Startup Interview with Sébastien Marion, Founder & CEO of Kasaz

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I'm a serial entrepreneur. I love tech and I love startups. I love being surrounded by people trying to make the world a better place.

Prior to founding Kasaz, I co-founded Comufy, probably the world’s most scalable CRM system at the time. Comufy was acquired by King in 2014. As part of my earn-out, I moved to Barcelona where I found the need for changing the real Estate Market status quo.

I did my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Kent in the UK. I am passionate about tech and startups. I believe that if you don’t like something, you must change it.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Kasaz is the real-estate portal of the future: a modern portal where all information is accurate and verified. The first truly buyer-focused property portal in mainland Europe. Where the status quo is duplicates, fake listings, and inaccurate information, Kasaz offers unparalleled transparency and listing quality combined with superior user experience.

What is the origin story?

After selling my previous startup to king I moved to Barcelona. Kasaz was born out of personal frustration at that moment of looking for a property to buy when I realized that the European real estate market is broken. Property portals are flooded with fake listings, duplicated properties, and inaccurate information and location.

Our objective is to make buying and selling property easy and quick. We aim to be the new standard for real-estate portals in Europe, a modern real-estate portal full of useful information and with amazing UX to make it easy to find a home.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I work with an incredibly talented team. I learn every day from my team. Everyone is trying to improve themselves and we push boundaries and innovate on a daily basis. I couldn’t be more proud of the people I work with, they inspire me.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I guess I’d be working my up in some tech company.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

For us, growth is a must. Having reached an important number of daily and monthly users we now fight to increase retention and most importantly to “wow” our customers.

In order to do this, we follow carefully each step of the customer journey, and while leads and conversions are the main metrics, we also try to improve the entire user experience.

Our core metric is the number of leads per month per user as this is a good indication of the quality of our platform.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

We just entered the top10 most popular real-estate portals in Spain and yet, we’re only just getting started.

We are also fortunate to be backed by amazing serial entrepreneurs and VC funds.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

For me, AI is the biggest game-changer of this decade. AI has the potential to bring personalization to a whole new level and help deliver magical experiences the likes of which could only have been dreamed about not so long ago.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Having a hub of information written by peers is amazing. Loads of interesting and comprehensive articles.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

It’s a long road ahead of you. It won’t be easy. But trust yourself, and you will achieve the most amazing reward of all: pride and joy in what you do.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Office work is not necessarily more productive than remote work. Remote work is not necessarily more productive than office work. Remote-first combined with occasional onsite meetings can really boost efficiency and team spirit.