Carlos Pierre (Barcelona, 1990) is the CEO of a long-term room rental platform that, since its launch in 2015, has become a reference when it comes to securely publishing, finding and reserving rooms from anywhere in the world. world. Badi in this time has managed to raise 45 million dollars with five rounds of financing led by different investment funds from the United States. Thanks to this, the platform continues to expand and already has more than 80 people on its team.
To review its beginnings, find out the state of its evolution, and what its next plans are, we spoke with Carlos, who founded the company when he was barely 25 years old.
It’s been 5 years since the launch of Badi. How do you remember that time?
I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember we used to wear small short-term goals. The first thing was to design the application, the second was to launch it on all platforms and the third was to get rooms to start uploading. There were two major challenges:
- Grow our offer as quickly as possible while attracting demand so that the liquidity of the marketplace resulted in a good user experience for both parties. It was very complex and we tried everything, but little by little we were achieving the goals that we set for ourselves month after month.
- Get investors to be able to sign and have enough resources to grow fast. I remember sending 50 emails with a very low response rate and an even lower rate of interest. We finally got our first €300,000 by Mangrove Capital Partners and various Business Angels. It is very important to understand that you only need 1-2 investors who trust your ideaso you have to be mentally prepared for your project to be rejected multiple times without it influencing your determination.
Was there a time when you thought the project would not go ahead?
When starting a new project there are always many doubts and moments when you think that it is not going to work or that you are doing it really badly. I think this roller coaster of good times and bad times haunts the entrepreneur until the company is in a very solid situation. An entrepreneur has to be mentally prepared to overcome difficult moments, especially in the first 5-10 years.
There was a particular moment when for a month we could not pay salaries because we couldn’t close an investment round. Finally, the team trusted usour investors too, and a month later we had closed our Series A of $10 million with one of the best funds in the USA.
“An entrepreneur has to be mentally prepared to overcome difficult times.”
From your experience, what is the main advice you would give to someone who is thinking of launching their own project?
The best advice I have received and the one I would give to young entrepreneurs is who believe in their idea and learn to articulate it in order to convince and surround themselves with the best team or investors. It is very important to choose the best investors because they will play an important role in the company when making strategic decisions.
At an organizational level, how have you coped with the change of scenery caused by covid? What changes have you made to adapt to the new situation?
We had to restructure the team to adapt to this new context. Our strategy, however, has not changed. Our mission is to digitize the rental market and become the largest medium/long-term rental marketplace in Europe.
Covid hasn’t changed our plans, but it has has accelerated them. We have focused on adapting our product to a new paradigm where many offline processes will move to a 100% online formatwhere the user expects a unique, special and trustworthy experience. Qwe want to be social and, therefore, that our platform contains relevant information not only about assets but also about people. And we want to do the whole process as efficient and scalable as possible for our users. We work to develop a product that speeds up and makes the entire rental process more secure so that everyone can find a place to live at the lowest possible cost and in complete safety.
To do this, we have reorganized the entire development team into three different horizons. Each one refers to a specific period of time and a clear focus. Each of the horizons has a success metric that indicates what we want to achieve in the short, medium and long term.
In the spring months, we saw cases of people who, without face-to-face classes, mandatory teleworking… chose to leave the big cities and return to their places of origin. How did you experience this phenomenon in Badi?
It’s true. The survey that we launched to our users affirms that their housing location priorities have changed after confinement, 54% say that now they prefer to live in the center of the city.
In Badi’s case, we have not suffered so much at the local level since the room rental market has remained stable after the pandemic. Internationally, it has been affected due to the confinement and mobility restrictions that exist in our global markets.
Has this situation been reversed with the arrival of autumn?
At the demand level, we have noticed an increase in demand after a drop at the beginning of the covid: at the beginning of the confinement we saw a drop of almost 50% of the active demand on the platform, but week after week we have been observing a progressive recovery with a growth of up to 50% since the beginning of confinement and reaching levels of 70% of pre-covid active demand.
And how has covid affected your business? What impact has it had on your turnover?
We started testing different monetization models right at the beginning of the pandemic and since then we have been growing in billing month after month. If it is true that our projections have been affected by the current context but we have adapted our plan very quickly.
In this situation, the fact of sharing housing can become a much more critical decision than before, especially if there is a return to home confinement. Have you noticed that the behavior of users has changed when looking for a room? Have they become more demanding?
user behavior has changed when looking for a room. This summer, we launched an internal survey that indicated that 60% would be willing to pay more for a flat with a terrace or balcony after the months of confinement. Right now, people are looking for a flat not only to live but also to work, so put more focus on quality of the flat and the services it can offer (desk, electricity, Wi-Fi, towels, digital access). For it, we wanted to bet on innovation and offer an increasingly digitized model.
We have services within our comprehensive management package where we offer digital access for our tenants to enjoy a rental experience like never before. We take care of all the rental operations so that the owners can obtain more profitability and greater occupancy of their flats and so that the tenants can access their flats without needing to use the keys. We promote the contactless economy.
And from the side of those who rent their homes? Has there been any relevant change?
Our mission is to support all owners and at this time, something that is essential is a Thorough cleaning of the houses before renting them.
In this sense, we have done a collaboration agreement with , the Barcelona company specialized in offering cleaning services to both users and owners. In this way, we follow the necessary prevention and care measures at all times and the tenants can rest easy.
The supply of rooms in the metropolitan areas of Barcelona and Madrid has doubled since the start of the lockdown. This growth has been due to three factors:
- The latent need of an important group of citizens to rent an underutilized space of their property to obtain extra income.
- The accumulation of existing supply that could not be rented during confinement due to mobility restrictions.
- The integration of the new offer from the tourist flats.
You have just launched room rental without a deposit. What impact do you think this measure can have on the conversion rate of your users?
The latest data from our survey confirms that bail is a major stumbling block when making the decision to change flats. Almost 70% of the users who share a flat had difficulty paying the deposit, being forced to ask for financial help. Specifically, for 21% it was really difficult to pay that amount and 16% had to resort to the help of friends, family or financial institutions.
In that context, the “no bail” functionality solves the problem. We cover the part of the economic commitment that a tenant has to have to enter or similar. With the launch of this special initiative, we want to continue betting on facilitating access to housing, by finding the best roommates and facilitating the search and rental process, now also in times of crisis.
“The supply of rooms in the metropolitan areas of Barcelona and Madrid has doubled since the beginning of the confinement.”
It seems a risky measure for you, who assume the payment of the bail. In your experience, what percentage of owners end up requesting a deposit?
For now, 25% of the owners are choosing this option. We are very happy because we did not expect so much adoption so soon. We expect this percentage to increase in the coming months.
In any case, you not only have a presence in Spain. How is your international business going?
We had plans to open an office in New York at the beginning of the year but we’ve had to pivot our plans and focus on other priorities in the short term by focusing on our European markets until the situation improves. We want to be profitable in Spain and then continue with our expansion.
Imagine that you could travel in time: What advice would you give to your 2010 Self?
Never lose your focus on the product and the user experience. Always surround yourself with the best possible team and always have a profitable and scalable business model as your goal.
Let’s do a bit of futurology: what headline about Badi would you like to read in Marketing4eCommerce in a year?
«Badi becomes the benchmark rental marketplace, achieves profitability and is ready to expand throughout Europe and the US».
And a little more difficult: what do you think eCommerce will be like in 2023? How will consumer preferences, technologies, etc… have changed?
All…
Facebook Comments
Disqus