Building a Successful PropTech Startup: From Ideation to Fundraising
When the Rent Now, Pay Later (RNPL) model was introduced in early 2024, Keyper’s founders discovered that allowing tenants to transform an annual lease into 12 credit-card instalments unlocked powerful engagement incentives for landlords. This realisation became the bedrock of a founder-led playbook that blends customer-centric product design, lean testing and innovative financing. What follows is a grounded, step-by-step account of how early-stage insights and practical lessons from this journey can guide aspiring PropTech entrepreneurs through ideation to robust fundraising.
Identifying Market Inefficiencies
PropTech innovators must first pinpoint the most burdensome pain points. Many markets suffer from fragmented payment flows, where tenants are forced to spread annual rent into a handful of large cheques, leading to significant cash-flow strain. Landlords, in turn, struggle to track payment statuses in real time, while tenants receive no rewards or incentives to stay engaged. Onboarding new tenants often involves manual identity verifications and paper-based lease agreements, elongating move-in timelines and adding administrative overhead. Meanwhile, disconnected systems create data silos that hinder portfolio analytics and valuation accuracy. By conducting user interviews across both landlords and tenants, startups can validate which of these issues promise the greatest impact when solved.
Crafting a Lean MVP
With the target inefficiencies defined, the next step is to design a minimal viable product (MVP) that addresses core needs without over engineering. Key features often include:
Digital Payment Options: A portal for monthly instalments, integrated with credit-card rails.
Automated Reminders & Receipts: Push notifications for upcoming payments and digital confirmations.
Instant Verification: Open banking integrations for income checks, paired with KYC via national ID uploads.
Basic Analytics Dashboard: Live property valuations drawn from comparable transactions, improving decision-making Bayanat.
Pilot deployments should involve a small cohort of users, enabling rapid feedback loops. Iterations—guided by usage metrics—refine UX flows and validate feature-market fit before wider rollout. For us, within six weeks, a working prototype was tested by four investor-landlords, who highlighted critical gaps in notification timing and user flow. These insights drove rapid iterations—with each two-week sprint delivering refinements that improved task completion rates by 40 percent. Early-stage developers learned that shipping a “good enough” version sparked richer feedback than delays caused by chasing perfection.
Piloting with Early Adopters
After MVP launch, forging trust with early adopters is vital. Initially, founders onboard a small cohort of ten to twenty investors or landlords to test core dashboard and payment features, ensuring any critical issues are surfaced early. These pilot participants often receive incentivised trials, such as waived setup fees or loyalty rewards, to encourage engagement and detailed feedback. Throughout this phase, data-driven refinement is key: by closely monitoring adoption rates, default metrics, and support tickets, teams can prioritise bug fixes and enhancements that deliver the most value. When we at Keyper rolled out a Rent Now, Pay Later (RNPL) solution, allowing tenants to spread AED 100,000 of annual rent into 12 credit-card instalments for AED 106,000, application volumes exceeded expectations, validating the model’s appeal.
Innovating Financing Structures
Traditional PropTech ventures rely heavily on equity, but innovative startups often blend debt instruments to optimise capital efficiency. Recognising that equity alone would constrain runway, our founders engineered a hybrid capital strategy. They negotiated a US$ 30 million sukuk—MENA’s first startup-issued Shariah-compliant bond—paired with US$ 6 million in equity. This 80/20 debt-equity mix meant that early defaults were absorbed by the equity tranche, protecting bondholders and extending the company’s funding horizon. In practice, this structure enabled the founders to underwrite RNPL at scale without diluting ownership or over-leveraging personal finances. Default rates have since remained below 1 percent Bayanat.
Securing Strategic Funding
Beyond product validation and financing innovation, attracting the right investors accelerates growth. Founders should begin by cultivating domain-expert networks, leveraging industry contacts to secure anchor commitments that provide both capital and credibility. At the same time, aligning with ecosystem players such as banks, asset managers, and government entities allows startups to co-develop compliance-friendly solutions that adhere to local regulations. Finally, demonstrating clear traction through well-defined KPIs—like application volumes, transaction values, and default rates—helps substantiate unit economics and builds confidence among potential backers.
Scaling through Partnerships
True scale in PropTech rarely arises from standalone apps; instead, strategic alliances drive network effects that expand reach and adoption. Partnerships with financial institutions enable co-branded payment offerings that extend user reach and trust, while integrations with governmental bodies—such as rental registries and digital ID platforms—streamline regulatory compliance and reduce friction. Additionally, white-label solutions for large landlords and property managers unlock high-volume portfolios and drive bulk onboarding. Keyper later expanded RNPL to Abu Dhabi with local capital support, illustrating how regional roll-outs benefit from tailored partnerships.
Navigating Regulatory Landscapes
Each market brings unique leasing, eviction, and consumer-protection laws that startups must carefully navigate. Early on, the founders mapped out legal variations across MENA markets—cataloguing differences in notice periods, eviction rights and foreign-investment rules—to anticipate compliance challenges. Embedding compliance within the platform by automating lease registrations, DLD filings, and landlord disclosures helps maintain legal alignment and reduces manual overhead. Moreover, adjusting risk models to local contexts, such as partnering with insurers where tenant protections are heightened, ensures that funding structures remain resilient in the face of evolving regulations.
Key Takeaways for Aspiring Founders
Solve Tangible Problems: Prioritise customer-pain alignment over trendy buzzwords.
Build, Ship, Learn: Short cycles of MVP releases generate actionable feedback faster than long development phases.
Mix Your Capital: A blend of debt and equity can preserve ownership while extending runway.
Leverage Ecosystems: Partner with banks, government entities, and large property holders to catalyse adoption.
Stay Legally Agile: Automated compliance features and risk partnerships safeguard growth across markets.
By following this blueprint—grounded in real-world learnings from markets like Dubai—PropTech startups can chart a path from early ideation all the way to robust, scalable fundraising to turn outdated real-estate norms into tomorrow’s breakthrough opportunities.
About the Author:
Mr. Omar Abu Innab, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Keyper. Omar Abu Innab is a distinguished investment banker with over 18 years of experience at leading banks such as Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Citi, and Guggenheim Partners, spanning the US, UAE and Saudi Arabia.
