NIMBUS® MAPS
CASE STUDY
PropTech Interview with Nimbus® Maps CEO, Simon Davis.
We speak to PropTech co-founder and CEO Simon Davis of Nimbus® Maps about the company’s phenomenal growth, lessons he learned along the way and his top tips on building a successful tech start-up in business and professional services.
When brothers Paul and Simon Davis were first approached about the letting of one of their properties, they had no idea that they were about to embark on a journey that would see them unlock more than £100 million worth of value in just three months. Five years on, the brothers’ property technology solution, Nimbus® Maps, is used by more than 10,000 property investors, developers and professionals and includes complex data on more than 30 million properties across the UK. Here Simon discusses how the business went from investment and development within the West Midlands, to providing the tech that supports tens of thousands of property deals across the UK.
The £100 million PropTech answer
The idea for Nimbus® Maps grew organically from a development opportunity. We had a property that was ready to be let to a major supermarket chain. However, the building we owned just wouldn’t work for them, so we looked across the road, as all entrepreneurial developers would do, at a site owned by one of the big pub companies, so we contacted their team and suggested a joint venture. The deal went through, albeit to a different supermarket chain, and the pub company liked what we had done so much that one site became 120, 800 and then ultimately 6,000. The challenge we then had was that we had the local knowledge, information, and contacts to be able to advise on the best potential uses and identify property buyers in the West Midlands, but how could we replicate that across the UK?
Initially, our solution was very people-focused. We established a network of multi-disciplinary consultants across the UK each with their own region, local knowledge, and contacts. The insight that came back, however, was often sporadic and couldn’t be normalised - making it unusable at this scale. What we needed was the ability to collate all the available data about a given site or location to help better inform both buyers and sellers. Working with the University of Warwick, we sponsored some research into a potential solution and then built the first iteration of Nimbus® Maps. Within just a few months of using this new tech-focused approach, we identified more than £100 million of latent value across the pub company’s estate which was reported in their public accounts.
The tech solution to property investment
We knew that this issue wasn’t just limited to pubs but would be affecting all landowners and developers of any size. In fact, it wasn’t long before the purchasers of the pub sites, including supermarket chains and care home providers, started asking if we could do the same for them. We’d assumed that big agencies were regularly undertaking strategic reviews of assets but that wasn’t the case. It soon became clear that we were blazing a trail in using data to help inform property decisions.
Property has always been quite a traditional and opaque sector reliant on localised networks. One of the major issues with this is that it also operates on a no hay no pay model. This naturally leads to a lack of trust, as often those advising on a deal will only get paid if it goes through. Nimbus® Maps, for the first time, brought together complex data from lots of different sources to objectively answer two main questions:
1. I own these buildings, who are the most likely prospective purchasers or occupiers and what should I do with them?
2. I’m looking to purchase sites, what are the most suitable options and supporting values?
The clever bit is the linking and aggregating of the data into a usable format that is specific to a particular use type. For example, the type of information a retailer will need will be very different from a buy-to-let investor.
In essence, the three strands of what we use the data to do are find, assess and connect. We find sites for potential purchasers, either on or off-market. Assess the site and area based on the end-use e.g. what’s the traffic flow like? What’s the going rate for property in that area? Is this a good neighbourhood or a bad one? Finally, we connect the purchaser to primary stakeholders - that could be the owners, or architects and planners that have been particularly successful at that type of use in the area.
In this way, decisions can be made using up to date, objective information rather than subjective opinions. We believe that a more transparent, data-driven property world will generate more activity because all parties will have greater confidence in doing deals.
Simon’s advice for tech startups:
Validate your idea
Speak to plenty of potential customers before building or developing any technology or solution to ensure you’ve correctly identified their pain point and the right solution.Keep it simple
Keeping it simple is perhaps one of the hardest things to do as a tech founder. You can over-engineer your solution and assume a happy customer wants more thrown at them but sometimes a happy customer just wants some basic things done really well.Seek advice
Speak to other founders and peers. A lot of the problems and challenges you face are ubiquitous. Founders are supportive of those going through the same pains as they have and are often more than willing to give advice. One of the best things about SuperTech is that it brings tech and sector specialists together.Maintain your culture
A company’s culture is at the heart of everything they do. At Nimbus® Maps, we’ve identified four core values - innovation, excellence, integrity, and belief. We’re currently going through a major recruitment drive, and I do all the first stage interviews, which focus exclusively on those values, ahead of any technical competencies.
Why SuperTech?
SuperTech, uniquely, brings technology, business, and professional services experts. together in one place. For me, this is crucial if we are going to help organisations grow through greater tech adoption as no one sector or technology sits in isolation. For example, in property, once we’ve provided the PropTech solution of finding, assessing, and connecting any deal is incumbent on effective legal advice and funding and of course, the property will also eventually need to be insured. Through SuperTech we can effectively educate a given market or sector on the best tech-enabled solutions to improving their processes at all the different stages drawing on PropTech, FinTech, LegalTech and InsurTech.
Benefits of being in Warwick and the West Midlands
One of the major benefits of the West Midlands for us is access to a huge talent pool. We’re aiming to more than double our workforce in the next year and being in the region enables us to recruit across all job roles and functions.
Being on the University of Warwick Technology Park has also been crucial to our growth and development. We’ve been able to work closely with some incredibly bright people, studying the latest data science. Putting into practice some of the advanced theories and thinking has allowed us to evolve Nimbus® Maps over the last five years. We want to be on the cutting edge of research and development, as do our staff, which is why we’re working with the university to ensure an even closer connection moving forward.
Simon Davis is the CEO and co-founder of Nimbus® Maps and PropTech co-lead for SuperTech. To find out more about Nimbus® Maps visit: www.nimbusmaps.co.uk