I've spent most of my working life in sales. The last fourteen and a half years have been with one of Australia's most reputable property funds and real estate groups, where I worked as an Estate Manager across several large residential developments in South East Victoria.
During that time, I spoke with thousands of buyers, managed high volumes of enquiries, and worked in an environment where responding quickly could make the difference between securing a sale and losing it. It also gave me a front-row seat to a problem that wasn't unique to real estate.
I've watched the same thing happen in business after business: an enquiry comes in at exactly the wrong moment. You're in a meeting, with a client, driving, after hours, or simply tied up with something else. By the time you get back to it, the opportunity has gone cold – or worse, they've already gone somewhere else.
It wasn't a lack of effort that caused it. It was simply timing. And after seeing the same issue play out over and over again, I started thinking there had to be a better way.
Avenir Co is what I built because of that. Not a software company that decided AI was trendy — someone who's worked in sales long enough to see this happen again and again, and decided to find a way to fix it.
I run it solo, based in Melbourne. No call centre, no account managers, no layer between you and the person who actually understands what's going wrong. The systems themselves are designed to run without me in the loop day-to-day — that's the point, regardless of whether you're a small business or a large corporation. Automation carries the weight; I stay the person you can actually reach when something matters. When I'm not working on this, I'm usually deep in house plans I'm owner-building for my family — turns out I like building things properly, on paper first.
— Rochelle Footman, Founder