From Deliveroo to PropTech: Graham Paterson’s Journey to Reinvent the Property Portal

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episodes of The Viking Chat and I'm delighted to be joined today by Graham Patterson of jittie.com. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming down the shortage and joining us. So look for those who don't know you and don't know what jittie is, let's start with you. How did you come into the wonderful world of Proctech? So I've been working tech for a long time. I've been lucky enough to work at some companies that got very big and became household names. Come on, name drop them. Transfer wise, now wise.com and delivery are the ones that people have had of. And I always wanted to start something myself, not only working for those big name brands set my bar very high. So I was always looking for like what's a big market? What's actually exciting to really change and transform. Myself and two friends from Deliveroo were moving house at about the same time. We were buying houses and we, you know, as one does, we were like this is a terrible experience. It's really, really difficult. It's not modern. We felt better taking care of by the apps and websites available when you buy a book from Amazon rather than be able to buy a home for like, you know, how many thousands times the price. And we thought we could do better. So we decided to jump in very naively. But I think we've managed to do a few things a bit better, which is nice. And so the idea of Jiti was born? Jiti, where does that come from? How did you come up? One of my co-founders was from Leicester and we were talking about homes one day and he mentioned a Jiti and we were like, oh, that's an interesting word. What does that mean? It means a little like a back alley almost behind, sometimes behind houses. So we thought that's quite a cool, quite a cool name, quite a cool word. And the dot com was available for very cheap. So we were like, let's do that, yeah. Nothing, nothing quite like a cheap dot com domain. Yeah. So look, I think whenever any agents watching this will be having their usual instant agent conflicting emotions, because we were talking about prop tech. But obviously we're talking fundamentally about a portal. Now there is nothing that I think divides an agent more than portals and what they deliver and what they cost and the role they play in the business. You know, there is obviously the behemoth that is right move that everyone loves to hate. Although interesting, you know, I find it fascinating talking to so many different agents across the country. You know, they've got an incredibly loyal fan base. They've got, you know, they do have a large chunk of the market of what are fundamentally very successful agencies that are very happy with the value that they get out of right move. There are sways of the industry that do not feel quite like that. But also to say there have been a lot of pretenders to the crown over the last 20 years, I think is an understatement. I'd say portals is probably the space where we've seen the most products. The most important thing is that we've seen a lot of the things that we've seen in the industry. We've seen a lot of the things that we've seen in the industry. What's different, you know, we've as agents, I think we've seen, and we're going to talk a lot more than just jettie.com, but let's start with this. As agents, we've seen a hell of a lot of, like I said, pretenders to the crown over the last 20 years. I would say I've seen at least 40 portals have a cracker there. Shockingly, the vast majority of those you can actually rule out very quickly. When you look at their landing page, their brand, their marketing strategy, of which there's often very little, which always find astonishing for a platform that is nothing but marketing. So what initially sets you a guys apart, I mean apart from the track record that you guys have come from bonafide, kind of tech-type businesses, what's different about jettie in itself? Yeah, I think AI and our ability to use it is the thing that really sets us apart in a couple of ways. Nyevly, when we started, we thought it would be simply be a case of being better, caring more, etc. We learned very quickly that that's not the case. And partly through careful planning and partly through sheer dumb luck, we launched and started to build it around the time of chat GPD, so a GPD 3, we're taking off. So we were seeing this new technology kind of emerge in front of us. And let us do two things that stopped us from being immediately in the property portal graveyard. Firstly, we can aggregate homes from agents very, very quickly and very, very cheaply. So we can build what we call a generic crawler that goes out around the internet, similar to Google, finds all the homes for sale that it can, brings them back, analyzes them and presents them to home buyers. And we spoke to a lot of agents when we were starting out, like kind of asking for permission, or kind of laughed off those calls, because they were saying we pay, right, move a huge amount to do that for us. So if you do it for free and we don't have to live to finger, fantastic, go for it. And then the AI really understanding those homes really, really deeply also lets us give buyers a search experience that they can't get anywhere else. So to start with, to start with, there was quite basic things, like we'd look for off-street parking, upstairs, Lou, downstairs, Lou, open plan kitchen, things like that. But it's melded and grown over time into this incredibly powerful natural language, such experience where it really is more like you give it a prompt and say what you care about and what you want to find in those homes. So now on your major port in the UK, you can still say in this area, show me homes up to this price, this bedroom count, that's a flat or a house or semi detached. Whereas on jittie, you can say I want a home with carpet in the bathroom, for anyone that does want that and there must be some surprisingly common. There's someone out there, it's a niche market. It's a niche market. Or I want a large garden or I want beautiful views from inside the home or I want to be within five minutes walk to an off-stead rated, fantastic primary school for my kid. Things like that are now possible. So really is a case of letting people search by almost anything when looking for a home, rather than you're really basic in this area, show me homes with this many bedrooms and then in this price. And it seems to really resonate with buyers. We've got high net promoter score, good retention rates. We're acquiring new users for zero, CAC, I think mainly because we let them do something they can't do anywhere else in the world, specifically in the UK. So I think you're hitting on a really valid point. I think one of the two common things that I've seen with in the graveyard of a portal attempt is one they make it too much about the agent. So I think I was the mistake with the boom inmate. I think it's a great example for a well-funded and again a business with leaders that kind of knew the game. They focus too much on the agent and not enough on the consumer. But then also with the consumer it was, okay, you say it's better but in what way? And I think that was the other thing was, yeah, you know, you would, like I said, you would look at a lot of these websites and it was, it doesn't look as good. It's based on the same. The buttons change a little bit and the image is slightly bigger. But I was always astonished that the new portal never kind of leapt on the