My Business: How one renovation crisis sparked a tech platform now reshaping a $40 billion market

Dubai: Every entrepreneur has a driving force, but for Marc Michel, Co-Founder and CEO of Reno Home, that inspiration was rooted in a personal, profoundly chaotic home renovation. That nightmare experience, shared with his co-founder, became the foundational blueprint for a tech platform now revolutionising the region’s massive property refurbishment sector.

Before he was advising on corporate strategy at McKinsey and later scaling financial services at AstraTech, Michel was simply a homeowner struggling with a contractor's lack of transparency.

“It all started from a personal pain,” Michel recalled. “A few years ago, both my co-founder and I were renovating our own homes, he was in Dubai, and I was in Egypt, and it was a total nightmare. We both went way over schedule, way over budget, and just ran out of money halfway through.”

The anecdote he shared encapsulates the industry’s broken model: his co-founder promised his wife the renovation would be done before their son was born, but “their son celebrated his first birthday by the time the renovation was finally finished.”

This shared frustration led to the realisation that the entire renovation process was fundamentally flawed. There was no clear structure, no accountability, and critically, no way to track spending or progress.

“When we compared stories, it was clear this wasn’t just us being unlucky, the entire renovation process is broken,” Michel noted. “There was no transparency, no structure, and no way to track where your money was going or how far along the work actually was.”

That moment of clarity led to Reno Home: a unified platform designed to inject clarity in design, execution, and accessible financing into the process. The core proposition is to make renovations less chaotic, less risky, and a lot more predictable. This drive to fix a problem they intimately understood is why, as Michel explains, "we obsess over making the experience effortless for our customers."

In its first year, Reno has emphatically validated its model, achieving rapid and consistent growth.

“Our biggest success has been proving that renovation can be both scalable and predictable,” Michel said.

The numbers speak to the critical need the company addresses. In its first year, Reno completed more than 120 projects and generated over $5 million in revenue, crossing the $1 million mark within the first three months.

But beyond the revenue, the true benchmark of success in this notoriously difficult industry is execution. Reno boasts that 95% of its projects continue to be delivered on time and within budget, “that’s unheard of in this industry,” Michel noted. This consistency has powered the firm to develop real-time design tools, instant estimates, immersive space previews, and structured project updates.

While the growth has been phenomenal, the journey was not without significant challenges that tested the founders' resolve and taught lasting lessons in discipline.

“We’ve had our share of tough moments. Fundraising was one of the hardest, building in this macro environment meant hearing 'no' far more often than 'yes,'” Michel shared. This experience taught him that "the right capital is better than any capital, and that alignment matters more than speed."

The demands of rapid growth also brought acute cash-flow pressure. Michel recounted a particularly humbling month in which, despite record sales, the growth squeezed the business so tightly that he and his co-founder had to give back their own salaries to keep the business operating.

“It was a humbling reminder that discipline and cash management are just as important as growth,” he reflected. These pressures, he explained, made the team more disciplined, resilient, and grounded.

For Michel, who grew up watching his father build a business from scratch in Egypt before building his own career as an Associate Partner at McKinsey, the move to start Reno in Dubai was both personal and strategic.

He noted that the UAE’s environment has been fundamental to its success. “The UAE has played a huge role in our journey. From day one, we felt the support of an ecosystem that genuinely wants founders to succeed, a place that encourages entrepreneurs to create, to take risks, and to build boldly.”

The opportunity for a "renovate now, pay later" model was particularly apparent in Dubai. As older properties offer the best value, homeowners needed a way to cover a major renovation cost without depleting funds after a mortgage down payment. Additionally, the government’s push to reach 1 million SMEs by 2030 creates immense demand for commercial fit-outs, and business owners also need flexible financing.

Backed by leading regional funds like 500 Sanabil, Hub71, Plus VC, and Zero 100 VC, and having recently secured $4 million in funding to fuel expansion, Reno’s future vision is expansive.

Looking ahead, Michel sees Reno transcending its current identity. In five years, he wants the company to be "the region’s default renovation standard, not just a platform, but a verb. I want 'Let’s Reno it' to be the first thing people and businesses say when they think about transforming a space.”

The market potential is immense, with the regional renovation market valued at $40 billion. Michel is clear that the path to success does not require premature expansion. “Our goal is to prove that by capturing even a very small fraction of that, we can build a unicorn right here in the UAE without needing to expand prematurely.”

His final advice to aspiring founders echoes his journey: “Start with a real problem! Ideally one you’ve felt yourself. When the need is genuine, you build with clarity and conviction.” He said that while entrepreneurship is not about having all the answers, it is about "the resilience and humility to keep learning until you do."