More from Greg Bader

No problem on the replying, to be honest I welcome some of the critical thinking that shareholders like yourself provide

The reality is that this business deserves to fly but our previous model (of being the 3^rd choice against REA/Domain) was not working. Getting $ out of agents is tough, even tougher when you are the new guy. That is why we released the “smart plan”, a risk free model for agents that we know works (I have analysed over 250k properties that have been leased, on average a property on the smart plan is on market for 7 days less and saves the LL around $500 in unrealised income), but it is a hard sell to agents, they are very traditional, not interested in change and I was getting to the point where the cost of me selling the product exceeds the income, the $10 plan was an alternative designed to give them a simple path to upgrade that would also be low touch to me.

Summary – this business cannot rely on Agent income into the future (compounded when we see the pressure on the agent side, their current revenue model of circa 10% in fees will not last forever)

I need to build influence in this market (to be able to effect change), we made the decision a year ago that this needs to come via customers (renters) rather than agents (3^rd wheel argument). So with a good share of the property listing we went about making the customer experience via RNT better than our competition. (Walkscore, NBN, Renter Resume etc). The key to this for me is walking a fine line between advocacy (pro renter) and my supply side (not upsetting agents), but if I can be the renter champion and the site that bats for them, I think it creates a unique niche that REA/Domain would struggle to move into with any sort of legitimacy

I now need to get better at monetising my customer base , we will do that by product (and not just generic product, great products that are built for renters) – insurance, payments and finance are all areas of strong interest

In terms of our steps

1. Get cost under control (largely done, but I am still spending more than I would like on marketing via google)
2. Great customer experience (ongoing, but some great work complete)
3. Get customers (running at 600k UVs per month which is not bad considering only 85k properties are leased per month, 185k RR’s in basically a year)
4. Products 1 - Rent Bond, Rent Connect, Rent Check (all rebooted, delivering)
5. Products 2 – Complex Products, annuity $ (in train, hope to announce the 1st around the AGM)
6. Vertical Integration, Acquisition (word domination)

If I do all this, become the default place for renters then obviously it has the kicker back to the agents (finally, they will need me more than I need them)

So that’s the loose plan – RNT shareholders have been extremely patient (with some embarrassment I do refer to us as the “world’s longest start up”) but I do truly believe in what we are doing and where we are going – we have a business structure that supports this, staff that believe (if they don’t, they are replaced) – 18mths ago this business felt old and traditional, today it feels new and aggressive (nice aggressive)

Hope that helps a little in terms of “painting our picture”

Cheers

Greg