new stuff. Like none of them leapt on video or virtual tours and was kind of like, right, this is how we're going to differentiate ourselves. And like you said, through kind of luck if not anything else, you know, you guys kind of timed it with AI and it is, it's a huge shift in how we're doing everything right. It's transformative. And I think, you know, we've seen in our agency in base, it's been really interesting. The chat, you be, to your fact of like you said, prompts the way people interact rather than going to Google and being like letting agents short it and getting this very generic kind of paid for list. Which tells you nothing. You know, we've had clients come to this year with their writing 3, 4, 5 line prompts where they basically describe their dreams. free agent, you know, we want them to be independent, we want them to look after tenants and all this sort of stuff. And then, but then they get these really refined results. And move very quickly on that. We've had some great clients join us this year through that. And it's, yeah, it is hugely transformative. And portals, like you said, the way the description you had, you definitely couldn't describe anything outside the property. I think the primary location where the early website where you could search for things like sash windows and each side and all that sort of stuff. But actually astonishingly, only fairly recently have you been able to start searching for those kind of things in in zoopler and right move. And then even then it's still quite, quite limited. Like you said, you can't write a three line description of your, yeah, and be dream home. And we, I think the change of describing of people describing exactly what they want in terms of letting agents, it's without one to sound like too much of a tech wanker. It really is like a paradigm shift. Do you go from, you know, keyword prompting Google to try to get it to do the thing you want to just describe and what you actually care about. And one of the biggest challenges that we've got, but also opportunities is that home buyers are so used to saying in this area up to this price. Yeah, three bed, two bar, yeah, between 450 and 500,000. Well, and so we speak to them and they tell us, you know, this is what I care about. And then when you, you know, you go back and forth and you really get the crux of it, some do care about, about those beautiful views. Or, you know, I want to hone those, that's a really great deal in terms of price per square foot. And I can do a bit of modernization to improve it, but it doesn't need doing up to live in. It's not a squat. It's not a squat, but it's like it's got a bit of potential to improve. So I'm going to a good deal. And those things they really care about, you need to kind of coax people into like, into telling you about and, and using it in, in the way that they can get the most value. I was going to say, there'll be a lot of agents watching this going, ah, great that you can find buyers what they want. Yeah. Travellers buyers don't always know how they want. And also don't necessarily have realistic expectations. You know, they will have a shopping list for a £650,000 home if they get everything they want with a £500,000 budget. Yeah. So there's always going to be that compromise in there. So, so one, one thing, I think just to kind of dance around this a little bit, obviously, in kind of a similar space, but very different to what you guys are doing, because he's not doing a portal, obviously got mal and his initiative there. And the one, the one thing I find fascinating with this, with this AI space at the moment, and you know, it's relevant to us with our tech business and us with our agency as well, is my, my only kind of thing is it's because it does so much more than a Google search engine did, you know, so you know, stop messing with everyone. You just get calls. There's no need to do so different, but, you know, because it does so much more and you can write these long prompts and it is moving so fast, you know, and, and, you know, I think the stuff we're going to see next year coming out with wearables and stuff where you'll just interact with your daily life where you can start talking to it and, you know, this is all sort of stuff. People listen to this being like, yeah, right, but, you know, the investment going into this space and, and some of that, yeah, some of the stuff we can see coming. And the thing I find fascinating is like, will, and I genuinely, I don't, genuinely don't know the answer to this question, you know, the way people have interacted with your right moves and you see the traditional portals in the past, is that going to be the same way that people interact with stuff or are people going to have whatever their AI assistant is, kind of straps them in their ear going, oh, you know, it's time to move. Can you draw me up a list of the ten top homes that match this, this like wish list of 20 properties? Yeah. And what that looks like. And it's ultimately, you know, how, how, are we going to service that data and how are you going to make sure that? I think it's going to be a combination of kind of both the thing it depends on what people are looking for. So for example, you've got your, we call them like room scrollers, right? Your people who just like to look at property port and I think your traditional doorways is at least half of website portals. Oh, I'd have guessed like 1990s. But it's, I think that'll always be like image based on a thing, on a, on a device somewhere. Whereas I don't know if you're maybe the other than the spectrum, you got your renters, right? Who might be like, when something good enough comes up, book interviewing. Yeah. You know my criteria, you know what I care about? We need to move in the next year when that happens, like book interviewing and tell me about it. Here's my calendar. And I think that'll be almost, we'll see the rise of like no interface AI where like you say, whether it's all wearable or literally just like, I'd love something where I can just say when this happens, book into my calendar, and I never need to talk to you again. Yeah. And I think that is where a lot of stuff will go to. It'll be like having a butler that you never see, which I've never had a butler, but I assume that's a no. No, exactly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you said, I've never had, well, that's a lie. I had an assist and an executive assistant for about a month, several years ago. Didn't work out. But no, it does, it sounds, it does sound fascinating. And I think this actually, this leads me onto a really interesting point because it says, I was chatting with, I'm not going to name drop him in this because he might not necessarily want this conversation to be completely, um, probably, but I was talking to a really good agent, um, who's running a really fantastic agency. He was going, um, quite rapidly. And we had a fascinating chat at the Relocation Agent Network event on, um, Thursday. Um, and there's this fascinating thing. I've, I've been saying this for a couple of years. Ever since AI kind of started its ascendancy. Um, there's, there's a lot wrong with agency. Um, and it's not complex. It's, it's fundamentally often poor training and poor service is the underpinning to it. And the trouble is when you go to a lot of the events and, and courses that happen within the property industry, you see the same kind of 10 to 20% of the industry there, more or less. They vary a little bit. But fundamentally, you see very much the same kind of agencies in the