Name: Rosie Kirk
Job title: Co-founder, Arrival
What I do: Building the infrastructure for moving properties – making utilities and rent collection seamless for operators and fairer for residents.
Why I got into the property industry: Like many people, I fell into it. I started in property management at Choices Estate Agents and discovered I loved solving operational problems.
How I did it: I started in a traditional estate agency and moved into the build-to-rent sector at Homebox. After I left I then took everything I’d learned about what wasn’t working in the sector and built Arrival to do it properly.
My first proper job: Head of build-to-rent at a competitor company.
My first big break: Starting Arrival and having clients trust me enough to follow my journey. That validation meant everything.
My inspiration(s): My dad. He’s a founder too, and watching him work so hard and build something from nothing has always driven me to do the same.
The biggest challenge I’ve encountered to date: Starting Arrival from scratch with no investment. Building something real with limited resources forces you to focus on what actually matters.
My greatest achievement/proudest moment to date: Launching Arrival and signing our first clients. There’s genuinely no feeling like it – knowing people believe in what you’re building enough to trust you with their business.
The biggest misconception people have about the property industry: That it’s all about bricks and mortar. Actually, it’s about operations, people, and solving incredibly boring admin problems that make a massive difference to people’s lives.
My biggest bugbear about the industry/the one thing I would change about the industry: How old-school it still is. We’re finally seeing new proptech companies emerge and more women-led businesses, but there’s so much resistance to change when technology could make everything better for everyone.
Why I’m so passionate about DE&I:I fell into property by accident, not through some traditional route or network. That’s how most people end up here, yet the industry still operates like you need the right connections to succeed. We need more diverse voices – different backgrounds, different perspectives, more women in leadership – because that’s how we actually solve problems for the incredibly diverse range of people who live in our properties.
Why I’m so passionate about ESG: At Arrival, ESG isn’t an add-on – it’s fundamental. We’re trying to fix an industry where residents get ripped off on default tariffs and have no visibility of their consumption. Fair pricing, transparent billing, and helping people reduce their energy use isn’t just good ethics, it’s the entire point of what we’re building.
Where I’d like to be in five years’ time career-wise: Having scaled Arrival to become the default infrastructure for property moves across the UK and US – thousands of operators using our platform, hundreds of thousands of residents saving money and time.
Who I’d invite, living or dead, to a dinner party: Judith Faulkner, because she just did it. No book, no TED talk, no valley mythology, just forty years of compounding quietly in one of the hardest markets imaginable until she owned the infrastructure half of American healthcare runs on, and then went back to work. I’d want to ask her what the long middle felt like, the years where you’re building something real but the narrative hasn’t formed yet, whether that felt like freedom or just like Tuesday, and I suspect she’d say the latter, which is exactly the right answer. There’s a campus in Wisconsin that looks like she let her imagination loose and didn’t ask anyone’s permission, and that private confidence, not needing the room to validate it, is rarer than the business achievement, and honestly more interesting to me.
What I do in my downtime: I probably eat more Sushi than I should out with friends and family. I also have a very naughty miniature cream dachshund that needs a lot of attention.
The job I’d be doing if I was not doing this: I’m genuinely passionate about build-to-rent, so I think I’d have pursued a senior operational role with a BTR operator.
My advice for someone just starting out: Focus on solving real problems for real people. The industry desperately needs people who care about making things actually work, not just people chasing targets or doing things the way they’ve always been done.
My motto/mantra: “It’s a privilege to be tired from the work you once prayed for”
