Introduction to the company

Problem statement

Building performance analyses require long manual tasks that don’t keep up with the pace of architectural design. To avoid missing deadlines, architects make design choices without real validation, risking that the concept performs too poorly to obtain building permits or sustainability certification.

Projects undergo delays, initial goals are compromised, the building value decreases.

The developers commissioning the project end up paying hundreds of consulting hours without a real value.

Solution

The startup replaces manual tasks with digital tools to deliver building engineering assessments with unpaired accuracy and speed. Our consultancy establishes an iterative feedback loop between architectural design and engineering performance, making sure that each design decision is the optimal choice towards the project’s goal. Developers can rest assured that their project is in line with the expectations, de-risking decision-making while saving hours of expensive consultancy.

What is unique?

At the heart of the company lies our self-developed software that enables ultra-fast quantification and comparison of design options. This provides a unique competitive advantage – especially in a market dominated by hourly-based tariffs - and makes the business scalable by reducing the need of a large team to cope with high volume of projects.

Business model

The consultancy has a hourly tariff, sold to the building developer or to the architect – depending on the project’s contractual structure. While the core product is represented by energy and environmental assessments, the company also provides other analyses necessary to the achievement of sustainability certifications (e.g. DGNB), with an extra price. Such analyses have a small cost for the company but a high value for the customer, thus can largely increase the project’s profit margin.

The beachhead customers are sustainability-oriented firms: having the double struggle of fulfilling mandatory regulation plus voluntary sustainability certifications, these are more willingly to try and invest in new solutions. The initial market is Denmark, followed by Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, where regulations are tighter and the focus on sustainable buildings is higher.

Opportunity and market

From 2023, new Danish regulation will enter into force, requiring a higher level of detail in technical/environmental quality of buildings, for which the consulting industry is still unprepared. The startup is already working on automating the required analyses, to use this new regulation as an opportunity to enter the market.

Development and current status

The startup is in its second year of life. During the first 6 months the focus has been on software development. Then, the team carried out pilot to test software and value perceived by the users, in different types of projects (residential, offices, renovation, new construction). Consequently, both consultancy model and software underwent several, continuous changes and improvements. The startup is now in a 1-year incubator programme to finalize the development of the software.

Questions for the panel:

1. The business model is influenced by a complex and traditional industry with a nuanced value-chain. The service of the company touches developers, but also architects, engineers, with different benefits and values. How is the company’s business strategy fitting in this complexity? Feedback and discussion.

2. The company’s go-to-market strategy: opportunity, first sales, beachhead customers, sales mix. Let’s discuss our plan out of the presentation, to find out strong and weak points and stimulate new ideas.

3. The startup team needs to grow to start operating, which points out to the need of investments. How can the startup improve its attractiveness towards investors? Is it a good strategy to aim at being acquired by a large engineering group, so as to simplify access to capital and clients?

______________________________________________