Samar Shaheryar is Co-CEO of Spring, the UK’s largest homebuying service. Born and raised in New York, she spent her first decade in investment banking before transitioning to entrepreneurship. In 2012, she founded Baby Hero, a socially responsible e-commerce venture selling organic, ethically produced children’s clothing that funded clean birth kits and life-saving medical products for mothers and infants in developing nations.
In 2018, Samar joined National Property Trade in the UK (later rebranded as Spring) to revamp its digital marketing. Her role quickly expanded into broader transformation projects, and she became Chief Operating Officer in 2019. In January 2023, she was appointed Co-CEO alongside Shane Miller-Bourke. Under her leadership, Spring has transformed the UK property market by offering homeowners a guaranteed sale with completion dates to suit their needs, protecting them from the uncertainty and emotional strain of collapsed property chains. The service is particularly popular with those downsizing into retirement homes. In 2025, Spring signed major partnerships with UK housebuilders, allowing them to offer the service directly to their customers.
Spring has grown to become the UK’s largest home-buying service under your leadership as Co-CEO. Could you explain how the guaranteed home-buying model works and what made you recognise the significant market opportunity that existed in transforming the traditional property buying process?
“Put simply, Spring can buy your home from you on a date of your choice, as quickly as you need. We buy the home 10-15% below market value and sell it on the open market ourselves, taking the margin as profit.
“From the customer’s viewpoint, they have a guaranteed offer with no risk of fall-through, a firm move date, no stress around updating their home for a sale as we buy as-is, and no hassle around estate agent viewings. It is far less stress to sell to us. Many customers that come through us via new home developers end up getting close to market value as they receive incentives on their onward purchase from the developer.
“In order to trade homes efficiently and profitably, we need to be excellent at valuing them. If we value a home too low, the deal won’t complete and if we value it too high, we will lose money. Unlike mortgage provider and estate agency valuations, our money is directly on the line with our valuation. This has meant a drive to build smart technology like SpringIQ, our proprietary valuation platform, which has helped make a Spring home valuation measurably more accurate than RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) or commonly used asset managers.
“We believe the best outcomes come from combining technology with human intelligence, unlike other valuation models that are purely AI driven, so have developed our exceptional underwriting team as determinedly as we have developed our technology.
“The opportunity in this industry comes from the tremendous inefficiencies in the UK residential property market which, at an average of six months, has one of the slowest home selling processes in the OECD, nearly three times slower than the US. This relatively glacial pace creates a great deal of uncertainty for home sellers who are under any sort of time pressure. More frustratingly, fall-throughs are very common in the UK, with one in 3 homes experiencing an offer pulling out, which resets the 6-to-9-month clock to sell a home. Spring is able to alleviate much of the madness of the UK home selling experience.”
Your career has taken you from investment banking in New York to founding the socially responsible Baby Hero, and now leading Spring. What’s your secret to rapidly mastering new sectors and building expertise that allows you to lead and transform entire business categories?
“My career has been connected by a drive to challenge myself in all the sectors in which I have worked. I like dynamic environments and really enjoy the building of businesses, working on growth and people strategy in particular.
“Everyone learns differently, and my brain gets switched on by throwing myself in at the deep end of projects, where research is needed to succeed. That research often comes via books. I read, a lot, across many genres from history to business to fiction. Books are a great way to expose myself to bigger ideas, questions and points of view and they play a significant role in my ability to lead change.
“Ultimately, I believe skills often trump experience. Fresh thinking, bold action and the humility to know what you don’t know are the building blocks of transformation.”
You and Shane Miller-Bourke have demonstrated how effectively the Co-CEO model can work since January 2023. What advantages has this leadership structure brought to Spring, and how has sharing the top role actually strengthened your strategic execution and decision-making capabilities?
“I am an advocate of the co-CEO model, which has been adopted by companies such as Spotify, Netflix and Oracle and according to a Harvard Business School study of 87 public companies results in better financial performance (9.5% average return vs 6.5% average return). Modern organisational leadership requires an enormous set of skills from relational and cultural to technical and operational and it isn’t realistic to expect all these qualities in a single person.
“Co-CEOs bring a larger set of abilities/experiences to the table, which means we can prioritise effectively, focusing on different parts of the business when conditions require. When our views differ, we have to bring strong arguments for our side and can’t fall back on our title/hierarchy. Not only does it make us better at our jobs, we make better decisions as a company.
“We also make decisions faster as we split the company’s reporting lines, allowing us to take responsibility for half the day-to-day decision-making. Other benefits include less burnout, greater resilience, broader representation at industry events and more bandwidth for concurrent projects.”
Baby Hero pioneered ethical e-commerce by funding clean birth kits and medical products in developing nations whilst building a successful children’s clothing brand. Now leading a major property enterprise, how have you continued championing purpose-driven business alongside commercial growth, and what exciting opportunities do you see for profit and purpose to amplify each other’s impact?
“I learned a lot building a social enterprise, most important of which was to have a clear revenue model and plan before anything else, including before designing impact. Most purpose-driven businesses focus on their purpose first but many of those goals remain unrealised as the revenue model receives less attention. Financial sustainability comes first, impact second.
