Goodlord company chiefs reveal issues that led to redundancies

Two of the leaders of PropTech company Goodlord have revealed some of the issues that this month drove the company to reduce headcount by 28 per cent, shedding some 38 individuals in the sales and marketing departments.

Goodlord - which is a cloud-based platform that helps agents manage pre-tenancy processes such as deposit handling and the signing of agreements - was set up by former Foxtons agent Richard White in 2014 and hit problems towards the end of 2017.

Now Tom Mundy, chief operating officer and co-founder, and Tom Glason, chief commercial officer, have told a podcast created by the ProptechConsult consultancy that Goodlord may have tried to expand too rapidly and attempted to win the maximum number of letting agencies - even the small operators that may have required substantial support.

“We were trying to acquire every agent in the market … We realised in the back half of last year that there was more work to do in our business to make it cost-effective to acquire those agents and support them” said Glason. 

“Every part of the organisation grew, not just sales and marketing … we saw expansion across the whole business but the key thing we realised at the back end of last year was that there was a sweet spot within the agency industry that we need to focus down on” he continued.

“We can’t acquire and support every agency at this stage” says Glason.

The company now handles around 400 agencies, including some major corporates. 

Glason was keen to stress that Goodlord would continue to support smaller agencies. 

A statement by Goodlord after the redundancies suggested that there would be more focus on bringing out new features and automation functionality to the platform.

The PropTechConsult podcast, hosted by Estate Agent Today contributor James Dearsley and business partner Eddie Holmes, can be heard here.