We step into the world of a new startup making it easier to tackle shared home ownership in New Zealand with Amy Stevens.
Amy doesn't just share her story from her earlier days as a lawyer but she gives us the valuable insights she's learned as a startup founder and overcoming the hurdles first home buyers face.
We also dive into some of the macro challenges around why it is so hard for young Kiwi's to buy their first home.
You can connect with Amy or check out Slice.
We step into the world of a new startup making it easier to tackle shared home ownership in New Zealand with Amy Stevens.
Amy doesn't just share her story from her earlier days as a lawyer but she gives us the valuable insights she's learned as a startup founder and overcoming the hurdles first home buyers face.
We also dive into some of the macro challenges around why it is so hard for young Kiwi's to buy their first home.
You can connect with Amy or check out Slice.
Home ownership is expensive and beyond the reach of most people that are of an age now where they're considering buying their first home right.
Speaker 2:The main thing that we've seen that's made it challenging is that you totally need to meet Amy.
Speaker 1:Amy is the founder of Slice, which is a shared home ownership platform, and Gravy, which is all about commercial driver compliance and insurance, etc.
Speaker 2:We're really focused in on that first home buyer market. There really only needs to be one process to buy a home and we've anchored and outlined what that process looks like and we're enabling those parties to collaborate throughout that process.
Speaker 1:So you hustled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just hustled and saw the opportunity and decided I wanted it and then went for it and I wasn't really gonna let anything get in my way, I guess.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan. Welcome to my podcast, where you will hear from a range of guests, including those from the startup world and those that have had incredibly interesting lives and some stories to tell. I would really appreciate it if you could hit the follow button and share this amongst your friends, but, as you know, time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. My guest today is Amy Stevens. Amy is a suggestion of Jerome Forey and I don't know if she knows that, but he actually said you totally need to meet Amy. She's very impressive and so, naturally, I started doing a bit of research and found out a few things about Amy's journey. And is very, very impressive. She is the founder of Slice, which is a shared home ownership platform, and Gravy, which is all about commercial driver compliance and insurance, et cetera. We'll dig in mostly into Slice today, but we'll start by just saying welcome to the show, amy.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks for having me and, yeah, always good to find those connections, wherever they come from. But Jerome is a legend in his own right, so I'm flattered that he thought of me.
Speaker 1:He is. Yeah, he's a really cool guy and I think he's got a very big intellect and he's got a very big heart as well. But yeah, he highly rated you. So I'd love to start by just looking a little bit at your origin story. We'll talk about Slice and the origin story of that, but what about you? I mean, have you always been entrepreneurially minded? You grew up in Hawke's Bay, did?
Speaker 2:you. Yeah, I did the real bay Exactly. Oh, there'll be a bit of contention there. Yeah, no, I did to some degree.
Speaker 2:I think I was really creative growing up.
Speaker 2:That's probably one thing that I recall my mum's very artistic plays, different instruments, and that was what I was really passionate about growing up.
Speaker 2:And then I fell in love with economics, so the two sort of worlds collided and that's yeah, that's probably always been a coming of age, I guess moment when I found economics and just realized that there's opportunities to be creative and to problem solve in a business sense as well.
Speaker 2:And so I was part of I think Jerome even again maybe spoke or was part of young Enterprise Scheme in some way, shape or form recently, but that was sort of my first introduction to entrepreneurship, which would have been 2009 or something like that, when I was in school and I found the Young Enterprise Scheme. So they would fly you around like if you did well in your business class, they'd fly you around New Zealand and then you'd go on these accelerator kind of things, and now, of course, there's heaps of accelerators around New Zealand, heaps of sprints and hackathons and all of that. But that was really the OG experience I think that I had, and even from that young age, I think it has been something that I've been drawn to. I also like to work under pressure and I like to solve problems, so that's really what's driven me into entrepreneurship, I suppose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we might go down the economics rabbit hole slightly during the podcast. I'm a bit of an economics geek as well, so that's going to be really interesting, particularly with what you're doing with Slice. I noticed that you went to university and you studied law. Was that something like as a child or as a teenager? You were like I want to be a lawyer. What was the driver there?
Speaker 2:One of my brothers told me that he didn't think I could, so that was the driver. I literally just did it as part of a bet or to prove someone wrong.
