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This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.
homefully Offers Co-Living in Germany and Switzerland and is Looking to Expand
During studies I moved on average every six month and rented furnished apartments. I could not find such an option in Frankfurt.Sebastian Würz, CEO and Founder homefully
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We started homefully as a side business, but it grew and grew. So, I had to make a decision. And I went all in.Sebastian Würz, CEO and Founder homefully
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We started homefully as a side business, but it grew and grew. So, I had to make a decision. And I went all in.Sebastian Würz, CEO and Founder homefully
Update in June 2021
homefully was acquired by Habyt. The transaction was announced on June 2nd 2021:
The Founder
This time we talk to Sebastian Wuerz (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastianwuerz/) the founder and CEO of the co-living startup homefully (https://homeful.ly/), a proptech headquartered in Frankfurt, offering furnished apartments across Germany and Switzerland. This trend is called co-living and offers a convenient way for ex-pats to relocate to a new city and have instant social connections. Sebastian graduated with an international MBA, which took him to Warsaw University, DUFE (Dongbei University of Finance and Economics 东北财经大学), and the University of North Florida.
Before starting homefully Sebastian also had stints in wealth management in Singapore and investment banking in Frankfurt.
We have roughly 50% international tenants.Sebastian Würz, CEO and Founder homefully
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The Startup
Initially, Sebastian and his co-founder started homefully (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/homefully, https://homeful.ly/) as a side business. After returning to Frankfurt from abroad Sebastian realized that he could barely find any furnished apartments. This was the point he saw an opportunity.
After growing for some time Sebastian took the leap and went all in to become a full-time entrepreneur.
The locations from homefully are always in the most vibrant neighborhoods in prime locations. They work with several approaches, including local community scouts to find these places.
They are also differentiating themselves from competitors by working with project developers and institutional investors to develop projects form homefully. Currently, they are targeting the top seven cities in Germany but are open to talk with project developers in other big European cities, as well as internationally. They already entered Zürich, in Switzerland.
We work with existing inventory, but we also work with institutional investors and developers to work on homefully developments in prime locations.Sebastian Würz, CEO and Founder homefully
Correction
At around 18.35 I say that SleevesUp! Is a co-living provider, that is wrong. They are offering co-working. Really sorry about that. Have a look at their interview here:
We start with a minimum contract length of three months and our tenants can stay as long as they want.Sebastian Würz, CEO and Founder homefully
Venture Capital Funding
homefully was bootstrapped for the first two years. Then they did a funding round with HV Capital in early 2018. The company is planning to raise a new round of debt and equity financing in 2021.
In addition, they are also looking to work with real estate investors, where the investor brings in their assets and homefully brings in their tech and management skills. With this, both parties jointly develop the asset to a co-living property. They call this committed capital.
You do not need physically to be in the city you are renting, you can rent a property completely online with us. … You don’t need to speak German.Sebastian Würz, CEO and Founder homefully
The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, April 15th, 2021 at 17.00 CET (Frankfurt/Paris/Zürich/Milano)
The Audio Interview
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Further Readings / Additional Resources
Value Investing https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueinvesting.asp
Wealth Management https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wealthmanagement.asp
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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Automated Transcript
Intro
[0:00] Music.
[0:08] That I owe you were podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startups.With News interviews and Live Events.Hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from startupradio Darrow your startup podcast and you do blog from Germany today bringing you another interviewin our series with invest in hessen.com the state where Frankfurt is located you know we bring you alwaysinteresting startups looking for international expansion may be looking for investors and international cooperation Partners I’m very happy to have Sebastian as a guest here on startupradio darou,your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany as well as the world’s first internet radio station dedicated to startups and Tech,companies if you have not already done so make sure to hit the like And subscribe button and leave us a nice comment as always there will be linked down here in the show notes where you can find,everything we talked about as well as the best chance LinkedIn profile and his company website Sebastian,how you do I do I’m good thank you thanks for having me on your show.
[1:27] Totally my pleasure it was long in the making but we get to this soon after we may say that you are the founder of what,some people may call a prop Tech code homefully headquartered herein Frankfort and as always I have been stalking you a little bit on LinkedIn and as always your LinkedIn profile will be linkeddown here in the show notes there depending on the service you are listening to this there is a link it’s either working or not workingnot our choice and there you’ll find the blog post and in the blog post there is the link to your LinkedIn profile so people can link,can link out directly to you or Reach Out directly to you on LinkedIn did I just make up another word I don’t knowand basically I’ve seen a lot of interesting stops along your way,I realize you went to University in Cologne despite that you went to a school in Thailandyou went to University in mainland China dongbei.In wash how and University of North Florida so tell us first a little bit what you studied and how it led to you to become the founder and CEO of homefully.