room, the same people. And what that lulls you into thinking is that that is what the entire industry is like. Um, and it's not that's, that's the cream of the crop. But one thing that is talked about a lot in that process is this, this human connection, you know, people, you know, it's a, it's a people business, people buy from people. And I think whilst there is an element of truth to that, um, you know, if you look at almost everything else we do in our lives from banking to holidays to, you know, everything else, you go back to, um, you know, our youth, like I remember our childhood, you know, going into the travel agents and picking up the catalog and, you know, going and picking up your two, three, four catalogs and taking them home and going through an earmark and them and going in and having a chat. And, um, you know, many would have argued that, you know, that was a people business. That was, you know, how can you kind of transact that without people? And yet now the idea, unless you're booking some like 50,000 pounds, like billionaire weekend trip, the idea of the thought of sitting down with someone and kind of having a chat about what you want for your holiday, um, is a horrendous thought. Um, you know, and I think it's also as agents, we kind of raise, yes, buying a house is a really important journey, but does someone, does a buyer find booking of viewing? Do they, do they find, is there an emotion in booking of viewing to see a property that they might buy? I'd wager not as long as the, as long as the information and the marketing materials and the information about the property are accurate. Yeah. Actually, all they want to do is book it in, they don't want to talk to anyone. They don't want to be asked about mortgages and have you got a property to sell. And, and like I get it, this is all with the agency journey. This is all how you build out your pipeline and your additional revenue and everything else. And, and, you know, but there are other seamless ways to embed that in the process. It doesn't have to be that kind of gatekeeper interaction. Because again, when you think of, you know, when you think of buyers or renters out there, that rather horrendous process that they still will have at this moment of, you know, they'll inquire, I mean, particularly renters would inquire about 15, 20, 30 properties. Having that same boring conversation of, oh, how many bedrooms, you know, and the thing you must have, do you have a card, do you have a pet, do you smoke? What's your income? Do you have a guarantor? Bye. the fact that we think and yes whilst a good agent will ask those questions and will handle the nuance from a customer's perspective that is so dull and so boring. And I just think I think people in agency are really important but we massively over value how many of those important touch points there are. I think there's that first interaction when you humanly interact whether it's over the phone or in person, that first impression, absolutely. If it's a client listing a property with you, that interaction around an appraisal, a market review, whatever you want to call that. And then really potentially negotiation if there is a negotiation to be had. And then, I've said that you've really got the sticky bits of which in letting's add argue most of the time they're few and far between, sales depends where you are in the market. And again, depends how well prepared the property is and the information around the property because I would argue that a lot of those sticky situations would be mitigated if the relevant information was available from the start of the transaction. But if we take out those, there's a lot of interacting. You know, we've still agents out there giving their people call numbers to hit the day and viewing numbers to book in their diary. This kind of being busy for busy sake, interacting for interaction. And it's like, why is genuinely where's the value? It's really hard isn't it because I think if you take that, the whole spectrum of those touch points, there will be somewhere in five years' time we look back on how ridiculous and obviously ridiculous. And there'll be somewhere it feels entirely necessary and there'll be this hazing between. So it is really hard looking forward to predict what will be there. Because when I think of the booking of viewing, for example, you're totally right and it's an absolute schlep for the tent or the buyer. But then also if I want to house and I want to view it and there's not many that I like this, whatever the agent makes me do, I'll probably do. So look, I'm not for one second saying that an agent should allow someone to view a property whenever they want to, just that that booking should be seamless. It's like, you book your car in front of a MoT. You go in online, you're not given an entire open diary of pick any day in time you are. And they've got other appointments. They've got stuff blocked out. They've got other clients. Things will roll over. I don't think anyone is, I don't think we're saying that people, like I said, should be able to just pick and choose exactly what they want. Because there is also an argument of motivated buyers and tenants will find the time. That's the way it's about. Sometimes they can't and you can always tell when that's legitimate. But you know, I've lost count the amount of times I've had to be someone called up and go, oh my god, I really want to see this property, but I can only see it on this date this time. And it's like, cool, that's absolutely not going to happen. You know, we've already got four people seeing it tomorrow evening. That's just a lot. If you want to get in, you'll get that. I absolutely can't make it. Well, you know, I'm sorry. If you can't make that, then we'll have to wait and see how those go. And if it doesn't go, then you might get a look in and the round. Do you know what, so I don't book it in. You know, you can, it's one of the reasons why we stopped doing sat days as a letting agent. You know, we did the traditional thing of being open on weekends. I actually remember there was a couple of agents when we used to be open saturdays who weren't open on weekends. And I was like, you know, how can you, how can you really give your client service if you're not offering some sort of weekend, weekend service because people, you know, there are lots of people out there who have a busy Monday to Friday and they can't always justify slipping away from work. But actually, you know, we kind of presented saturdays and we would always joke about the fact that, you know, saturdays were horrendous. Like during the week, our cancellation rate was like 2% on weekends. It was like nearly 50. Wow. And then actually offers, you know, our strike rate during the week is, I mean, typically because we will usually do a block viewing. So we usually have three to seven people. We don't allow moderns for lettings. We don't allow more than seven people to view a property in a block. So like, can only give it, only give it to one of you. And typically one attendance will secure a deal. Interesting. Whereas on the weekends, again, our strike rate rather than being one out of three to seven people would be one out of 25. Is that just like the ones that came during the week were the more serious ones. People were like, I wanted them at the wrong time, like even when they've got busy jobs. Like you said, if you see that property that really ticks those boxes and it's like, that's where I want to live. I get my hands on that. I'll be a happy bunny. Yeah. It's got the transport