Zoopla Founder Alex Chesterman Invests in UK PropTech Thirdfort

UK based PropTech company Thirdfort has secured a £1.5m funding round to continue its mission to remove friction from the property conveyancing process. The company, whose application is used by some 500 legal companies in Britain, lets conveyancers identify a potential homebuyers ID and proof of funds in just a few minutes and helps some 30,000 clients move home each month.

Among investors in the round was Zoopla founder and noted businessman and entrepreneur Alex Chesterman whose backing will be seen as a real industry seal of approval for Thirdfort. Chesterman had runaway success with Zoopla before selling up to Silver Lake in 2018, he has also seen spectacular progress with his used-car venture Cazoo which is slated to go public via a SPAC merger later this year.

Speaking of his new investment, Chesterman said: "My passion in business is for solving problems, and the team at Thirdfort has developed a product that tackles an issue affecting hundreds of thousands of us each year – the cumbersome process of buying and selling homes. This hasn’t changed for decades and is ripe for transformation, particularly around the compliance aspects that affect not just consumers and their lawyers, but also agents, brokers and lenders."

Olly Thornton-Berry, co-founder and Managing Director of Thirdfort: “We’re using cutting edge technology to help lawyers and property professionals minimise fraud risk, whilst improving the client experience during life’s big moments. These tools have the backing of regulators, Government bodies, and a growing number of firms, and our objective is for Thirdfort to become the new standard in legal security, as well as expanding into adjacent markets such as the estate agent and mortgage space. That means building better products and doing so faster than ever, and we’re delighted that some of the UK’s leading angel investors support this strategy.”

With the latest round, Thirdfort takes its total of funds raised to some £4.2m which will be used to propel expansion in the property sector. The company is one of a new breed of UK PropTech startups whose products are starting to become mainstream and accepted as the industry standard in property transactions and this week's funding and the publicity and guidance which comes with having Chesterman on board will no doubt accelerate that process.