Link: https://www.unissu.com/proptech-resources/Michele-Schirru-interviews-Russell-Quirk-podcast-proptech

For me, and I'm sure I am not alone on this, it's always great fun and source of inspiration to sit and listen to Russell Quirk.

He is a very influential figure when we take property into consideration. For this reason, it is not surprise that he was recently awarded as the top influencer in UK for PropTech.

Source: https://tytopr.com/top-10-influencers-in-proptech-tech500/

During the years, we've seen him involved in various conferences, events, shows, all over the UK and online. He has always been at the forefront of the discussions about the future of property and the implications the digital transformation carried to the industry.

Let's be honest, property is a sector that has been one of the slowest to adopt technology, this is true for the UK but even more for the rest of the world.

The two uncontested "trend-setters" during the last 10 years have been the US and the UK, but other regions of Europe are now trying to do their part of the job. Germany and France are definitely worth to look at in this respect, certainly the rising interest for Axel Springer in proptech firms like Homeday, initially, and Meilleurs Agents, lately, is a strong signal.

It is not all confined in there, because Spain and Finland are strengthening their position as well, and so is Italy with more than 120 proptech firms in the space for 2019.

I in fact have recently written an article here on Unissu about the rising of the italian PropTech.

But these recent developments came around just about 7 years after something started to move heavily in the UK.

The interest for Axel Springer in Meilleurs Agent is a sign that interest is moving from online estate agency, servicing directly the consumer, to a model where services are rather directed to the agents. As Russell will say later in the interview:

"I think the way forward sustainably for estate agency is to leverage agents and their personal brand and to help them with admin and compliance and so on. That's what I should have done differently. I should have become a UK Keller Williams in 2018 charging a full fee of one and a half per cent plus VAT on success."

It was 2009 when Russell founded Emoov, one the most interesting projects in the entire spectrum of proptech that has drawn attention globally. It was not the first, but certainly Russell knew how to make his way through the press and get the results grow and grow.

Back then, but even now, he's obviously been focusing a lot on online estate agency, having been mainly an estate agent for very long time.

As you might know, for Emoov things have not turned out very well. After 9 years, even after joining with Tepilo, Channel 4 and Urban.co.uk, after millions of pounds poured into the business, in 2018 Emoov went into administration and Russell had to find an alternative way to earn his living.

“I should have explored more aggressively with my board becoming a full fee agent but still using local experts still using technology still using operational centralization. And actually I've kind of come full circle when I started looking at what on earth I do for a living. In January 2019. How do I pay the school fees how do I feed my family.”

And here it comes Properganda PR and so on, as he will actually tell us in the interview...

“The obvious thing of course was PR. Because I've got a profile and reputation in property in terms of being able to gain PR coverage so it was natural that I would then do that for other people and we now have lots of clients benefiting from that as propaganda PR.”