links I need. It's got, you know, whatever. People find the time. Or, you know what, they call it their mate and be like, dude, I'm stuck in this meeting. But can you, like, I trust you a judge. Can you go in like, can you maybe face time when you're there? Or record it? Or like, you know, somebody, even I do, I trust you. You know what I like. If you like it, tell them I want it. And so, like, I'm not, I think the misconception when people, when agents here, people just want to be able to book stuff here. Is they think what that means is giving people the choice to do whatever the hell they want. And I think also this is where some tools that have attempted to crack this have got it wrong. Is that a lot of the earlier ones, and they're getting better now, but a lot of the earlier ones, you couldn't set parameters. You couldn't say, right, we're launching this property. And we are going to do, being so we will often launch a property on a Friday. Yeah. For obvious reasons. We will often launch a property on a kind of Friday afternoon. We'll get the weekend traffic. We'll come in on a Monday. We'll be there on the Tuesday evening. By Wednesday, lunchtime, dropped that. In terms of tying up the deal anyway. And yeah, there weren't any of those where you could go, right, this is on the market. We're showing it Tuesday, 5 till 6.30. And it was free for all. So that's in the earlier tools that was kind of where we shined away from it. But fundamentally, as long as you've got good tech that is vetting that person, what value? What value is someone sat on that phone? You know, particularly, there's a lot of agencies out there where the people answering the phone and booking the viewings, they know the property no better than the person online. They are going by exactly the same listing information. They've never been to the property themselves. So they're not going to go, "Oh, you know, just so you know, it's next door to this." Or whatever it is. There's a train track at the bottom of the garden. Just the heads up, it's that kind of new. If the people on the phone know literally as much as the people calling in about the property. There's no much value to add. What value is that person at? It's really interesting as well because I've been trying to think about what is the thing that makes those leaps happen. Like I said, something on my mind has always been like, "Well, if the agent controls the supply and you want the supply, there's not much impetus to change." But at least in, I don't know as much what's in lettings, but in sales, I think there's quite a big part of aspiration. If I'm buying a home, I want to know that the people that live there have a kind of lifestyle that I want to emulate so that I feel like I'm doing better in life. I feel like I'm doing well by moving to their life. That gets reflected, I think, in the agent that they choose to go with. They choose to go with someone who's really clearly cheap, slapped-ass, doesn't know what they're doing. Then I'll feel like, "Oh, maybe I was wrong while it's a place. Maybe it's not quite the place for me." And I imagine that over the next couple of years, we will start to see, like, as there's, if there's agent interactions, they're difficult. I'll still book the viewings, but I'll just be more hesitant to be like, "It all feels a bit old school. It doesn't feel like these people are that much of the kind of people I want to emulate." So I can imagine that being a big driver. As the best agents start to adopt new tools, I think I wonder if everyone else will have to follow suit just to make sure that they are. But look, I think that's why good agents do continue to evolve. It's that what's happening, isn't it? Standing still is going backwards. And it is what separates the top kind of 10% of the market from everything. everything else and it's why the bottom half of the market really struggle is because they are so focused on the day to day. They are so focused on right we just need to sell four properties this month to keep the doors open. When you're so focused on that, guess what you're never going to sell more than four properties a month. Because that's what your success looks like. That's what everything is. That is your best case scenario and because you're so focused on what you think of the pragmatic drivers of achieving that. That you build everything around that. But again by kind of building that you're locking yourself in to that very same issue. Do you see much appetite from mainstream agents yet for adopting AI practices? There's a lot of talk about it. I think part of the problem as everyone finds is some people are just totally overwhelmed at the moment. The veracity of products out there but also the claims of what it can do. Some of them accurate, some of them bonkers. I think for a lot of agents and we've got so much going on in our own industry at the moment. Again, particularly we're letting us, we've got the renters rights act and we've got making tax digital kicking in in April and yeah all sorts of phantom products and everything else else kicking in. I think there's there's so much noise. It's very difficult to distill. How as an agent you take the initiative to kind of leverage AI yourself and I know you know hand on heart it's something with base I wanted to do a lot more of this year. I wanted to do a lot more a kind of really deep diving into what some of these products were capable of. It's a massive time of resource that vast majority of businesses just don't have that luxury. Unless you're literally locked into that kind of obsessive mindset where you're coming home from the office at the end of the day and you have your dinner and then it's straight back on the laptop and two three four hours of squirreling away. Yeah, I'm funny even then for like for me as literally my day job. Even for me I'll do that every now and then get up to speed with it all and go cool. This is the lay of the land. This is what works what doesn't. This is over hyped. This is maybe under hyped. Three weeks later four weeks later it's all changed and evolved against it is really hard to get moving so fast and I think you know you and I were talking a bit before I think for us I think what's going to help a lot of agents is individual solutions that are really focused that you know you have the focus as a portal to positive tree focus and end-to-tenancy you know there's inventory companies doing that you know I think there's we've got so many specialist products in the product market space now that really those products should be best placed to do at the very least kind of what I consider the first phase of AI. Yeah. Because as businesses we should be able to go do you know what AI is really exciting it is really powerful but you don't have to think about the big picture we can just think about this is how we can leverage AI to transform the consumer experience on such you know we've we've we've identified three really clear areas that for us we could go right you know we've done as much to be camera this process but these are two points for front end users yeah where we can quite easily leverage AI capabilities but deliver a really nice time saving really nice to have for those agents but still kind of in a framework and boxed up so that the bosses are known as like cool they're not just running around on chat GPT or Gemini just randomly putting details and data to the rather than focus on like the kind of the the absolute bleeding edge of where things are this huge big movement rather being like here's a couple of almost