Amcham: How long has RoomMate been in existence in both Luxembourg and other locations, what is your current operational size (number of employees and range of services offered along with and business volume for each category of services), how quickly are you growing?
Mikael Da Silva: RoomMate was originally founded in Italy in 2017. Later after graduating and receiving funding & support from the Fit4Start acceleration program, we established ourselves in Luxembourg in 2019. We currently have 8+ employees with the majority stationed in Luxembourg and the rest in Madrid Spain.
We are solving multiple problems for two sides of the same coin. So in terms of services on one end we have the tenants who use our platform, Places, by which they can manage and build a seamless relationship with their landlord. With features such as…
Check unit info
Make automatic rent payments
Manage and view your leases
Chat communication with all parties
Send maintenance requests
Files on the go
Our paying clients are mostly property managers and real estate companies. Our SAAS platform called Estelle, helps them streamline their activities by digitizing and automating many of the processes that go into the real estate rental business. Through Estelle, they can:
Onboard tenants and manage their relationship with them
Collect rent
Send automatic reminders
Automate the bank reconciliation
Manage all documentation
Receive, classify and manage maintenance request
Communicate with all tenants through messaging to single and en-mass
Manage their calendar
Integrate with accounting tools
Manage their vacancies through our channel manager
Analyze and understand the performance of their portfolio
We are growing at an exponential rate both in all aspects of the company with features being released regularly and according to our product roadmap while listening to our clients and the market.
Amcham: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future, and why ?
Mikael Da Silva: We are super optimistic and believe that we will fully automate property management by 2030. We understand this is a big challenge, but we love challenging ourselves! So far, we completely automated the day-to-day operations of the property and rental management, including the tenants’ acquisition with the Channel Manager. Our next step will be to turn data into information. We want to provide our customers with intelligence about rental prices per neighbourhood, demand flow, predictive maintenance, and the tenants’ credit score.
AmCham: Would you like to introduce yourself to our readers and explain the activity of RoomMate?
My name is Mikael Da Silva and I am the head of marketing and business development at RoomMate. RoomMate is a client-centric Proptech with two scalable platforms that digitises and automates the processes for mid-to-long-term rental management, with an app for tenants and a SAAS platform for landlords.
Based on your experience, please assess Luxembourg’s attractiveness (plusses and minuses) as an international business location?
I strongly believe and can attest that Luxembourg is becoming more and more visible to the nearby business ecosystems. Especially in the startup circle where Luxembourg has been able to attract strong companies with high growth potential in various sectors such as Proptech, Fintech, and even SpaceTech. One of its strengths is also being a small country where you can truly network and know the different players in the ecosystem. With that comes a nice environment where everyone knows everyone and can then help each other out.
What is your unique selling point (USP)?
Our unique selling point is the seamless integration of all of the tools we are building for the digitisation of the entire rental management value chain. We already have our web app for tenants (Places) and our SAAS platform for landlords (Estelle). The suite of tools we are building contributes to the digital transformation of all of the actors in the value chain, from tenants and landlords to property managers, listing platforms, and, service providers.
Who are the owners and management, and what are your backgrounds/motivations and stories?
Our team has already all the competencies to grow a digital PLG (Product-led Growth) SaaS and each member is vital to our success today and for the future of the company. The executive management team is composed of the 4 founders plus our first employee where each one is skilled and experienced in their respective fields to cover all the necessary running operations of the company. The journey started in 2017 at the University of Bologna while being selected out of 250 ideas from the ‘Innovation Day’ of Almacube, an incubator at the university, RoomMate was founded. The initial idea was to solve the numerous problems of sharing life between “roommates”. The same problem that our founders, Mattia, Matteo, Mirko, and Francesco were facing in their day-to-day student lives at the time. After arriving in 2019 in Luxembourg, RoomMate gets awarded the program graduation, given by the Luxembourgish Ministry of the Economy, for having successfully concluded the Fit4Start program.We also then get acquired as a Luxembourgish Startup and begin to grow the team locally.
To introduce some of our incredible founders and management we have:
Mattia Raffaelli, CEO, and Co-Founder, has an MBA, and is in charge of overseeing all business operations, sales & fundraising. Together with the team, he steers the company’s vision, with a particular attention on data and customer-centricity.
Matteo Bucci , Full-Stack Developer and Co-Founder, has a BsC in IT Engineering. He has developed mobile applications that have more than 100k users.
Mirko Martignon, Full-Stack Developer and Co-Founder, has BsC in IT Engineering. He has also developed mobile applications for one of the biggest Italian Regional Authorities.
Francesco Cotugno, Head of Design and Co-Founder, worked in Mediaset, the biggest private Italian television broadcaster. He is in charge of the UX/UI design of our entire product line, as well as overseeing the administration and brand identity.
Mikael Da Silva, Head of Marketing and Business Development, has a BA in Business Management from the University of Luxembourg. Worked at LBAN and is very involved in the Luxembourg startup ecosystem. He is in charge of all the Marketing verticals while creating new business opportunities, partners, and networks.
Problem – Please describe what problem (customer pain point) you are trying to solve.
Landlords and property managers are not aware of their portfolio’s performance, because they lack the proper tools to understand it. Every day they use different unlinked solutions to manage their rentals and properties, resulting in performance inefficiencies, and poor quality services delivered to tenants.
Solution – What is your solution? What is innovative about your solution, technology, business model, etc?
Our solution is a client-centric Proptech with two scalable platforms that digitises and automate the processes for mid-to-long-term rental management, with an app for tenants and a SAAS platform for landlords.
We are vertically focused on Co-Living and Student Housing management.
Define the 1-year and 5-year impact that you hope to accomplish. Importantly, what is the benefit on society?
In 1 year: We will be able to serve 100,000 rentable units while making those tenants satisfied, and driving 1,200,000€ in ARR.-In 5 years: Having conquered Europe, we will be market leaders in Italy and Spain, serving more than 1,000,000 units.
Which areas of ESG does your startup address and in which way?
Does your solution address any ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) areas? Do you have any metrics to support this?
ESG 9 -> Thanks to our solution we avoid information asymmetry between tenants and property managersESG 11 -> Due to the ever-increasing urbanization trend, we will insure and work towards having resilient and affordable cities.
