Our journey
From one block's frustration to a platform for anyone who runs one.
- 1
A block with a problem
Marklet started where most leasehold stories do: a block, a managing agent, and a lot of email. We reported issues that went quiet, chased updates that never came, and watched problems resurface a year later because nobody could find the thread. We didn't want to fight anyone - we just wanted to know what was happening in our own building.
- 2
Track it so it can't get lost
The first version of Marklet was nothing more than an issue tracker and an email log for our own block. Every report, every reply, every promise in one place. Communication with our managing agent improved almost overnight - not because anyone worked harder, but because nothing could quietly disappear any more.
- 3
Then came the service charges
When the accounts landed, we had the same questions every leaseholder has: what are we actually paying for, and why has it gone up? So we taught Marklet to read the accounts for us - AI that analyses and summarises service charges in plain English. That work became Ask Mark, and understanding our own money stopped being a weekend project.
- 4
It was never just us
Speaking with directors and leaseholders from other blocks, the same stories kept coming back: lost issues, opaque accounts, and tools built for big agents and priced like it. So we turned our fix into a product - and started building Marklet for everyone who looks after a building, not just our own.
Ivo
Founder, Marklet
Ivo is a product-minded engineering leader based in London, with more than 20 years spent solving problems in software - across SMEs and large organisations, in financial services, insurance and retail. Most of that work sat in heavily regulated domains, where an audit trail, a clear record and plain answers to "why did this cost that?" are the baseline rather than a nice-to-have. Leasehold deserves the same standard, and that expectation shapes everything Marklet builds.
He is also a leaseholder in a block moving to leaseholder-led management, which is where Marklet began: the problems at home met the skills from work. The tool he wanted did not exist - so he built it, on the belief that the people paying for a building should be able to see how it is run, and that what one block learns the hard way should be shared with every other.