Sebastian — The Founder
[2:53] Yeah happy to do so I think you listed a lot of a lot of stops along the way in a very correct order alreadyso first of all I did during my bachelor’s degree I studied international business a semester abroad in Thailand so that was my first my firstlonger stay abroad,after my bachelor’s degree I started working in asset management for a wealth management company in Singapore.So we did help German and swiss clients to invest in Asian Pacific stocks and I also helped.Building an asia-pacific value fund with.With stocks basically focusing on the asia-pacific region.
[3:42] Afterwards I did an international MBA and this MBA program had several stations so it started in Cologne,the University of cologne followed by a semester in Warsaw,at the University of Warsaw then summer school and China mainland China and Dahlia and it finished with the master thesis in Florida at the University of North Florida.So I was I was collecting quite quite a lot of quite a lot of different countries and quite a lot of different University and work Arrangements along the way.
[4:20] I actually found a year stopin Thailand very intriguing what I had in mind was you lying on the beach with the tablet and studying their I do assume it was not that way butthat was the picture I had in my mind we do have a lot of listeners on Somalia from mainland China can you tell us a little bit about your experience at Dalian.Yeah so Dalian we had three month of University there.
[4:53] And it was a really interesting time we we’re coming directly from from Poland transitioning transitioning to to China.And it was a very exciting time because suddenly you’re realizing and this was for me the very first time that I have realized that when traveling abroad,you’re not understanding the language you’re not understanding anything at all because at this point we were not in abig city at least considering the fact that a six or seven yeah seven million,city with the six or seven million inhabitants in China it’s not considered a big city so you don’t have a big International population they are you know you don’t have have read in experts in there despite,being such a big city for European standards so it was really really interesting and we got a lot of help and support fromour local or fellow students there were able to speak Chinese and were able to to speak Mandarin and this was for me the very first time that I reallyhad to rely on my on my fellow students there because you are getting exposed to world.Where you really don’t understand anything at all out of sudden when no one speaks English but no sign is in English.
[6:15] And you are just realizing okay this is a compact I really feel that I’ve lived in Beijing what I Beijing I love Beijing,I still miss it but what would help me Lord where the people were kind and understanding when I tried out my Mandarin it got better over time but at the end I was still only able to see say very stupid things like,I want to buy that this is too expensive I want to take a cab to this and that place and so on and so forth,that was really nice and will Woods also funny is I was once they’re ordering beer,and I held up my index finger and my thumb which is a parent which is,Chinese symbol for eight so they gave us eight before two guys that was there was one of my my funniest experiences in China but,they smiled.Nodded and gave us a peer just amazing place let us get a little bit serious into business as you said value investing will have a link down here in the show notes.
[7:19] It’s a certain approach for investing and I do see you is you’ve also made some stints EdgeInvestment Banking here in Frankfortanything you learned they’re like really useful except for working long hours and really testing the limit of excel.
[7:44] You’re right I came that’s that’s also the reason why I came back to Germany back to Frankfurt I used to work in a job and Investment Banking Consulting.
[7:58] I think this industry is still a very very interesting industry I mean you you have a steep learning curve I was there for almost three years working as a consultant there,at some point I think you have to decide if this is the industry you want to stay in like you said long hours I mean you get paid above average.You you you need to have especially an interest for such a fast-paced environment.That’s for sure you also need to have interest in financial and capital markets but I think it’s a really good industry to learn and to growbut for me personally I always had the idea to start my own business to start somethingon my own start the intrapreneurial journey so for me that this was a really good really good time where I learned a lot apart fromFinancial modeling in Excel.So I think when you enter this industry you have to be you have to be very very clear on what you are what you’re getting out of it and what you want to get out of it and then you have to decide at some point if you if you want to leave after two or three years really really.Take advantage of that learning experience or if we want to stay into that into in that industry and make like really work up your career and work up in the ranks.So I think both options are possible.
Starting Homefully
[9:24] Even though we did not discuss this but you gave me a great Lounge point to ask why you decided to leave and start homefully it is it just worked out wonderfully thank you.You’re welcome so I did start homefullyessentially as a side business with my co-founder at this point so we never really tender in the first place to build a market-leading startup here.So I came from abroad I always lived in different co-living Arrangements back then when I when I was studying and working abroad.And I came back to Frankfurt again back to Germany and I realized okay the current real estate market here.It’s not really comparable to what I have experienced the broad so there were almost no places that offered furnished living.
[10:16] A lot of places that I that I looked at didn’t even have a kitchen.And that was something that I wasn’t that I wasn’t really used to that but I was not really expecting at this point so we decided,and we may add for everybody who’s listening to this or watching this from abroad so basically you’re not referring that there was,apartment layout without a kitchen but in Germany you have those built in kitchens that means allall the installation of the plugs water Wastewaterenergy they are all there but you’d still have to put in all your furniture all your electricalElectra stuff like the fridge like the often and so on and so forth and you have to pay for it yourself,German thing we don’t get into details but basically the place is there but the furniture is missing that’s what you’re referring to right exactly exactly and I left an a little bit different countries and moved.Around quite a lot I moved on average every six months to another place so I was I was used to,get that kind of flexibility which I didn’t really see in the German real estate market.