point solutions tools that you can use to immediately make this this better I think makes a lot of sense and it makes it a lot clearer yeah you've used this thing it has worked rather than I know some of these tools are so open-ended you use it and you're like it looks good but I've no idea if any of this is true and this is the thing you've you've you've got to be yeah you said on the surface it looks incredible but you know you read it more and more now and also with AI being used more yeah and it generating more content and I saw was it two four weeks ago online content online content production by AI has now already overtaken human yeah it's only just passed but we know that's gonna keep skewing and because AI feeds off content in the internet if you're putting out garbage yeah but like an athlete if you eat junk food all day you can't you're not gonna stay at the top former all day so yeah there is that complexity and I think as always with these things I'm always intrigued with the big boys you know if I was a connoisse country wide if I was an LRG a TPFG a Spicer Harp a Lomond if I was those kind of guys with that kind of money and resource I would absolutely be doing something very focused I would you know have a team of three to five people and be like yeah sit in the dark room do your magic come to me with it with with amazing stuff like just disappear for three months and come back to me with some amazing ideas yeah yeah where we can go but I think for the average estate agent and again I alluded to I think you know at least half of the market still struggles with the concept of using digital digital documents yeah and virtual tours yeah and shooting video content so let's let's keep those expectations realistic but I think as suppliers we can you know we can definitely help with with that first step and we can we can frame it in a really we can frame and leverage that that tech in a quite easy but but compartment closed way yeah I think that that framing and wrapping it up is is so much of the value that's applied can add because especially when you're not necessarily creating the base level elements yourself and you're leveraging other people's technology which is a large part of what we do frame you in a way that's really clear really nice really easy to consume is a huge part of offering I think that's something that I undervalued and didn't realize going at first I was like AI is huge and we're huge we're gonna be huge and that didn't land whereas like okay here's the very specialist thing that we can do and we can do it really well is I think yeah it's a big part of the value for sure yeah and I think you know coming coming back to the big boys as well you know it's to get them to buy in as well that you understandably they're very risk of us you know they huge amounts of money tied up in this business quite often a lot of you know private equity or whatever or VC money tied up in there and GDPR you know all these frameworks that they're that they're cautious of and I think again for them it's really scary so I mean like I know I said LRG are our biggest client and currently and have been have been with us for four years we were phenomenally lucky to have them join us just a year a year into our journey yes and but what's been great with them is you know they're really quite done out for the size of business they're pretty dynamic in terms of their very quick to kind of go oh actually I like this I get I get yeah that that that's gonna solve something do they have a small team like you mentioned or do they like embed that kind of innovative view into everyone so it seems it seems from top down there you know they're a pretty open dynamically led business I mean when I started working with LRG there a different CEO and but Michael who's who's now CEO was I believe director of Lettings and he's now CEO of the business but I mean I've always worked with the letting side of the business but I know from other products they're adopting and I know from the journey we had with them they they really get it and for a big business they are very dynamic but they are you know they are still a corporate business they are still you know they still have to have those checks and balances and careful things and you know I again when AI kind of really started kicking off kind of two years ago I made a point of starting my conversation with their senior team around what was happening in AI space but also kind of as our thoughts started to formulate about where we felt we would be able to leverage it and I started having this conversation so we so you know we've been having that conversation with LLG for like 18 months 24 months and even to the point of like and we also see it going in phases because you know we're all talking about a gentick AI and next year's going to be a really interesting one as we start seeing AI being given more free reign to kind of instigate things more for us and do more for us but again I think you know knowing agents mindset and again laying on that extra filter of of corporate protection. If we'd launched the ultimate AI tool where it was like, guys, we've built it, this will handle 80% of your deposit reconciliation without a member of staff even needing to be involved. Lots of them would have loved the overarching concept of that, but getting them to actually sign off and do it, we would have had to start, even if we'd got signed off, we would have had to start off so granular within their business and so cautiously expand it. It would have taken forever if we'd got anywhere, whereas for us, it was like, right, it's identified the issue, but also, let's kind of, let's just help our front end users, first of all, like the overall, their performance should improve and that will make the seniors happy, and let's just focus on those front end users, first of all, and how we just give them tools that makes their job easier and increasing their performance easier to achieve. But we're laying the framework of being able to start to give AI that free reign. So we're building and proposing negotiation tools. Again, we know from the data in our system, we know that roughly one in three transactions need very little human involvement, because the tenants get their responsibilities, the landlords are diligent, but fair, there's really good record keeping, and so when you get to that end-of-tenancy process, either the tenants have done a great job and the property's handed back, tickly booing everyone's happy, or the deductions are reasonable, legitimate, framed, evidenced, and of fair value. So there's very little negotiation, guys, you didn't replace two light bulbs, and you didn't take the bin out, 80-quid, cool. - Yeah. - Take the bin out. Why does a human need to be involved in that? It really doesn't. So again, our ambition isn't to potentially get to a point where AI, again, is doing 18, 90, 100% of those transactions, but if by the end of next year, we can take what we're releasing now and get it to a point whereby by this time next year, we can be saying to agents that we can probably take 30, 35%, you do conclusions off your desk, while still having parameters, safeguards in there, we're already thinking about what that framework looks like. So when we get to that stage, agents we're able to go, well, look, AI can do three rounds of negotiation, but we want trigger words like, if the one dispute gets brought up, it's handed to a human. We'll want to give people choices about whether they are open and upfront that it's AI, or whether they want to pretend it's