Eightant
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Eightant
online student housing management
Private limited liability company
Belgium
User-friendly
Siard van den Bosch (CEO)
Julien Verheughe
Siard van den Bosch ,Raul Marcelino, Nicolas Nijssen, Matthijs Spittel
Summary
Eightant is a software application that allows landlords to manage their buildings efficiently. But it also enables them to communicate with their tenants in a very userfriendly way.
Background
The name Eightant is a name made up from two parts: eight and ant. Eight stands for the floor of the building they are living in. All the co-founders are students that live on the same floor of the same building. Ant is short for Antwerp, the city they live in. And because they are all students that live in studios, they noticed the problem between a landlord and student-renter first-hand. A lot of the students complained about the building management and because they had a good relationship with the landlord they heard his side of the story too. Students didn’t give enough information when they reported their issues. And after some brainstorming they came up with the idea of Eightant.
At first they put their own money in to pay a designer. They then entered the Telenet kickstart competition and won an investment of €25000. At the moment that money is almost gone, so they are looking for investors to keep them going.
The platform they offer has benefits for both landlords and tenants. The platform they sell combines communication and management. Two things that landlords would normally do through separate tools. With this platform the student can report issues to the landlord a lot easier. By a click of the button the tenant or student can inform the landlord a problem and Eightant will automatically categorize the problem (repair, question,etc.).
It also makes it a lot easier for the landlord to manage his buildings and also notifies him if there is something he has to do. Because the amount of things a landlord has to check or do (for example: fire extinguishers) can become a lot for work when not managed properly. In the future they would like to digitalize contracts on their platform and implement statistical analytics.
Mission
To bring the landlord-tenant relationship to the next level.
Vision
To conquer the Belgian market first. And then the Netherlands, United-Kingdom, Germany and France.
Values
User-friendliness and intuitiveness
Business Model
At the moment they are still juggling business models, because they are still in the development phase. They are currently getting advice from some more seasoned entrepreneurs regarding business models and pricing. Some of them are also active within the student housing market and therefore have very valuable insight that can help the Eightant-crew to make important decisions.
The general concept at the moment is that the landlord would pay per unit (room or studio) and those with more units will have a lower price. But the exact prices and the difference in prices when the amount of units are taken into account are still being decided.
Eightant does have some USP’s compared to their competitors. First of all most of their competition are located in the US. There are competitors in Europe but not as much as in the US. And most of those competitors only offer a basic management-tool that can only be used by the landlord. It’s purely to manage his buildings more efficiently. There are some that have integrated tenants into their application but they are very complicated to work with and not user-friendly at all. The product Eightant offers is based on the principle of user-friendliness. Students can send a notification to their landlord by the tap of a button on their smartphone and the platform is simplified for (older) landlords so that they aren’t discouraged to try all the features out.
Growth
At the moment they are still in the testing phase so there isn’t a lot of growth possible. But they would like to expand their team with 2 developers and one salesperson in the near future when they get some investment.
Two landlords are testing out the platform for free. In return Eightant receives valuable feedback, which enables them to optimize their product.
There is not any turnover at the moment because their product isn’t ready for the market yet. They would like to launch the application before the next semester.
Customers
The target audience of Eightant are obviously the landlords of the student houses. They are the ones that will be paying for the application.
Competitors
There are some direct competitors that also offer management software for landlords, but they don’t have the same features as Eightant. Some examples are 123Landlord, LandlordMax, Landlord Track,etc.
Direct competitors are mainly social media, Facebook groups, whatsappgroups,etc. Also e-mail and Excel (for management purposes) are major indirect competitors for Eightant.
Conclusion
There are a lot of opportunities in the student housing market. First of all most landlords don’t even realise the potential of management software. A lot of landlords are of an older generation and are still doing old school with excel and mail. So most of the time they can’t see the issues that Eightant could solve, because they have become used to them. So there are still a lot of eyes to opened, which means a lot of potential customers that could realise that they need this kind op application. On the other hand it is the same generation that could pose a threat to a modern software enterprise like Eightant. Some older folks don’t like to use modern technology, they can’t wrap their head around it and won’t stray from their traditional methods. It can be quite a challenge to convince the older generation to use a software application. Another opportunity is that they are currently testing their product in a building with 207 students. The company that owns that building has a total of +2000 units (or rooms/studios). This illustrates the fact that most student houses aren’t the only piece property owned by a person or company. This means that if they can sell their product to a client, there is a chance that they make a large sale because of the large amount of student houses one client has.
The main advice Siard would give starting entrepreneurs is to get in touch with a lot of people and really expand your network. Ask those people feedback about your product. Getting constructive feedback enables you as an entrepreneur to challenge your idea and to think objectively. Also make sure you are passion about what you do. If you aren’t willing to go the extra mile and push yourself to try and accomplish something then shouldn’t even start.
Eightant did hit some road bumps along the way. Financial wise they hit a roadblock at the very start but then they won the Telenet kickstarter and had 25000 euro to spend. Another issue that they didn’t expect was that it could sometimes be hard to communicate with your crew. Making sure someone understood what the other was trying to say could sometimes be an annoyance.
The goal of Siard for Eightant for the next 5 years is to establish themselves as a student-housing platform that everyone knows and uses. Towards the future they would like to go o the regular housing market. They also see themselves expanding to other countries like the Netherlands and the UK.
Posted on 27/04/2016