LDC Top 50 2025
Heather Staff and Tom Staff
Co-Founders
Street Group
Heather and Tom Staff are the brother-and-sister duo behind Street Group, the Manchester-based proptech firm reinventing the home-moving experience. Raised by estate agent parents, the siblings saw firsthand how outdated systems were holding the industry back.
“I spent time in our dad’s agency and began automating manual processes. That led to Spectre, our first product,” says Tom. “Heather joined to help scale the business. There was huge potential to transform one of the UK’s most complex and underserved sectors.” Today, their platform supports 15,600 agents across the UK and 130,000 monthly active users. “We want to elevate the profession with world-class technology,” adds Heather.
Estate agents are incredibly hardworking. We want to help elevate the profession with world-class technology.”
Q&A
What does it take to disrupt a stagnant industry?
Tom: Until late last year, we were fully bootstrapped, reinvesting every pound of profit into R&D. That allowed us to accelerate innovation while most of the market stood still. Estate agency tech hadn’t evolved in decades. At first, big players hesitated – they’d have to move their entire business onto our platform – but we’ve now crossed that trust threshold and we’re on track for 100 per cent growth this year. We’ve gone from being viewed as the new kids on the block to a safe pair of hands.
How have you built the company culture?
Heather: We now employ 197 people but we’ve been obsessive about culture from day one. We’ve probably read every business book going! We set clear operating principles that directly feed into salary reviews, so they’re never just words on a wall. We believe fun and high performance can co-exist. We operate with full transparency – anyone can submit anonymous questions to us, and we’ll answer them live during weekly all-hands. We spent a year hiring the right Head of People to help build an inclusive workplace, with paid menopause leave, extended parental policies and return-to-work schemes through Tech Returners.
What are the advantages of building a business with your sibling?
Tom: I genuinely don’t know how solo founders do it. Beyond our complementary skillsets, there’s complete trust. Nothing business-related would ever come between us. It works brilliantly. In ten years, we’ve only fallen out once and it was over whether to get a pool table in the office!