an assistant. And again, there's arguments for both. - Yeah. - Do you want 24/7 response? Do you want that? And again, if you're open about it being AI, then why wouldn't you? But if you're pretending it's a human within the business, do you want to frame it? So that only answers between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday? - Oh, how's the huge delay and a tired turn of voice? - Yeah, and never response in under 30 minutes. So all those kind of-- - And I think what you're doing, that's really cool there. If you don't mind me saying, it's like by taking that first step and being like, right, with the people that will help you in these ways that you are comfortable with, both with your larger clients. And I imagine with the smaller ones, it means if the world does shift, as it sounds like we're both expected to, to say more agentic stuff, et cetera, et cetera, maybe agents start to get fomo from each other. If that cool ever does come to say, like, hey, we want to really ramp this stuff up. You're a super well placed to help those agents, because you're like, we've established trust. We're here already where the people you're going to want to go to to take it forward. So then there must be a really nice position that you guys put in. - Yeah, I think what's interesting as well, is I think, you know, I think as agents, we often lose track of the fact, like, you know, some people come up with some cool ideas, but fundamentally, we're quite often trying to keep up with consumer trends. - Yeah. - You know, a consumer mind shift or attitude or, you know, happens because of some epic product. Some potentially, totally unrelated space, that kind of changes people's mind shift. And I think one of the fascinating things I think about, a lot of the talk about AI at the moment, is a lot of us talk about it as businesses, and how we're going to help the businesses. We work with transform, or you're going to transform a consumer journey. But I think what there's not enough conversation in my eyes, the moment, happening about talking about what this new kind of AI empowered consumer is going to be like. Because historically, all this stuff was for businesses, right? There's this crazy tech stuff, yes, okay, we've got our smartphones that do amazing things. But the really kind of transactional stuff was really like big business stuff. And we're now talking about the very real, the very likely reality that by the end of next year, you know, most people are going to have bolted up to their smartphone now. There's like mega computer set in their pocket, which isn't going to be like we talked about earlier. It's not going to be waiting for you to do stuff. It's going to be, you know, you've already got products like Fixer doing it in email, you know, and we're going to start seeing this more. And I've talked a bit about this with the Renters Rights Act. I think the lettings industry and private landlords, I think there's a huge wake up call. There's a massive, massive shift that's going to happen in the next 12 to 24 months in the lettings market. Which I think actually for agents or good agents is going to be good. Because I think for poor agents and landlords who don't understand everything they're meant to be doing, we're going to go shift to a mindset where fundamentally, and I say this with a great respect to tenants, because actually a lot of letting agents and landlords don't grasp this stuff. Most tenants are utterly clueless as to the compliance landscape, that their landlords and letting agents should be applying, should be hearing too. But also what their rights and courses are for them to do stuff. And actually within the tenant space, particularly under the New Renters Rights Act, there's lots of things tenants. There's lots of tools tenants have, which are absolutely zero cost and zero risk for them to pursue. And whereas at the moment, tenants with that knowledge, I would say is probably like 2% of the market. We're going to get to a point in about a year's time. Will you're going to have AI going, you'll get a landlord or a letting agent will send a tenant a slightly shirty email about something, semi-legitimately. And AI will go, I've drafted a response for you, would you like me to send it? And as we've both said, probably half the time the tenants won't even read it. They'll kind of glance over and be like, yeah, but in that email will be like, under this, you need to provide us with this, you need to provide us with that. You've said this, but it should have been that. And what about this? And if I don't have that within seven days, I'm going to send an email, I'm going to start the official complaints process. And again, these are things that the friction for someone to go to an agent's website and learn what their official complaints process is and what those time frames are and how you escalate here was like, oh, like, most people just want to get through their everyday lives. But we're now going to have people where they'll just be like, yeah, can you pursue that through to Resolution? Yeah, a lawyer in your pocket, right? And I think that's such an example of a place where the difference between new AI and Google becomes so stark. Because I could always Google the rent's right, and like, understanding all that. But digging through it and sifting through it and seeing how this applies to my situation is, I'm simply not going to bother unless it's such an egregious misdemeanor or something. Whereas now you're right, like, someone will be like, I can save you three pounds. I've already done it for you. Do you want me to push this off? It's going to be-- that's a fascinating angle on it. It's just like how much educated consumers now are going to be able to push back on things. And put it in a challenge. As we touched on earlier as well, AI doesn't get it right. And this is the other thing is you're going to have to be so knowledgeable that you're going to be able to get that response and filter it and go, well, actually, 80% of this is bullshit. Because you've pulled sources that aren't valid. This is legislation which actually hasn't come in yet. We've already got AI, citing stuff for the Renters Rights Act. We doesn't start to make. So you're going to not only need to know your stuff, but you're going to need to really know your stuff. Because you're going to need to be able to read that and go, oh my god, they're absolutely bang on the money. And with penalties going up to $40,000, for interestment, rent repayment orders going up from a year to two years. But I think fundamentally, there's still that underpinning principle that most tenants-- firmly believe this-- most of them just want to rent a home that does what it says on the tin. Keeps them dry, safe, and happy. And they can pay their rent and be left the bucket home. And when something breaks, it gets sorted in a timely fashion without any bullshit. and when they leave at the end of the tenancy. There's a very clear and fair process about, you know, did you hand the property back? Great, fab, money back nice and quick, or not. It's fair, it's legitimate, and again, it's still quick. And do you think that's going to be the future that we see more frequently now because of this increased technology on both sides? Yeah, I think, you know, what's the saying? Technological change doesn't have not as much happens in five years as people expect, but more happens in 10 years than we expect. So what we're kind of right, year three-ish for AI now. So, you know, we've got, I'm saying by the end of next year, you know, I