Every great venture begins with an idea. In April 2023, the concept for Dwello was born out of our own challenges in navigating the real estate market as newcomers. Recognizing a gap in the market for a more personalized and intuitive property search experience, we assembled a team of experts across technology, finance, and marketing. This marked the beginning of our journey to transform the real estate experience in Portugal.

In November 2023, we attended the Web Summit, one of the world’s leading tech conferences. While we didn’t present Dwello to the public just yet, this experience was invaluable. We scoped out the environment, confirming that there are no other products quite like ours in the market. We also gathered inspiration and insights on how to best present Dwello to the world. We aim to return in the near future, ready to pitch Dwello to investors with a fully developed product.

By December 2023, we put our vision into a detailed project plan and took a significant step forward by submitting our proposal to IAPMEI, Portugal Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation. This submission is securing potential funding and support, laying the groundwork for Dwello’s development and launch.

The start of 2024 was marked by a series of calls and meetings with key incubators across Portugal: INOVAGAIA, VILAWORK, GrowIN Portugal, IET, ADRAL, StartSilkHub and Startup Santarém. These discussions were aimed at exploring partnerships, gaining mentorship, and accessing resources to accelerate Dwello’s development. This phase allowed us to refine our business model and align our goals with the best practices of the startup ecosystem. By the end of this step, we have chosen an incubator to proceed with as soon as our project will be marked favorable by IAPMEI.

In March and April 2024, we focused on building the backbone of our platform—the database. This involved aggregating and structuring vast amounts of property data, essential for powering our AI-driven property recommendations. Our team worked tirelessly to ensure that the database would be comprehensive, accurate, and scalable, setting the stage for a robust and reliable platform.

In May 2024, we laid the technical foundation for Dwello by selecting and assembling our tech stack. This involved choosing the right tools, frameworks, and technologies to build a scalable and high-performing platform. Our CTO led the development of a robust architecture that would support our vision of a seamless, AI-powered property search experience.

July 2024 marked the beginning of our website development phase. Our focus was on creating an intuitive, user-friendly interface that would serve as the primary gateway for users to interact with Dwello. This phase involved close collaboration between our design, development, and content teams to ensure that the website would not only be functional but also engaging and visually appealing.

In September 2024, we launched a comprehensive survey to gather feedback from potential users and real estate professionals. This survey was designed to validate our assumptions, test our features, and refine our offerings based on real-world input. The data collected during this phase will be instrumental in guiding the final stages of Dwello’s development and ensuring that we meet the needs of our users.