Startup Story – The Good Agent
Introducing New Irish Startup – The Good Agent
Company: The Good Agent
Website: www.thegoodagent.ie
Founders: Barry Wallace & Shane Murphy
Age: Founders are 27 & 28 respectively
Based: Blackrock, Co. Dublin
Staff Number: Six
Date started: Beta launch 3rd December 2010
Tell us what your business does?
The Good Agent is an estate agent that is based online and gives customers complete flexibility and control over the letting or selling process all for one great value fixed fee.
Very simply, we are offering a service that allows people who are selling or letting their property to choose which parts of the process they do and which bits we do. In other words, if they want to take the photographs, then they don’t pay for that; if they want to do the viewings, then they don’t pay for that; if they want to do the negotiations, then they don’t pay for that; if they want… well, you get the picture! But if they want us to do the whole thing, then we’re happy to do so.
Where did the idea for your business come from?
The seed was planted when Shane was letting his apartment and the agent was asking for a cut of the annual rent. Why is the fee percentage based? Why can’t I do the viewings myself? The model just didn’t make sense. We brought in the experts and they reluctantly agreed… and then they joined the team.
Have you always wanted to run your own business?
Absolutely. Ever since I bought and sold lunch tickets in school I have wanted to build and run a company from scratch. In college I ran a t-shirt company, but it was unlikely that I could ever live off it.
Similarly, Shane is a serial entrepreneur and has brought several small companies from idea to launch and also managed the growth of large companies’ new products.
What planning did you do before you started up?
Quite a lot. We were out and about asking the public about the industry and the appetite for change. We did the business plan (I think we were on version twenty-something before we were happy with it). We did the financial projections. We did the website mock-ups and wireframes (it’s a beautiful site if I may say so myself, the guys at We Are Elevate did a great job for us). And, most importantly, we built a great team with millions of years’ experience in the industry.
Which entrepreneurs do you admire?
All of them. I love hearing stories of people leaving their job to do something a little risky. I especially admire those who start a business when they have a family… that takes some balls. I think Ireland is coming into a belle époque for start-ups so I hope to hear a lot more of these stories over the next couple of years.
What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them?
As soon as people hear “estate agent” they think two things (1) shower of you-know-whats and (2) are you crazy in the current market?
We love hearing the gruesome anecdotes about estate agents as it gives us a great springboard to say “It’s a disgrace, but what if…?” and then we Wow them with The Good Agent’s offering.
When people bring up the state of the housing market they are, understandably, focusing on the sales market, but The Good Agent is both sales and lettings. The two markets balance each other: when people aren’t buying, they’re renting and vice versa. The number of renters is actually very high at the moment because of the low rents.
How have you promoted your business?
We are doing a full launch in January 2011 so we’re in stealth mode until then. We’re focusing on populating the site with properties (which we’re doing for free for the month of December), but when we launch we will be using our marketing guys to get us in as many media outlets as possible. Property is such a hot topic in Ireland and anybody who is challenging traditional estate agents is going to attract some attention of which we will be taking full advantage. We really want to develop a healthy debate between ourselves and the existing estate agents in order to promote much-needed change in the industry.
What has your growth been like?
It’s difficult to tell as we’re pre-launch, but nobody (except for a grumpy old estate agent in South Dublin) has said “That’s a ridiculous idea. It will never work”. We have received some great feedback and ideas from other people in the industry, some of which we implemented straight away and some of which we will be adding to the product after launch. Come back to us in six months and ask this question again!
What are your hopes for the future?
In the short term, we have some features in mind that we would like to add to the site to make it even more user-friendly, but the long-term goal is to expand the service abroad. Initially, we will be looking at the UK, but after that who knows? You could be looking at Le Bon Agent or Die Guten Agenten in a couple of years (I had to use Google Translate for those… I hope my Junior Cert French teacher doesn’t read this).
Thanks Barry and Good Luck! S
