Tell us about your business: What do you do? What did inspire you to start?
Splittable makes housesharing simple by making it easy to split bills and expenses between housemates. I’ve shared 8 properties now in London, and am living in my biggest houseshare yet…so trust me when I say, I understand the problems we’re trying to solve…I live them every day and night!!
I’ve shared homes in London and many more in Washington, D.C. I’m a social animal and love living with others, but know how frustrating it can be and how unfortunately easy it is for household finances to get in the way of a happy living environment.
I’m co-founder & CEO, so I do everything from washing the dishes (not any longer thankfully we’ve just moved to nice, new offices), to striking partnerships with other startups and big corporates, to fundraising, to growth hacking and all sorts of other bits. We recently closed a seed financing with a group of private angels I put together, so now my job is mostly about growing our user base, keeping our customers happy and preparing for our next fundraise.
Splittable is the newest product from our big brother company Locatable, where our team builds cool technologies for the home focused on making the day to day experience of home management and property related decisions…easier and more delightful.
I’ve spent my career in real estate, I’m obsessed with everything property related…which I realised recently started from when I was a baby growing up with a landscape designer mother and architect and contractor father. I’ve been around house plans, materials and construction sites since I’ve been a baby.
What is innovative about what you do?
Splittable let’s you stay on top of all your shared expenses with absolutely minimal effort. We have a unique visualisation that shows who is in credit and who is in debt, so the system helps to suggest who should “pay for the next thing” rather than worrying about micro-paybacks all the time.
What were the biggest obstacles launching the start-up and how did you overcome them?
We’ve always had a huge vision to connect everyone in the world to a digital representation of their home, so one of the hardest things has been having to identify and narrow our focus on a small customer segment. Now we’ve focused on housesharers though everything is much easier and it’s given us a lot of confidence.
Why did you choose Shoreditch to launch your start-up?
The community. Hands down. The entrepreneurs that have all moved in here are amazing to be around because even when you have a bad day, you walk out on the street or grab a coffee, see someone you know have a quick chat…or even often times, hear about your problem and tell you the best solution, because they had that same problem just last week!
What should help for the development of Shoreditch entrepreneurial community? What this community is still missing?
I think we need more early stage investors and angels. There needs to be more risk capital. With the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme offering the most advantageous tax breaks in the world for the riskiest, early stage investments…anyone with money would be smart to spend a bit of time touring around Shoreditch and meeting some of the teams. If I ever do make it big, I know I will be plugging it straight back into the community!
Who are your favorite CEOs/Businesses in Shoreditch?
Well, especially considering we ended up getting led to our new space from their site, really like Nick Russell and www.wearepopup.com the online retail popup marketplace. Tushar Agarawl from Spacious,Rush Somauroo from PropertyFlock and James Swanston from VoyageControl are also all really exciting leaders with growing businesses.
Social links:
Twitter: @splittableUK
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/splittable
Website: www.splittable.co
