Enso Spaces

My co-founder had wanted into Barcelona real estate for years and couldn't get a foothold; it is a closed sector. One night at his place he asked whether I wanted to do something illegal: short-term rentals, no licences. I didn't say no straight away. Then we looked at the fines, and the answer was definitely no.

The two of us were the founding pair. Two more co-founders joined as the company grew. He is still one of my closest friends, and has since been a client.

I studied the tenancy law without being a lawyer: how the seasonal-rental regime works, and how the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos applies to it. Out of that came a model that let coliving operate legally in Spain at a time when the whole category sat in a grey area. The approach has been copied widely since, and not always well.

Once the model held on paper, we found the first apartment the next morning, negotiated the contract and moved in. We did that first flat entirely by hand, down to painting the radiator pipes in colours and laying artificial grass in one of the rooms. It was odd, and it filled fast. Inside a week the concept was proven. After that it was a scaling problem.

As Chief Innovation Officer, co-founder and board member I designed the business model and owned long-term strategy, the real estate investment strategy, process optimisation, investor relations, new business and digitalisation, working alongside the CEO and COO to execute the plan. I stepped away at the end of 2022: the company was working, and real estate had stopped being the problem I wanted to solve.

€1M

raised at a €10M valuation

€0→€150k

monthly recurring revenue while I was there

770

rooms operated today, on track for €10M in revenue this year

The legal model was the real product, and we treated it as a detail. I would have documented and defended it earlier, before it became the industry's default and was stretched in ways we never intended.