Meet the CEO and co-founder of Kettel
Alex (CTO and Co-founder) and I (Trevor Stunden) met through a tech accelerator programme. We shared the same vision and had both recently come from building companies that were changing the landscape of residential property in the rental and home management space.
What was unique about the businesses that we’d first built, is that the focus was on the tenant or the owner. The first iteration of proptech has been focused on building for agents, sellers and developers. Our mutual passion for building products that deliver an amazing experience for overlooked customers has led us to focusing on helping first-time buyers.
Alex is a self-taught full-stack engineer who combines his love for building useful products with the application of behavioural science he gained while working at the UK’s famous Nudge Unit. While my journey has always been focused on working with companies that can provide a great customer experience at their core. Working for brands such as eBay, adidas and AB-Inbev (Budweiser, Corona & Stella Artois). I have spent my career to date seeking ways to leverage technology to enhance how customers experience products or services in the real world.
There’s always a lightbulb moment before the beginning of a new venture. What was that moment for you?
Speaking with hundreds of renters who said they’d like to buy, but weren’t sure how to go about it. When we started to do our research, it quickly became clear that all first-time buyers wanted to talk about was how horrible the entire experience was.
Buying your first home is one of life’s biggest moments. It’s comparable to getting married or having your first child. It’s a defining moment in many people’s personal and financial lives. But sadly, according to a Which? survey, it’s also considered the second most stressful thing you’ll do in your life.
Both Alex and I attempted to buy our first properties multiple times and even despite being part of the industry, found the processes archaic and lacking transparency. A combination of personal experience and connecting with renters who want to own made it clear to us that there could be a better way.
What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?
After experiencing first-hand how difficult it is to buy your first home, Alex and I knew there could be a better way to make the process more transparent and seamless.
Millennials are now accustomed to being able to do everything on their phone while getting a much better level of service and transparency into their purchases. We wondered how you could order takeaway, book travel or even buy a car from your phone, but one of the biggest and most important purchases of your life wasn’t supported by technology.
We’re starting by linking all the fragmented components in the first-time buyer’s purchase process. First-time buyers are unique. They require a higher level of personalised guidance as this is not something we teach in school (a topic for another day). Because the process is rather complex, filled with industry jargon and fraught by all sorts of hidden challenges, we knew that transparency would be a great spot to start tackling the problem.
Our ultimate goal is building a platform where first-time buyers can research, finance and complete on their home from one single spot. Your education, property search, mortgage application, conveyancing, survey, insurance and home move would all be done seamlessly on your phone. No more connecting the various service providers. No more entering your data 5 times. No more chasing suppliers to understand what’s next. By consolidating the purchase in one place, we give control back to first-time buyers, which translates into reduced fees, increased transaction speeds and ultimately a more enjoyable experience.
What’s the most common problem your customers approach you with?
When we first started speaking with buyers, we were actually researching a different problem, but all first-time buyers wanted to talk about was how terrible the experience was. In particular, its lack of transparency, the fragmented process and the level of stress they endured throughout. Some would even compare it to a traumatic experience.
They’d start by telling us they felt lost when trying to understand the purchase process. They’d cruise Google trying to understand what they need to do, only to find themselves wasting hours on end without truly understanding what they personally needed to do next. They’d then tell us about their frustration in finding service partners to get them a mortgage, do their conveyancing and complete their survey. Again, more googling.
Finally, they’d tell us about the lack of connection between their advisors and how they had no idea what was happening during the purchase process. They felt like they were being left in the dark and magnifying an already stressful situation.
Is word of mouth working to your advantage?
Word of mouth is key for our business. What we find is that first-time buyers are heavily influenced by their peer group. Similar to other major life milestones like having kids, we tend to see that once someone in their close friend group makes the decision to buy, many start to think about doing so as well.
If at a barbeque or dinner party in your twenties or thirties and the topic of buying your first home doesn’t come up, it’s a rarity. If someone has recently purchased their first-home in your friend group, they are going to tell you about it. The good, the bad and especially the ugly.
Most people heavily rely on anecdotes from their friends and family when it comes to buying a home. If you’re not lucky enough to have had a good friend or family member recently purchase a house or work in the industry, many people turn to the large Facebook and Reddit support groups to seek advice and guidance.
