Fast-growing Manchester-based PropTech Street Group shot to prominence in July following a strategic investment from listed private equity investor Hg.
The company has been achieving 100 per cent growth and the investment valued the software business at more than £200m.
Siblings Tom and Heather Staff are, pardon the pun, hot property in their sector and Hg’s investment is set to take them to the next level.
Tom Staff is the latest guest on Alvarez & Marsal’s Dealmaker Uncut podcast, hosted by Jonathan Boyers and Chris Maguire, and he spoke about how Street Group’s technology is now used by more than 4,000 estate and letting agency branches.
Tom Staff with Dealmaker Uncut co-hosts Jonathan Boyers and Chris Maguire
It was perhaps no surprise that Heather and Tom ended up in the property sector as both their parents ran their own estate agencies.
Tom founded Agent Software Group in 2015 – which later rebranded as Street Group – and his sister Heather joined a year later after spending nearly a decade at KPMG.
Street Group is behind Street.co.uk and Spectre, which help estate agencies generate leads more efficiently, win new business and provide exceptional customer service.
“We make software for estate agents,” he said. “We started off with Spectre, which is a marketing tool. We now have Street.co.uk which is a full software platform for estate agents. They run their entire business on it.”
The siblings, who were included in BusinessCloud’s Founder 250 list, completely bootstrapped the business until raising £3.3m from Praetura Ventures (now PXN Ventures) in 2024, valuing the business at c.£50m.
Praetura’s investment director, Peter Carway, joined Street Group’s board as part of the deal and the company has since grown to 230 staff.
The company’s impressive growth attracted significant interest from investors before the siblings eventually chose Hg earlier this year, which specialises in scaling software and AI businesses.
The size of the investment has not been revealed, but it delivered a 4.4x return for PXN. The siblings remain majority controlling shareholders in Street Group and continue to lead the business.
Go faster
Explaining the reasons for seeking the latest round of investment, Tom said it was about wanting to go faster and that Hg was the standout option.
“Everybody has a very high opinion of them,” he said. “Hg were consistently, throughout the process, on it.
“They knew things about our business that we didn’t know. They didn’t miss a beat throughout the thing.
“We liked the people. It’s quite a rare mix to be very personable and extremely impressive at the same time. There a lot of people we met who were one of the other.”
Tom said he and his sister were having too much fun to be contemplating an exit.
You can listen to the latest episode of Dealmaker Uncut here