8 Challenging Truths for PropTech Founders from Gary Barker
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- Aug 13
- 3 min read
Gary Barker has spent almost 30 years in the property industry, from launching Rightmove to steering Reapit through a management buyout with zero customer losses. In our PropTech Growth Podcast interview from 2023, he shared some evergreen, straight-talking lessons every founder should hear. I'm bringing them back this week for a throwback episode you shouldn't miss.
1. Partnerships aren’t magic bullets
Partnerships get talked up as if they’ll solve everything. They won’t.
“The problem is the partnership always has more value one side and getting that right is a little bit of a seesaw. Sometimes we want it more, sometimes they want it more… The only way partnerships were going to work was when they were properly mutually beneficial.”
Build them for the right reasons... but maybe not as your main growth channel.
2. Surviving a crisis comes down to the offer, not the noise
2008 was brutal. It also delivered Reapit’s best year.
“In 2008 when it absolutely kiboshed… we focused on solving specific problems with measurable outcomes. While others were just saying ‘we’ll make you more efficient’, we could prove where and how the value came through.”
In challenging times, marketing spin gets you nowhere - it's concrete commercial results that will win you business.
3. Retention is proactive, not reactive
Reapit’s first decade: zero customer losses. During the MBO: 105% net retention.
“Every month we’d go into our biggest customers and say, ‘Do you realise you’ve got 2,000 customers you haven’t spoken to in the last three months?’ We’d highlight unused features and missed opportunities. We didn’t just keep them happy; we grew with them.”
Customer success is a discipline, not a department.
4. Market share is rarely evenly spread
In UK estate agency, half the listings sit with just 500 firms.
“The top 500 agencies account for about 50% of all listings. If you want the SMB bit of the market, you’ve got to do something completely different.”
Know exactly which segment you’re chasing and adjust your approach accordingly. The Enterprise players have notoriously long sales and procurement cycles, and everyone is trying to beat down the door for a piece of the action. The long-tail of tiny operators are working to paper-thin margins and rarely have the capacity to embrace new products. SMEs are overwhelmed by choice, opportunity, and workload. Where are you adding the most value? Stand out with a unique offering, then land and expand there.
5. Tech adoption ≠ performance
Yes, UK agents typically run 12–15 pieces of PropTech. No, that doesn’t mean they’re making the most of it.
“On average it’s between 12 and 15 pieces of software… but when we mystery shopped, only 52% of agents responded to a query. The technology is there - it’s training and implementation that are the gaps.”
Before selling more tools, solve the adoption problem: how are your users going to neatly slip your product into their existing workflows? If you're not seamlessly onboarding, you're likely to lose them.
6. Fix the fall-through rate, fix the industry
Roughly a third of UK property transactions collapse before completion.
“We should be doing surveys and searches before listing, not after the offer. If buyers had full information upfront, we could dramatically cut fall-through rates.”
Sometimes the biggest wins come from changing the sequence, not the system. Anyone who can crack this nut mightn't win any prizes for "sexist innovation" but they will win business. And lots of it.
7. The missing "Amazon of property"
Despite property being most people’s largest asset, there’s no single, trusted marketplace.
“If you talk about Amazon and a marketplace… property does not have a marketplace. The opportunity for major players to collaborate is enormous.”
The space is wide open, but the scale of collaboration needed means only a few could pull it off. So what part do smaller PropTech innovators play? They sit at the fringe, but they can move fast and support the big players - cashing in when they make a move. Look at the market - you'll see that the CRMs are already leveraging smaller PropTech solutions to bolster their market share and improve retention.
8. VC money comes with a ledger, not a blank cheque
“If you take VC money, the first question they’ll ask is: what are you going to do with it? And they’ll go down to the very nearest penny.”
A vision is essential. So is a spreadsheet that tells the exact story of how each pound drives growth. Transparency builds trust, so be ready to show your work.
Listen to the full Proptech Growth Podcast episode with Gary Barker for the uncut conversation, war stories, and the rest of the detail that didn’t fit here.
To book a free commercial growth consultation with Yours Truly, click here. 👈