← Bento Labs Holt · Investor brief · May 2026 Request brief

Holt Ltd · UK rental trust · Pre-seed open

The trust layer
for UK renting.

"not another landlord tool — a verified two-sided network for the post-Section-21 world"

Holt is the verified two-sided trust layer for UK renting. Trust Score for tenants. Landlord Score for landlords. Both sourced from regulated providers — Experian Connect, Onfido, TrueLayer Open Banking — not self-attestation. Embedded rent collection on TrueLayer + GoCardless. Built as infrastructure, not as software you operate on your own data.

01 · The market shift

Section 21 dies May 2026. The market needs a trust layer, not another spreadsheet.

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent in October 2025. From May 2026, Section 21 "no-fault" eviction is abolished — the biggest structural change to English tenancy law in 36 years. Landlords lose the no-fault exit and need verified tenant data to underwrite tenancies they cannot easily get out of.

Industry trade data puts landlord exits at over 150,000 across 2023–25. The landlords staying are professionalising and shopping for infrastructure for the first time. They are the early adopters.

The public rails are slow. The Government's PRS Database lands late 2026. The Landlord Ombudsman is not expected before 2028. Both are records-only — no matching, no scoring, no rent rails. A consumer trust layer sits above them.

02 · The category gap

Voids and bad tenants are symptoms. The real problem is the category.

Today's stack is single-player. Alphaletz, Hammock, Landlord Vision give a landlord software to track their own properties. OpenRent and Rightmove list flats but score nobody. Canopy passports tenants but has no landlord side. Goodlord is agent-facing and one-direction. The verified, two-sided quadrant is empty.

That is where Holt sits — and the empty quadrant is the whole opportunity.

03 · The product

Three surfaces. One trust spine.

Each product feeds the same verified data graph. The graph is the moat.

  1. Live MVP

    Holt Core

    The verified marketplace. Trust Score + Landlord Score, smart matching, in-app tenant ↔ landlord messaging (logged for dispute resolution and feeding the Response score), embedded rent rails on TrueLayer Open Banking + GoCardless. Sandbox wired; production switch on Q3 2026 incorporation.

  2. Live · free · public

    Holt Agent — holtagent.com

    The document and compliance assistant. Free Renters' Rights Act Q&A bot and 25 document templates (Section 13 notices, deposit returns, Section 8 notices). Public lead-gen funnel into the marketplace. Already live, already capturing landlord intent.

  3. Active build · ~11k LOC

    MTD module

    HMRC Making Tax Digital integration. Quarterly + final declaration. Compliance spine for every landlord on Holt — not a bolt-on for accountants. Lands ahead of the HMRC ITSA rollout for landlords.

04 · How it works

Two scores. Verified at source. Smart matching surfaces the best.

Every input is sourced from a regulated data provider or platform telemetry. Self-attestation gets zero points. Identity (Onfido biometric + Right to Rent) is a gating check, not a scoring input — pass and you can have a score; fail and you are off the platform.

Trust Score · tenants · 0–100

Credit
Experian / Equifax Connect (soft search, no impact on the underlying file)
Income
TrueLayer Open Banking — disposable income, not gross salary
References
Verified prior landlords, not self-reported
Payments
On-platform rent history compounds over time

Landlord Score · landlords · 0–100

Reviews
Post-tenancy only, verified-stay only
Response
Telemetry from in-app messaging + maintenance requests — measured, not claimed
Compliance
Gas Safety · EICR · EPC · Deposit Protection
Standing
Dispute history with right-of-reply

05 · Traction & proof

What's live. What's wired. What's coming.

Live now

  • Holt Agent — public, free, holtagent.com
  • Holt Core MVP — auth, listings, scoring schema, matching loop
  • Anthropic + Databricks AI certifications (4 in 2025–26)
  • Agora open protocol (22,500 products indexed) and Solon v1 — velocity evidence, not competing raises

Wired · sandbox

  • TrueLayer Open Banking — sandbox; production on incorporation
  • GoCardless — Direct Debit rail for rent collection
  • Onfido — biometric ID + Right-to-Rent
  • Experian Connect — soft credit
  • Supabase (Auth + Postgres), UK data residency eu-west-2

Active build · next 90 days

  • MTD module — ~11k LOC, lands ahead of HMRC ITSA
  • iOS + Android marketplace apps (Expo)
  • NRLA recognised-supplier conversation

Founders Agreement signed 13 March 2026 (50/50 voting, 51/49 economic, 4-year vest, 12-month cliff). Holt Ltd incorporates Q3 2026 on UK Founder Visa endorsement. ASA-to-SEIS/EIS conversion path structured; HMRC Advance Assurance in progress.

06 · Market

£75B in UK rent moves through 2.7M landlords every year.

07 · Team

Two immigrant founders. Operator + builder. Skin in the game.

CEO designate · Product + engineering

Matthew Góralczyk

Polish-born; came to the UK alone at sixteen for A-levels in Psychology at Weymouth. 20. Two years of graphic design school in Poland, then HNC Animation Industry (Merit) at Weymouth / Plymouth University partnership — HND in progress, on track for Merit. Self-taught the AI stack across 2025–26 with Anthropic and Databricks certifications.

In the last five months, solo-shipped four production products: Holt (this round, including the live free Holt Agent at holtagent.com), Agora (open protocol for AI-agent commerce, MVP live, 22,500 products indexed), Solon (explainable credit decisioning, v1 in active build), and Overstimulated (CBT/ACT consumer wellness app, on the App Store). Portfolio at bentolabs.co.uk.

CSO designate · Capital + strategy

Nam Tang

Malaysian-Chinese; UK small-business owner and operator at 1QMF / Ming Wah Group. Took Matthew on at seventeen, watched him rebuild a team across an ownership transition. Mentor turned co-founder.

Property portfolio seeds Holt Managed Properties supply from day one — solves the marketplace cold-start with controlled supply quality. Investor introductions and operator advice come from the same person. Years of working trust before the Founders Agreement was signed in March 2026.

08 · Vision

From marketplace to rails.

  1. Year 1–2

    The UK's first verified two-sided rental marketplace.

    Earns on subscriptions, referencing, and rent-collection take.

  2. Year 3–5

    The trust API embedded across fintechs, BTL lenders, landlord banks, and PRS infrastructure.

    Earns on per-call verification fees, data licensing, B2B SaaS.

  3. Year 5+

    The trust layer above UK rental infrastructure (Ombudsman, PRS Database). Exported into Ireland, Australia, New Zealand as their post-Section-21 regimes land.

    Earns on network economics — a take rate on every verified UK tenancy.

Stripe became APIs. Plaid became infrastructure. Holt becomes the rails for £75B of UK rent flow — and exports the model to every market that abolishes its version of Section 21.

— Investor brief

Round size, valuation, unit economics, roadmap.

The financial brief — round size and cap, dilution, projected ARR run-rate, blended CAC, LTV/CAC at month 24, the 24-month roadmap, the use-of-funds breakdown, and the Series A trigger — is shared on request. Drop your name and email and we will send the full investor brief PDF plus a calendar link.

LOIs accepted now · non-binding · converts to ASA on Holt Ltd incorporation (Q3 2026 on UK Founder Visa endorsement) and to SEIS / EIS shares within six months.

Or email ceo@bentolabs.co.uk directly. The deck PDF is shared on request after a brief intro call — we keep it off the open web while LOIs are still being placed.