When Marcos Azevedo moved to Canada in the summer of 2009, he came alone with no job and a willingness to discover a new place. Originally from Brazil, he had moved a few times to study and work in France and the U.S., and he was eager to settle down somewhere he could call home.
He chose Montreal and like many new immigrants, Azevedo, 33, found the experience stressful and “intense.”
“It’s challenging. Everything is new,” Azevedo said in a recent interview with CP24.com. “I had to accept a reduction in salary. I wasn't sure I would find a job in the same industry or if I could live as comfortably as I used to.”
His first priority was finding a cheap apartment fast, but sifting through thousands of online listings seemed overwhelming. The challenges led him to become a co-founder of Navut, a business that helps newcomers find neighbourhoods to suit their lifestyle. The name comes from two Swedish words: Navigera meaning navigate and utomhus meaning abroad or out.
Navut works by matching people’s expectations of their neighbourhoods with the characteristics of different regions. It was launched in Montreal in April 2013 and has been used by about 100,000 people since then. The site recently debuted in Toronto, making Hogtown the seventh Canadian city to have its neighbourhood profiles plotted online.
Profiles are built using publicly available data from sources such as the Census, police crime statistics, the National Household Survey and the Fraser Institute Report Cards on schools. Neighbourhoods are ranked for different criteria such as safety, schools, transit, walkability and amenities.
Navut also guides people in prioritizing whether they want to live in areas with families, younger professionals or retirees. This was something that Azevedo struggled with when he came to Canada and moved into Montreal’s Hochelaga Maisonneuve neighbourhood in the east. He got a job as a sales executive for a software company and wanted to meet other career-oriented young professionals with common interests. But his neighbourhood was populated with families who had different priorities from him.
“After getting to know the city three to six months later, I realized I could’ve rented something cheaper, closer to downtown, safer and with more amenities,” he said. “But the problem is I was in a lease for one year. So, with that and moving, it actually cost me more.”
Azevedo joined an online forum for Brazilian immigrants where he met Mauro Repacci. It was Repacci who came up with the idea for the online tool, and together with two other friends, also immigrants, the four co-founders began collating data and building an inventory of homes for sale or rent. All four co-founders introduce themselves on their website as newcomers who, despite doing their research, ended up having to move multiple times and spending more money than they needed to because they didn’t know enough about how each neighbourhood differed from the others. This only compounded the stress that comes with moving across borders from such things as having to choose a bank to suit one’s needs, getting new furniture, exploring gym options and finding out which companies provide utilities, Azevedo said.
Navut’s matchmaking algorithm spits out up to five neighbourhoods and recommends three real estate agents. Their business model revolves around charging fees to realtors who connect with newcomers through Navut.
“Having access to the real estate market is very valuable for our real estate agents,” Azevedo said. “The chance of closing is very high and real estate agents pay us a fixed and small amount… depending on the lease.”
Navut has now grown to a team of about 12 people sharing resources with eight other startups in an incubator hub in Griffintown, an upcoming area about a 10 minute walk from downtown Montreal. Azevedo is happy to be living in this neighbourhood too now.
Although Navut does not match immigrants to specific ethnic regions, the neighbourhood profiles do give users the percentages of people from different cultural communities and the ratio of immigrants to non-immigrants. It also gives information on the type of buildings in an area, the extent of development, average family income and the top occupations of neighbours.
Azevedo and his team now hope to introduce Navut in the States. Such a rapid expansion may seem ambitious for a start-up, but they have a chance: They were recently accepted to tape an episode with Dragon’s Den, a reality television show where start-ups pitch their ideas to wealthy investors.
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