February 27, 2024 • 15 mins
In this episode, host Caroline Bray and guest Hugh Gibbs co-founder of Searchland, delve into the transformative journey of Searchland – a trailblazer in the property technology sector. Hailing from the Geovation Accelerator Programme, Searchland has leveraged HM Land Registry's commercial datasets to dramatically enhance their B2B platform.
Searchland's tool enables a vast array of users, predominantly property developers, to manipulate property data more effectively. Using an array of data from HM Land Registry combined with other datasets, they provide valuable insights into property ownership, transaction prices, and registered leases among other key aspects of the property environment.
During the conversation, Gibbs touches on the diverse customer base, the unique features of their platform, and the continued growth that has seen them expand from 100 to over 1,000 customers, as well as grow their team eight-fold.
Particularly noteworthy is their successful integration with Rightmove, enriching the Searchland platform by allowing users to immediately know if identified development sites are already on the market, helping customers to make swift and informed decisions.
Join this behind-the-scenes journey of Searchland, a resilient and innovative startup that's grown into a commendable player in the Proptech arena, dedicated to providing valuable solutions for property developers.
https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, I'm Caroline Bray. I'm the Geovation Stakehold Manager at Land Registry.
And what that means is I get to work with all the PropTech startups who are
accepted onto the Accelerator program, as well as the whole of the Geovation
community, which currently has around 1,800 members.
My role is pretty varied, but it includes talking to all of the startups that
are part of Geovation, talking to them about our data,
(00:22):
our commercial data sets, what Land Registry has to offer, and how that data
might help the startup I'm chatting to achieve what they're looking to achieve
with them, what they're trying to build.
So today I'm here with Hugh Gibbs from Searchland.
Searchland took part in the PropTech stream of the Geovation Accelerator Program in spring 21.
(00:45):
The program is sponsored by Land Registry and Ordnance Survey and offers startup
companies companies funding,
support, and access to property and location data so they can come up with innovative
solutions that address issues in the property sector and in the wider society.
So thanks for coming to chat to us today, Hugh. Do you want to introduce yourself?
(01:07):
Yeah, thank you for having me. Firstly, yes, so my name is Hugh.
I'm one of the four co-founders of a company called Searchland.
First thing they say when you sign a company is not to have I have four co-founders,
but I think hopefully by the end of the podcast, we would have shown that it's
not such a bad thing. It's been a strength.
So, yeah, like I say, one of four founders. We joined Geovation, must have been in 21.
(01:30):
But what Searchland does is we are inherently a tech platform,
which is the property industry and the technology industry combined.
So what we provide is your sort of B2B SaaS platforms. We've got a website. We use lots of data.
Your Land Registry data being an example.Put it onto a website and
allow our end users who are increasingly varied to engage, manipulate this information
(01:55):
and kind of do their job a bit faster. Cool.
But yeah, so my background's in the planning sector. That's how I got into this.
But yeah, we are a tech company first and foremost, which is quite fun.
Cool. So yeah, so when you joined in spring 21, I think we met in Geovation
and at that point you were members and then you decided to apply for the program
and then luckily you got on. Yeah.
(02:17):
Just talking about the data, so I know you use some of Land Registry's data.
Can you just give me an overview of what data you are using within Searchland?
Yeah, the dataset that you, so when you log on to Searchland,
the first dataset that we sort of shove in your face is the Land Registry Ownership,
is what we call it, but that's the National Polygon Service.
(02:38):
Who owns what, to what extent?
That is the architecture of Searchland. You can click onto a title and see what's
going on. But we plug into quite a few of the land registry data sets.
So the other crucial ones we have on there are linked back to leases.
So we play around with your registered leases data set.
The price paid is also a really useful one.
So looking at that transaction price, obviously that's a crucial part of,
(03:02):
say, our industry is what's selling.
As well as, I think we've got a few others that link to, say,
your company ownership data and your overseas company ownership information.
