beenexperiencing is that like generally it's all a lot easier than it seems onceit's started like most people will ask for help, most people will always help you so we've had like created experienceswith just really like asking like top-notch people for advice for help and the outcome has always been great, right? like so people always responded well andthen doing thing, you know? and like

obviously when you want todo something you're almost always quite insecure about it unless you've done itquite a lot of times but just really nothing to be afraid of andeven failing,i guess, isn't such a bad thing makes you like i guess in a lot of waysstronger it's just go out and like do things and ask people. so justdon't be afraid to fail don't be afraid to fail now, don't beafraid to look stupid because you won't people alwaysappreciate it when they have someone who like wants to do things who asked forhelp they always appreciate it ok moritz, thank you for theinterview

hope you enjoyed it if you liked thisvideo you know what to do if you have any questions leave it below in thecomments and here you will find a link to 123makler.de check out the website and what they do