This article originally appeared in the March/April issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe

F ounded in 2016 by Marc and his colleague and fellow Airbnb host Florian, the pair decided to leave behind their jobs in private equity consulting and pursue KeyNest full time. It’s been over six years since they began their journey, but now they have some impressive milestones to show for it, and with their business having slightly morphed and certainly expanded, KeyNest’s story is as much about opportunity as it is about their startup.

WHAT IS KEYNEST

As mentioned above, the concept for KeyNest came out of a genuine situation that the founders experienced and the way they personally overcame it. In a nutshell, KeyNest is a key management system. The way it works is a property manager who uses the system can assign numbers to each of their keys. Then, they can drop their keys off to a local shop or supermarket near the property. When they need to give someone access to the property, instead of them needing to deliver them or have someone pick them up, they issue a code corresponding to the key and the person can go to the pick-up point, provide the code and get the key. “Literally all the person needs to collect the key is the address and the code, and there's no need to install anything or anything like that,” says Co-founder, Florian Hoven.

Florian believed there was a need for something like this in the market as current methods were rudimentary in comparison to his and Marc’s idea for a key management system. “You've probably seen these small lock boxes, which you can attach to rail to something or close to the property. And that is something I would say most people were using before they switched to us,” Says Florian. “The key differentiator is, quite simply the security because these boxes usually have a reusable code. So, someone opening the box once can just come back in two or three days, open it again with the same code. Also, it's very easy to crack open with a hammer and a nail clip, you can take this box out and open and get the key, plus there's no tracking. So, the owner of the apartment doesn't know that someone has already collected the key. It really is the security aspect and a little bit of the convenience that differentiates us.

Therefore safety, but also convenience, became key in the development for KeyNest’s system for management. “We decided against the key collector or the person dropping the keys needing an app, and the reason we did this was for two reasons. First of all, we wanted to have a system across the place which is super robust because we work with landlords all over the world really. Second is because big companies sometimes assign one person to a job, but then another person ends up coming. If this happens, all this second person needs is the same code and location. So, this made things much easier for people.”

In terms of the tech, the key remains unremarkable to KeyNest, as it shunned the idea of real-time tracking via GPS in its efforts to keep it simple for its end users. “We have clients with hundreds of properties and having them having to replace or charge a battery every couple of months would be a nightmare.”

That’s why KeyNest packages offer not only the drop off and collection service, but the tracking of keys in and out of a business via a RFID fob, which premises can view via its online dashboard or app. “With our management system, you will be able to know which person collected, at what time, and you’ll get a notification when and which key is collected,” says Hoven. “So you know at all times about your key.”

This system has proved effective enough to see KeyNest become a global host partner with Airbnb and even securing the backing of LiFE Residential as part of its second round of investment.

Yet as I’m sure much of the world can attest, the past two years with the pandemic were challenging, even more so for businesses. However, luck would have it that the company that started out as a key management system for Airbnb and the tourism sector managed to turn their greatest challenge into an area which became their greatest asset.

THE TEST OF KEYNEST

“So, the biggest challenge was Covid. Because when Covid started, we were very focused on the holiday sector. As you can imagine, that wasn't the best sector to be involved with then,” says Florian. Having focused heavily on providing key management to clients in the tourism sector, when the pandemic shut down global travel, the company was faced with an existential threat with no known end in sight.

Yet luck would have it that a new sector would open up to the startup to help it not only ride out the pandemic, but help it expand. And it actually was prompted by companies approaching KeyNest. “I have to admit that some sectors came to us with the idea. One was a big social housing provider, a sector we hadn’t even looked into at that point,” says Florian. “They came to us and said, ‘you know, we're not doing holiday lets at all, but we think your solution works well’. We then started with them as a trial, and soon discovered actually, there's a very big market here where our solution fits perfectly.” This example of a customer coming to a company shows why sometimes, the customer truly is king.

As now, KeyNest’s involvement in the social housing sector has become a sturdy “pillar” in the company’s business model, and with it adding additional business alongside its tourism property and real estate property focus, the company is looking ahead to what’s on the horizon.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR KEYNEST 

Since its beginning in London, KeyNest has managed to penetrate the UK market with presence across all the major cities. It has even managed to take the concept global, growing its team to 35 people, obtaining offices in Barcelona, Paris and London, and even have working relationships with people from New York to Melbourne. “A milestone for me was to reach and to really replicate what we've built in the UK,” says Florian. “The UK is still our largest market, but we have been able to replicate it a bit in a few countries. And we're very close to closing the gap in these other countries too”. This global growth has meant at one point, a key across the KeyNest portfolio of locations was being moved every 30 seconds.

Having a presence across much of central Europe, the US and Australia, KeyNest is well on the way to becoming “the standard solution for anyone that needs to provide access to their property” as Florian has hoped. And although giving itself a two-year deadline to achieve this seems lofty, when you look back at what’s been achieved since its 2016 founding, it might not be too long until the next time you check into your Airbnb that you come across them.