Entrepreneur in focus

HYBR

Home - Entrepreneur in focus - Hannah Chappatte – HYBR

While I was a student at the University of Bristol I was shocked by how many of my friends hated the rental process. As a student, you’re faced with a disjointed market where you don’t know where to go, or who to trust and you never really understand your obligations as a tenant until it’s too late (until you never get your deposit back)! I started researching the market and interviewing students and landlords to figure out what we needed to build. By November 2019, we launched a very simple Squarespace website and got our first clients on board.

Renting for the first time is an incredibly anxiety-inducing time, especially when you’re trying to juggle university work and figuring out your friendships. Renting is also an incredible exclusive space that favours people with bigger budgets and wealthy guarantors. I felt it was time for a brand that understood the student market to challenge the industry.

How did you start HYBR?

HYBR is a student accommodation platform that supports first-time renters. We offer a more personalised and tailored service for landlords than typical rental platforms while maintaining a competitive price point, to keep rental prices down. Our mission is to reform student renting by building relationships around care and trust.

We spend a lot of our time helping students find housemates, understand background checks, contracts and get out of tricky situations. Once we’ve aced helping students find great homes, we plan to expand into other student solutions to be the one-stop-shop for students during their time at university.

A key part of our model has been our ambassador scheme and our focus groups. Our ambassador scheme is a way for us to give back to the student community, by paying students for part-time work, providing them with the experience they may need for their CVs, and helping us increase our brand visibility. Focus groups ensure we are constantly in touch with what our students need from our platform so we are always improving our product.

What would you say are the key elements for starting a business?

I would say launch an MVP as soon as possible to trial your idea in a low-budget manner. This will allow you to figure out where you need to slightly iterate and tweak your business model or whether you need to go back to the drawing board. Someone once said to me if you’re not embarrassed by your first product then you launched too late.

Also, it’s so important to hire the right people and ensure they are as passionate as you about what you are trying to solve. You usually can’t offer people a hugely competitive salary to start with, so you have to sell people on your vision. I would say it’s better to take a bit longer finding the right people to join your company at the start than to rush this process.

How did you finance your business?

I’m a big fan of grants! At the start of HYBR’s journey, I entered the New Enterprise competition to win £10,000 and won the second-place prize of £5,000. I then won a £10,000 grant from the Prince’s Trust to help launch our new platform and employ our first member of staff. Recently, I entered Montagu Evans Me100 Awards for young entrepreneurs in the property world and won £10,000. We haven’t got high overheads so we broke even quite early on and then have been supported by several of the grants we’ve won.

Did the pandemic impact your business?

The impact of Covid-19 has been twofold for us. On the one hand, it slowed us down. My plan was always to be low cost and low risk but Covid has meant that we’ve had to be even more careful, which has meant it took me longer to hire our first employee and expand our operations in Bristol. However, on the other hand, it’s forced us to create a robust business model and hone in on what we’re good at – supporting students to find accommodation. It’s also proven that more than ever students need an accommodation platform they can rely on. We were recently on BBC Radio 4 talking about how we’ve helped students get out of contracts, find housemates when they haven’t been able to make friends, and sublet properties. We’ve also helped landlords ensure they don’t have to go out of pocket and fill void periods if they had students who couldn’t pay the rent on time.

Someone once said to me if you’re not embarrassed by your first product then you launched too late.

Hannah Chappatte

CEO - HYBR

What is the experience of growing a business in the UK?

I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by how many amazing grants, startup communities, and programmes there are out there for SMEs. It’s really helpful for early-stage founders to meet more experienced founders who understand the challenges you’re facing and can offer guidance. I’ve also really enjoyed partaking in different competitions as it forces you to step back from the operations side of the business and reflect on your business model and hone in on your USP.

What's next for HYBR?

Scaling! It’s a really exciting time at HYBR because we’ve proven that we have a successful model in Bristol and now it’s time to prove that our model can work in other university cities. We’re also growing our team rapidly – we’ve recently hired our 4th full-time employee and we’re going to be looking for #5 in the next few months.

The most encouraging thing about our journey so far has been the passionate response from both our landlords and our students (go to TrustPilot or recent press where we were voted number 1 lettings agent in Bristol!) There’s a gap in the market for HYBR and we’re really excited to show everyone what we’ve got next in-store

Entrepreneur in focus

HYBR

Hannah Chappatte

Founder - hybr

What made you want to become an entrepreneur?

How did you start HYBR?

What would you say are the key elements for starting a business?

How did you finance your business?

Did the pandemic impact your business?

Hannah Chappatte

CEO - HYBR

What is the experience of growing a business in the UK?

What's next for HYBR?

Fred Maude and Jack Carr – Addesu

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