Proptech startup SearchLand has secured a GBP200,000 seed investment to accelerate its development of the world’s first fully automated site sourcing tool.
The funding, which came from a number of angel investors, is London-based SearchLand’s first investment to date. The round was part SEIS and part EIS.
Founded in 2020, SearchLand is an off-market site sourcing tool that allows property developers, architects and investors to find potential sites and contact the landowner directly through the platform.
The software-as-a-service platform automates and accelerates users’ hunt for viable plots of land by allowing them to search sites based on a range of data, including title boundaries and ownership, permitted development rights, price paid records, and planning application analysis. Using hundreds of map layers, users can rapidly pinpoint sites that meet their specific criteria, with workflow tools allowing them to easily contact the landowners of those sites.
SearchLand’s has experienced consistent month-on-month growth of 30 per cent over the past 12 months. The startup’s funding will be used to hire new sales and marketing personnel, as well as building out its automation tools to further improve the platform.
The company is planning for a series A funding round in 2023.
Hugh Gibbs, co-founder of SearchLand, says: “Given the amount of information that must be located and then analysed, sourcing sites is often a huge challenge for property developers; it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. Understanding this first-hand, we created SearchLand to take pain, complexity and time out of the site-sourcing process.
“By putting data in the hands of developers and investors, we enable them to make faster, better-informed decisions. And we’re moving closer to creating the world’s first fully automated site sourcing tool. The strong growth we’ve experienced in our first year, as well as the feedback we’ve received, has underlined that our platform is hugely valuable and much needed.
“We’re delighted to have secured this seed funding. Having bootstrapped throughout the initial development and launch phases, the investment is going to bolster our efforts to grow the team, improve the product, and expand our userbase significantly. It’s an exciting time for SearchLand, and we’re heading into 2022 full of confidence that we can continue to be a disruptive force in site sourcing and property development.”