Convo started as something simple

I’m Benjamin Taylor, the founder of Convo and a software engineer who has spent most of my career working in financial technology, building systems that prioritise clarity, structure, and reliability.

Convo didn’t start as a company idea. It started because my mum wanted to rent out her home in retirement, but wasn’t confident navigating what it actually meant to be a landlord.

Not the legal side, or the big decisions — but the day-to-day reality. Messages coming in at random times. Issues that weren’t clearly explained. Trying to keep track of what had been said, what needed doing, and what was still unresolved.

It wasn’t one big problem. It was the accumulation of small, unclear moments that made the whole experience feel harder than it should have been.

So I built Convo to introduce a bit more structure into that process. A clearer way for issues to be raised. A shared space for communication. Something that reduces the reliance on memory, guesswork, and back-and-forth.

As I worked on it, I realised that a lot of the friction came from how information is shared in the first place. Messages are often incomplete, unclear, or missing context, which makes everything that follows harder.

It also became clear that simply adding AI into that process wouldn’t solve anything on its own. In many cases, it just adds another layer without really improving how things work.

Instead, I focused on where it could actually be useful — shaping how issues are raised, making sure the right details are captured, and helping each conversation start from a clearer place.

The result is a system that still feels simple to use, but removes a lot of the back-and-forth that usually comes with managing issues. It doesn’t replace communication — it just makes it work better.

What I found was that when the structure improves, everything else does too. Conversations become easier. Expectations are clearer. And the relationship between landlord and tenant feels less stressful on both sides.

Convo is designed for people who feel a bit uneasy about the responsibility that comes with being a landlord. Not because they’re incapable, but because there isn’t always a clear way to operate day to day.

Once there is a system — something that gives each issue a place, each conversation a structure, and each step a sense of direction — that feeling changes. Things become easier to manage, easier to respond to, and easier to stay on top of.

And it works both ways. Tenants get clearer communication, more consistency, and a better sense of what’s happening. It stops feeling like a series of scattered messages, and starts to feel like something that actually works.

It’s not about adding complexity. It’s about removing it.