Home » News » Matt Goddard: ‘Why I’ve left Reapit after nearly ten years at the top’
Products & Services

Matt Goddard: ‘Why I’ve left Reapit after nearly ten years at the top’

Former Foxtons and until recently Reapit tech high-flyer reveals his next move to The Neg readers.

Matt Goddard

matt goddard reapit

After an amazing nine years and four months at Reapit, the time has come to venture out on my own.

Given I was also at Foxtons for the same time, it would seem I have a strange variation on the 7-year itch… and the timing has nothing to do with the fact I hit forty during 2021.

I joined Reapit in August 2012 when we had 68 employees and head office was Sting’s old flat above a Sainsburys in Fulham.

Having come onboard to launch the RPS Lettings and Client Accounts product, I joined the Exec Board in February 2013 and became a Company Director in the same year.

In my time, the team has blossomed to 250 people and Lettings and Client Accounts has grown from one client with a couple of hundred tenancies to the only multi-award winning, ICAEW accredited, single system on the market, with over a quarter of a million tenancies worldwide.

To say I’m extremely proud of the company we’ve built and the customers we work with would be an understatement.

Over the course of my career in property and technology, I’ve been lucky to work with some of the best estate and letting agents across the UK, Dubai and Australia.

I’m in the privileged position to have helped those businesses implement processes and technologies that have improved service, reduced costs and ensured compliance, to name just a few benefits.

Disparate tech

I’ve seen first hand the need for someone to help make sense of all the disparate technology available to our industry and, crucially, how that could and/or should be implemented within a business.

Research from Kerfuffle shows that an agency has an average of twenty different PropTechs within their Tech Stack.

The problem is that those proptechs, for the most part, work within their own silos.

Having been pivotal in working with Dawson [Scott] and the team to develop Reapit’s Foundations platform, I’ve helped make a big step in integrating those disparate parts within the Reapit ecosystem.

In launching my own business, I can work closely with agencies and proptech firms on their operational planning, process efficiencies and system integrations.

Slow adoption

One of the things that still astounds me about technology in our industry is the slow adoption of some, that I would class as vital, tools.

For example, I’ve worked closely with Adobe Sign, initially as Echosign, since I was at Foxtons and have forged a great relationship with them through my time at Reapit.

What I would take as a staple, especially in lettings, is still only just being adopted by some agencies now.

Yes, the impact of the pandemic has played a part in that with consumers more willing/forced to use the solution, but, even so, a 20% YoY increase in envelopes (documents signed) in Q4 2020 is a remarkable uplift.

In a similar vein, I recently found an article I contributed to in December 2013 where a common theme for innovation across software providers was an online offering for Landlords and Tenants.

While these self-service portals have now been around for well over a decade (we launched My Foxtons in 2009) I’m still amazed at the number of companies, including high profile brands, that have not adopted them for their consumers.

Visit Matt’s website.

January 5, 2022

What's your opinion?

Please note: This is a site for professional discussion. Comments will carry your full name and company.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.