So, you know, we're plugged in at various degrees. You don't see all of it all
at once, but it's really that sort of land registry MPS that's our main data
(03:23):
set that we use. So it's quite handy, isn't it?
With UK companies and overseas companies that own property in England and Wales,
you can show that ownership.
If you link it in with National Polygon Service, you can show the ownership
on your platform relatively easily.
Whereas if you want to show residential ownership, as you know,
you have to buy the official copy, which I know you can probably do via your platform.
(03:45):
But the fact that you can show that ownership straight away is quite useful
for your customers, I would think.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's useful for a number of reasons.
Just in terms of how you approach, say if you approach a company that owns a
plot of land, it's a very different approach to if it's a private individual, right?
You just take the knowledge gap as the beginning.
You know, if you're speaking to a private landowner, you're going to be very
(04:07):
different about how you approach them. If it's a company, let alone whether
you buy the £3 deed or not, because you have the information.
So yeah, it's pretty useful.
And so looking at that, Who are your main clients and customers?
And how does what Searchland do help them in their day-to-day lives?
The core customer base that we have is your property developer.
(04:30):
So that's all shapes and sizes. So that's everyone right through your SME,
right through to your nationals.
So, you know, even if you cut that a bit further, those developers are made
up of smaller developers who may be doing flips.
They might be taking commercial property, converting that into a residential building.
Either through PD rights or sort of conventional planning right through to your
(04:52):
big strategic land planners who are looking at those edge of settlement sites,
building new villages, new homes.
And they're looking at the platform, they're engaging with that land registry,
the planning applications that come into one of the data sets that we pull is
we scrape every council's plan application.
We can say who's submitting what and for how many units and a few other fields in there.
(05:14):
So they're looking to see if they can find a site that has planning potential,
acquire it, and then build it out. That's what they want in there.
So the property developer is our core customer group.
We service pretty much most of the built environment.
If property development was a relay race, you've got your development right
through to your design and build.
So we've got architects and planners who use our platform because they want
(05:36):
to see what's going on, the constraint layers and planning.
And then we've also got agents who also look to
find land but sell land so they'll get
rid of it more recently which is really interesting we've been really
popular with the utility sector in particular sort of
your solar providers really big business at the moment um
(05:56):
oh I didn't realize that I didn't realize that you
were that that area was using Searchland too
so that's that's pretty interesting so what are they looking at putting the
the solar panels in and trying to work
out the best sites for that or something different yeah it's.
It's very similar they follow almost identical process
to a developer who wants to find a site see if it's
(06:17):
suitable and then speak to the landowner so buy the land which
indeed this industry is crazy you write letters in this industry it's
got a super high correspondence rate so the
utilities is very similar renewables they'll find a
plot of land it's big enough it's near enough key things that
they need so in this instance it's what you call substations basically
like the infrastructure of electricity generation if
(06:39):
they think a site is suitable because it's location and it's
planning they write to the landowner and yeah
currently there's a really big push for away from
sort of you know your fossil fuels into renewables and
solar in the UK solar and wind are two big drivers of
that and these companies are very well funded and looking
for a lot of land so so those letters
(07:02):
can they go out through your platform yeah yeah
so yeah like I said letter sending is
the it's sort of like the outbound of this
industry it's how you engage with the landowner we built
in in fact this while we're in geovation we built a letter sending feature it's
like the first of its type in this industry where you could buy a land registry
record we then get proprietor information so you could see it's owned by you
(07:25):
know two proprietors on there and the addresses that they have and then you
You could send them a letter from the platform,
which is pretty cool, because most people were doing mail modes at the time
or whatever wacky solutions they'd created for themselves.
And begin to use SearchSlam a bit more of a CRM. But ultimately,
you'd find these physical sites, but you'd be sending them letters all digitally.
(07:48):
So if I remember rightly, you built Business Gateway as well, didn't you?
