HOMELINK

HomeLink launched into a rental market running on screenshots and guesswork. Fake listings were everywhere, renters abandoned search within 90 seconds, and agents ignored half their leads because they couldn't tell a serious renter from a browser. The product tried to serve renters, agents and landlords equally — so it served none of them well. Growth had stalled at 4% search-to-enquiry with a churn problem on the supply side.

We ran two weeks of interviews with renters and agents, then reframed the entire company around one promise: every home on HomeLink is verified by a human. That single decision became the filter for every trade-off after it — what gets listed, what ranks first, what the brand says before a user taps anything, and which users we were willing to lose. We killed the landlord self-serve flow, rebuilt ranking around verification recency, and gave agents a reason to care: verified renters, not raw leads.

A rebuilt search and verification pipeline with a human-review queue and SLA tooling, an agent onboarding system that cut document collection from nine days to three, a full identity refresh built around the verification badge, and a responsive web app plus native mobile experience covering search, map discovery, shortlists and in-app messaging. We shipped in eleven weeks with a two-person squad embedded alongside the founding team.

HomeLink now has a defensible position in a crowded category and a funnel that holds. Verified inventory grew to 88% of active listings, enquiry quality improved enough that agent retention flipped positive, and the company closed a seed round on the strength of the verified-supply story.