[11:31] So we decided to launch homefully our coding approach as a side business first and then itaccelerated and it grew and grew and at some point I decided okay I need to decide if I want to continue doing my job,if you want to continue being employed or if I want to do that full time and I decided to yeah to go all in take the rest take the take the risk quit my job and start doing homefully full-time.I see you guys are active in Germany as well as Switzerland big gritty to Switzerland here.
[12:09] I was wondering did you feel any change over the last year especially like an uptick in.In requests in in tenants from the UK after brexit or something like this.
[12:29] So we always had a rather big crowds around a big customer mace coming from abroad so when you look at our portfolio with our customer base,we have roughly 50% that our German Nationals and the other 50% are Internationals and expats.So mostly those 50% Internationals are from other European countries so Italy Spain France and the UK.
[12:59] Even I don’t know exactly when the brexit discussions started I think it started at some point already back in 2013 and 14.But we didn’t really see it big a big change we always had a pretty pretty good amount of Internationals coming from the UK.But I don’t think we saw this like huge wave at some point of like.
[13:24] People from Britain flooding flooding the financial center of Frankfort.I see a let let us now after we’ve like all the macro stuff out of the way let us get into the micro stuff like what you guys areactually,offering because my understanding is you’re not building like big apartment blocks with apartments with a lot of bedrooms and say okay that’s called living go guys that’s it you have different approach right.
[13:52] Essentially we do both so I want approaches to work with existing inventory that is already built that is already on the market.But we also working with institutional investors and project Developers.To work on homefully Project developments in cities in Prime locations and we are focusing on very Central locations and on the most vibrant neighborhoods,to create Living Spaces where they are needed the most essentially so this is something that I think.Differentiates us from the competition because they either do one or the other and we basically work with both approaches on this case.I see am so talking about the most vibrant neighborhoods.
[14:40] My question would be how do you actually pinpoint the most vibrant neighborhoods for example.In FrankfortI would say most fatal the red light district around Central Station is pretty fancy there was even an article in the New York Times talking about that that’s a pretty good hint maybe it’s it’s alreadytoo fancy but how do you how do you actually do that in other cities for example somebody.Who’s moving Tootsie rig how do they find out what’s the hard what’s the next big place to be.
[15:19] Using two approaches simultaneously so first of all we having.A pretty clear framework of kpis how we rank certain parts of a city on a micro level and on the other hand we are already in the business for almost 5 years now,so we already bring in quite a good amount of experience.So we deem ourselves not me personally on this nerve and our team of community managers.We see them as experts for that particular city so we can offer a broad range of different co-living spaces throughout that particular City.
[15:57] And like you already mentioned you have very different kind of neighborhoods within within one City FL Frankfort for instance the bond of Seattle neighborhood.Which is very Urban very Central like you needs you need to want to live in that particular place and you also have,for instance the West Side area where it’s a bit more quiet when it’s also very simple,and then we basically choose and pick automatically depending on your preferences.The neighborhoods are the area of the co-living space that fits you the most ideal that’s that’s kind of like our approach in this casehey hat another question when you’ve been talking like you work with project developers basically to get a project like a building develop to your needs I would be curious,
Working With Project Developers And Institutional Investors To Develop Homefully Properties
[16:50] where are you looking around and if this interview right now,is hurt by a project developers some way in the US in Asia somewhere else in Europe would be would you be open to talk to them as well.
[17:07] Absolutely so we are currently targeting the top seven circles and Germany.So the top seven of the essentially the 7 biggest cities Frankfurt Munich Berlin Hamburg Stuttgart cologne in the soda.But we also interested in working together with.Project developers in other big European metropolises for instance at Zurich we already have.Well first International Hub and we also plan to expand further into into a new international cities and international markets with the 2021 and followingsomething you have in mind they’re just just instant thought would be something like Paris Barcelona Madrid stuff like that.
[17:55] So Paris is very much on our list Barcelona I think it’s a really really great City a really great spot for co-living in general.Not only because of the weather but because it’s like a very very vibrant Tech seen that it is that is growing there.So yeah absolutely those those kind of cities are the ones that we are currently that we are going to be looking at and that we also currently targeting.
[18:23] We recently talked to Sebastian from sleeves up co-working spaces here in Frankfurt and he talked about that he’s more interested in debt financing because,co-living spaces all usually a casefor the the normal Bank credit what would be your approach more Equity or single financing of the debt financing of single project.