Yeah, so integrated through the gateway, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and the Business Gateway, what that allows our users to do as well is
they can have access to all the exact same information bought through,
you know, it's the same provider, but they can have multiple accounts,
they can have accounts through Searchland and set it up.
(08:08):
So it speaks really cleanly to our platform, which is great.
Cool. So I know we mentioned earlier that you were part of the Accelerator program in spring 21.
Just briefly, how did that help Searchland being on the program itself?
South yeah I remember getting that call
from you very very clearly it's for
(08:31):
the stage of business it was kind of immeasurable as I say it's immeasurable
I actually think the number that we kind of throw around is you know between
the founders and we think it probably sped us up about a year for where we were
because what the Geovation accelerator allowed us to do was go from well this this is a fun idea.
We all had jobs elsewhere to this being our full-time employment basically became a business.
(08:54):
So from idea to business was perfectly in line with our time at Geovation.
So all of us had full-time jobs. We were thinking around with this.
I was ultimately the first to leave my stable employment. I remember you leave
it actually. I remember you leave it. But through Geovation.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I drafted up my notice. My contract termination notice as well as at Geovation.
(09:21):
But it's, yeah, so that idea from idea to business was probably one of the big
things that it provided.
It was everything from the content and the courses that you structure,
which again is just a great mindset shift as I'm going from a nine to five to
I need to be thinking about how I'm selling and who I'm selling to and marketing,
right through to being around other businesses that are a similar stage.
(09:42):
You know, I've still got some great connections from people on our cohort and
just seeing how their businesses are doing.
Yeah. but ultimately it gave us just a really sort of safe place to grow the
business. So just thinking about,
your journey are there any particular highlights or successes
that you'd just like to mention that that stand up
in your mind so far for search land the big
(10:04):
success is the it's the one we kind of all hope for and we're you know we're
still trying to see when this bottoms out but it's kind of the continued growth
that we've had so since Geovation leaving we've gone from you know 100 customers
to we should pass the thousand mark this quarter employees we've gone from i
think we're about eight to 30 to 35.
The number of employees is definitely not a metric of how well a company is
(10:26):
doing, but it's definitely in line with all the growth.
We release features at a continued rate. I think we do about 15 main,
main, main features a quarter.
And the thing that's quite nice about that is that's allowed us to go from a
company where people didn't really take very seriously.
That's okay. Who are you? What are you doing? Okay, that's cool.
(10:46):
To a company that now has a bit of reputation, a bit of brand awareness.
It's very rare that I jump into a call now and someone hasn't heard of us,
which is nice because that just keeps the conversation flowing.
But that's allowed us to form quite cool partnerships, integrations,
and relationships that we just couldn't have had otherwise.
So I suppose the most notable one was running an integration with Rightmove,
(11:09):
which obviously, you know.
Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I saw that. Live on market properties data.
And yeah, in November, we formed the first partnership of its kind with them.
And I'm sure they'll do more.
But it was the integration with their data displaying on our platform and seeing
that sort of synergy between what we would call off market and on market and
(11:31):
how that data speaks to each other. So, yeah, we wouldn't have been able to
do that a couple of years ago.
But yeah, we're able to do it now. Yeah. So on the Rightmove partnership that
we have with the data, what that would mean for our existing audience,
a lot of them might already have subscriptions to Rightmove,
or they'd be trawling online for properties that are on the market.
This allows that customer base to bring all of that information into one place.
(11:55):
So what Searchland is very good at is saying if a property is developable.
So if you look at it and you can see the planning applications are looking good,
or that it's unconstrained and that you want it.
But a missing piece of information we've always had like
a missing bit of the puzzle has always been well is the
site on the market so now
developers can see if a site is developable and
(12:16):
could put you know 1 10 20 homes on it now they can see if it's on the market
and if it's on the market that developer can then have more information more
purchasing power than all the other people looking so they can either bid higher
and get the site because they know what it's worth or they can drop a site more
quickly because they also know what it's worth and they know if it's gone too high.
