instep.ai raises £900K to fix estate agency's biggest blind spot

Estate agents are already generating more inbound demand than their teams can handle. Calls go unanswered, out of hours enquiries disappear. Leads that cost money to generate don't get progressed and it's not because anyone isn't trying but because there's only so much capacity.

That's the problem we built instep.ai to solve.

Today we're announcing that we've raised £900,000 in pre-seed funding led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from angel investors.

What the numbers show

Our early data is direct and exciting. Branches using Ella, our AI assistant for estate agents, capture an average of 11 additional valuation opportunities per month from enquiries that would otherwise go unanswered. That translates to an estimated £45,000 to £50,000 in incremental annual fees per branch. In higher value and London markets that figure rises to £180,000 to £190,000.

None of that comes from increased marketing spend or outbound lead generation, it comes entirely from warm leads recovered from missed calls.

What Ella does

Ella works across voice, web chat, WhatsApp and email, 24/7. She qualifies leads, books valuations and viewings, manages routine enquiries and integrates with the CRMs agents already use.

She's trained on thousands of real property conversations, which means she understands the nuances of sales, lettings and valuations not just how to take a message.

The team behind it

Patrick Littlemore, our COO and former CEO of Marsh & Parsons, brings 35+ years of property industry experience and the kind of sector network that accelerates early adoption.

I bring nine years of product management experience across Rightmove, Red Sift and Honu, focused on building SaaS platforms that drive real commercial outcomes.

We built this together because we'd both seen the same gap from different angles. The answer wasn't more headcount or another CRM configuration, it was an AI assistant built specifically for how property businesses actually operate.

What we're doing with the funding

The investment accelerates our sales growth and national roll out, including pilot programmes with larger mid sized and national agencies. We'll also continue developing the platform's automation capabilities across both front line and back office workflows.

We're not chasing feature volume, we're focused on reliability, measurable impact and expanding access to agencies that are already under pressure to do more with leaner teams.

instep.ai is addressing a clear and costly inefficiency in the estate agency market. The team has demonstrated strong early traction, a deep understanding of their customers and a product that delivers immediate, measurable value. Reid and Patrick combine exceptional product leadership with real industry insight and we're excited to support them as they scale the platform and redefine how agents manage inbound demand.

About Fuel Ventures

Fuel Ventures is a leading UK early-stage venture capital fund with over £246 million invested across 210+ UK companies since 2014. Portfolio highlights include Volt (valued at £256m), ContentCal (acquired by Adobe for £110m) and Capdesk (acquired by Carta for $88m).