Ten questions for Federico Gallina, co-founder and CEO of Leasy

“We expect a fully integrated ecosystem that goes beyond just collecting and paying rent and instead focuses on solutions that offer a full range of financial services, including embedded financing and property insurance with payment guarantees.”

It’s funny how working relationships change over time.

I first met Federico Gallina when I was working at Spanish rental startup Spotahome. A few years later, I interview him about his company Leasy.

Originally called FidoRent, Leasy is a highly efficient platform for large real estate operators to track the status of their properties from rent collection to renovation costs.

I caught up with Federico to get a feel for the landlord-tenant relationship, course changes, distraction metrics, the growing wave of FinTech solutions for landlords and property managers, and his thoughts on medium-term rental opportunities in Italy and elsewhere…

What problem does Leasy solve?

Leasy simplifies and redefines rental property finances.

Property managers typically spend 30% of their daily activities on accounting, banking and rent collection. In Italy, the cost of tools and human capital can reach up to €30,000 per 100 properties under management.

Our goal is to eliminate this inefficiency.

Who is your primary target audience and what can you tell us about their needs?

Our primary audience consists of large property operators, from property and asset management companies to large private landlords.

We have found our sweet spot with operators managing a portfolio of 100 to 1,000 rental units, particularly in the medium to long-term rental market. These companies face significant challenges in scaling their finance and administration teams, with adding more units requiring additional staff, creating inefficiencies and wasted time.

In addition, there are two critical areas that are still largely managed manually and are critical to the success of these companies:

• Unit-level performance tracking: This is critical to understand the margins of each property, especially when renovations are required.
• Cash flow forecasting: In such capital-intensive models, costs cannot be accurately predicted, leaving property operators in the dark. This leads to poor decisions and missed opportunities.

Federico Gallina

How does the company make money?

We generate revenue by charging a subscription fee based on the number of contracts operators upload to the Leasy platform for rent collection and reconciliation.

In the short term, our goal is to offer the software for free, with our main revenue coming from upselling financial services through third-party providers and providing tailored value-added services to our stakeholders – namely tenants, landlords and operators.

How is Leasy funded? Will you be raising money this year?

We raised $500,000 in a pre-seed round from a mix of institutional investors including Techstars, Exor Seeds, and Casavo.

Further investments came from business angels with proptech and fintech expertise, including Raffaele Terrone, co-founder of Scalapay and one of the first Italian unicorns; Simone Surdi, co-founder of Tabas, a Brazil-based property management company (acquired by Blueground); and Joe Zadeh, former VP Product at Airbnb.

We are currently in advanced discussions for an investment round later this year.

Congratulations on the transactions of over 1 million euros processed on the Leasy platform. What other figures can you give us?

Based on the total volume processed on the Leasy platform, we have a 100% collection rate, with 49% of tenants paying their rent in advance (1-5 days before the due date) and 90% of tenants paying within 5 days of the due date.

Considering that we are currently operating in Italy – a country where paying “within a month” is culturally considered not only acceptable but quite normal – this is a sign that we are doing something positive to increase trust and transparency between landlords and tenants.

I remember Leasy when it was still called FidoRent. What advice would you give to a founder going through the difficult process of having to take their young company in a new or unexpected direction?

I believe the real key to success is persistence. If you are persistent enough, sooner or later you will find the “right path” for you.

It’s a game of trial and error.

Can you give us an example of A) an important metric and B) a misleading metric when assessing the viability/longevity of a young, growing company?

Customer retention rate. It may be easier to acquire customers in the early stages due to an aggressive launch, but the ability to retain those customers is a strong indicator of product-market fit, customer satisfaction, and the likelihood of long-term success.

And as for red herrings: revenue without considering profit margins. If you have low or negative profit margins, revenue becomes misleading, and this can mask underlying problems like high customer acquisition costs or excessive operating costs.

We are seeing more and more FinTech startups offering end-to-end financial services such as rent collection and payment. What is the next step in the digitization of this industry, especially with regard to the tenant-landlord relationship?

We expect a fully integrated ecosystem that goes beyond simply collecting and paying rent and instead focuses on solutions that offer a comprehensive package of financial services, including embedded financing and property insurance with payment guarantees.

These solutions not only provide operators and landlords with capital to enable worry-free growth, but also offer tenants more flexibility and options such as tailored financing solutions and transparent payment plans.

For landlords, guaranteed payments reduce the risk of late or missed rent payments, providing a more reliable income stream. For tenants, flexible payment options make it easier to manage their finances by allowing costs to be spread more conveniently.

This is what we are building at Leasy.

What products and services are you currently working on?

We are primarily focused on building partnerships to integrate new embedded financial services into the Leasy platform. These offerings, similar to those previously offered by FidoRent, will now be delivered through our partners.

The services we work on include financing options for tenants, landlords and operators, property-related insurance products and banking.

What should the industry talk more about?

The clear shift from short-term to medium-term rentals.

This change is largely due to more favorable tax and legal conditions.

In addition, traditional long-term rentals – in Italy the average rental period used to be 3 to 4 years – are now trending towards medium-term leases, typically between 6 and 18 months. This reflects the increasing flexibility and mobility of today’s generations; as people become more mobile, rental markets around the world are adapting to meet these new demands.

From a business perspective, many companies that operated on a rent-to-rent model – that is, renting properties long-term and subletting them short-term – either went out of business or switched to medium-term rentals during and immediately after COVID-19.

However, this transition has also revealed a gap in the market: most existing software solutions are designed for short-term rentals and do not adequately address the specific needs of companies offering medium-term rentals.

The industry must focus on developing tailored tools for this growing segment.