So again, I think this will speak to where we want to take the platform,
(12:38):
but it's more partnerships, more information, more integrations,
so that you've got that information in one place,
and effectively allow our users to move quicker and a bit smarter than their
competition because it's competitive for developers.
And finally, Hugh, what's next for Searchland? What's next?
I think it's just a refinement. I suppose it's refining what we're doing,
(12:59):
going into that next stage. Now we've got these employees.
We're getting to a point where we probably want to just refine the product in certain areas.
And hopefully what we'll start to see is Searchland meeting different things,
different industries. So at the beginning, I mentioned developers.
We've got agents, the renewable sector.
We still want to grow into new sectors. So we still want to grow into the commercial sector.
(13:22):
It's going to be a really interesting one for us. You know, we've all seen the
growth of franchises popping up and acquisition of companies that go and bust
that have really good sort of property holdings.
We, this year, want to sort of increase our presence with them.
But what that also means is that if you would speak to different customers across
these different segments, they'll also hold a very different view of what Searchland is to them.
(13:45):
So, you know, I think just a slight maturation in maybe our marketing,
in the way that we promote and sell the product, as well as just how people use it.
So also in terms of our roadmap and what we're actually looking to build out,
one of the main features we want is, yes, we've got this letter sender and you
can find sites and send letters.
But we want to take that a step further.
(14:06):
And one of the features that we want to release, which is it's ultimately going
to be a new product in its own right, which would be really interesting because
it would be one of the first new products that we've released since launching.
But it's the ability for users to send letters on planning applications or any trigger.
If a property sells, you can send a letter. If a planning application goes in, you can send a letter.
(14:28):
Or some other trigger, you can send a letter.
This will be particularly interesting because it's where a service owner wants
to take the product over the next year or two, which has become more CRM-like,
more daily habits, more daily features, more actionable things.
And the ability to send letters on the back of automations is a step towards
(14:49):
that sort of CRM-like product which we want to be able to deliver.
Lots going on in the future.
Well, it's been great to talk to you, Hugh. What I can say is that hopefully,
yeah, that everyone I talk to in Geovation, when they want to come onto the
program, I always mention Searchland and they always already know who you are.
(15:09):
So the word is certainly getting out there about what you're doing and how well you're doing it. Great.
So thanks so much for talking to me today. It would be good to catch up in,
well, we always catch up, but maybe catch up in another six months to see what
more Searchland is doing in the prop tech sector.
Definitely. I'm here for it. Well, thank you very much for having me.
Hello, I'm Caroline Bray. I'm the Geovation Stakehold Manager at Land Registry.
And what that means is I get to work with all the PropTech startups who are
accepted onto the Accelerator program, as well as the whole of the Geovation
community, which currently has around 1,800 members.
My role is pretty varied, but it includes talking to all of the startups that
are part of Geovation, talking to them about our data,
(00:22):
our commercial data sets, what Land Registry has to offer, and how that data
might help the startup I'm chatting to achieve what they're looking to achieve
with them, what they're trying to build.
So today I'm here with Hugh Gibbs from Searchland.
Searchland took part in the PropTech stream of the Geovation Accelerator Program in spring 21.
(00:45):
The program is sponsored by Land Registry and Ordnance Survey and offers startup
companies companies funding,
support, and access to property and location data so they can come up with innovative
solutions that address issues in the property sector and in the wider society.
So thanks for coming to chat to us today, Hugh. Do you want to introduce yourself?
(01:07):
Yeah, thank you for having me. Firstly, yes, so my name is Hugh.
I'm one of the four co-founders of a company called Searchland.
First thing they say when you sign a company is not to have I have four co-founders,
but I think hopefully by the end of the podcast, we would have shown that it's
not such a bad thing. It's been a strength.
So, yeah, like I say, one of four founders. We joined Geovation, must have been in 21.
(01:30):
But what Searchland does is we are inherently a tech platform,
which is the property industry and the technology industry combined.
