By Miles Gilroy, Senior Print Editor
In 2024, Hannah Chappatte featured on both the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and the Sunday Times’ Young Power List, alongside the likes of Leah Williamson, Luke Littler, Amelia Dimoldenberg, and Bukayo Saka.
‘It feels like a ridiculous privilege and I think it makes you feel very, like, undeserving to be next to those people. [...] It's a great honor.’
I sat down with Hannah, the founder and CEO of Hybr, to discover more about her, her business, and her time at the University of Bristol.
Hannah studied liberal arts at the University of Bristol, graduating in 2019. After experiencing the ‘chaos’ of the student housing market in Bristol first hand, Hannah was motivated to improve the system and make the process easier for both students and agents.
With three million students in the UK forming a rental market worth £13bn, Hannah pushed ahead with her idea and created Hybr.
‘I would recommend any student that's interested in start-ups to do an internship at a start-up.’
But, going from studying liberal arts to founding a tech start-up seems like quite a large jump. So, what is it about Hannah that made this jump possible?
Well, first of all, the jump may not be as large as it seems - at least from liberal arts to entrepreneur. Hannah praises her degree for giving her the opportunity to exercise her multitasking ability, a skill she now finds extremely useful in her current role.
‘I loved liberal arts because I always wanted to do something that was quite holistic, multidisciplinary, I didn't want to just focus on one thing. I like doing a lot of things. I think that's quite representative of me as a founder - I'm good at spinning plates.’
Okay, so a liberal arts degree set her up to become an effective founder, but how has she thrived so well in the tech startup scene?
Hannah spoke fondly of the extra curricular activities and internships she took part in while at university. During her summers, she worked at Jumia, a Nairobi tech startup. She was emphatic that this experience was invaluable for her when it came to founding Hybr.
‘I would recommend any student that's interested in start-ups to do an internship at a start-up.’
Armed with industry experience and a level of passion that can only be fostered by interaction with the Bristol student rental market, Hannah launched Hybr, aiming to provide students – and agents – with the tools they desperately need.
Hybr is a rental marketplace that matches students and graduates to housing based on their preferences, as well as assisting letting agents with their workflow and calendars, improving efficiency and reducing stress on both sides of the rental process.
Hannah came up with the idea after realising that all the aches and pains that haunt students during the rental process are due to inefficient practices by letting agents who try and organise viewings and keep track of applications manually.
‘The only way to solve that problem was to build a solution for letting agents because it's the letting agent that manage the properties and manage the renter experience. And the reason why renting is so stressful is because letting agents don't have any tools to manage the renter journey. The lettings teams are drowning. They're stressed.’
Hybr’s goal is to increase the ‘transparency’ between renters and agents, enabling them to work together to find the most suitable properties. It’s name, originating from ‘hibernate’, reflects this idea of making the process smoother and more relaxed.
'I want to have a much bigger impact on the UK student rental experience, and I think we're, like, not even 1% there.’
Despite being recognised at the same level as the captain of the Lionesses, Hannah rather humbly doesn’t ‘consider [her]self too successful.’ She cites the innate ambition of the entrepreneurial spirit as the root of this humility.
‘I think most entrepreneurs are always raising that bar and you generally never achieve it. I'm very, very early on in my journey, so I'm definitely not there from a personal perspective. I want to have a much bigger impact on the UK student rental experience, and I think we're, like, not even 1% there.’
Perhaps this relentless ambition is contagious. Hannah told me she finds inspiration in other successful female entrepreneurs, referencing Marcia Kilgore, founder of Beauty Pie; Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva; and her very own sister-in-law, Alexandra Chappatte, who founded the Kenya-based craft beverage company African Originals.
‘Proving that you can have a different type of profile than most of the CEO's out there, I think that's very inspirational.’
Experience and ambition aside, starting a business is a daunting prospect; it’s practically impossible to know A: if you’re the right type of person to be a founder, and B: if being a founder is the right path for you. I was eager to get Hannah’s insight on whether knowing the answers to these questions is necessary.
‘Definitely not. I think it kind of helps having the naïvety because I was just focusing on what do I need to achieve today, what do I need to achieve this week, what do I need to achieve this month? What am I trying to validate to give me the confidence to continue on this journey? And that allowed me to take my time and grow into the role versus if I'd have been chucked into where I am now, I would never have survived. So yeah, I definitely didn't know, but I think sometimes you need that early naïvety to throw yourself in the deep end.’
In such an uncertain and hectic environment, it seems as though retaining your confidence and composure would be an impossible task. Hannah spoke about how the start-up experience affected her and how she dealt with its stresses and strains.
‘You have doubts all the time. You have massively bad days and good days. I remember having my first ever panic attack in the early stage of the business – had plenty more of them since that point. [...] But I never thought I'd give up. It just made me want to improve, want to prove to not only other people, but mostly to myself that I could do it.'
‘Compartmentalising is so important. I don't think I would be able to survive without that. So, being able to work a 13 hour day, but being able to switch off at the end of the day and have a really nice evening with friends or family. Even if that's just like an hour at dinner. And the same with making sure that you're taking at least one full day off on the weekend. Having that time to reset so that you come back hungry, passionate, excited for the next week is really important.’
‘Take the pressure off yourself from having the perfect time.'
To close off our chat, I asked Hannah what advice she’d give to current students on how to get the most out of university; her closing remarks are comfortingly honest:
‘Take the pressure off yourself from having the perfect time. University is very, like, you'll be on cloud nine one moment and then you'll be having an anxiety attack a second later. Know that that's normal. Every single student is going through that.’
So, if Hannah's success is anything to go off, we should all relax a little. Take each day as it comes and spend your time doing what makes you happy.
Featured image: Hannah Chappatte