think we'll see a notable shift by the end of next year. I think we're still looking at probably another year or so after that until it is explosive. Yeah. And totally like unavoidable. Yeah. But I think that's what's really important, the agents, agents don't have to become masters of AI at the moment. They just need to understand what the puck is coming. Yeah. Because, you know, I've been saying for a couple of years that, you know, this is our generation's industrial revolution and on steroids. Yeah. Because even with the industrial revolution, that still kind of happened. This is transforming. And that was very industry-focused. This is going to transform every industry. And the thing I think is fascinating as well as previous, you know, the information revolution and industrial, like it takes physically building things in the real world. Whereas this is just digital. Like it can propagate as fast as demand is there to buy it and lots will come from big businesses that can deploy it to the industry. And historically it's prohibitively expensive, right? Yeah. Because not only do you have to build something, you know, I mean, it's Amazon. It was kind of the equivalent of the mills being built, right? So I'm just going to spend whatever it was, 10, 15, 20 years building insane, spending insane amounts of money when half the world, at least the early phase thought they were bonkers building all this infrastructure to then go, ta-da. Whereas the astonishing thing with AI is, A, the pace it's moving. But at the moment, the cost of these products is insane. Yeah. You know, you go and see stuff and it's like, ah, it's like $12 a month. Like, sorry, for 10 pounds, you're going to look. Yeah. It is. And that, that is the insanity, the availability of it. And I think we are going to have an AI bubble for sure. You know, there is an insane amount of money being thrown in. But that's the nature of a paradigm shift in anything. Yeah. It's a vast opportunity we live in a incredibly complex society. So nature suggests there's going to be a shift and a money thrown at a lot of different horses. Yeah. And they're not all going to win. So there is going to be a bubble. But yeah, the shift is, the shift is, is epic. Yeah. It's really, it's all thanksly very exciting to be a part of and like slightly terrifying of making sure that like you build for real success rather than headlines and overhaped valuations or whatever else I think can be very seductive if you choose to go after them. I think also, you know, so should I mean I get very excited about the capabilities of AI and, you know, I love the game of business and processes and operations. I think, you know, that kind of fascinates me. But from a societal point of view, it's bonkers and bewildering, you know, someone raising two kids with two young kids at the moment. I'm probably glad I don't have teenagers right now. But I don't think I would, I'm not sure I would feel about a late teen kind of pending graduate at the moment. Yeah. I think that's a terrifying landscape for them to come into. Yeah, really is. From an employment and opportunity basis, particularly if you're working in something that at least two, three years ago didn't seem particularly centered in tech. Yeah. Like the creative arts. Yeah. I think that's probably where the big surprise with AI has come and we've all seen those jokes about, you know, I thought AI was going to kind of do my taxes and sort out my homework for me, not the fun stuff. Not the fun stuff. Not the fun stuff. It's hard as a Nick, because I feel like graduates now are being asked to predict what technology will automate in future. And it's like incredibly hard. Like you say, I think my son is seven and all not eight now. And that's a good enough time for me to be like, well, I think I hope society is going to work out the balance by then. But I think we're in for a weird couple of years. Yeah, phenomenally. And I think, you know, understanding. I mean, I think governments worldwide have been caught sleeping with all this. I mean, I know we've got a good, what have they called her, an AI's AR. I'm not sure what exactly what a handle is, but at least they have hired someone who knows what the hell she's talking about. Yeah. And I had a name and loads me now. I have done a post. But it is someone who gets their staff. But I think whilst it's interesting, they brought in someone from a tech perspective, you know, governments worldwide should be investing a hell of a lot of time in energy and think about what the societal ramifications are. Exactly. There's a lot of chat about the like, are we investing in the right amount? And stuff, which is good. But like you say, there's like, what happens if we automate sways of doctors? What happens if 20% like, if virtually all entry level admin jobs go within the next two years? Yeah. Yeah. What next? Yeah. You know, what happens to those people? If there's still a position after entry level, how are you bringing those people into the business? I mean, are they just paid to kind of sit and observe? Yeah. Like, how are they, how are these people learning? You know, we've had these conversations, I've had these conversations many a time with people, you know, and we all talk about, you know, with agency, you know, doing, you're being like a weekend nag and then being like an office admin and then getting to the sales nag roll and then working, you know, doing, doing the journey. Yeah. And those first jobs being crap money and grunt work. But it wasn't about the job. It was about learning the craft. It was about making the mistakes. And being surrounded by people who had more experience from you and learning what they did well and learning what they do badly. Yeah. And kind of carving your path, that journey of, yeah, learning. And if we're taking those first few rungs up within businesses, where are those people, how, how, how will we bring those people to the business? And they're coming in with any sort of proper grasping and understanding of. Yeah. It's bonkers in bewildering and we could, yeah, disappear off top. After, yeah, like we're going from like the optimistic pits to the like societal, not quite collapse, hopefully, but like the societal ramifications. But I think that's the broad spectrum of the change that can happen right is like the stuff we can do is becoming so infinitely cooler and cheaper. But then you can trickle that down into your business, right? So I think, you know, I don't dwell too much on the societal stuff because I'm kind of, what will be will be will kind of stumble through and we'll figure it out. It's going to be a lot of mistakes and there's going to be some, for some people, there's going to be some tough journeys in there, but there's also going to be some exciting stuff happening. But I think all you can do is, when you're a business owner, it's kind of distill that down to within your business. Yeah. I think what we focus on is how can we leverage that tech to make our team, yeah, just as good if not better than they are now, but make their job easier and more enjoyable. Yeah. And I think those are our kind of two focuses and if in doing that, we can increase their capacity as well. Yes. Fantastic. And then we kind of go with where it goes and you know, where AI is going at the moment, I envision us building a business that is leaner in head count than it would have been. But I would like to think that we will be able to pay those people more than they would have traditionally been paid. Yeah. And I think that's going to be a really