In this Founder Institute webinar, Stefan Gastiger, co‑founder of VonEgo (branded as WoonEgo), presents a London‑focused flat‑sharing platform that tackles two core pain points for renters and landlords: lack of roommate compatibility and pervasive rental fraud. The solution combines four key features – credibility scoring, compatibility scoring, algorithmic matchmaking, and rent‑payment processing – to create a trusted marketplace where users can sign up in under five minutes, answer personality and lifestyle questionnaires, and be matched with vetted roommates. Launched in May 2017, the service has attracted roughly 2,000 active users. The business model captures a 7 % fee on the first month’s rent, positioning the company as a trusted intermediary that handles the initial payment and refunds if the tenancy fails. The target market is London professionals (mid‑20s to early‑30s), representing an estimated £50 million share‑rental commission market; the founders aim for a 10 %+ market share before expanding to other major cities. Growth channels include direct messaging, social media, and partnerships with graduate programmes and corporates. The pitch details the design of two questionnaires (personality‑based and lifestyle‑based), the curation process to mitigate false answers, and a two‑stage credibility scoring system that currently uses email/phone background checks and plans to incorporate broader online activity signals. Funding needs are outlined: a £500,000 (£650,000 USD) round to secure an 18‑month runway and reach 1,500 paying users by late 2019, followed by a future Series A of $4‑5 million. The name “WoonEgo” blends the German “Wohnen” (to live) with “Ego” (the individual) and the abbreviation WG for flat‑share, emphasizing the person‑centric focus of the platform.
Chapters
Hello everybody, and again, thank you so much for having me here today. I'm Stefan Gastiger, I'm a co-founder of VonEgo based in London. In London, many people, as John was saying, live in a shared home, but there are two major issues people face with their housemates, with their roommates. First of all, a lack of compatibility in many cases, and secondly, a lack of trust, with over 300,000 cases of rental fraud in the UK every year. So how does VonEgo help? VonEgo helps professionals in London find roommates who are compatible and who are trustworthy, and that's facilitated by 4 key features: credibility scoring, compatibility scoring, matchmaking, and processing the rent payment. So if you go to vonnego.com and sign up, you can create a profile in less than 5 minutes. We'll ask you to answer a few questions about personality and lifestyle. Our matching algorithm will then present you to your top matches ranked with a compatibility and a lifestyle score You can click on the ones you like most, view their profile, start connecting and messaging with them. And we launched this platform in May 2017 and now have around 2,000 active roommates on the platform already and growing. Our business model is focused on capturing the rental transaction in the first months, meaning we take a 7% cut of the first month's rent. This adds a layer of trust to the process as we handle the transaction as opposed to you having to handle it offline. The market we initially target is a market for London professionals typically aged in their mid to late 20s or early 30s, um, and we target the market in London initially. It is worth around $50 million in house share rental commissions. Once we get to to a 10%+ market share in London, we'll be targeting other large cities and expand. Our competition includes on one side the large listing websites and at the same time on the other hand some smaller websites which are more focused on house sharing and have some matchmaking features. However, our combination of the key features I mentioned earlier is what makes us unique. We have grown in the London market via direct messaging, via social media campaigns, and we are now looking to increasingly grow the user base through partnerships with graduate programs and with corporates. Stuart, who is my co-founder, and myself are both landlords, so we have spent many years facing problems and frustrations of the property market. About 2 years ago, we left our careers in banking to launch VonEgo and to fully focus and dedicate ourselves to solve some of these problems which we are passionate about addressing. We now look at raising a funding round of £500,000, around $650,000, which would give us an 18-month runway to achieve a late 2019 goal of 1,500 monthly paying users.
Users.
Again, thanks very much for your attention, and I really look forward to your questions.
All right, thank you, Stefan. So I was also a landlord, and I had a very awful experience with the tenant. So I definitely understand, you know, there's a lot of products out there for landlords that can create create a lot of value. And something like this is something that I definitely would have liked to use. So I, you know, knowing the business models of a lot of, you know, brokers and stuff like that, your business model of a 7% first month's rent, uh, makes sense to me because it kind of plugs in. Is there any other kind of background you can give on why you chose that business model? Because, you know, you have two sides of the marketplace and a lot of different ways you can make money. You know, what was kind of the customer development what led to that decision to make that the business model?
