Endeavor

MICHAEL LAHYANI UAE, Propertyfinder Group Michael Lahyani is the founder and CEO of Propertyfinder Group, the largest and most searched-for property portal in the Middle East. In 2005, after cutting his teeth at PricewaterhouseCoopers in his hometown of Geneva, he moved to Dubai and quickly identified a gap in the market: real estate advertising. Within a year, he launched the first real estate classified in the Middle East, in print and online. With Internet penetration at 45% in the country, Lahyani knew he couldn't start a tech-only company, so he started Al Bab World, a property print magazine that generated leads for agents, and offered free online advertising as well. In the first few years, distribution was 70,000 copies, delivered for free to consumers every two weeks, and the team was elbowing in on local newspapers' advertising market share. More than a decade later, Lahyani has led his company in a digital transformation from the original business model, and weathered The Great Recession, a time that demanded he wrest majority ownership back from shareholder REA Group, or potentially lose it all. He was successful, and Propertyfinder came out of the recession poised for growth, launching operations in six MENA markets in 2013 and 2014. Its most recent funding round, a Series B in 2016, gave Propertyfinder a market valuation of $200 million, led by Vostok New Ventures. Most recently, Propertyfinder announced it bought a 16.95% stake in Zingat, the largest property portal in Turkey. Lahyani was the first Endeavour Entrepreneur of the UAE Chapter. He holds a Bachelors and MBA in Finance from HEC Lausanne. His advice to entrepreneurs, as quoted in The National, is this: "I always say to entrepreneurs when they say they are trying to raise [VC funding], 'Do you think you can get through the next 18 months without raising?' If the answer is yes, put your head down and keep pushing."

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