Because of this level of trust people put in their friends when making one of life’s biggest purchase decisions, it’s imperative we’re top of mind when they’re having that conversation. We do this by focusing on our customer experience and building products that help first-time buyers regain control of their purchase. As there’s no platform out there that offers hands on end-to-end support, we believe there’s a level of surprise and delight that comes with the Kettel experience.
How does technological advancement speak to the strategic direction of your business?
We’re finally in an era where the historically laggard real estate industry is starting to recognise the benefits of adopting technology. Service providers are recognising that in order to differentiate themselves, they need to provide a better customer experience too. For a generation that has grown up with an iPhone in their pocket, using technology to simplify the home buying experience is a must.
Estate agents, mortgage brokers and conveyancers have recognised that they need to deliver a better service and there are various technologies they can use to facilitate that. Despite the adoption of these new technologies, there still remains a gap in delivering a seamless and more transparent experience across the entire transaction.
To order dinner you wouldn’t order ingredients from a farmer, send them to a chef and then call a cab to pick up the food when it’s ready. No, you open Deliveroo and they do all that for you. Kettle’s ability to connect all these disparate parts onto one platform and provide the buyers with a transparent view on their transaction allows us to provide a much better customer experience than any single fragmented player in the purchase process.
What are some ways in which you are breaking data and analytics to find opportunity / strengthen processes?
Every home purchase is unique and because of this we need to offer a personalised journey for the customer. Using the data provided by our customers about what is important to them helps us shape what support they need along the way. Some customers are using help to buy, while others are getting their deposit gifted. Each of these scenarios requires personalised guidance to help them manage their purchase.
We understand that everyone’s purchase journey happens at their own pace. This is important to appreciate as it guides how we want to surface support for our users and when to introduce them to the next step in the journey.
What’s your best advice for early-stage tech founders getting ready to launch their MVP?
Love him or hate him, Jeff Bezos is undeniably one of the most amazing entrepreneurs of our lifetime. His experience of building a small online book store into the everything store started with an MVP. It was books. A simple website that sold books.
Whenever I speak with fellow early-stage founders, I always like to ask them “what is your book”? I think it’s a great question to ask yourself when you’re building a product. All founders have a massive vision for their business or they wouldn’t do it, which is great, but you need to start somewhere. If you can’t find your initial book, it will be nearly impossible to build your dream.
I’ve found this question very useful to ask myself and my team in our early stages. It’s not easy and sometimes even frustrating, but I think it’s a great exercise in keeping ourselves honest and on the right track when there are lots of competing requests pulling you in different directions.
How do you believe the evolution of tech will impact your industry over the next 10 years?
We’re going to move from buying a house in 20 weeks, to buying a house in a few minutes. Buyers and sellers will be connected seamlessly without agents, mortgages will be done instantly based on open banking profiles, conveyancing will be highly automated and powered by a plethora of data sources.
When you’ve decided you want to move (or maybe even when you’re data says you should), AI will manage most of the process and provide key insights like the best property for you based on your personal situation, finances and life goals. Residential real estate is on the precipice of foundational change. We predict the 2020’s will be for real estate what the 2010’s were for e-commerce and we’re excited to help shape that journey.
How is digitisation empowering your business?
As I mentioned, in general the real estate industry is behind many others in embracing technology. As we continue to digitise all the information in, around and about our homes we’ll start to see opportunities that weren’t possible before.
Our homes hold such a wealth of analogue and anecdotal data that could be used to make buying, operating and selling a home so much easier and efficient. You have an operating system for your computer, why don’t you have one for your home?
What routines have you got in place to ensure that you don’t ignore your mental health?
There’s no doubt it’s difficult and to be honest, more difficult than I anticipated. You always have competing priorities, but it’s important to be efficient with your time and to make time for the people and things that matter. It’s so easy to skip something like a workout, saying “I just need to get this done”. But as a founder, there will always be that next thing that “just needs to get done”.
For me, it’s about making time to relax with my wife and go for a ride on my bike. I live by my calendar and making sure I book time for the things that keep me grounded and decompress, only makes me more productive when I need to be.
You’re always going to have that bit of guilt in the back/front of your mind. (Almost) every founder has it. The idea that every moment you’re not thinking or working on your business you're wasting an opportunity. It’s tough to put this aside, but what I find for me is that the only way to stay energised and focussed is to step back on occasion and take a breather.
