13. GuestReady

Founders: Alexander Limpert
Founded: May 2016 (Launched August 2016)
Website: www.guestready.com

Rental property management is becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace, but GuestReady is already one of the largest of its kind.

Launched less than two years ago, GuestReady’s premium short-let property service is now in operation across the UK, France, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong with just under 500 active hosts.

The start-up was founded by Alexander Limpert – former managing director of Foodpanda in Taiwan and the Philippines – when he struggled to find someone to look after his rental home while he was travelling.

Intent on “unlocking the potential of real estate through innovative solutions”, GuestReady was borne.

Optimising Airbnb, Booking.com, and HomeAway listings, pricing and occupancy, the business takes care of everything from managing your listing to cleaning, laundry, maintenance and more, claiming to be able to increase revenues by up to 100%. TrustPilot reviews are telling with a star rating of 9.1.

Limpert says the start-up has been in “constant breakthrough mode” since starting in August 2016, quickly scaling up from a team of seven with one person in each city to new cities around the world within weeks. Today it has 71 employees.

What’s next on the cards for the intrepid, fast-growth business then? More growth of course, facilitated by the improvement of its website and technology.

Expansion into Portugal is a priority too, as well as launching in more cities in the UK and France and consolidating its recently launched cities of Dubai, Manchester and Cannes.

And to fund this growth? The business is being facilitated by a £2.3m investment round it secured in October 2017, led by Impulse VC (the fund backed by Roman Abramovich), XPonova, and Boost Heroes.

GuestReady may be one of the newest short-term property rental management services on the block but it’s certainly made a significant footprint in a short space of time. We look forward to seeing where it goes next.