Work at Buena

A company description with photos. For jobs, scroll down.

Buena is looking for driven people to completely change the largest asset class in the world: residential real estate. Are you one of them?

We are building the best property management software on the market: web-based, intuitive, easy to learn, and constantly evolving.

To go to market, we acquire property management companies and integrate our software there to increase revenue and profit.

Why is this exciting?

“The rising tide lifts all boats”

The most important factor for your success is a successful environment – and that’s exactly what the property management market offers:

• €15 billion annually in Germany alone: We can become a unicorn before even considering the US.
• Approximately 22,000 property management companies: A fragmented market with many small players making it difficult for them to stay at the forefront of technology.
• Residential real estate has the biggest wallet share - 30% of monthly expenses are spent on housing, more than on any other single need (from groceries to healthcare - and certainly more than on b2c software).
• Property management is an old industry. We've been around since the ancient Romans - and property management has always grown when cities, wealth and free markets prospered. Our industry does not depend on a random law introduced by an ideological politician. Property management makes sense from the ground up. It's got it's tweaks from country to country, but largely you'll find it from Singapore to Buenos Aires and from Syndney to SF. This allows for global ambitions, others, with lawfare-based business models cannot.
• We want to make residential real estate more accessible and used by everyone. While we strongly believe in the power of Silicon Valley, once every decade or so a company originates from a unique place - for good reasons. Spotify popularized streaming, merging monetization with effortless access. It made sense that this came from Sweden, the country with the most liberal piracy laws and thus very different user expectations on when to pay for music. Buena started in Germany. A rich country with dismal home-ownership rates.
• >80 property management software companies that are largely stuck in the early 2000s and make their money mostly through seminars and not software licenses. As a result traditional software used in the market today looks like this:

Software screenshot currently used in dozens of property management companies across Germany

• How did this happen? My theory is, that sometime in the 90s dedicated property management software became better than Excel and people switched. But back then SaaS wasn't a thing, so the software companies started charging little for the software - but a lot for seminars about it. That was fine at the time as all software was more tricky to use. Unfortunately, this never changed. Now, it's 2024 and these software companies still make more money with seminars than with licenses - so every update has to be complicated enough to make people sign up for a seminar. New companies on the market are stuck with a target audience that expects extremely low licensing fees. Buena does not have this dilemma - we have the users and the producers of the software - every step towards intuitive and simpler software is good for everyone in the org.
• Every property manager in East Germany was started in 1991 by people were in their late 20s. All of them are in their early 60s now and think about retirement. In West Germany the trend is less pronounced but similar: this critical industry has a big succession/talent problem.

Where does the Buena journey lead?

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat”

In the medium and long term, we will expand in all directions:

1. Depth: We will increasingly handle and improve more property management tasks through our software solutions.
2. Breadth: We will enter new, adjacent business areas—from brokerage to deposit management.
3. Global: Germany is only our MVP (minimum viable product). While we can become a unicorn with the German market alone, we aim to enter the US market. Whoever has conquered Germany can either expand linearly through the EU… or take another leap and go to the USA.

Intensely non-remote & hardcore

"The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."

We are in our office at Immanuelkirchstraße 26 a lot. That’s why we also live close to the office. In fact, we even pay you a bonus to live near the office.

Individualist

"To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'"

We appreciate individuals and individualism. We believe in the 'Great Men and Women Theory', positing that it's a few Great individuals that change the course of history - not the swaying moods of the masses. As such we thrive to bring together many such Great individuals to build this company - and incentivise them accordingly:

• You'll work with your manager to make sure you have a clear and exciting vision for your personal progression at Buena. "Show me the incentives and I show you the outcome" - Charlie Munger
• You will participate in possible exit scenarios through accelerated vesting of your share options.
• You have the leadership team's commitment to ensure that you are surrounded by other Great individuals to raise the bar.
• Lots of our team members have founded before - many more want to found again. You'll be in good company if you plan to build something from the ground up - and a place where you can train to become the best version of yourself.

Buena principles

Stay fierce.
Call them today.
Annoy people until it’s done.
It’s always urgent.
Think crazy big.
Buena is the destination, not a stepping stone.
Lead from the front.
Don’t avoid mistakes. Find success.
No consultants.
Have peripheral vision.
Resentments? Resolve them.
Why? Why? Why?
Be specific – ideally with numbers.
Assume everyone is wrong.
Avoid jargon.
Outresearch and outthink everyone.
Grow fast or die slow.
Win win over zero sum.
Speed leads to scale and quality.
Learn through osmosis.
Communication must be net positive.
Small meetings.
Single source of truth.
English first.
Everything has one owner.
Priority, not priorities.

Impressions

Our office in late summer

CEO Din met with Sam 1:1 at OpenAI headquarters in Silicon Valley—after his cold email worked.

Harry Stebbings (20VC), one of our investors during a Q&A session at our three week Portugal offsite 2024. Quote from Harry: “Din is the most talented founder I ever worked with”.

Everyone works with a Studio Display and Macbook setup. Design matters.