First Uber and now Amazon. The Spanish startup specializing in the rental of medium and long-term housing, Spotahome shapes its dream team and makes it ‘fishing’ talent in some of the most leading companies of the last five years. After hiring Cleo Sham, former director of operations of Uber EMEA, as operations director (chief operating officer or COO) and Balaji Nageswaran, former Amazon executive and SVP (senior vice president) of Hello Fresh as CPO, or responsible for attracting talent , the company announced today the hiring of Ángel Azcárraga as the new technological director or Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
PropTech has gone to the headquarters of Amazon in Seattle to close the signing of Azcárraga, who led and contributed to the growth of technology and product teams of the company’s user experience division in the United States. The objective, will have to develop the technological infrastructure and the teams of engineers of the company, from his new office in London, where Spotahome has just opened a new center of operations.
Azcárraga takes over from Bryan McEire, co-founder of Spotahome, who remains with the company within the technology team advising on strategic projects such as Technology Advisor. This signing takes place at a very important time Spotahome, which in addition to opening office in London, is preparing to hire more than 200 people, making use of the 40 million dollars raised in the Series B of 2018.
Headquarters in London and 200 expected signings
The latest signings allow Alejandro Artacho, CEO and co-founder of Spotahome to form his dream team to face the company’s global growth, which will double its technology and product development staff by 2019, through the incorporation of engineers, developers and product managers, of which more than 100 will be under the direction of Azcárraga.
The latest signings allow Alejandro Artacho, CEO and co-founder of Spotahome to face the company’s global growth
Thus, his six years of experience in the growth of technology and product teams at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, and more recently directing a pool of more than 140 employees in the Amazon Search division, will allow Spotahome to dominate the market and expand it quickly to reinvent the way people seek to rent a house. During his tenure at Amazon, Azcárraga led for six years a team of engineers, product managers and scientists responsible for building the applications and user interfaces that make up the Amazon Search multi-device search service in more than 14 countries.
The director of Cuban origin developed applications and services that are used today by millions of people to search, discover and buy on Amazon. Before working for the marketplace, Azcárraga spent nine years as a leading engineer at Microsoft HQ in Seattle, where he managed teams to implement the basic workflow capabilities of Microsoft Azure and Office 365, the two best-known business systems at world level.
“Ángel was responsible for the technological team that has served millions of clients in the most successful marketplace in the world, using technology that drove purchases for a company that tripled its income in 2018, while maintaining a strong cultural identity” , says Alejandro Artacho. “His experience in designing large-scale, high-performance software systems will allow Spotahome to leverage large amounts of data within the real estate market to drive new and innovative rental experiences for homeowners and renters”.
“The vision and opportunity for growth in Spotahome captured my attention from the beginning, and it is essential to strengthen the company culture with each contract, especially at the pace and level that Spotahome is looking for, which is why I will be personally involved in the hiring process of all of them. the engineers”, assured Ángel Azcárraga.
The real success
Only in the last year, Spotahome has achieved almost half of the 200 million dollars in contracts generated for its European owners, with more than 7.5 million total nights booked on its platform.
“Spotahome presents a great opportunity to make a difference, it is a product that changes the rules of the game and improves the rental experience for both owners and tenants,” says Ángel Azcárraga. “Alejandro has built an incredible culture of product, team and company, his commitment, passion and ambition are reflected in his achievements with Spotahome, and the company is backed by a group of investors who have invested in technologies that have really changed the way in what we understand the world”.
“The rental of a home may be one that needs to be renewed, despite the rise of the Internet and smartphones, many of us continue to rent in the same way that it was done more than 30 years ago.” The PropTech market needs to evolve from images with a phone number to call, modern transactions, agile and secure, I am excited to be part of an amazingly talented and diverse new team that is addressing this problem, with the aim of offering a product focused on solving the needs of the users”, concludes Azcárraga.
Jump to London
The jump to London of the company, in full Brexit, has been very striking, since there are many firms that have left the British capital and many others that do not consider landing on it in thirteen. From Spotahome point out, however, that they chose London “for being an attractive city for the international growth of our business and to be able to attract a greater number of professionals related to the technology sector”.
The original office of Spotahome in Madrid will remain as European headquarters where, at present, more than 270 professionals work. In parallel, the London office will grow and develop in a sustained manner, anticipating hiring 2019 up to 200 new professionals that will complement the team located in Madrid.
Also published on Medium.