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SKEMA alumnus Victor Hoernle revolutionises real estate with Siello, an AI-powered startup
Victor Hoernle (SKEMA 2015), a graduate of SKEMA Business School's Master in Management (PGE) programme, has co-founded "Siello, real estate in real-time", a PropTech startup that promises sellers total transparency. This is achieved through an AI-based solution that allows real-time tracking of property sales and support from carefully selected real estate advisors. He tells us more about it in this interview.
Victor, you graduated from SKEMA's MSc Global Supply Chain & Purchasing. Can you tell us what led you to create Siello?
After completing a preparatory class in Strasbourg, I gained admission to SKEMA and joined the Sophia Antipolis campus. My student life was very active; I was a member of several associations, including the football team, and president of Avenue Montaigne, the fashion association. After my third year, I had the opportunity to go to the Suzhou campus and spent my gap year at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland.
I then pursued an , which led to an international business volunteering position (VIE) in the purchasing sector at Hutchinson in Italy, where I worked as a 'project buyer responsible'. Following this experience, my employer offered me a managerial position in Poland (lead buyer Europe & worldwide pilot for O-rings). However, after two years, I experienced burnout.
In 2019, you decided to return to your native region Alsace to transition into real estate. How did you manage this change?
I had always been interested in real estate, so I joined a network of agents and stayed for three years. I achieved excellent results in Mulhouse, an attractive investment location with one of the best real estate returns in France. There are many investors from Paris and Switzerland, and through my network, I brought in investors from Hong Kong, Nicaragua, and Dubai. After three years in this network, I decided to go independent and launch Siello with two partners, my partner Anaïs Roesch, and Valentin Cordier, an engineer and seasoned entrepreneur (co-founder @Comet). Today, we have six partners.
With Siello, you aim to "de-uberise" the real estate advisor profession. How are you achieving this?
Today, anyone can become a real estate advisor without any experience or adequate training. However, the real estate sector has also begun its digital transformation, and the expectations of sellers and buyers have changed significantly, particularly in terms of transparency, speed, and communication. With Siello, we started our activities with six initial advisors who are independent real estate agents. We recruit experts in their fields very selectively and emphasise the training of our advisors. In this way, we aim to help the profession's digital transition.
Siello has just closed a €500,000 funding round. Several investors, including BPI France, are supporting you. What sets Siello apart from the rest of the companies in the real estate market?
At Siello, our motto is "100% digital, 200% human". Property owners who entrust us with the sale of their property enjoy total transparency. Thanks to our digital solution, powered by AI, they can follow the entire sales process online. They can know, in real-time, the diagnostics performed, the visits made to their property, all the way to the conclusion of the final sale agreement. This transparency, combined with the expertise of our agents, helps dispel the mistrust that sometimes surrounds our profession. Everything is done to restore owners' confidence!
Siello is currently present in six French regions and has 30 advisors and six partners.
Victor Hoernle LinkedIn's profile
