Adrian Gill is a veteran of the UK property market. With over 20 years’ experience as a property executive, Adrian has worked as finance director and group commercial director of Connells, executive director, estate agency at LSL Property services plc, and Group CEO of Leaders Roman Group. Adrian’s latest appointment is as an independent non-executive director on the Purplebricks board.
He is also the Chairman and co-founder of Autoenhance.ai. Gaining from Adrian’s wealth of knowledge and experience of the residential property sector, we’ve been able to develop our technology to become the best photo editing AI for the real estate market.
We sat down with Adrian to ask him about his exciting role as an independent non-exec director at Purplebricks.
First of all, why on earth did you take that job with Purplebricks??
[Laughs]... to be honest, that was the question I was expecting from my friends, but in reality most of them felt that it would be a really interesting role and a great fit with my estate agency experience. Most felt that Purplebricks is now accepted as another estate agency, but with a different proposition. And whilst Purplebricks is tech enabled and doesn't have branches, winning business still comes down to the quality of the people talking to customers at the sharp end.
Tech enabled? Aren’t all agents tech enabled now?
Yes and no. Purplebricks certainly led the way to remote working and its customer facing technology is still an important differentiator. However, traditional agents haven’t stood still and (of course) everyone is capable of remote working now. Traditional agents have also started adopting some of the really clever proptech solutions available although the key to their success is making them easy to use since who wants to sign into multiple apps. That’s why features such as Reapit Marketplace, which is integrated with dozens of proptech solutions, will be so important going forward.
Your LinkedIn profile is looking busy now. Have you taken on too much?
[Laughs again]... Aside from Purplebricks I’m involved with four businesses. Lifetime Legal, who deliver AML checking free to agents and conveyancing, doesn't take up too much of my time because Rob Sendall (who sold his previous conveyancing business for £ millions) runs it on a day to day basis. And the same can be said for Telecom Acquisitions, who pay commission to letting agents for leads, where Nigel Barnett is very much in charge. And I’m still a board advisor at Reapit, but that’s not a big drain on my time.
My final role is Chairman of Autoenhance.ai, which is very much my baby and where I’m more involved on a day to day basis. We’re now selling our AI photo enhancements to customers in the USA, Canada, Spain, Thailand and lots of other places, so there are occasional calls at the beginning and end of the day, but for the most part, Autoenhance.ai is a pure tech play and the CEO and CTO do all the heavy lifting.
I don’t mean to be cheeky, but aren’t you supposed to be retired?
Yes, and I’m doing some retirement activities such as playing golf and I volunteer giving advice at the Citizens Advice Bureau one day per week. But mostly, I enjoy interacting with lots of dynamic and clever people in the property industry.
Finally, apart from your own interests, which proptech idea do you like best and why?
Anything that improves the conveyancing process would be a boon to everyone. I’ve been following the progress of View My Chain for a while and think its close to providing complete chain information to all parties in the buying / selling process. As well as being a great innovation, when it succeeds, it will be a must-have proptech and could be extremely valuable.
We look forward to seeing Adrian develop in his new role at Purplebricks, and the exciting possibilities this opportunity will bring Autoenhance.ai.