So what we provide is your sort of B2B SaaS platforms. We've got a website. We use lots of data.
Your Land Registry data being an example.Put it onto a website and
allow our end users who are increasingly varied to engage, manipulate this information
(01:55):
and kind of do their job a bit faster. Cool.
But yeah, so my background's in the planning sector. That's how I got into this.
But yeah, we are a tech company first and foremost, which is quite fun.
Cool. So yeah, so when you joined in spring 21, I think we met in Geovation
and at that point you were members and then you decided to apply for the program
and then luckily you got on. Yeah.
(02:17):
Just talking about the data, so I know you use some of Land Registry's data.
Can you just give me an overview of what data you are using within Searchland?
Yeah, the dataset that you, so when you log on to Searchland,
the first dataset that we sort of shove in your face is the Land Registry Ownership,
is what we call it, but that's the National Polygon Service.
(02:38):
Who owns what, to what extent?
That is the architecture of Searchland. You can click onto a title and see what's
going on. But we plug into quite a few of the land registry data sets.
So the other crucial ones we have on there are linked back to leases.
So we play around with your registered leases data set.
The price paid is also a really useful one.
So looking at that transaction price, obviously that's a crucial part of,
(03:02):
say, our industry is what's selling.
As well as, I think we've got a few others that link to, say,
your company ownership data and your overseas company ownership information.
So, you know, we're plugged in at various degrees. You don't see all of it all
at once, but it's really that sort of land registry MPS that's our main data
(03:23):
set that we use. So it's quite handy, isn't it?
With UK companies and overseas companies that own property in England and Wales,
you can show that ownership.
If you link it in with National Polygon Service, you can show the ownership
on your platform relatively easily.
Whereas if you want to show residential ownership, as you know,
you have to buy the official copy, which I know you can probably do via your platform.
(03:45):
But the fact that you can show that ownership straight away is quite useful
for your customers, I would think.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's useful for a number of reasons.
Just in terms of how you approach, say if you approach a company that owns a
plot of land, it's a very different approach to if it's a private individual, right?
You just take the knowledge gap as the beginning.
You know, if you're speaking to a private landowner, you're going to be very
(04:07):
different about how you approach them. If it's a company, let alone whether
you buy the £3 deed or not, because you have the information.
So yeah, it's pretty useful.
And so looking at that, Who are your main clients and customers?
And how does what Searchland do help them in their day-to-day lives?
The core customer base that we have is your property developer.
(04:30):
So that's all shapes and sizes. So that's everyone right through your SME,
right through to your nationals.
So, you know, even if you cut that a bit further, those developers are made
up of smaller developers who may be doing flips.
They might be taking commercial property, converting that into a residential building.
Either through PD rights or sort of conventional planning right through to your
(04:52):
big strategic land planners who are looking at those edge of settlement sites,
building new villages, new homes.
And they're looking at the platform, they're engaging with that land registry,
the planning applications that come into one of the data sets that we pull is
we scrape every council's plan application.
We can say who's submitting what and for how many units and a few other fields in there.
(05:14):
So they're looking to see if they can find a site that has planning potential,
acquire it, and then build it out. That's what they want in there.
So the property developer is our core customer group.
We service pretty much most of the built environment.
If property development was a relay race, you've got your development right
through to your design and build.
So we've got architects and planners who use our platform because they want
(05:36):
to see what's going on, the constraint layers and planning.
And then we've also got agents who also look to
find land but sell land so they'll get
rid of it more recently which is really interesting we've been really
popular with the utility sector in particular sort of
your solar providers really big business at the moment um
(05:56):
oh I didn't realize that I didn't realize that you
were that that area was using Searchland too
so that's that's pretty interesting so what are they looking at putting the
the solar panels in and trying to work
out the best sites for that or something different yeah it's.
