Lintil helps home-buyers through the complex and stressful process of buying a home
Please introduce yourself and your startup Lintil to our readers!
My name is Emmet Creighton, I co-founded Lintil the virtual home-buying assistant. We help home-buyers through the often complex and stressful process of buying a home.
How did you get the idea of Lintil?
My day to day role prior to founding Linitl was to purchase large properties, for example, castles and stately homes for wealthy clients. These clients would avoid the complexities and hassle of the property buying process employing me. I felt if we could digitise the service I was providing then it could be offered to all property buyers free of charge. Everyone could then experience a hassle-free property buying experience.
Why did you decide to start with Lintil?
I had experienced the problems with property buying in a personal capacity and as a professional lawyer so I knew a solution was needed. I then undertook wide-ranging surveys of the key players in the property buying ecosystem and together with research on solutions and technology. It was clear there were technical tools to help but no one had employed them to the advantage of the home-buyer.
What is the vision behind Lintil?
We want to allow people to purchase a property entirely on their phones with a few simple clicks. We want to group all of the services needed in one place and make it as easy as ordering a pizza.
How difficult was the start and which challenges you had to overcome?
Starting a business is difficult in any industry. The challenges we faced were that the majority of the players in the ecosystem were very large incumbent companies very resistant to change. The status quo can be your biggest competitor. We decided to focus on the home-buyer who, we believe, is the most important person in the home-buying process. Another challenge was getting to these users. As a startup marketing and user acquisition can be very expensive so finding a distribution channel was our next challenge.
Who is your target audience?
Our users are residential home-buyers. Anyone buying a property can be a user of Lintil. They typically mean couples between the ages of 25-45. Our service is free of charge and we earn revenue by creating high value leads for service providers in the property ecosystem.
What is the USP of your startup?
We are the only business offering an end-to-end solution to the home-buying journey exclusively for the home buyer.
Can you describe your typical workday?
Our team split their works days into AM and PM. In the AM we work on recurring tasks and in the PM we work on specific projects that help move the business forward. A typical workday would start with a review of emails, followed by a team standup, then I work through my action item list. Before and after lunch I’m on customer support. I assist users with their queries and collect feedback for the development team. After customer support, I get back in the team sprint and I’m delegated tasks by members of my team. At the end of the day, I typically meet the management team to consider what we have done today and what we should do next.
Where do you see yourself and your startup Lintil in five years?
We see ourselves being synonymous with home-buying. The old traditional way of buying property will have been resigned to the past and when people think of buying property they will think of Lintil and how easy it is. We plan to be the worldwide market leader in home-buying.
What 3 tips would you give to founders?
Generate revenue as early as possible, ideally before you have a product, find a distribution channel to shortcut the marketing journey and get an entrepreneurial trusted team with you. Starting a business is a hard and often lonely experience having good people with you makes it a million times more enjoyable.
Picture: Lintil Picture Conor McCabe Photography
Thank you Emmet Creighton for the Interview
Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.