Funding And Expansion
[18:49] Except for the very first two years so we put in our own money and weekly organically.And after three years we realized okay capital is all bottleneck when it comes to expansion.And we raised all first-round from from Venture capitalists so we did our first round with HP capital in early 2018.And that’s the way we move forward we are planning to raise a new round and this year and we’re looking actually for a mixture of debt and Equity financing.Because we have a we have a certain part of our business that is.
[19:27] That is ideally suitable for Equity financing for instance when you were building like an old case your own technology are you investing in the operational part of the business and into the brand.
[19:38] And on the other hand we also looking for that financing when it comes to.
[19:44] Jointly developing those projects together with either a big real estate Institutional Investor or project developer because this part is the most suitable or can also be suitable for that financing.
[19:58] A third part that is that is maybe not not part of the traditional financing scheme.Is something that we call committed Capital so we also looking for strategic partner in the real estate world.Where we basically bring an operational excellence and operational approach.And the real estate brand partner is bringing in their answered their real estate asset.Part of their portfolio and then we jointly develop this case together so we bring in our co-living approach and they bring and committed capital and form of real estate asset.
[20:36] I see so you’re looking for many different investors in many different forms and you’re open for Real Estate Investors forproject developers in the real estate spaceas well as institutional investors I can see the charm for institutional investors for example like a pension fund who actually owns a building that work with you and you help them to get itrented out on a normal price on a constant on a constant basis and they generate a constant cash flow I doI do see the utility for both sites there let usquickly talk a little bit about who is actually living in your spaces and how they experiencewould be for person like this let’s say you’re living right now in Barcelona and you just want to move to Frankfurt and using a homefully,how would you start and what’s the usual customer Journey there until they actually get the key,um so I think the use case of you you’re just describing is as a perfectly for the so ideally as a homefully customer you have,medium to long-term stay in line so we don’t rent out our coding space on a day-to-day basis we start with a three month minimum stay and you can essentially stay with us for as long as you want.
[22:01] So we see ourselves thought of like a community Builder.And we want to Foster those relationships that basically.A cure when you lift together with other people that are in the same and the same basically in the same period of time over the same period of your life.So our customer on average they are in between their early to mid 20s to the early mid 30s.Many of them half of them have an international background.
[22:38] And you basically apply through our website so you don’t need to travel to Frankfurt you don’t need to physically look at the space you can pretty much do everything online.The entire process from looking at the apartments to applying the apartment,to signing the rental contract until your move-in date is being scheduled until you actually move in at some point in the future.Is being done entirely digital and 100% online what would be a potential tenant need to show you I know in Germany if you.Rent an apartment from like not an Institutional Investor that usually do have a very long listoff requirements for the very simple reason when you want living in an apartment in Germany into very hard to get you out,so they do all their due diligence before is it also like a meter long list of stuff people have to show you before they can move in there we do the we do the approach.I would say in a much more consumer friendly way so first of all we don’t discriminate we don’t discriminate by by language you will discriminate by nationality.We make it much easier for you to move to Germany if you don’t speak jealous.
[23:54] Which is a big hurdle big obstacle in traditional real estate when you apply the regular way,so we have a we have a basic set of documentation of verification that you can pretty much upload with the very convenient Self Service process as a potential customer to us.And then we verify that at all background this is also being done automatically.
[24:20] What do you what you have to do is you go submitting,you’ll preferences for instance the time you want to move in the date the date you’re going to contract or Union working contract in that particular city starts.
[24:38] Your budget your ideal roommate set up like I you I am more interested in.On a two roommates or do you want co-living space as big as possible with maybe six seven or eight minutes so you can make as a new as many new friends and.Build your build your social network network as quickly as possible and then we do a qualification call with you so one of our community managers.It’s going to reach out to you so this is like a 10 15 minute interview.And then we basically offer you to sign to sign a contract with us so the approach is much more convenient and also much more consumer friendly,and this case that we rely Less on bureaucracy and more on technology.Compared to what I would call the traditional way of renting an apartment.
[25:32] That pretty much sounds like it would be the ideal way of a student and intern looking to rentspace for some time in Frankfurt as well as a protect professional who just got his first job there I’m too actuallyget their apartment.On time digitally or at least a space in an apartment Sebastian.It was just a pleasure talking to you everybody would like to learn more can go down here in the show notesthey’ll be a link as I said to your LinkedIn profile as well as to homefully and in how many languages is homefully available right now.
[26:18] In German and in English as soon as we expand to other countries we also going to add them all languagessounds pretty good so in German and in English go down here in the show notes and you’ll be able to digitally secure your living space wherever you get an internship or a job Sebastian,thank you very much was a pleasure having you as guests.Good time I’m having a Leah podcast if you are a professional looking at the European startup scene Germany is a place you cannot miss.
[26:52] Music.
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[27:13] Music.
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