Ideal Flatmate passes £1m in Seed Funding

With a valuation that has increased from £1.25m to £3.75m in a year

Ideal Flatmate, a LondonlovesBusiness one to watch, was the UK’s first flatmate matching site that helps flatsharers find better matches based on compatibility and living habits.

The platform has seen rapid growth over the past 12 months, and now sees 2,000 new properties uploaded each month by landlords and letting agents with rooms to fill. It also attracts more than 150,000 visitors each month, with flathunters searching for rooms and looking to ‘buddy up’ using it’s matchmaking tool.

Part of the growth is driven by the changing nature of the property market and increased demand:

• The fastest growing demographic of flatsharers is the over 35s, with a 400% rise in the past decade.
• Forty-somethings are now almost twice as likely to be renting from a private landlord than they were 10 years ago.

Founders of Ideal Flatmate Tom Gatzen and Rob Imonikhe came up with the idea following years of becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of options for finding flatmates after searching through current listing websites. The last year has seen the site become one of the busiest flatsharing sites in London, with particularly strong backing from professional landlords using the platform.

The additional funding will allow Ideal Flatmate to accelerate its business plan, fast-track its recruitment of key hires, significantly grow the user numbers and advance the implementation of machine learning into the platform. The full-time team has grown to eight over the past 12 months and technical advisory roles have been filled by the likes of Edd Read, co-founder and former CTO of Graze.com.

Gatzen said, “This funding is a huge vote of confidence in the business and we are excited to continue building a credible alternative to help Generation Rent find their perfect flatmates. The last 12 months have been an incredible journey and our team have performed remarkably in shaping the product, staying close to our users and making constant improvements to the platform. We can’t wait to increase the speed of our growth and provide London and the UK with the flathsharing platform it deserves!’

Since its launch last January, the site has reached an average of 150,000 monthly users, more than 50,000 people have registered as a flathunter on the site and over 12,000 properties have been listed. A slate of developments are now in progress to fine-tune the algorithm based on initial testing and to deliver greater value for users.

The Advisory Team is also being strengthened, with David Pollock, founder of Greene & Co. joining the Management Board, Edd Read joining as Technical Advisor and a new Lead Developer being appointed.

“The next stage of progression is an exciting one for the business as we deploy our growth strategies over the coming months. This funding round will help us continue to build a strong team and fast-track our drive to onboard more users,” said Imonikhe.