Mortgage Mates was an idea that Co-Founder Daisy Ashworth initially had back in 2015, when a friend was left holding an expensive mortgage after they separated from their parter. It sparked the question, what could you do to mitigate this? How could some-one/anyone on a limited income, ever enter the property market without a partner or family member to support with a second income?
Once the question was asked, it never quite went away. Daisy began researching housing affordability from a home owner perspective and found that for most individuals in Australia, housing affordability was a huge issue, and that owning a home was something unlikely to be achieved for many people.
In 2017, Daisy met Jess, another social entrepreneur who was interested in making positive change and wanted to make an impact to the home ownership market.
Over a few cold beers the idea started to develop, and Mortgage Mates become more than just a concept, it became a community and a disruptor, looking to bring the idea of co-ownership to the market.
Daisy applied to attend the Curtin Ignition program in 2017, where Daisy and Jess planned to test the idea more robustly, in order to establish whether the idea would work, and whether this could be a business, and not just a website.
Ignition is a week long, intensive training program for aspiring entrepreneurs- provided by Curtin University and with amazing support and assistance from a number of incredible people (thank you Ignition team for all the support and guidance you give at the beginning and after the program). By providing individuals with interactive information sessions on areas including marketing, finance and intellectual property, alongside mentor sessions where you can work and develop your idea, Ignition teaches you to understand, develop and polish your idea affectively. At the end of the week you are then able to pitch your idea to a number of professionals who provide feedback and support on your idea.
After hearing stories from successful entrepreneurs, such as the developer of Rhinohide Marc Berryman (https://rhinohide.com.au) and individuals previously based in Silicon Valley, excitement increased and the beginning of Mortgage Mates was formed.
Despite being incredibly nervous to pitch, it was an amazing experience to sell an idea to professionals working in the housing space. It validated the idea and confirmed that it could, one day, be something amazing and disruptive in the housing space.
Following Ignition, Jess and Daisy spoke to three website engineers about their vision, and the tech team of Mortgage Mates was formed (Marcus, Alan and Luke thank you)! Over the next 18 months the team worked hard to turn the concept of Mortgage Mates into a website, researching third parties to link to, overseeing website content and photos when needed and developing, creating and finalising the algorithm that matches two or more Mates to each other.
In June 2019 www.mortgagemates.com.au was launched and has been growing in success ever since. The team are working towards improving and developing the site to ensure customer experience is as positive as it can be and are already thinking of ways to develop the opportunity.
Daisy and Jess continue to look at ways to improve the home ownership opportunity for every day Australians and work on Mortgage Mates to it’s full potential.
