Founder Series #1 ft. Nils Henning: “I want to build Google for Real Estate”

In the very first episode of The PropTech Interview Series, I interviewed Nils Henning enning, a remarkable serial entrepreneur who started his journey 15 years ago. As a Founder, I am always curious to learn about the entrepreneurial journeys of others and I am happy to be sharing these insights with other business enthusiasts.

Nils built startups across verticals spanning from the realm of video games to pioneering one of Germany's first FinTechs and trailblazing in the mobile ad tracking domain (AdTech). Additionally to leading these three successful ventures with valuations ranging between EUR 100m - 1bn, Nils invested and co-founded many other companies as part of YoungBrains.

Today, Nils is a hands-on Co-founder and CEO to CASAFARI safari, a company that has raised nearly EUR 30m euros in equity and has built most complete and most accurate real-time database of real estate in Europe.. Casafari's operational footprint extends across multiple European countries, including Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

In this interview, Nils shared invaluable insights on raising capital, growing a company’s valuation from zero to a unicorn exit, executing strategic business acquisitions, the future of PropTech and venture building, securing recurring revenues over time, and much more. You can access the full interview through the link below.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/matthew-maltzoff/episodes/Founder-Series-1-ft--Nils-Henning-I-want-to-build-Google-for-Real-Estate-e2b9vb3

Interview Highlights

Matthew: Thanks for joining us Nils! To start off, please tell us about your journey as an entrepreneur and how you got to where you are today.

Nils: “I'm originally from Germany. I started with a video games company. Together with the key founder, we brought it from zero to 650 million dollars in valuation. We had Oliver Samwer from Rocket Internet directly on board. I can tell you, by education, I have an MBA and an LLM, but working in Bigpoint GmbH and together with Heiko and Oliver Samwer, I learned significantly more than in all my studies combined.”

Matthew: What was the problem to solve when you started Casafari?

Nils: “The market is very opaque. If you go to one of the biggest cities in Europe, go to Madrid, into the neighborhood Salamanca, and you say: ‘I'm looking for three bedroom apartments. How many are in the market? How many were last month in the market? How many were six months ago in the market? What is the average rental price, the average rental yield, and how did this develop over years? Nobody could answer this to you, and I felt that this was insane. It's the biggest asset class in the world and there's not a complete database monitoring the entire stock in real time. This is how we came up with the idea.”

“I wanted to build Google for real estate. Inventory was somewhere fragmented in the web, we needed to find a way to index the web like Google does, take factual property information, build an own container around every property in the internet and monitor its listings in the market. And by this I can monitor the exact stock and history of every property.”

Matthew: What’s next? Is it more acquisitions, or more countries?

Nils: “I still think Europe has a tremendous potential. The biggest problem when you compare Europe to the US is the fragmentation and the opacity. It makes it much harder to scale. There are not many companies operating pan-European-wise, and we also strongly look into the UK. I know that UK will be not a market that we will build organically, it's too competitive, but I believe that with a combination of Casafari and Targomo, we could bring tremendous value. Therefore we also look into inorganic growth opportunities, acquisitions, in the UK.”

Matthew: How is the PropTech venture building scene changing?

Nils: “Things changed from 2022 onwards. As I told you my first companies were focusing on profitability and cashflow. The shift in 2022 was also for us a total change of reality, but I'm happy that I experienced this in the beginning of my career, and it needed to happen at some point. However, the valuations of tech companies were really pushed down. This is another reason why I believe more consolidation is on the horizon.”

Matthew: How is PropTech different from the other industries where you worked in the past?

Nils: “I saw different industries. I saw FinTech, I saw AdTech, I saw video games. In those industries, when you hit a strike and you have a hit, the sky's the limit. But in PropTech, there is an understanding that this is not about scaling on every price. It's a lot of building trust in the industry. It's more an ultra-marathon over the Mont Blanc than a sprint on 100 meters. This is endurance. It's about persistence, and it's about having strong investors who understand we are going to change the way Real Estate works, but it will take time.”

Matthew: How hands-on are you with Casafari day to day? Are you in the office with the sales team or are you more high level at this point? 

Nils: “We are 160 people in the company, but I want to be a startup. I don't want to be a scale-up. I want to be lean, I want to test product innovations with the team, I want to say when things are not like they should be. I want to live by it and it only works if you're hands-on. I wish I could go sailing and do other things, but I need to be hands-on.”

It was a pleasure interviewing Nils and learning about his journey.

Stay tuned for the upcoming Founder Series interviews, as well as for the launch of the Investor Series and the Executive Series!