Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem are you solving?
Johannes Bader, Heyroom: We founded Heyroom to revolutionize finding roommates for shared apartments. Heyroom is based on a vibe score and provides a streamlined view of potential roommates based on the needs of the shared apartment residents. No more copy-paste applications and endless apartment-sharing castings – we make finding new roommates easy and stress-free. We believe that living together harmoniously in a shared apartment is crucial for the well-being of the residents. With Heyroom, we want to help make “shared expense apartments” a thing of the past and help people feel comfortable in their shared living space.
Munich Startup: But that’s already been done!
Johannes Bader: Heyroom offers apartment-sharing communities an innovative solution to find suitable roommates quickly and easily. WGs can enter their “vibe” – interests and values such as “hiking, daydrinking, environment, art, veggie” – when advertising their free room. Using the vibe score, applicants can instantly see who is the best fit for them. The ranking system is based on mutual chemistry and ensures a harmonious environment in the shared apartment, regardless of gender, country, age or salary. Heyroom improves the image of shared apartments and makes living in a shared apartment more accessible for many people. A service like this hasn’t existed on the market before, in fact, we developed it to revolutionize apartment communities.
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Johannes Bader: Two years ago, my two buddies and I lived together in Munich. When I had to move out, the question arose of how we were going to find someone who would fit in with the other two. That’s why I sent the market leader WG-Gesucht an unsolicited application and shared my vision of how the platform could grow to become really effective and innovative. Unfortunately, my application was skillfully ignored. That’s why we set out to do it ourselves and, in just 12 months, created Heyroom, a highly innovative solution that is unrivaled on the market in terms of usability and user experience.
Today, Heyroom doesn’t just consist of one person, but of a team of seven interdisciplinary and multicultural experts with experience in top management, IT and advertising. We are an unbeatable and efficient team with extremely high quality results.
Heyroom: “The simple and uncomplicated way to find the right roommate”
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Johannes Bader: Our target group are people who live in shared apartments and are looking for new roommates. The process of finding the right person to fit in with your shared apartment is often time-consuming and frustrating if you don’t have a suitable platform.
The biggest challenge is to reach this target group, as there have been no new options or solutions on the market for years and no previous promotion in this area. Hence, many shared apartment residents are not yet actively looking for alternatives, but remain with the old familiar and inadequate platforms for apartment-share searches.
At Heyroom, we want to close this gap and offer a simple and straightforward way to find the right roommate. As soon as our target audience hears about us and uses our platform, they are excited about the benefits Heyroom can offer them.
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, and in five years?
Johannes Bader: We are currently revolutionizing the shared apartment scene in Munich and ensuring that no one has to live in shared expense apartments anymore. We have already brought together over 2500 registered users and more than 50 roommates. All this exclusively in Munich and in just 3 weeks.
We see that many people are already moving within Munich, which creates vacant rooms and a chain reaction that completely changes the Munich shared apartment scene.
In one year, the German rollout will be completed and the number of users will be well over one million, which reflects about 25 percent of the total market in Germany.
Our vision is to become the best apartment-sharing platform in Europe and make it easier for over 20 million people to find the right shared apartment and roommate. We are also going to campaign intensively for shared accommodation to be taken into account in the construction of future housing projects and for shared accommodation to be given a voice in society.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Johannes Bader: The startup scene in Munich is mainly dominated by B2B businesses, which leads to a lack of social aspects. Especially in the area of digital advertising, revenue streams and guerrilla marketing, there is often a lack of expertise in the network, which hasn’t really helped us. Nevertheless, we have received great interest from TU Munich and LMU Munich to collaborate with us on research or teaching projects. Our topic is highly social, future-oriented and considers shared housing as the most sustainable way of living today and in the future.
Munich Startup: Outsource it or do it yourself?
Johannes Bader: As of now: Do it yourself and get support and input from your network. Check it out: www.heyroom.app – no agency can provide an app like this and its corresponding marketing.