If you are one of the desperate souls trying to find an affordable apartment in Vienna and are tired of browsing through all the websites, here is a startup you should take a look at. Last time inventures.eu met zoomsquare was in June, so we caught up with them to find out about their recent achievement and next steps.
The team of Vienna-based zoomsquare announced the end of their testing phase and officially launched during their press conference today. zoomsquare (read more about them here and here) has developed a real estate search engine that browses through more than 300.000 links to find the home you’re looking for.
Based on realtors’ advertisements, zoomsquare scans through specific information – say you want to live close to Schwedenplatz and have a bathtub – and picks the most relevant places.
A search engine for real estate
Back in 2007, co-founder Andreas Langegger was frantically looking for an apartment in Vienna and soon grew tired of checking one website after the other. With his IT background, he was eager to simplify this tedious process and developed a prototype. But it was only in March 2012, when he met his then-to-be future co-founder Christoph Richter at a startup event. Now, zoomsquare is a team of six.
Some 1.800 users registered for the beta and could browse through about 135 Viennese neighbourhoods to allow for narrowing down to their favourite area. “You should be able to not only find your perfect apartment but also the area that suits you the most,” said Bernhard Holzer, head of PR and marketing at zoomsquare.
Up until now zoomsquare was bootstrapped and received funding from INiTS and aws (impulse-XS and preseed investment). After extensive testing for about six months, they are finally able to reach their next milestone. In B2C, the team looks to offer a freemium model, meaning the basic functions will be free of charge while more features such as text and email notifications can be acquired. “We are also working on several B2B strategies such as improving the search management for realtors,” said Holzer.
What’s next?
Currently, the team are working on more add-on features and are developing apps for Android and iOS. For this coming November, they plan to enable users to draw their favourite area with a few mouse clicks. They also want to implement tags, such as “shopping”, “train station”, and “park”.
“With the help of these tags users will be able to find similar neighbourhoods that they haven’t even thought of,” said Holzer. Also on the list is expanding to other markets such as Germany.