We interviewed Julien Schillewaert, CEO of the Zurich-based Proptech PriceHubble, global leader in AI-powered digital products in Real Estate.
Hi Julien! Can you tell us a few words about PriceHubble? What are you guys doing exactly?
PriceHubble is a global PropTech company, specialised in big data and artificial intelligence for real estate markets. First and foremost, our solutions enable businesses along the entire real estate value chain to make more informed, faster and better real estate decisions. We serve a wide range of B2B and B2B2C real estate players, such as institutional investors, developers, banks or realtors. We enable them to boost critical performance metrics in their business (e.g. cost of acquisition, client conversion rates, retention or rental yield optimisation). I personally joined the company in 2019 as CEO.
Why and when was the company founded?
We were founded back in 2016 by Stefan Heitmann and Markus Stadler. Their initial goal was to set a whole new level of transparency on the European (and global!) residential real estate market. Our data & AI-driven insights provide the most powerful yet intuitive valuations and analyses for residential markets. We are currently operating in France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria & Japan. 2020 has been a very good year so far for us: we opened our new office in Vienna and we’ve just reached our 80th Hubbler milestone!
Real estate is a fierce and very competitive field… What sets PriceHubbles apart from its competitors?
Real Estate is still opaque, backward-looking and behind other industries when it comes to its digitalisation. To change this, we combine 1) the widest range of data possible with 2) cutting-edge analytics and 3) great visualisation.
Our trademark is to invest heavy data science resources to understand the marginal impact of every single parameter on property prices. That’s what we call “explainable AI”. We also leverage AI to detect and forecast the impact of urban evolutions such as new transportation or gentrification dynamics. Thereby PriceHubble defines a brand new level of market transparency and enables B2B clients to make smarter real estate decisions, for themselves or their final client.
What kind of clients use your solutions?
Our solutions have already convinced some of the biggest names in the industry in all markets. Our customer base include B2B2C clients such as real estate agents (like Century 21 in Germany or Orpi in France), real estate portals (Check24 in Germany or Comparis in Switzerland), mortgage brokers, wealth managers or banks, and B2B players such as asset managers (BNP Real Estate, Axa IM, ING, Helvetia among others), developers or institutional investors (Gecina, SwissLife for instance).
What do you expect for 2021?
There’s still so much to be done in 2020!
But for 2021, we’re talking about more products, more customers and more markets. Our roadmap is full and we’ll bring new products to better serve our customers. We expect our customer base to triple in size again next year. Finally, we’ve successfully entered 5 countries so far and plan on accelerating our international expansion to make our solutions available in a few more European countries. Stay tuned!
A last word for the talents out there who would like to join PriceHubble?
Our team is growing fast and doubled in the last 12 months. We have one of the biggest tech & data science teams dedicated to residential real estate in Europe, and we’re always looking for great talents to join us.
You’re looking for challenges and want to gain responsibilities in a fast-paced and growing team? We would love to hear from you! We currently have many open positions within our Paris, Berlin, Zurich and Vienna offices here, so take a look and get in touch with us!