“I have also learned that it isn’t necessary to have a purpose-driven model in order to make a significant positive impact, and this ability to do business ethically is possible for every company. Indeed, if all companies were built thoughtfully, with humans and communities in mind, we would likely be in a far better, more stable world than we are now.
“Spring is not a social enterprise but we have built it with purpose in mind, in particular our responsibility to our employees, to property sellers who use our services, and to the community in which we live. When we provide a transparent, principled and positive environment for our team, we are, by extension taking care of them, their mental and physical health, their families. In turn, our belief is that employees who have a great experience build great experiences for our customers. This is evident by our industry-leading net promoter score of 89 supported by a team, 96% of whom, recommend us as a great place to work.
“Many of the people who use our services are elderly as it is a popular product for those moving into retirement homes. This comes with significant responsibility as there can be many vulnerabilities for our older customers. As a result, we make sure our team have all had Dementia Friends training as well as Samaritans training for active, empathetic listening. There are many other ways we build care for our customers throughout their journey, as we know what a stressful time it is for many of them.
“Again, this care in the design of our customer journey is what purpose looks like. And this is what I think the future of purpose is in business. Human-centred design at every part of the customer journey, employee experiences that help them thrive in their life, not just at work.”
You joined what was then National Property Trade in 2018 to revamp digital marketing, became Chief Operating Officer within a year, and Co-CEO by 2023, which is an impressive progression. What capabilities and vision did you bring that accelerated your journey to the executive suite, and what advice would you give to ambitious professionals looking to fast-track their own leadership trajectory?
“When I joined we were a small company with a need for professionalisation in an industry with a poor public image. I initially joined to apply my digital marketing experience from Baby Hero to NPT’s lead generation. Once that work was done, other aspects of the business needed improvement, from the customer journey to employee management.
“When I joined, 10% of the company was women, and within a few years we had grown to 50%. Eventually,we moved to a co-CEO model to create bandwidth at the leadership level. We also work in tandem with our Executive Director and co-founder of the company, Cormac Henderson, who runs many of our most important transformations.
“If I were to give advice to ambitious professionals to fast-track their career, it would be toshadow as many people as you can in your company, to understand the details of how it works. This knowledge accumulates, connecting diverse strands and results in the great ideas that can turbo-charge your career. Relatedly, become an excellent listener, in tune to the needs of the team. Removing obstacles from the path of employees is one of the best uses of time and effort.”
Your openness about balancing demanding leadership responsibilities with being a working parent has resonated with many professionals. How have you built systems and a culture at Spring that allows high-performers to excel in their careers whilst honouring their personal commitments, and what success have you seen from this approach?
“When I started at NPT, building the right culture for our future success was a significant priority. Today, 96% of our employees recommend us as a great place to work, which we know because we survey them every year and create an annual list of actions based on their responses. This comes back to that very important theme of listening. We also are good at recognising our employees strengths and being comfortable with their differences.
“We encourage diversity of background, experience and thought and know it is an important part of building an innovative company. Our team includes a significant amount of neurodivergent employees, and we have continuous open dialogue about how to accommodate need for every brain to work at its best.
“Being human-centred, family-friendly comes naturally to us and all employees know they have flexibility for the demands and pleasures of their personal life. The team is relentlessly considerate of each other, which has made Spring a wonderful place to work and has allowed us to keep bringing in excellent talent. We have almost no employee attrition.
“This isn’t always a positive, but for now, as we continue in growth mode, there are increasing opportunities for the team, many of whom have moved to different roles as part of their career growth. We have built a valued career progression pathway that allows our team to keep moving forward with their ambitions. This is especially important for a small company which can’t always offer the same breadth of opportunities as a large company can.
“Another tool we have used to create an aligned and happy workforce is the psychometric test called “Working Genius”. The entire company is mapped according to this scale that measures the type of work that gives us energy and drains energy. It has allowed us to build well-balanced teams, staff projects with people who hold a particular strength and to give our team the ability to work with their strengths. All companies should have this type of understanding of their employees.”
Reflecting back on your career from Wall Street to Co-CEO of Britain’s largest home-buying service, what achievements are you most proud of, and what ambitious goals are driving Spring’s next chapter of growth?
“Ultimately, for me, having a positive impact on people is far more important than any other work achievement. “Have I been a good colleague? A good mentor and boss? Have the products I have worked on made the lives of our customers better, easier?” This is how I measure my achievements, and I see it as a never-ending target, something I need to show up and work on every day.
“Our 2019 fundraise was monumental for us as a business as it allowed us to keep the lights on during Covid, without needing to make any staff redundant, and as a result we picked up business when our competitors faltered. Likewise, after the UK’s mini-budget when cost of funds soared, we did an excellent job managing risk and customer needs. I am proud of helping build a fantastic working culture at Spring that has led to a loyal and happy team.
“Of course I co-founded a purpose driven company as well and in that time I am so pleased we were able to fund tens of thousands of birth kits for deprived mothers and newborns in rural Pakistan and Kenya. I hope that those babies grow up healthy and loved and contribute to the betterment of their community. That would be the best achievement of all.
“Spring’s next chapter of growth is about building greater efficiency and customer ease through automation and digitising more of the customer journey. We are also working on ways to speed up the conveyancing of properties we are buying and selling. We continue to fundraise for growth, both in our current model and for new lines to the business.”