Speaker 2:So quite entrepreneurial in spirit there, I think, I think there needs to be a bit of resilience in it, like when someone says no, you go ahead anyway. So yeah, that's my honest truth about that one. But I actually ended up really enjoying the subject and I've taken regulation into a lot of what I do because it's one of the key topics that I like thinking about actually is where that regulation bridges technology, because regulation really is the disabler or enabler if it's, you know, established in the right way. So we can definitely see that where there's less regulation, technology can go hard and go fast, and where there's more, it's pulled back. So I mean just even thinking about open banking as an example and the challenges we've had in New Zealand with that sort of space and that opportunity.
Speaker 1:So you came out of university and then, I think from memory, you jumped into a law firm so you got a role with one of the big law firms Simpson, gerson, is that right or was it yeah?
Speaker 2:Simpson, gerson, I was working there while I was actually studying and then I spent a little bit of time. You moved around roles and around units, but I spent a little bit of time getting into property there. So that was probably my first introduction to property law and looking at titles and leasehold documents. But I wasn't there very long before I jumped into banking and moved to foreign exchange. So that's more on that economic side. So while studying law I also did a double degree. So I also did a degree in economics and it's probably been a contention ever since as to which direction I might head. But yeah, now, being a business owner, I get to use both in my day to day, so that's optimal.
Speaker 1:And how did you get to be a Forex trader?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's kind of, it's a pretty cool thing to be a part of, and there's a lot of people imagine what being a Forex trader is all about. Yeah, honestly, I loved economics and I always wanted to do that and I saw it. So I had a partner at the time who was working in the space To take an opportunity. You actually have to understand it exists, but I had the benefit of sort of seeing him and seeing what he was doing. He studied certain exams at one point and I was looking over the material and I was like I love this sort of stuff, like this is my jam. So, yeah, which is, yeah, a really key thing that I try to do now is provide opportunities for others, just by letting them see what options are available to them, and and we'll come into that with Slice as well but, yeah, it was really more just an opportunity that I was aware existed and therefore I went for the role, although I didn't actually get the role immediately.
Speaker 2:This is an interesting story now that I think about it. I was competing with a fellow law student for the role. He didn't have a degree in economics and I did, but he was a very talented guy. Anyway, he got the role first and I flew up and said that I just happened to be in Auckland. Could I meet for a coffee? And then they created a second role, which I got, and then I passed the exams with, you know, better grades, so perhaps I was more qualified.
Speaker 1:So you hustled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hustled hard and so that was like, yeah, that was a pretty challenging period where you are trying to decide which way you want to go, whether it's law, whether it's banking. You've got all those big four roles coming out of university. But yeah, I just hustled and saw the opportunity and decided I wanted it and then went for it and I wasn't really going to let anything get in my way, I guess.
Speaker 1:And this was ASB, the bank in New Zealand. Yeah, asb owned by Commonwealth Bank out of Australia, and so, with ASB Bank, it looked like you then made a bit of a move into the entrepreneurial space within the bank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did so. Then I got there and foreign exchange wasn't all. It was quick to be, no, it was great for a period of time. I did really enjoy it. I love the product.
Speaker 2:So if you don't know what you know foreign exchange is. It's really about the differences in currencies and particularly for businesses and SMEs and Aotearoa, it's about hedging your risk. So if you're selling goods or services overseas and then receiving US dollars for those, then you can actually fix the rate at which you're selling goods or services overseas and then receiving US dollars for those, then you can actually fix the rate at which you're receiving them. Or, likewise, if you're importing particular items in the production of your goods or services in New Zealand, you might hedge so that you can be sure that you can purchase at a certain rate.
Speaker 2:So there were things like foreign exchange orders and then there is the trading side of things as well, which is very Wolf of Wall Street and I enjoyed it for a time. But then there was a lot of sales elements of it and I feel I wanted to move more into technology and I saw the advances that were happening there. So then I pitched an idea through an incubator, which is amazing that ASB sort of established that and some of the other banks have done that since. Asb sort of established that and some of the other banks have done that since. And it's similar to what I was saying about yes, which was, you know, a much clunkier original version for high schools back in the, you know, early 2000s but I'm not sure exactly when it started, but it's been around a long time but they brought that opportunity into the bank and so I pitched an idea which was called Home Share, and you can see where this journey is going to take us.
Speaker 1:I can. The breadcrumbs are being laid here.
