WHO are you?
I am Hannah Chappatte, 24-year-old female entrepreneur, graduated from the university of Bristol with a 1st in Liberal Arts. After facing a myriad of issues during my tenancies from unreachable landlords to vague and unhelpful letting agents, I decided to shake up the industry and launch HYBR in November 2019 aged 22 years old.
HOW did you do it?
I sat outside the library with snacks to entice students over and interviewed 100s of students to figure out their pain points in the rental market. I knew I understood the student pain points but I was less clear on the landlords’ perspective, so I cold called all the landlords my friends had rented from to figure out what they needed from a platform like HYBR. I soon got my first client onboard, quickly created a square space website and went from there! We have funded our operations fully from our profits & winning competitions
WHEN did you start your company?
November 2019.
WHY are you innovating with this service?
There are 2.3 million students in the UK, of which 64% live in private accommodation and 1.5 million live away from home. Students struggle to find housemates, understand contracts, and pay unnecessary fines. Every single one of these students knows of a student renting nightmare and I was one of them.
All of our competitors, letting agents and accommodation portals (open rent etc) are built for the landlord or agent. We want to turn this on its head and build a product for the student. Letting agents are paid by landlords to protect their interests, hence, it’s often a letting agent and their legal team vs. a student. We want to create a platform that is tailed to the students, and by doing so, we are also helping landlords. (Happy tenant = happy landlord). We are re-building the student rental experience for the student. We’ve identified 1st of its kind features that will make us the destination for students, and we can’t wait to launch them!
WHERE are you from?
United Kingdom
Prop-tech / real estate
https://www.instagram.com/hybr.uk/ + www.hybr.co.uk