It's very similar they follow almost identical process
to a developer who wants to find a site see if it's
(06:17):
suitable and then speak to the landowner so buy the land which
indeed this industry is crazy you write letters in this industry it's
got a super high correspondence rate so the
utilities is very similar renewables they'll find a
plot of land it's big enough it's near enough key things that
they need so in this instance it's what you call substations basically
like the infrastructure of electricity generation if
(06:39):
they think a site is suitable because it's location and it's
planning they write to the landowner and yeah
currently there's a really big push for away from
sort of you know your fossil fuels into renewables and
solar in the UK solar and wind are two big drivers of
that and these companies are very well funded and looking
for a lot of land so so those letters
(07:02):
can they go out through your platform yeah yeah
so yeah like I said letter sending is
the it's sort of like the outbound of this
industry it's how you engage with the landowner we built
in in fact this while we're in geovation we built a letter sending feature it's
like the first of its type in this industry where you could buy a land registry
record we then get proprietor information so you could see it's owned by you
(07:25):
know two proprietors on there and the addresses that they have and then you
You could send them a letter from the platform,
which is pretty cool, because most people were doing mail modes at the time
or whatever wacky solutions they'd created for themselves.
And begin to use SearchSlam a bit more of a CRM. But ultimately,
you'd find these physical sites, but you'd be sending them letters all digitally.
(07:48):
So if I remember rightly, you built Business Gateway as well, didn't you?
Yeah, so integrated through the gateway, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, and the Business Gateway, what that allows our users to do as well is
they can have access to all the exact same information bought through,
you know, it's the same provider, but they can have multiple accounts,
they can have accounts through Searchland and set it up.
(08:08):
So it speaks really cleanly to our platform, which is great.
Cool. So I know we mentioned earlier that you were part of the Accelerator program in spring 21.
Just briefly, how did that help Searchland being on the program itself?
South yeah I remember getting that call
from you very very clearly it's for
(08:31):
the stage of business it was kind of immeasurable as I say it's immeasurable
I actually think the number that we kind of throw around is you know between
the founders and we think it probably sped us up about a year for where we were
because what the Geovation accelerator allowed us to do was go from well this this is a fun idea.
We all had jobs elsewhere to this being our full-time employment basically became a business.
(08:54):
So from idea to business was perfectly in line with our time at Geovation.
So all of us had full-time jobs. We were thinking around with this.
I was ultimately the first to leave my stable employment. I remember you leave
it actually. I remember you leave it. But through Geovation.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I drafted up my notice. My contract termination notice as well as at Geovation.
(09:21):
But it's, yeah, so that idea from idea to business was probably one of the big
things that it provided.
It was everything from the content and the courses that you structure,
which again is just a great mindset shift as I'm going from a nine to five to
I need to be thinking about how I'm selling and who I'm selling to and marketing,
right through to being around other businesses that are a similar stage.
(09:42):
You know, I've still got some great connections from people on our cohort and
just seeing how their businesses are doing.
Yeah. but ultimately it gave us just a really sort of safe place to grow the
business. So just thinking about,
your journey are there any particular highlights or successes
that you'd just like to mention that that stand up
in your mind so far for search land the big
(10:04):
success is the it's the one we kind of all hope for and we're you know we're
still trying to see when this bottoms out but it's kind of the continued growth
that we've had so since Geovation leaving we've gone from you know 100 customers
to we should pass the thousand mark this quarter employees we've gone from i
think we're about eight to 30 to 35.
The number of employees is definitely not a metric of how well a company is
(10:26):
doing, but it's definitely in line with all the growth.
We release features at a continued rate. I think we do about 15 main,
main, main features a quarter.
And the thing that's quite nice about that is that's allowed us to go from a
company where people didn't really take very seriously.
That's okay. Who are you? What are you doing? Okay, that's cool.
(10:46):
To a company that now has a bit of reputation, a bit of brand awareness.
It's very rare that I jump into a call now and someone hasn't heard of us,
which is nice because that just keeps the conversation flowing.