Speaker 2:I'm laying this out nice and easy and that was really born out of a want to get into housing myself, so I didn't own property at the time. My mum had struggled to get back on the ladder but been able to do so after my parents separated. So it had always been something that I wanted for my own financial independence and security. And now I was in the bank and I'd been earning a little bit and I'd paid down my student loan. I was thinking about how, what that next move would look like, and shared ownership was an obvious opportunity whereby, you know, you could buy with your mum or you could buy with a brother or a friend, and so I was exploring what those different structures looked like. I'd already, you know, had that experience legally to see how those structures can be managed, whether it's a company's a co-ownership agreement, a trust, a jv. So I had, I had a fair degree of knowledge and I was trying to impart that through the platform that we were creating there, and so I did that for a period of time. But then the incubator they weren't quite sure how to either roll out the ventures or roll in the ventures, so whether or not they were going to remain bank owned or operate independently, and at that I sort of decided, without that clarity I was putting a lot of time and energy into something I was working, living and breathing it, working on it as if it was my own. It wasn't really making sense for me. So then I did a quick jump across, made a bit more money in a different role at Kiwi Bank and then moved into Slice. And Slice does echo some of the experience that I had at ASB in building that shared ownership platform, but it's more focused on first-home buyers now.
Speaker 2:So, yes, we support and specialise in shared home ownership, where you're buying as a couple and you're putting in different amounts, or you've got a parent helping or you're buying with a government scheme. We do all the legals for that, but we also do all the legals for conveyancing. So we've fixed fees and digitized the experience for buyers going through that journey, regardless of whether or not you know they're buying with mum and dad or they're buying by themselves. But we like to bring forward the fact that actually the majority of people are buying with others. So we're trying to kind of change the mindset and the stigma around that because, believe it or not, people sort of love to bring those down that are buying with others or are getting help, but we're trying to go hang on here. What's your opportunity? Let's get curious.
Speaker 1:Let's not get judgmental yeah, I'm intrigued to sort of go back a little bit into the home share journey before we even dive into Slice, in the sense that you were doing it within a corporate and perhaps even harder still, if I choose the right word there. More challenging is doing that inside a bank, and a bank's main asset is its ability to prevent.
Speaker 2:You know risk and I think we're coming full circle here.
Speaker 2:We're going back to regulation meets technology again yeah yeah, it was a very different environment, but one that, again, I'm quite comfortable in. So because I had that experience in regulation and, you know, not to the degree of lawyers that have been working in the space for a long period of time, nothing like that but I almost had enough to communicate without key regulators, but at the same but I almost had enough to communicate with our key regulators, but at the same time I still had a bit of naivety and opportunity to question and ask but why, but why, but why? What about if we did it this way? What about if we did it this way? And sort of test those imaginary boundaries or guardrails.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean that was a constant management thing while working at the bank, but I think it's one of the things. One of my biggest attributes now actually is being able to manage regulation and risk whilst trying to innovate and be a change maker, because it's very easy to create change without you know any of those, but you're not really creating big change unless you are changing structures, foundations. You're pushing those boundaries. So I think the biggest opportunity sometimes can be to go from within a corporate and drive change, but it's also one of the most laborious and exhausting things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've almost got a thesis on this and I want to put this to you and for you to challenge this, because my thesis is it's almost impossible to create real innovation from inside a large corporate, particularly a large bank, where risk is really locked down, so you're not free to make all of the decisions that you would otherwise be able to make. Tell me why I'm wrong. Is there a place for banks to truly innovate, or even large corporates to innovate?
Speaker 2:I think there is actually. I think, whilst it was challenging, the experience was a very, you know, enlightening and positive experience for me at ASB and I think they made massive headway in terms of enabling innovation and just supporting people to ask questions, to test, and, and they had some great kind of culture shifts in the space there around mindset to enable that. But tell me why you're wrong. You're not wrong, but I don't think it's just bank specific. I think it is that regulatory umbrella. I think that's where you're probably right. Is that? Actually there's some regulations, there's some criterias that aren't within the bank's control. So, yeah, that's a challenge for them because it's not something that they can shift or move within. It's actually out of their hands. But beyond that, because they're not setting those regulations now, they're not rolling that out, they're actually having to respond to that regulation. So much of their time, effort and priority is spent on actually responding to regulation and making sure that they are meeting the required expectations, risk appetite, so that they don't end up in the news next week saying that they've stolen a whole lot of money because they've made a mistake, they've put a decimal point in the wrong place. So it's just much harder for them.
Speaker 2:And I think it is easy for people to say, oh, banks aren't doing it, banks aren't innovating.
