“Everyone has already thought of everything. Very few take the time to launch it” - Sebastian de Biolley

A year after founding Roofwander, a marketplace for renting rooftop tents, the 25-year-old Belgian co-founder talks about Facebook Marketplace, unpaid fifty-hour weeks and why the business plan can wait. “In a month you can already have an MVP [minimum viable product]”

Asked how many hours a week he gives to Roofwander, Sebastian de Biolley answers: “Too much”. Then, after a moment, more precisely: “Fifty hours”. He and his two co-founders work on the company full-time and still do not pay themselves. We spoke at the end of a working day, his and ours, a year after the company was founded in Brussels.

Roofwander lets people who own a rooftop tent rent it out to travellers nearby. The renter collects the tent from its owner, who helps mount it on the car, and if it does not fit, the rental is refunded. The website already lists cities in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal. De Biolley, who looks after strategy and finance, is Belgian. His partners, Lucas Dardé and Samuele Lensi, friends from university, are French and Italian.

At 25, this is his first company. “I finished my studies two years ago”, he says. Founding it was, by his account, “not that much of a decision”. The three of them liked working on the project, and the company followed by default.

I would never have guessed that a tent could be an asset sitting idle. Where did the idea come from?

“I own a rooftop tent, and I was studying in Lisbon, where one of the big startups is a van rental company. There are plenty of ways to rent a van, through marketplaces or private rental firms. But there was no way to rent just the tent, without the car. And many owners don’t want to lend their car, because you never know what happens to it. It comes back looking fine, and two months later there’s a problem with the engine”.

Were people already doing it?

“Informally, yes, on Facebook Marketplace and similar sites. What was missing was structure, a marketplace dedicated to it. So, we built one. Our first owners were people I contacted because they were already renting out their tents. Then we went looking for renters, and this summer we did our first rentals”.

Is anyone else offering the same service?

“Some resellers rent tents out, but there is no marketplace that puts private owners in touch with renters. We didn’t invent renting a rooftop tent. We are the first marketplace doing it at scale. Well, not at that scale yet, but that’s where we want to get”.

What separates you from the resellers?

“We don’t own the tents. We build the digital structure around them. With a reseller you call, and everything happens over the phone. We collect the information through the questions you answer when you sign up or list a tent, so there is no manual intervention”.

I work as an economist, so I have to ask about competitive advantage. What protects a business like yours?

“For any marketplace, defensibility is the community, which means liquidity: the people who sign up and become part of it. On top of that there is the data. We ask owners about their tents, and through our relationships with manufacturers we receive their catalogues, so we can fill in the details automatically. Another rental platform that decided to enter this market wouldn’t have that”.

And where are you still weak?

“On the tech side, notifications. We have a web app, not a mobile app. People get notifications and emails, but it isn’t the same as a phone ringing, so replies take longer. We are launching the app, and with it bookings will run more smoothly”.

Has it all gone smoothly?

“Not really. The financial difficulties are arriving now. We have to wait before things settle, and the wait is starting to feel long. We don’t pay ourselves, and after a while that becomes frustrating. At one point I asked a friend who is very good at IT whether he wanted to join us. He tried it, found it interesting, and stayed”.

How did you build the supply side?

“By hand. We found owners on Facebook Marketplace and phoned them one by one. Now we also go to events. We never ran ads for owners, because at the start, with no traffic and no money, they are very hard to reach that way. For renters we paid for Google search ads, since people already search for this”.

Are you hiring?

“We are always looking for profiles. Attracting talent is one of the most important things a company does. We aren’t hiring full-time right now, but we are raising money, so we will be able to. There are internship opportunities. And in the end, if you meet someone you enjoy working with, you hire them and give them some equity”.

What would you tell a student who wants to start a company?

“Start by building an MVP and getting a few customers, rather than writing a business plan. You will pivot anyway. I’m not saying skip market research, but the most important thing is to start. In a month you can have an MVP and begin contacting people. That’s how you learn”.

Many people keep their idea to themselves for fear that someone will copy it.

“I think that’s completely wrong. Everyone has already thought of everything. Very few take the time to launch it. Maybe someone could have stolen my idea of renting out rooftop tents, but I don’t think they would have built it. The best thing you can do is talk about it with everyone and get their feedback”.

Better on the market imperfect, then, than perfect and late?

“Three hundred percent. You will never build a product from scratch without feedback from the people who are actually going to use it. The launch campaign can come whenever you like. Once you raise money, you can announce that you have just created the company, even if it has existed for years. No one cares”.

A big thanks to Sebastian for his time and availability. Be sure to check out Roofwander at roofwander.com, and stay tuned to the SEC blog for more stories like this!

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