StartUs Presents: nestpick

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Fabian Dudek and I’m founder and CEO at nestpick.

Why is your startup special?

We allow people from all over the world to find and rent their homes in the most simple, secure and convenient way, 100% online. You could also say, real estate agents hate us.

With a transparent platform, a dedicated Happiness Team and thorough a verification system, we enable tenants to rent apartments and rooms for a couple of months or even years in a matter of 50 seconds.
We started out just helping internationals and after a while more and more locals started renting with us. So following that, we naturally are now working on setting a new standard of how people rent and let apartments.

What problem do you solve?

While I was trying to find a place, I got really annoyed with scammers, that tried to steal deposits from me as well as real estate agents that are just ripping people off with their ridiculous fees.

For landlords we are just the most convenient solution out there: you list your place once and we continuously send you new tenants, even before the place is empty again. There is no annoying back and forth e-mailing and there is no time in which you do not earn money with your place, because it is empty.

How did you develop key partnerships?

Our partners must believe in the same vision as we at nestpick. We chose partners that aim for transparency, that believe in honesty – challenging status quos and also believe that it is time to change the real estate market. Given that we are aligned on these beliefs, then we have a very strong basis for a very fruitful partnership.

How did you distinguish yourself from your competitors?

Our transactions are concluded entirely online. Consequently we have our own photographers to verify and visualize the properties, giving you the feeling that you can view 100s of apartments in just minutes. Indeed we are actually the first company that allows tenants to rent and landlords to lend places for months and years in more than 40 different cities entirely online.

I believe that at some point renting completely online will be as popular as buying shoes online is, it’s just a matter of time.

To what do you attribute your success?

I honestly believe that what we do at nestpick will change the world and the way people rent their homes (even how they take the decision to move or not). We are looking at a generation, that is more educated and more likely to move than any generation before. Many of my friends already lived in more than 3 countries and even those that did not, at least moved a couple of times within their city or country.
nestpick is just a result of this change and that is why we are successful.

Secondly, this belief I described above created a culture that enables our team to be truly proud of what we do, resulting in everyone doing the best they can. Having a team that shares the same values and objectives is the best way to reach something that seemed out of reach.

Why do you think this company can beat the competition?

We do not care about competition. Startups do not fail because of competition, they fail because they screw up internally. 99% of all rentals are concluded offline, so we have 99% to divide up with our competition. As long we focus on the customer and on building something we can be proud of, we will be successful.

What are you most excited about at the moment?

Every month, more nests are added to the website and more people rent them – that is honestly most exciting.
If you want me to mention a specific thing, then I would say, how real estate laws are changing and what this will do to the market. There are also a couple of cool new product features and another insurance we will be launching, that will be pretty cool.

How many team members do you have? Why are they important?

We have about 100 nestees now. The early staff and the early culture that a company develops is so determining for where you are able to go in the future, so obviously every single person in our team is unbelievably valuable. The website would be nothing, if we would not all bring it to life on a daily basis.

What do you look for in a team member?

We look at two things – culture and performance. We like passionate people. The ones that believe in what we are doing, feel empathy with our landlords and tenants and try to do their best to help.

Give us examples of how your Online Rental Platform is used. What is the most bizarre use you have come across?

There have been a couple of different things. We had one girl that contacted us, because her landlord (that we obviously did not list on our site) put up cameras in the room to check if guests were visiting (as that was forbidden). She booked a nest with us and we made sure she could get in the same day.

Now this one is cheesy, but I will mention it anyway: We actually also had a guy and a girl move from Italy and Sweden to Barcelona – after they moved in we received a letter, later of them telling us, that they had fallen in love and were giving part of the credit to nestpick.

Have you ever turned down a client? If yes, why?

Yes, there are landlords who are looking to rent out rooms in their own apartment, but they are only looking for good looking girls. Those are generally landlords we turn down. Apart from that, we try our best to find a perfect fit for the tenant and the landlord. Our team is ready to put as much effort as it’s necessary to make it happen.

Describe your first sale or customer you had.

I started the business some years ago in the Netherlands. At that time I was a student struggling to find a home myself. After a tense time of being afraid to end up homeless I found a place with quite a nice landlord and I started to help my landlord to rent out his rooms.

The first tenant was a girl from Singapore, that I probably sent 30 emails with. Sending pictures of places, explaining rental conditions and so on. That is actually how we tested the minimum viable product by chance.

Do you use the services of a professional accountant or attorney?

What kind of question is that :D. Yeah now we use multiple ones. I actually tried to outsource these tasks, that clearly offer no potential for a company to differentiate itself very early to focus on the important things.

Your advice for other startups?

I believe that advice for start-ups can usually just be applied to life just as much. You need to learn quickly that you will not be able to control everything. However, there are two things you can control.
First, you can make sure to have as much fun as possible in the process and second you can make sure to learn as much as you can. If you persist in these two, a lot of other things will fall into place naturally.