Yeah, it's a good question. It's really about adding a layer of trust because right now on existing websites, you meet somebody, you arrange a viewing, you move in, but after you met the person, you have moved offline. And that's where a lot of problems can start happening. In over 50% of cases in London, in the UK in general, over 50% of house shares are without any contract. In many cases, in most cases, payment is arranged you know, between two parties. In some cases, it's cash, in some cases via bank wire. And the biggest worry of landlords is, as you know, John, is not getting paid on time. So handling in the beginning the first month of rent and in the future potentially handling the rent for the longer term is solving another problem. It is clearly challenging, but it is solving an additional problem which no major firm has solved in the industry so far.
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. You talked a little bit about credibility scoring and there's some questions coming in here too, and I encourage other people to put some questions in there and I'll get to those in a second. But the last thing on the credibility scoring, that also was something that I thought was super interesting. Can you dive into that a little bit more? Sure.
So credibility scoring is about being able to show that the person you are seeing as a match and you interact with is a real person. So we do a lot of work currently on identifying how to best show and score credibility. There is a very easy way which can be done by searching a person online, doing a background check based on the email address and phone number and building that into our platform, which is something we're currently doing. And the more complex solution to that, which we'll be bringing in the longer term, is to show somebody's credibility based on their activity on the web in general, such as over social media, such as over Netflix, over Amazon. How many hours does a person spend online? Which then results in showing that person X is genuine because they have more social media activities than person Y. For example. But this is where we'd be working with partners.
Right, right. So you take the whole responsibility off of the landlords to figure this kind of stuff out. All right, let's get some audience questions. So, Aysan, Aysan, again, you asked the question to the last one and I appreciate it. I'm just, I'm probably butchering your name, but how did you design the questions for matching users together and how do you correct for false answers? So I guess that's kind of diving a little bit deeper into the methodology for, you know, the logic that you're creating and this credibility.
Yeah, absolutely. So that's a very good question. We have two questionnaires. So the first one is personality-based and that's inspired by, um, by several types of personality tests. So what kind of person are you? The second questionnaire is about lifestyle. So how do you actually live? And that's like, when do you go to bed? When do you get up? Do you work full-time in an office or do you work full-time from home? Because so that second questionnaire, the lifestyle questionnaire, was basically designed with users because we realized that It's very simple, but we realized that the biggest frictions happen between house sharers when two of them get up at the same time and need the bathroom at the same time, and one of them gets to work late just because of the other. Or that— the obvious one is somebody gets up at 5 AM every morning, but somebody else goes to bed at 3 AM every night and has a shower in the bathroom next door. So the lifestyle questions really have been designed with users. The personality questions are inspired by multiple tests of personalities that we have come across talking to experts. Now, to the second part of your question, how do you deal with false answers? You know, it's at this stage— It's a tough one. It's a tough one. It's a very tough one because at this stage everyone fills in as a questionnaire only once, so you cannot change your answers to the personality questionnaire. You cannot change them once you have filled it in. You cannot go back and edit it. Regarding the lifestyle, those things change, and honestly, it's not in your interest to lie, to say you work in an office all day long and then you end up working from home. So one way of addressing this currently is that we are very, very focused on curation. So we go literally through every listing, we look at our newly registered users, and we quality control them, and we make sure that those profiles have been filled in properly, that the name matches the email address. Because a big problem we currently see in especially the house sharing market is, as I was saying, is it's a quality problem. And by curating more, we we can start addressing this and we reduce people who come up with false answers to a minimum. And you can quite quickly see when a profile is suspicious.
Yeah, yeah. It's certainly not a quantity problem, right? Definitely quality. So let's see. Could you mute your microphone? I think it's you, Joan. Okay, there was a little echo there. That's better. So, um, let's see. Lydia asks, liability and insurance, are you providing to the user? Do you provide any guarantee that rooming pairings will work?
Um, we currently don't provide liability and insurance, but we will if you book a room and you cannot move into the room, of course you'll get refunded because we handle the rent. And so you will only— the landlord will only get paid after you have moved in and you have— you can give us some feedback in the first 48 hours. If something is wrong with the room or with the home, we'll not pay out the rent.
Okay. And Jens, I think Jens has been asking repeatedly how the how the Founder Institute assisted you with your company, but I'm going to skip that question. Jens will provide contact information after this webinar. I don't want to make this about the Founder Institute. Yeah, but Susie asked, what does, what does Woonigo mean?
That's a very good question.
And how did you come up with the name?