Speaker 2:And look at me, I've jumped out because I want to be on the other side, so don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2:But as soon as you grow and scale and get to a point where you have this much power over not just your customers, like their livelihood, but also over an economy like if one bank fails in Australasia, it's actually's, actually, you know, they've got a decent market share it becomes a different beast, and I think it's easy for new banks to come in and go, oh, we're going to move fast, we're going to do this.
Speaker 2:But as soon as they hit a certain threshold and that regulation comes through and they have to manage risk regulation, adopt all of that they're still going to have those same challenges. The only difference that they might have is that, yeah, they've been the longer that they can remain unbeholden to those regulations and operate, lean and build technology and not have to manage. You know the spaghetti warehouse of technology that the banks now have, where everything's plugging into a hundred other you know platforms or data apis from the 1950s or whatever it is in their back end. I think there's some advantages, for sure, but I think I guess, in summary, I don't overly think it's the bank's fault yeah, and I can see how you know you're a resilient person.
Speaker 1:But being in that environment and doing something creative, something innovative, something where you're trying to solve a really big problem that is already even if it's not owned by a bank is already clouded in its own regulatory umbrella. And then you add the layer of being inside a bank and lines at chains of command and risk, et cetera. It would be very, very challenging. So you leave the bank and you go and start slice, is that pretty much?
Speaker 2:you sort of jump straight into that not quite I wanted to, and then COVID hit and so I was a little bit, had had some trepidation, so then I was working part-time and kind of managing a couple of things and then it was a little bit, you know, after the the main kind of announcement of COVID that I jumped. So I was working, always side hustling kind of the way through. I built gravy while I was at ASB so, as I was building out a home share because I wanted something that I owned myself. So now we support drivers across New Zealand managing their digital logbooks and supporting them with insurance their digital logbooks and supporting them with insurance. But yeah, I mean, ultimately it was a bit of a stepped transition and it was based on my financial ability to to jump. But yeah, now I'm in Slice and we got we got some funding on and that's the full-time focus.
Speaker 1:So how did you make that start? So when you were ready to to jump in, could you code? I looked at you've obviously done a bit of training in and around sort of some development stuff. Did you code yourself or did you find somebody to help you code?
Speaker 2:yeah, jack of all trades, master of none. I think right is where I'm headed. I can front end code and super competent with webflow and those kind of kit set websites, but I can also front end code but, to be honest, I don't spend as much of my time doing that now because there's people that are better than me and it's not an efficient use of my time. That said, I know I understand I can communicate exactly what I want in terms of back-end, front-end, and that's what's really important. It was important for me to get in there and understand the activity, understand the activity, understand the work that the coders and the developers do, so that I can ask for what I want and understand what I'm asking for, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you must have learned a lot through the HomeShare process too, about the product you're building, right.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 2:I was very lucky and I had the opportunity to use that money, you know, within reason, but in the way that I wanted, and we were the leanest spending project or platform that came out of that, and that's because I ended up, yeah, removing the agency developers and getting our own devs in and then building in-house, and so I also got greater exposure, kind of working side by side with our developers, and also made more decisions, technical decisions on how we were setting things up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which meant the great thing about there's so much, so many words around agile, scrum and all of those kind of product development terminologies, that or keywords that are getting slandered now or overused, saturated, but basically, yeah, it is that exposure. When you have a cross-functional team and you're working side by side with them, you can pick things up pretty easily. So I was in the code for HomeShare doing bits and pieces as well, and then I did my Udemy at the same time, so that has aided in my ability to develop, but I prefer to work with people that are better than me in the space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm keen to sort of dig in a little bit into the problem. I think it's probably not going to need a lot of explanation as to why we have the problem, or maybe for some people there is a need to explain it. But home ownership is expensive and beyond the reach of most people that are of an age now where they're considering buying their first home, right. So I don't know if you want to get into any of the economics around that, any of the tax policy stuff on that at all.
Speaker 2:briefly, I mean, yeah, we can. I think one of the interesting things because people say, oh, interest rates were really expensive back in the day and they were. They were like 19%. But the main thing that we've seen that's made it challenging. Two main things let me have two.
Speaker 2:So the first thing is that the income, our income, hasn't grown at the same rate as property, as or you know, it's not keeping up with that. So what was you know? Maybe you would have been on 20 grand and a house was 200 grand. Now you might be on 80 grand or 100 grand and a house is 1 million, 1.5. Even so, it's totally changed in terms of affordability between what people are earning and what they're able to purchase with that, with those earnings. And then interest rates, yes, have decreased, but you've got to remember that six percent of one million is a lot more than 20% of $200,000. So it's still something that you've got to think about. And then, on the other side of things, it's what you're saying about tax or policy that you're leaning into is really just speculation.
