Fräntz Miccoli is one of Luxembourg’s leading tech figures and an accomplished developer. Together with his business partner Pierre Clement, they decided to dust off the real estate agency sector and put tech at the heart of their company Nexvia.
Photo: Fräntz Miccoli, co-founder of Nexvia / Image Credits: Kaori Anne Jolliffe
You are the CTO and co-founder of Nexvia, it is a rare thing to see a tech profile in Luxembourg in these positions. What motivated you in this project?
I had worked early on Nexvia but joined later as a co-founder. The most important element is that we found an excellent work dynamic with Pierre Clement, my business partner. People are the most important thing in my environment.
Nexvia provided an uncommon tech context. When you are familiar with tech you may be wondering what impact you could have on a traditional business if given the opportunity. 70% of Nexvia is rethinking the real estate agency. We can make use of technology to enrich this traditional business, all while keeping the human touch.
I was also interested in the meaningfulness. Producing something that will impact many is hard to find, strangely enough. A lot of software projects never go in production, some never find real traction, some are only marketing gimmicks. We did not try to rethink the business model, we mostly tried to rebuild the process. So, on that end, I was confident that my work would have a positive contribution on a key element of people’s lives: their home.
What do you think about the boom of real estate agencies 2.0 in Luxembourg? Is it an important change of the industry and a turning point in Luxembourg?
Most people who enter the real estate industry with an innovator’s mindset are motivated by a poor perceived value of the provided service. You can either solve this by providing a better service quality or lowering the price. Those agencies focus on the second element.
The property values, especially in Luxembourg, prevent customers from wanting to gamble with a bare minimum flat-fee service. The risk is not worth the potential savings.
To build a brand and traction, those activities need significant capital. They need critical mass and that may not be achievable in Luxembourg. For example, UK’s Purplebricks was founded in 2012 and only reached profitability in 2021.
What is your opinion (as an engineer) about the evolution of Luxembourg’s tech industry in the past few years, specifically in the PropTech industry?
I would prefer to provide figures and fact-based elements, but those are only intuitions.
Luxembourg attracts more startups than before. The regulated ones perceive the expertise of the financial place and the simpler processes of a small country. While perception got better, the housing costs reduced our competitiveness on the talent market. The positive demographic influx may be mostly driven by the EU and industry leaders like Amazon.
In our industry, I have a feeling that property development is still low tech. The recent financial and fiscal changes – stricter loan conditions and reduction of the accelerated amortization – may promote innovation as one of the ways to preserve profitability in the coming years.
This article was first published in Silicon Luxembourg magazine. Get your copy.
