Boomin

Boomin was Purplebricks founders Michael and Kenny Bruce’s second attempt to disrupt UK property tech — this time aimed squarely at Rightmove and Zoopla’s grip on listings, rather than at the high street agent.

What Happened

Announced in July 2020 and launched publicly in April 2021, Boomin positioned itself as an “agent-centric” portal, offering agent-facing tools like SmartVal and MortgageMaker alongside consumer listings, and reported signing up roughly 6,300 listing agent partners by June 2021. The same month it launched, the company was seeking around £25m in funding at a £100m post-money valuation from investors that reportedly included Foxtons and Channel 4.

The funding push wasn’t enough to sustain the business through a cooling housing market. Layoffs began in July 2022, and by November 2022 the company had gone into liquidation, making its remaining 65 staff redundant. Michael Bruce attributed the failure to the “macroeconomic climate,” saying “timing has not been our friend.”

Why It Matters

Boomin shows that founder pedigree and agent buy-in don’t substitute for a funding round actually closing: a portal’s economics depend on sustained marketing spend to build consumer traffic against two entrenched incumbents, and Boomin ran out of runway roughly 18 months after public launch, before that flywheel could take hold. It’s also a rare example of a UK proptech founder failing twice in the same segment of the market — Purplebricks’ international retreat and Boomin’s liquidation both trace back to the same Bruce brothers playbook of aggressive, capital-heavy growth against slower-moving incumbents.