Episode overview

Rafael Niesten joins Steve Grace for a conversation packed with unlikely founder stories, from unlocking Nokia 5110s in a one-bedroom apartment to having a community radio station investigated by the broadcasting authority. The episode traces how these early ventures shaped the resilience and scrappiness behind Proptech Labs, which now processes over a million property inspection images per week.

Unlocking Nokias and getting faxed out of business

While at university in Perth, Rafael found he could buy prepaid Nokia 5110s for $199, unlock them using $16 software sourced from Hong Kong, and sell them for $399. His apartment filled floor to ceiling with phones. He scaled to tens of thousands of units before a fax was sent to every Telstra dealer in Australia telling them not to sell him prepaid phones. It was his first lesson in supply chain disruption.

The radio station that was too successful

Rafael set up a youth community radio station in Perth with a $120 three-year licence. The station grew so popular that ‘other FM’ in the ratings shot to 10%. Their first event filled Perth’s largest nightclub (3,000 capacity) in 30 minutes with a line stretching nearly 4km. Commercial radio networks Nova and DMG filed complaints, and the broadcasting authority sent seven people to investigate. They wrote a 300-page report but found no smoking gun. Rafael stepped down to protect the legacy, but the station was shut down within nine months. He won Citizen of the Year for Western Australia (Youth) and was a finalist for Young Australian of the Year.

Proptech Labs: boring problems, massive scale

Proptech Labs handles maintenance, inspections, invoicing, and chatbots for property managers. The business manages 1.7 million properties across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK. Their inspection platform processes a million images per week and 40,000 inspections per week, with over a billion photographs in their database. They are now moving into AI to blend data across platforms.