Founder Interview: André Roque – upgrading rental property management
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In the world of AirBnB and Booking.com, homeowners are looking for alternatives to costly and inefficient traditional key systems. For Homeit founders André Roque, Pedro Mendes and Pedro Viana, this market disconnect offered a window of opportunity to streamline and simplify rental property management.
Homeit’s bundles serve as all-encompassing smart access solutions that are integrated with the booking systems and platforms homeowners already use and suitable for almost any door type on the market. Acting as a smart technology access layer to facilitate the Sharing Economy, Homeit eliminates the logistical headache and costs associated with lost keys, odd check-in/check-out times and management of cleaning and laundry suppliers.
We sat down with Homeit co-founder and CEO André Roque to discuss Homeit’s vision within the rental property management space.
What is the Homeit vision and why are you personally passionate about it?
We really want to empower people to live out their dreams, whenever and wherever they want. This applies to me personally and to the many friends and acquaintances I have, scattered all around the world. I wish that this sort of empowerment that we are trying to build with Homeit existed 10 years ago. Now, we finally have the opportunity to empower people to live their lives the way they want to.
How does Homeit differentiate itself from competitors in the market?
Homeit is the easiest to use and easiest to communicate and that’s really what sets us apart. It’s a smart access solution specifically designed for short term rentals, making it essentially a one-stop-shop for for locks, intercoms, keypads and installations, compatible with all doors. That way, our clients don’t have to worry about sourcing a smart lock and then organizing the logistics involved in controlling the guest’s service providers. We’re building a network of connected homes so that homeowners can more efficiently coordinate guest usage, goods and services. That’s not something that other providers are able to offer.
How does Homeit plan to go about achieving projections for the coming year?
We’ve had a great deal of organic engagement as a result of our marketing efforts but we are hoping to expand on this in the future to be able to grow our brand. We’ve established a shared margin with a number of locksmiths and security hardware stores who already install our system, but have also shown interest in reselling it. This poses a great deal of opportunity, as would listing on sites like Amazon and eBay – something we are looking to do after this investment round. We also want to integrate our services through developing partnerships with companies that serve the same customer base. All of this will enable us to sell more boxes, which is ultimately the key to maintaining a positive cashflow over the next few years.
What is it that makes you and your team work well together?
Firstly, it comes down to strong personal and working relationships we have with people we’ve known very well for years, and mutual respect for the high quality of work we all do here Secondly, we’ve managed to build a well functioning and collaborative process as a team that we all both trust and follow in order to get our work done. In building and improving the Homeit system, we’ve really had to pave our own way, which is one of the inevitable challenges of operating in an innovative space. But, after a few tough years, we are still here, still united and about to launch a new version of our hardware product! These are really exciting times.
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For more information on Homeit’s crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs, visit here.
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