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Company background

The company works in digitization of calculations and procedures, mostly in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, with the objective of improving design and sustainability outcomes. We design and develop digital tools that allow clients to run and manage engineering workflows and calculations - lowering their risk and reducing technical bottlenecks in their workflows.

Product

We have developed, commercialised and have a growing client base on our cloud platform for running wind, sun and daylight simulations.

These types of building simulations are an integrated part of designing sustainable buildings. The simulations and calculations involved are often very heavy. Managing the required software, hardware and training in-house is a significant burden for many firms. The platform gives customers access to the vast amount of computation resources available in the cloud, with elastic pricing that scales with their needs. This is an industry first and game-changer for time/cost complexity of carrying out these design calculations.

Initial feedback from clients has indicated that the platform lowers their overhead costs and removes workflow bottlenecks by an order of magnitude. Transforming calculations that previously took days or weeks of compute time down to only a few minutes or hours and improving sustainable design feedback.

Generally, architects and engineers have to choose between expensive providers who only offer limited cloud-base simulations or running it on their own hardware. With our platform, we offer the power of the cloud for a range of simulation types - at low cost. We also differentiate from others by allowing users to execute their simulations directly from their existing CAD software or other tools of choice - without having to learn another complicated toolset.

Business Model

The platform is a pay-per-use type of service. We only charge customers for the number of CPU-hours they use. Customers prepay an amount in exchange for credits. By having an effectively cost-per-simulation, we differentiate from traditional building physics providers, who charge a costly minimum annual subscription. Many architectural firms, we have been in contact with, find our price model an attractive offer, as the annual subscription for other providers is excessive and does not support their business needs - particularly in early and concept design stages. We offer training and support upon request from clients, as an additional source of revenue.

Clients

Our target customers are architects and engineers. Engineers often use building simulations to verify that the building meets governmental or other requirements. They typically run high accuracy and heavy simulations. Architects use simulations in their early design phase to inform and improve the design. They often run many less accurate simulations to be able to follow the rapid design iterations they have.

Market

The building physics and simulation market is global - with growing requirements from companies and universities around the world to carry out these calculations as part of sustainable design and due-diligence. As the demand for green and sustainable buildings grows, so will the market for simulations to support that.

Tier 1 architectural firms as BIG, Henning Larsen and 3XN have already signed on, while the platform was only an early prototype. We see that as a strong indication that other firms like them - as well as Tier 2 & 3 architectural firms who want to compete - will be interested to use the platform as well. We already have had meetings with companies from around the world: DP Architects (Singapore), Gensler (Singapore/USA), Smith+Gill (USA), Yale University (USA), Transolar (Germany), Mannes-Tifs (Italy), EGM (Netherlands), Mad Architects (Norway)

We will grow our European market share from a successful market entry in Copenhagen. A (co-founder) has an extended network in Australia and we are setting up a franchise there to entry the Australia and Asia Pacific market.

Competitors

Currently there is no other firm that offers building simulations in the cloud. Typically, competitors focus on a single simulation type. SimScale and IngridCloud both offer a CFD cloud platform, but do not provide functionality for daylight. Similarly, there are cloud platforms for daylight, but they do not offer CFD.

The market right now is dominated by “traditional local” software, that you install on your own computer.

Growth Potential

As the market for cloud simulations are still young, we expect that we can grow our revenue, the first couple of years with 200-300% per year, with the right marketing and sales effort.

Management and team

A, co-founder. A has a Ph.d in Mechanical Engineering 15 years of experience as a sustainable building consultant. A has during his career worked extensively with building physics and has created the predecessors to Compute.

B, co-founder. B has a Msc. in Architectural Engineering.

He is the lead developer of the platform. B has an extended knowledge of building physics, software development and cloud technologies.

Financing

We are currently bootstrapping the operation, with revenue from consulting.

We have secured a grant from Innovationsfonden to keep adding new functionality to the platform.

Status

We currently have a working product with paying customers. We are currently working on growing our client base, while adding features.

Questions for the panel

1: Go To Market strategy – discussions focusing on

a. Customer segmentation

b. Unique Selling Proposition

c. Price model/structure

d. Marketing activities

e. Sales strategy

2: Strategic partnerships – which partners would be beneficial to work with in order for the company to successfully roll out the solution?

a. How can we structure agreements to accelerate the growth?