Where Are They Now: HomeLINK

This CivTech 3 company completed the Accelerator just over four years ago and we caught up with their CEO, Chris Jones, to find out how the company has developed since….

Chris Jones, CEO, HomeLINK

Our CivTech Challenge was, ‘How can technology help us improve services by better understanding investment requirements for our public buildings?’

Stirling Council wanted to help social housing landlords to better manage their assets and improve their customer’s experiences by using tech to provide much greater insight into the conditions of their buildings and what work might be needed to improve them.

We saw that smart home technology was rapidly evolving and had a lot of potential. Most landlords had lots of disparate systems, some were 10 years old, or they were using Excel Spreadsheets, so our concept was to develop a system which brought information from all the different connectivity technologies together into one device and backed all that information up on a cloud.

It meant that if there was a boiler fault, for example, then the landlord would know immediately or even be able to take other pre-emptive action.

We were acquired a few years ago by the life safety company, Aico, and we’ve developed our systems so we can now also feedback carbon monoxide levels or even measure the risk and likely causes of damp and mould in a property. All the information can also be used to help with retrofitting and improve energy efficiency.

Lately there has been a complete mindset shift in the sector. Currently, we work with around 600 landlords which is representative of 25% of all UK social housing landlords. With nearly 200,000 devices already installed, at our current growth rate, we pessimistically expect to have installed around 500,000 devices by the end of 2023 and then 1 million by 2024.

In terms of getting involved with the CivTech Accelerator, I think it's important to have that opportunity to speak to a potential customer with a problem that needs solving and start on the journey of product market fit is important. Having a paying customer is really important because it also demonstrates credibility to yourself if you’re having doubts over whether you're doing something crazy or not but it's also important for investors and even prospective employees.

The CivTech accelerator delivered on the essentials. Their experienced team were committed to working with us to identify solutions and to build a product everyone would be happy with. There is also a lot of follow up work that is exceptional.

Overall CivTech gets 10 out of 10 from us.

You can find out more about HomeLINK HERE.