important thing and I think there's lots of obviously huge questions going on about that at the moment with the likes of all, I think is it Starbucks who's got the greatest disparity, I think their CEO and 6,600 times what that average employee earns. Yeah. The greatest wage disparity I think in a Western business. We're going to have to be careful about that. For sure. And particularly if AI is doing more for all of us, including senior execs and your decision makers. Yeah. You can see a world kind of way like the, the, the, the, the, the, the increase efficiencies, the child at the top gets pushed in this direction. I assume it's a chap. And the, the lot of employees maybe get pushed in that direction. See, yeah, if it goes the wrong way, that, that becomes even more stark. That goes from six and a half thousand to 10,000, 20,000. Yeah. And that's not what we want. So thinking, you know, as, as business owners, then it's, maybe it's easier to talk about smaller businesses when you're not at the behest of investment banks and shareholders and everything else. And, but yeah, I think we're all going to have to start taking a bit of a look in the mirror and being like, okay, cool, this can make me wealthy. how much wealth do I really need and is it really justified if that means half of my staff are finding life harder than kind of includes have been before. But let's swing it back onto happier notes. So just bring it back on to JITI before we round up. What are your key hopes for JITI for next year? I have to get a question. I think one of the things we work on lately is saying what's the revenue model that drives the new type of property portal. So in the olden days it's been charging for listings which like you mentioned before like there's agents hate. Even though it can be a great ROI it doesn't have to be. So we've been doing a lot of experimentation that and I'm hoping that a lot of that stuff starts to land in the next few months that we can really push on accelerating our business faster. And the other is we want to partner with more agents. We've built our business so far around the concepts of we don't want to ask anything of agents. We just want to help promote their homes, help them grow their business. But we're starting to build now deeper partnerships and tooling to help them actively grow their business. And so yeah, any agents wanting to work with us, jittie.com/agents, totally free to put homes on there. And we're in advanced talks with some very big agencies which I hope will come early next year so that we can get, we can show the world just as serious. It's into you're exploring that spectrum because I think with your right movies, you're zoopersy on the arc on the market. It is relatively, say, yes, you've got your sponsored listings and your premium listings and your top three agents or whatever it is which is all very much kind of repackaging Google ads really into a portal format. And you could argue it's not, it's not really generating new businesses, just disseminating how the business they generate is shared between the between their subscribers. So I think definitely anything that broadens that spectrum and you know, as agents we're not good at marketing. Right. I found it really interesting with base. We've been on a real marketing journey like the last year or 18 months to kind of not reinvent ourselves from a brand perspective wise, but you know, we're a we're a 21 year old business. And we've never done marketing well. And it's a really interesting conversation this year with agent I really love from respect who like when I have that conversation, I'm like, you know, our marketing has always been shit. And you know, probably 18% of the conversations have been like, what do you mean? You guys are like great. And it's like no listings look amazing. Really good at presenting property, but actually into the marketing ourselves and understand and taking a structured scientific data led approach, which every part of your business fundamentally should be taking to every aspect. And it's just not that, you know, and yeah, you know, a lot of agents frustration with portals is not necessarily about just what they spend on the portal to fact that there's this kind of open promise of all we're also going to bring you clients. And I know, you know, our entire time in right move and our entire time is that I can I can count on one hand the amount of like valuation or praise requests from land. Wow. In 21 years. It's it's tiny. It's what we've done outside of that for sure. But that was so unstructured for us. It was kind of the last thing. It lettings you're so focused on process and compliance and and everything else. It's so easy to leave that to the end. You know, and like I said, we're we're absolutely on a mission now. We've partnered with them with we are in chains. So Simon led better in his team. You know, and we're on a kind of transformation journey, but I think it's it's huge. It's vast and we're we're we're you know, we're still a small agency and that journey is massive. So I think any good toolkit or solutions you can deliver the complement the portal without necessarily being called it's kind of a self-serving. But bolt on product that's just a revenue producer. Yeah, it's interesting what you say about the, you know, not doing it well. I think it sounds like like at least you've been doing it. You know, we've been it sounds like you've been putting an active effort into saying how do we build up our our awareness and brand and because there's not many lettings agents that I think have that much of a clear brand positioning. So I think yeah, it's I guess just doing in the first place is. Yeah, I think I think a lot of hard stuff right the brand the values the messaging our language that's internally that's always been super clear. Yeah, who we were what we stood for were objectives were where we sat and how we positioned ourselves within the market that we always had a very clear thing that actually having a devised strategy of how we actually put that in front of people's eyeballs. That's where we had nothing and that's where I think like a lot of agents it was very sporadic you get quiet you do stuff you get busy it drops you do one one time it works brilliantly you think you've cracked it you do it again you get full call you know it's yeah that doing it properly like like we approach everything is as as taking us 21 years to get so yeah any tools you can do that that help an agent build out that structure and offering I think is is definitely going to be something that really sets you apart if you if you don't want me finishing with one last compliment for you for like. I felt a fastening you started with the identity of who we actually are and then on our work on the structure because I think it's so often almost always the other way around so you know a brand realize they've been throwing a lot of money the world they say actually hold on what is our identity so I think to do that from the beginning is a pretty big part of why you've managed to build this this really cool positioning. That's ended my compliments. Well just did that's a nice way to end and so thanks join me today. I think you're right hopefully that was a good one and so keep an eye on gt.com if you're not familiar with them and as gremes already said reach out check out the agents tab reach out to them with your thoughts always interesting see what happens to kind of evolving in this space and yeah excited to see well have a seat you guys next year. Cheers guys, take care, bye!