Speaker 2:We've enabled people to purchase property for their own betterment and basically avoid tax. So you get taxed on every other asset. You get taxed on your business, you get taxed on your PAYE, you get taxed on a bank account that you make a dollar off just because you're not even getting a great interest rate, they'll still take that tax out of that. So property has been exempt to that, or at least, the family home has been for a very long time and it's pretty easy for people to set things up to look like they are a family home and then not sell the property, so own multiple assets. And yes, they might need a larger deposit to get an investment property now, but still, as long as they don't sell within a certain period, they don't pay capital gains tax on the gains that they make over that period. So obviously, when labour was in, they were looking at different things there around interest rate deductibility as well and reducing that, and now we are seeing that undone by national again, so you can write off your interest rate as a cost against that investment as well. So that's also further enabling investors and encouraging more people to get into market from property purchases for investment as opposed to for living.
Speaker 2:And then probably the third issue, seeing as we're still here, would be supply. This is the main one. I'm just rambling off the top of my head, you know, but the main one would actually be supply. Like, I would like to say that that's our biggest issue, but those other two things are a bit more systemic and, you know, economic. But yeah, the supply issue is a big one as well, because if we had enough supply, ultimately, even if people were buying lots up, there'd still be a little less. If we go back to the economics, the demand, supply graph, which we will do.
Speaker 1:We will do. We're going off piste, which I always do.
Speaker 2:The demand supply graph would just be a bit healthier if we had more properties on market, you know, and that's the other thing. So those are three key things. I think which leaves us where we are today is that, yes, we've got a shortage of supply, we've got regulation that encourages people to make speculative investments instead of just buying to live in the home, and then we've got a greater differentiation between income and property purchase prices. So some massive, obvious challenges there and, as a result, people can't get into housing. First, home buyers can't get into housing, and then, if we drill down and get into a bit more detail around that problem, we've got this bulk of late 20s to 40-year-olds that are really high earners but don't necessarily have the deposit. So they still have enough to make repayments, but they can't get in because they don't have that deposit. So we're starting to see different low deposit options and shared ownership as a way in as well, which is another thing that we support with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean the last thing I want to do is make my podcast political, but I will go there slightly on this. I think the reality is that we live in a country where we don't have a capital gains tax, which I think is wrong. We tax incomes pretty much all income in New Zealand is taxed but we don't tax the balance sheet, and whether it's building an asset with a business or whether it's building an asset with property, whether it's done on the balance sheet, there is no tax on building wealth through the balance sheet, and I think we probably need to look at that. Otherwise, those that can just play the balance sheet game versus the income game are always going to do substantially better off. So something there. The other interesting thing about New Zealand is there's this massive shortage of houses being built and immigration last year was at a record high, so it's only going to get worse. And we are in a country yeah, it's over 110,000.
Speaker 1:It's crazy, and to put that into perspective, I think it's about two times the size of New Plymouth arrived here last year, you know. So I think you know to think about it like that we've just dumped, you know, a population into New Zealand that's twice the size of New Plymouth, and we've just added that without necessarily building the houses. And the demand on the New Zealand front door for people who want to live here and to escape whatever they're escaping from offshore is not going to get smaller, it's. So we've really got to deal with this issue.
Speaker 2:The other thing that you have to think about there, though, is we can't get more land. Well, actually, climate change might be different depending where you are in the world, but you know, new Zealand is a finite amount of land, so there's always going to be a degree of demand for property in New Zealand. And, yeah, we're not building enough houses. That would be the solution. I think the solution to some of it would be building more houses, but it would also be clever regulation, that that manages investment, but if it's, if it's restriction, if it isricting this is a really interesting conversation I had with Simon Bridges If it is restricting something, though, that people are using to grow their wealth and that's impacting New Zealand GDP, then we need to replace that with something else.
