Meet our Premium Member Patrice Choffat – Founder and CEO of Bestag

Please tell us about yourself and Bestag 

My name is Patrice Choffat, the Founder and CEO of Bestag. I am also the husband of Kathrin the amazing Head of HR for Adecco Switzerland and father of Léonie, Alice and Coralie.

Bestag allows homeowners to sell their property at a 5-7% higher price. We make the real estate agent system work thanks to the combination of man and machine: i.e. data analytics for agent selection, tender process for house valuation and incentive system.

I solo founded the company at the end of 2017, and for three years it was a small bootstrap story. Now we have raised a little money, have 16 employees and remain profitable, if not expanding.

Tell us more about your plans for 2023. What is your long-term vision?

We are in a bit of a consolidation phase with a lot of automation (marketing, ops) going on, as well as a push to professionalise sales. We are also honing parts of our technology backbone: data, ML and analytics.

Over the medium to long term, we need to do three things:

•  “Be the best”, a.k.a. Be the reference for excellent real estate transactions
•  “Upsell mortgages” … Offer ancillary services in synergy with our core product.
• “Go international”

And there’s obviously what several players have in mind: change the game. Is there an AI-based transformational play? Is there a true platform play that is not a cost cutting game? We have a lot of long-term strategic ideas and options that we can act upon depending on future market developments.

What has been the biggest success that you have achieved in your startup?

Homeowners have mandated us to sell over half a billion CHF property value. This is the largest financial transaction of a lifetime for most clients, so this is a great responsibility.

If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? What are your biggest learnings?

Focus on building a team at the very start.

I solo founded very very naively and did everything wrong at first, costing a lot of time: designing the logo and website myself, etc.

What motivates you to continue your business every day?

Satisfied clients and a happy team. And I’d put emphasis on team motivation. We perform a transparent, ethical value-adding service in a market where those qualities are often lacking. As such, our team is very purpose-driven, which is incredibly satisfying (compared to my past in management consulting and large corporations).

One piece of advice for someone who is just starting out with their startup?

The usual would be “Building a great team matters a lot!” And yet, I think everything is easier in a startup if your product generates a lot of value, so I would emphasise the customer value your product generates.

Tweak tweak tweak, learn as much as you can and pivot as needed. And always focus on having a product that really helps your customers (and generates NPS, virality, network effects, or even product-led growth). It will help your sales, your unit economics, and the team’s motivation over time. It will help your sales, your unit economics, and the team’s motivation over time. To the contrary, all these factors are negatively affected over time, if you fail to deliver customer value, which happens quite often, e.g. the product should be a feature of another established product, or the product is so marginal that nobody will pay for it, or in the worst case, the product is essentially a bit of a rip-off. 

And the last piece of advice: It’s never too late to start a startup. I started at age 36, and I know a number of yet older founders.

What does it mean to you to be a member of the Swiss Startup Association? 

I really like to learn from peers, former entrepreneurs and from experienced mentors, so I am looking forward to the exchanges I will have. And also: Yes, we do fundraise, so that will be a boost as well.

Absolutely! Having access to a network of people who truly understand the journey you’re on is invaluable.  Being able to share stories, experiences and ideas with others who just get the life of a startup sparks different ways of thinking, gives you a different kind of exposure and inspires you in the challenging moments isn’t something that’s on tap elsewhere.  It’s a unique group that can really help accelerate your growth- both personally and that of your business.

Is there anything that we haven’t asked you that you would like to share with us/the community?

We are nominated for the Swiss Real Estate Award, and we think you should vote for us: https://realestateaward.ch/voting/

Find Patrice Choffat and Bestag on LinkedIn.