But that's allowed us to form quite cool partnerships, integrations,
and relationships that we just couldn't have had otherwise.
So I suppose the most notable one was running an integration with Rightmove,
(11:09):
which obviously, you know.
Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I saw that. Live on market properties data.
And yeah, in November, we formed the first partnership of its kind with them.
And I'm sure they'll do more.
But it was the integration with their data displaying on our platform and seeing
that sort of synergy between what we would call off market and on market and
(11:31):
how that data speaks to each other. So, yeah, we wouldn't have been able to
do that a couple of years ago.
But yeah, we're able to do it now. Yeah. So on the Rightmove partnership that
we have with the data, what that would mean for our existing audience,
a lot of them might already have subscriptions to Rightmove,
or they'd be trawling online for properties that are on the market.
This allows that customer base to bring all of that information into one place.
(11:55):
So what Searchland is very good at is saying if a property is developable.
So if you look at it and you can see the planning applications are looking good,
or that it's unconstrained and that you want it.
But a missing piece of information we've always had like
a missing bit of the puzzle has always been well is the
site on the market so now
developers can see if a site is developable and
(12:16):
could put you know 1 10 20 homes on it now they can see if it's on the market
and if it's on the market that developer can then have more information more
purchasing power than all the other people looking so they can either bid higher
and get the site because they know what it's worth or they can drop a site more
quickly because they also know what it's worth and they know if it's gone too high.
So again, I think this will speak to where we want to take the platform,
(12:38):
but it's more partnerships, more information, more integrations,
so that you've got that information in one place,
and effectively allow our users to move quicker and a bit smarter than their
competition because it's competitive for developers.
And finally, Hugh, what's next for Searchland? What's next?
I think it's just a refinement. I suppose it's refining what we're doing,
(12:59):
going into that next stage. Now we've got these employees.
We're getting to a point where we probably want to just refine the product in certain areas.
And hopefully what we'll start to see is Searchland meeting different things,
different industries. So at the beginning, I mentioned developers.
We've got agents, the renewable sector.
We still want to grow into new sectors. So we still want to grow into the commercial sector.
(13:22):
It's going to be a really interesting one for us. You know, we've all seen the
growth of franchises popping up and acquisition of companies that go and bust
that have really good sort of property holdings.
We, this year, want to sort of increase our presence with them.
But what that also means is that if you would speak to different customers across
these different segments, they'll also hold a very different view of what Searchland is to them.
(13:45):
So, you know, I think just a slight maturation in maybe our marketing,
in the way that we promote and sell the product, as well as just how people use it.
So also in terms of our roadmap and what we're actually looking to build out,
one of the main features we want is, yes, we've got this letter sender and you
can find sites and send letters.
But we want to take that a step further.
(14:06):
And one of the features that we want to release, which is it's ultimately going
to be a new product in its own right, which would be really interesting because
it would be one of the first new products that we've released since launching.
But it's the ability for users to send letters on planning applications or any trigger.
If a property sells, you can send a letter. If a planning application goes in, you can send a letter.
(14:28):
Or some other trigger, you can send a letter.
This will be particularly interesting because it's where a service owner wants
to take the product over the next year or two, which has become more CRM-like,
more daily habits, more daily features, more actionable things.
And the ability to send letters on the back of automations is a step towards
(14:49):
that sort of CRM-like product which we want to be able to deliver.
Lots going on in the future.
Well, it's been great to talk to you, Hugh. What I can say is that hopefully,
yeah, that everyone I talk to in Geovation, when they want to come onto the
program, I always mention Searchland and they always already know who you are.
(15:09):
So the word is certainly getting out there about what you're doing and how well you're doing it. Great.
So thanks so much for talking to me today. It would be good to catch up in,
well, we always catch up, but maybe catch up in another six months to see what
more Searchland is doing in the prop tech sector.
Definitely. I'm here for it. Well, thank you very much for having me.
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