Speaker 2:So we need to encourage new builds we're starting to do that but encourage investors into new builds or into development projects or into commercial real estate and to enable, you know, the first home buyer in, or we need to encourage people into business, investment and something else that's going to grow wealth for them and for New Zealand, and we don't just want to tax everyone and then have no sort of positive wealth or growth strategy for those, those investors in New Zealand, so we need to think about it from both sides. But, yeah, there definitely needs to be something done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if I jump on my high horse for one further moment, it doesn't make any sense to me that you can be somebody with no knowledge, buy a house and this is probably going back a few years maybe even buy a house, wait and become wealthy back a few years. Even buy a house, wait and become wealthy. So you're not adding to the economy, you're not building a business and toiling it out to build a better business to serve people in the community. You're just buying a building and waiting and that makes you wealthy and our tax policy allows you to do that. And there'll be a bunch of people, I'm sure after they listen to this, will have a private message to me saying what the hell are you saying, greg? But that's the reality. No disrespect, but dumb people could make money from property just by buying and holding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the challenge as well. It's like that's when you know it's not necessarily the system doesn't work right. Because even this, at the most holistic view, you want to think about how we can contribute to society, to an economy, to a country, to the world, by creating new value or, you know, creating and adding opportunity, not by the snatching up existing value and then moving that value around Like there's no sensible outcome. For, yes, it is for the individual and I totally appreciate that and, don't get me wrong like I'm hoping that my property increases in value and I individually benefit. But how can we incentivize people to create value, grow value that provides for betterment, for more than what just one individual? You know. That creates growth for a country or growth for the world, which is what businesses do right. So businesses create something new, they solve a new problem, they help people, they create employment opportunities, they create something out of nothing, and buying property that's already existing or, you know, selling and trading properties, is not creating that value. So we should be just at the broadest, most holistic level. We should be thinking about how we can incentivize the right behaviors in our economy and unfortunately we we've missed the boat there for a long time.
Speaker 2:But you know, we could have ended up with more houses if we'd encouraged that type of investment 10, 20 years ago. We could have ended up with more houses if we'd encouraged that type of investment 10, 20 years ago. We could have ended up with more businesses if we'd encouraged lending to businesses instead of lending to buy property, which is another earth that I had, because it's really hard to get lending when you're a business owner. Yeah, so quite often you have to buy a house and they'll lend you. You know they'll lend you 800k for your house, but they won't lend you 800k for your business, which is going to create value, potentially grow the economy and and lift up everyone in New Zealand or wherever you're living, but they won't do that for your business. And then, once you've bought the house, they'll let you lend against that house for your business like it's. That's when you know the systems yeah, it's all a bit.
Speaker 1:It's all a bit broken, and I agree, and I think we could go down the rabbit hole of economics and politics and tax policy forever and we would have some of our listeners going oh my God, this is boring. I thought we were going to be talking about startups, so I'll bring it back onto your startup, but I guess I'm keen to understand. You know you are building a product that solves a big problem, there's no question of that, and you're building a product in a regulatory environment that's quite challenging, but what do you personally find are some of the hardest parts of, you know, running your own startup?
Speaker 2:one of my favorite things is that I get to like start a new role every three or so months, but then that's what's also hard. I go from getting good at something, pumping through it, starting to benefit and see the business benefit from that new skill set, and then I have to start all over again and pick something up new and then it's hard and it can be frustrating. Like moving from marketing into sales is quite a jump for me and just setting up sales processes and moving into cold calling and things like that. I've found that that shift a bit hard and I think that's probably just one of the challenges. It's also one of the things I love is the variety of the work and the opportunity to pick up new skills.
Speaker 2:Another one would be funding. Funding is awful, so it was actually a good segue from where we were talking about. There, where you can't get funding from the banks, it's hard to know whether or not there is a bias that I'm experiencing as a woman going for funding or whether, uh, the platform's just not good enough or you know, it's hard to know what the what the analysis is. But I know that last year funding in the states dropped from about 2.6 percent to 1.8 percent for female founders, and that's not just. You know, I'm a sole female founder at the moment, so that would be a female founder where there's probably also a male co-founder in a lot of those companies.
Speaker 2:So those stats are awful and I can't help but wonder whether that is something that is a bit challenging for me. I mean, it's been a hard couple of years with raising funds as well for everyone across the board. So we'll see. I did manage to raise last year, so that's awesome. But I think that's a continuous journey. You need to for the platform that I'm building and it's really a marketplace and an ecosystem. So we've got brokers, lawyers and buyers on there. There's a lot of moving parts and we need a big amount of funding to grow. So that's going to be a continuous challenge is just getting that funding required to grow.
Speaker 1:And the reality of funding is, you know, it is tough. As you say, it's really tough for male and female founders, and the thing with female founders is you're never going to know if you were turned down because you were female. I mean, I would love to think in 2024, we don't have that going on. But I don't think no investor is ever going to say hey, amy, I really love the product, I really love you know everything you're doing, but you're a female. So then hopefully they're not thinking that either.
