INTERVIEW: Mike van der Heijden, CEO at Portal Ventures

The 26th Property Portal Watch Conference was held in Madrid this past November; it was our largest event thus far, with 400+ C-Level leaders attending from 40 different countries around the world, among them, Mike van der Heijden, CEO at Portal Ventures was kind enough to sit with us for a short interview.

With headquarters in Singapore and an office in Melbourne, Australia, Portal Ventures helps online marketplaces generate more revenue through effective and scaleable search engine optimization. "We're a digital growth marketing agency that specializes in the marketplace in classifies," told us Mike van der Heijden, CEO at Portal Ventures.

Portal Ventures specializes in helping both one and two-sided marketplaces (including property, auto, and jobs, among others) grow their organic search traffic and market share. "The company has been around for about four years now but it started off as an idea probably about six years ago," added van der Heijden.

We asked van der Heijden, if he could think of one thing which he would have had done differently when he began Portal Ventures, or if he could give advice to someone just starting out, "If I were to talk to a startup or a portal classifieds business today, I would tell them, first of all, focus and understand the user and then meet and exceed their expectations. I think, gone are the days when we just want a list of 10 properties, cars, whatever... what we need to do is go one step further and understand, that if they're looking at these listings, what other information should this buyer be aware of, that we can actually give them. 

"Because by creating a great user experience and not just a listing, we're actually building a lot of trust. If you can measure that trust and that engagement, I think that's what's going to set a lot of new disruptors apart from some of the incumbents," stated van der Heijden.

Addressing the topic of "Disrupt or be Disrupted" we asked van der Heijden what or who is the biggest disruptor in his region, or in the classifieds realm, “I’m a bit torn about this. I think there’s a lot of people trying to disrupt the real estate industry in Australia, but they’re repackaging the same old story. Obviously, there’s the iBuy model, and that makes a lot of sense (given the popularity overseas), but I still see a lot of traditional real estate models claiming to be disruptive, which I’m sure can be, but it’s yet to be seen in Australia, where the two incumbents Domain and RealEstate.com.au have held the majority of market share and I don’t see that changing any time soon” commented van der Heijden.

The Madrid Property Portal Watch Conference was van der Heijden's 7th event with us; he attended several PPW Conferences in Bangkok as well as the Global Online Marketplaces Summit in Miami. Van der Heijden hosted a seminar at the beginning of the Conference, where he addressed the scalability of organic searches for marketplaces.

What has been van der Heijden's experience with the Property Portal Watch Conferences? "I know this conference is great for networking! It's good to get into the same room every couple of months with the people that are in the industry, that are doing this day-to-day because it is quite a 'small world' that we have in the classifieds industry, so it's always a fantastic opportunity to catch up with everybody."

Over 220 attendees are expected at our next event - the Asian Property Portal Watch Conference in Thailand. The Conference will be held in Bangkok from 26th to 27th February 2020, and it will run for two days, featuring expert Industry Speakers, Innovative Companies at the forefront of the online real estate industry. The Asian Property Portal Watch Conference also offers amazing Social Events, a perfect opportunity for networking.
We hope to see you there.

Join us February 26-27 for the Property Portal Watch Conference Bangkok 2020.