That's a very good question. Well, I have German origins, as you can hear probably. WohnEgo, so Wohnen in German means to live, as to live in a house, and Ego is of course the ego from Latin, is the person, the identity. So we are very focused on the person, we bring the person into the property transaction, we think that the person's importance is underestimated in the property transaction. At the same time, WG, which you find in WohnEgo, stands for, it's the abbreviation for flat share in German.
So we played with those words, with those. There's a lot of meaning. Exactly. All right, so those are all the companies, and all of you are on now. You can put your microphones on. Um, the— there, I think I've seen a lot of questions about patents as well, and I just want to bring this up before you guys, uh, want to put your microphones on. Have any of you guys gotten patents Not yet.
We didn't as well. In Europe, it's tricky to patent software, so we didn't do it.
No, we didn't for now, basically for cost reasons.
Yeah, no, and I asked that question because I totally agree. I think that my guess is that the person who keeps asking this And, um, that's, uh, there's a lot of activity there, so now I can't see it. Look, man, don't, don't worry about your idea being stolen, all right? Don't, don't worry about that. Don't worry about the patents. Um, you know, build, build some customer demand, build a product before you worry about that kind of stuff. So if you guys all had, um, you know, maybe one last ask Right. For the people on this webinar, as I said, we have— we had about 900-something people register. I'd say about 60 to 70% were aspiring entrepreneurs all across Europe. We promoted this pretty, pretty targeted just in Europe and some Northern Africa and the Middle East. If you have any recommendations for them, and then also if you have an ask, for the next stages of your business? Does somebody want to go first and volunteer, and then I'll make you on the big screen? All right, Mario.
So again, our ask for this pitch is we'll be fundraising a new round. We just closed one now, but we'll be fundraising a Series A of about $4 to $5 million in 14, 16 months' time. So if there's any investor up there that is on SaaS, B2B travel space, and that is interested, come and speak with us. And regarding my advice for the founders in here, this is my third company. I failed two before. So what I was really looking for when I joined Founder Institute is someone to tell me what to do in a process that I know I will not fail. And Founder Institute gave me exactly that proven methodology. That's what I was in need for. So I'm really grateful I joined. I think it was one of the best decisions, publicity-free.
Great. Okay. I'm going to bring the other ones on, but honestly, I don't want to hear what you like about the Founder Institute. I want to hear about your company. And thank you, Mario. I'll take free promotion, but I want to hear, you know, Just trying not to make this about F5. So Joan, it looks like you're ready to speak. So I put you on. All right.
All right.
Thanks.
Yeah, I completely join Mario on the Foundry Institute. I won't say more, but I'm in the same case as him. I have two asks. One is an offer for people looking for images in Europe to prove that our technology is working and is efficient. We can manage some image search and image acquisition for free for you. So we won't make thousands, but we can make a few ones for you. So if you're looking for images, reach out to us and we'll search images and buy them for you. That's the first thing. That's for startup and company looking for images. And we are in the middle of a $300K round, seed round. So if you're a business angel or VC, I'd be happy to talk. We want to close it by the end of the year.
Yeah, and let me, let me just say really quick too that images for content creation, all this kind of stuff, is a huge problem for us. We used to have a deal with one of the bigger companies and then they cut it off because it's very concentrated kind of at the top, right? Between 1 to 3, maybe, probably 2, Getty and Shutterstock, right? And that leaves out the whole long tail, right? Which is what the internet kind of produces. And then we've gotten random, like, letters in the mail saying that we owe thousands of dollars for some picture of me or Deo, right? And I'm like, that's a picture of me. Like, how could I— anyway, it's a big problem. So, um, I, I implore people to, you know, if you're starting a small business and if interested in that space, it's becoming more and more of a copyright problem just because the amount of images that are being shared on the internet and all of the restrictions and the copyrights that go as part of them. All right, so Stefan, I'm going to put you on right now. What do you think?
So first of all, in terms of ask, we are always interested in user feedback. Of course, anybody who is looking for a room in London or has a room to offer is welcome to visit our site, and we also very actively always help our users, and we love feedback, good or bad. We work with our users all the time, always interested in partnerships as well. Um, and of course, we're looking at raising a round, as I said earlier. Um, so very, very interested in discussing opportunities with potential investors. Now, when it comes to advice, um, advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is, um, yes, do, do follow your heart, to follow your passion. Um, build what you believe in. Of course, the Founder Institute helped me give me that structure and work towards that vision, and I also found my co-founder on the way. But yes, if you have a dream you want to pursue, don't give it up and go for it and just work very hard on it and make sure you, you reach that goal.