Speaker 2:I don't think they're thinking that. I think it's an unconscious bias. And when markets contract, you know where there's a bit of talk around a recession and things like that and people are holding their checkbooks a little bit closer to their chairs, I think they just go back to known experiences and what they know has worked in the past and most of them won't have funded a whole lot of female founders. So that's not something that they're thinking fits that contraction and I expect that's why it dropped from 2.6 to 1.8.
Speaker 2:2.6 is already abysmal, but you know and I'm not saying woe me or anything, but I think funding, yes, it's a challenge for me and it's a challenge for everyone, but it is hard to know how to navigate that and what you can do to. Yeah, I guess navigate unconscious bias, because I don't think it's intentional, I think it's just people are looking for what they think is going to be a high performing platform, business product, whatever. And if I've, if I've had success in the four before investing in men, then you know it gets probably hard to change and and what are you raising currently?
Speaker 1:I will be again soon, sort of later this year, but not for another five months probably okay, and and if for people that are listening and can sort of start keeping a bit of an eye out for when you are raising, you know what's the pitch. What are you? What are you saying right now? I mean, obviously we understand the problem. How are you solving this like really elegantly?
Speaker 2:yeah, so we are a marketplace that connects the buyer, the broker and the lawyer, and they all collaborate in a workspace together to simplify that buying journey. Okay, if you think about it, people are buying property world over all the time, but they're doing it in a different way. The process looks different every time. They're starting with a broker first, they're starting in an open home first, they're trying to set up a company first, and there's just no need for that. There's one clear process that we've established through our software that connects and enables the buyer, the broker and the lawyer and actually notifies them when they need to engage and what they need to do at each step of the way. So we've got obviously great tooling in there, in particular for the lawyers, that we're leveraging AI for the due diligence process.
Speaker 2:We digitize and pre-populate legal agreements for the different structures required to purchase property. So there's a lot of kind of tooling that creates efficiencies for our partners as well. But on the most basic level, there really only needs to be one process to buy a home, and we've anchored and outlined what that process looks like and we're enabling those parties to collaborate throughout that process. I think one broader piece that's come out of this experience as well, though, is that mindset and education is also a huge part of what we do now, so we're also moving into. Yeah, we have our own podcast. We have our own content creation and our focus there to actually get people into the platform, and that's working well as well and what is the podcast?
Speaker 2:shout it out slice first home buyers podcast. So yeah, we're really focused in on that first home buyer market. We do get a range of people through those. So if you are listening to this podcast and you want to go on your second, third property, you want to set up a jv or you want to know what the right structure might be, we still support with that. But we believe that by solving for the most challenging segment we can solve for all. So first home buyers just yeah, they know the least or tend to know the least and tend to struggle the most.
Speaker 1:So by solving for all of those problems, we're solving for well, that's a big shout out to that uh, to you your podcast. So people who are listening should go and and check out that podcast, particularly those that are trying to, you know, buy their first home across the sort of the buyer, the, the broker, the lawyer who pays you who's the customer there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everyone.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, see investors. There's three sources of revenue.
Speaker 2:And there's more people that want to work with us as well. But, yeah, one of the challenges that we are doing is we do obviously have those three channels and we're very much limiting it to those channels. The core product is really for the buyer and the lawyer and the brokers engage to refer and be referred to. But, yeah, the buyers pay we collect transaction fees when they work with our partners but they get to use the software for free. They get to listen to our podcast for free, so you get all of that education and that support and then you do successfully purchase. We get a fee out of that purchase. And then for the lawyers, they pay a subscription to use our software.
Speaker 1:Obviously we're creating efficiencies for them with the using AI, using pre-populating agreements and and the like that's superb and I think hopefully by now people have got a bit of a sense of you. You know how big this problem is and also just how well Slice are solving that problem. So whether you are a first home buyer or a second or a third or fourth home buyer, or you are a broker or you are a lawyer, then check out Slice. I'm keen to sort of jump into a few quickfire questions at the end which are really more about you as opposed to the business. So just chatting to you, I can really really clearly see that you're super intelligent. You've got a bunch of resilience. What is your and it's an overused phrase, but your zone of genius, your superpower, what are you really good at? And if you spend time in that space it just really accelerates you forward in the business.
Speaker 2:I'll use what I've been told by someone else because sometimes it's easier to have it reflected to you. I think I'm really good at leveraging the skills and bringing people together around me, which makes sense, right? Both in the context of me saying earlier in the podcast that, yeah, I love to dive in and learn and make sure I understand a particular skill set and I've tried absolutely every role in building this, this platform, but then I like to hand it off to someone that I deem to be better than me in that particular area. So I think that's really important when building a team, but it's also really important when building a marketplace, because obviously it's not just one user, that one end user.
