Samantha Kempe is the co-founder of IMMO, a tech-enabled platform providing data on potential housing investment opportunities.
Founded in 2017 by Kempe and Hans-Christian Zappel, IMMO has created a platform that lets property investors compare disparate data points. It also provides a customer-facing app for renters to manage their tenancy.
The London-headquartered company secured £57.5m in Series B funding in April 2022.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, Kempe explains why early-stage startups should hire generalists, how to get the most out of customer feedback, and the impact of AI on the real estate industry.
1. Which role was the most important early hire you made?
Samantha Kempe: There isn’t one role that stands out as the most pivotal. However, there are key characteristics that are especially important within early hires. Early-stage startup life is so fluid that even if someone is hired for a specific role, they also need to be a generalist, roll their sleeves up and dive into any number of tasks that come up.
This unpredictability is exciting for some but stressful for others. So we realised very early on that we needed to hire people who would thrive in this environment and be able to roll with not only the ever-changing role requirements, but also the ups and downs of the startup rollercoaster journey.
For those that do thrive within this type of environment, our early-stage employees got to experience first-hand an extremely diverse range of workstreams, try things they had never been involved with before and have a level of autonomy and responsibility that they may not have benefitted from in a more established company.
2. What advice would you give to a first-time founder?
SK: There’s so much great advice already out there. Here are some additional points that I don’t often read about, but have been critical for my journey.
Get out of the office: Too many people intellectualise a problem and don’t immerse themselves within the industry to truly understand the issue they’re trying to solve. Don’t just do desktop research. Instead, get out there… network, constantly speak to people, attend conferences – be a sponge for all the feedback you will receive to help shape your product.
Listen to feedback, but not all feedback is equal: imagine the feedback you receive sits on a bell curve… at one end, there will be people who love your idea/product and think it’s amazing – they are great cheerleaders, but ultimately they aren’t providing any feedback that can help improve your product; at the other end, there will be doubters or people who default with a ‘computer says no’ answer – you can’t change those people and shouldn’t waste your time trying to. Once you’ve removed these outliers on the bell curve, focus on the core feedback. These are the insights that will provide you with the most useful information.
Get out of your own eco-chamber: don’t just network and attend conferences with others within your part of the tech world (eg. fintech, proptech) unless they are also your target customer. Most tech-focused conferences end up being an eco-chamber of tech companies talking to one another – which can be very helpful to understand latest developments in the market and see who your competitors are, but you’re unlikely to generate key insights that will contribute to developing your product-market-fit.
To do this you need to be immersed within the world of your target customer to not only understand the problems you’re trying to solve, but also importantly how to position and sell your product to your target customer.
And finally, don’t ask, don’t get: be bold and don’t be shy to reach out to people.
3. In another life you’d be?
SK: Throughout what has been a rather intense and busy career, I’ve always tried to take time to travel and see what the world has to offer. From exploring cities during weekend breaks, to backpacking across South America, to trekking the Himalayas to Everest Base Camp, I’ve always been drawn to the discovery of new places, cultures and experiences.
The world is an incredible place, with so much to teach us. With this in mind, I think a professional explorer would make quite the challenge.
4. How do you motivate your team?
SK: Again, there’s so much fantastic advice out there and books written about motivating teams. A few areas that I think are most important:
Intrinsic motivation: from the get-go, businesses need to hire people who share the company’s vision and are intrinsically motivated to succeed. If this isn’t the case, you shouldn’t have hired them and you’re already on the back foot.
Alignment across the business: we provide updates on our highest priority goals during our company fortnightly all-hands meeting. During this meeting, we also provide opportunities for parts of the business to present, like what exciting product developments they are working on for example. The combination of both understanding our highest priority goals and what other parts of the business are working on empowers employees to take more initiative in their day-to-day tasks, inspires them to see the progress being made in other areas, helps them to connect the dots and allows them to better understand the direction the business is moving.
Get out of the way and clear the path: we’ve hired a lot of incredible and excellent people, who are far more capable than myself in many areas! Nothing kills motivation faster within ambitious people than feeling blocked from executing – I see my role as giving them the autonomy to execute, providing support when they need it and helping clear the roadblocks that prevent them from running fast.
5. What’s the most misunderstood technology?
SK: In the realm of rapidly evolving technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) is often the most misconstrued. While fears of AI often revolve around job displacement and loss of human touch, the reality is strikingly different. Within the real estate industry that IMMO works in, the scope of AI’s impact is huge: from predictive analytics enhancing investment decisions to smart home technologies improving living standards, AI’s influence is profound and beneficial.
Its potential to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive sustainable practices in real estate is immense. This technology is not about replacing human roles but augmenting them to achieve greater efficiency and a smarter, more sustainable urban environment.
Founder in Five – a UKTN Q&A series with the entrepreneurs behind the UK’s innovative tech startups, scaleups and unicorns – is published every Friday.
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