Speaker 2:We've got at least three end users on the platform right now. So we've got, you know, 150 buyers joining each month. We've got over 40 brokers on the platform. We've got about nearly 10 lawyers, legal firms on the platform. So I think that probably ties in nicely with what it is we're trying to achieve here, which is leveraging the right people in the room to streamline this process and make it, you know, simple and easy to buy in and out of property.
Speaker 1:And where do you find inspiration personally, like through a book or a podcast that you listen to, or a blog, or you know something that you listen to, that or read. Where are you getting that from at the moment?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do love listening to podcasts. I think I find that quite easy because it's you know, you can listen to it at 1.5 and you can just listen to it on the go. This guy, greg's, got a really good podcast no, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a, uh, a sort of a caged question, but you know, like have you got a? Book that you're reading at the moment, or something as well yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 2:I've got a book that would be my favorite book, I think, and I reread that. I reread a few of them, but sapiens is one that I love and I keep going back to, and that is actually. It fits in nicely with around that leveraging and collaboration. So when I think of that book it's it is a chunkier book, but I think about where we are in the food chain as human beings and our role being really enabled by the fact that we can collaborate.
Speaker 2:So when lions were out, you know, eating at the marrow, we were able to collaborate and say, oh, there's a dead calf over there, we're going to be able to get some food, but don't go there yet. The lion's there. And we were able to collaborate. And that's what you know, enabled us to evolve and keep alive was through collaboration. You know, enabled us to evolve and and keep alive was through collaboration. And now I see technology, as you know, being a better collaborative tool than than humans, which is what's so scary. But, yeah, I think that's. There's some themes that I just love to revisit in there and reflect on those and and use them in my life. So, yeah, I definitely think reading is reading books like that, but they're generally more philosophical or scientific that I tend to read, and that's because I like taking the themes or the ideas and then aggregating different you know themes together to think about a market opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that way of thinking of grabbing sort of material from other disciplines and, as you say, the sciences or the arts or whatever, and then bringing those into conceptualising and thinking. What about philosophies and mantras that you live by? Is there anything that you were taught when you were young or something you live by now and you just think this is how I like to roll. This is me.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's a great quote actually that I do like, but I have it written here Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. I think it's a mixture of my own thoughts and Steve Jobs, but yeah, so I really liked that one because it is just. It's thinking about walls as being something that you can tear down, as opposed to being boundaries that you can't move past or you can't solve for, which fits with what we sort of spoke about our own regulation and, you know, innovating in different environments. But that's really inspiring to me from Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1:And for many others too, and I think the fact that you're sharing that, others will hear that and get a lot from that, because I think all of us have times where we doubt ourselves or we don't think we're capable of pulling off something that is perhaps new and profound, but actually we're all capable of that. So thanks for that. And then, finally, is there something that you believe quite strongly in that very few people do? There you go. That's a good answer, that's a great answer, yeah, so yeah, you're making a beautiful case for the capital gains tax and all the homeowners out there are going no and all the people that are yet to own a home are saying yes.
Speaker 2:Now I am a homeowner as well, so it's hard to still believe that, but I do believe it. Yeah, I did run to lead the Opportunities Party at one stage and that was on the basis that they were looking into a capital gains tax and some other pretty great policies that they had.
Speaker 1:I feel like there is an entirely new podcast episode that we could have there going down the politics rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:It's a rabbit hole. Don't take me there.
Speaker 1:It is. I know we could perhaps do that offline. That's probably a really, really cool way to finish. Honestly, amy, you are a very impressive founder like very impressive and I think when it does come time for you to be raising again people who have got checkbooks that you know where they can write a check they need to be looking at this, because not only should we be changing on 2.6 to 1.8%, it's just absolutely appalling. Why isn't it 50-50, based on whatever the representation female to male across the gender split is? But it's not good enough. It's nowhere near good enough and it's actually abysmal. But you've got a product that is solving a very, very, very big problem and you've got resilience and you've got a bunch of intellect and skills to be able to take this a long, long way. So I genuinely wish you every success and I've loved the time chatting to you today.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me. I think it's obviously it's still got to be a great platform and a product, but there's a lot of them out there that are founded by women, so it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. But thanks for having me, and if anyone is a broker, a lawyer or a buyer, you can also check us out at slicetobuycom no-transcript.