This story was migrated from our old blog, originally published on April 8th, 2021.
New Blog
This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.
Proptech Capmo Replaces Pen and Paper with Digital Workflows and Smart Construction Analytics
Construction is likely the biggest industry in the country of the people listening or watching, but it is also likely the least digital industry.Florian Biller, CEO and Co-Founder Capmo
Tune in to our Internet Radio Station here:
Subscribe Here
Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here:
I liked the work in the startup. It was more future oriented than my stays at corporatesFlorian Biller, CEO and Co-Founder Capmo
Media Partnership with Munich Startup
Munich Startup is the official startup portal for Munich and the surrounding region. It was developed by the City of Munich, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Munich and Upper Bavaria and the four entrepreneurship centers of the Munich universities within the framework of the Entrepreneurship Strategy Munich. You can learn more here: https://en.munich-startup.de/
The biggest challenge in construction is not the design, but the execution. That is where we help.Florian Biller, CEO and Co-Founder Capmo
The Founder
This time we talk to Florian Biller (https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-biller/, https://www.crunchbase.com/person/florian-biller) the CEO and co-founder of Munich-based proptech startup Capmo (https://www.capmo.de/). Florian spent quite some time studying abroad at Tel Aviv University in Israel, University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, as well as in the US at the American University and UC Berkley. He also worked at Roland Berger, Deutsche Börse, Microsoft, BMW and at the sports startup Feeletics (https://www.freeletics.com/en/).
The biggest reason construction projects fail is that the construction crew on the ground does not have the most recent plans at hand.Florian Biller, CEO and Co-Founder Capmo
The Startup
Construction sides are usually littered with large and bulky paper-based construction plans. It is also a hassle to keep all people up to date with recent changes, especially on larger constructions. Capmo (https://www.capmo.de/, https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/capmo) wants to change that and digitize the plans so everybody is up to date all the time.
At Capmo, we focused on purpose on an industry, that is not “sexy” on the surface, but what we do has a big impact.Florian Biller, CEO and Co-Founder Capmo
Venture Capital Funding
Capmo is currently VC funded by several funds focused on B2B SaaS companies. They are looking to expand globally with their clients in 2022 and may need additional investments to do so.
The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, April 8th, 2021, at 17.00 CET (Frankfurt/Paris/Zürich/Milano)
The Audio Interview
The Audio Podcast will be published at the same time.
Feedback
Reach out to us, here is our audience survey, to give us feedback, suggest topics, interview partners or just to say “Hallo!” https://forms.gle/mLV6mVKwGwKuut8BA
The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:LinkedInTwitterEmail
Follow us
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/startuprad.io/
Keep Up to Date
Here is our publication calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=MDEyaTI3YWs1MjVxaTNzbWdqbDh2OXRiaW9AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ
Transcript
[0:00] Music.
[0:08] That I owe you were podcast and YouTube blog covering the German.
[0:13] Music.
[0:20] Hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from startupradio at allyour startup podcast and YouTube blog today I’m bringing you another interview on our 24/7 internet radio station just ask Alexa for play startupradioor on our syndicate with our syndication partner IBT our Network the internet and business growth radio big mental high five to eight guysand of course you can also find us on our newsletter on sub stack.
[0:52] I said that and this is actually in media Corporation with Munich startups the local startup block,in unique as you can already guess and surprisingly I do have an entrepreneur from Munich here with me hey Florian how you do and now thanks for having me I’m I’m doing great,it’s really good to have you here and we are already diving in as always we link down here in the show notes not only your personal LinkedIn profile but of course also dcompany website and I went through a little bit your CV and it appears youETA Pierce you study quite a lot at Ludwig Maximilian University one of the best onesin Germany done that minich but you also spend time like semesters abroad in American University killer wife University UC Berkeleyand universitatis and gallon you made a master’s degree can you tell us just a tiny bit about that before we go into would you really did as an entrepreneur.Yes thanks for having me Joss Oh and before restarting capmo I was.
[2:09] I wasn’t doing my student life so I as you mentioned I am originally from Munich.Most people noted for for beer and soccer but has a pretty big startup Tech seen by now.So pretty happy to have been grown up there went to went to the LMU which is the big university there and there I got first touch points with with local entrepreneurs.And got the chance to move to.Startup places or cities that are more well-known so I was really lucky to get the chance to spend half a year at UCL in Berkeley.And also in Tel Aviv and would really fascinated me about that is.The mindset of the people always pushing forward versus at LMU or in my business Bachelors it was morethe basics and the big corporate world that I learned so then really well combined combined everythinghaving had the chance to get to know the u.s. ecosystem these rally ecosystem but also having that German and swisssweets or swiss touch from from st. Gallen which which really well equipped me with with all the basics beyond the.
[3:28] Storytelling and the technology side of things that that is pushed a lot in the US and Israelyes and before we talked you did some internships will be not going to go into this but you’ve seen Dodger buzzer Roland Berger BMW and Microsoft from the inside but we’ve found,actually interesting you started out with freeletics that is a sports app and tool that actually shows you just how to work out with your own body weight,on your cell phone and,and I can I tried it personally and one point in my past and I can attest it’s really really tiresome just to work with your own body weightwhat’d he do dare and how did you like it yeah that that ties well together and with the with the first question,because it was a project we or what we did there in incorporation with the,the center for digital technology and management which is a munich-based.
[4:36] University program you’re doing parallel and what they do is they force you to or they enable you to work with a with a local startup and we were lucky enough to spend half a year as freeletics.Back then it was 20 20 2014 so pretty early for them and,what we did is try to look into gamification Concepts on how to motivate people to do sports with their own body weight even.
[5:08] Yeah if like you haven’t tried it out once and it seemed too hard how can I use gamification and user experience too.To push you to do it twice and three times and for my habit out of it that was really the first time I saw started from from inside such as scaling.And that was what what also motivated me a lot too,to go in that direction because it’s more Dynamic more entrepreneurial and are future oriented than what I’ve seen in Consulting at Holland PA go over what you mentioned that Microsoft octopus.
[5:43] And actually before we move on.I do believe a freeletics is now available almost across the world in German and English,yeah it’s I think 20 30 or whatever language is so it’s globallywe will link it down here just to make sure you can still work out if you’re in your part of the world in lockdown or not and would have found very interesting then for some reason you just.Went to Hong Kong as a venture analyst with Nova Founders Capital how did he go from,Munich.To become Venture and list in Hong Kong I totally get why you moved from a starter position into a VC and all this position but why do Hong Kong.
[6:38] To be honest it’s I had a deal with my girlfriend so because.We were planned to be one year apart me half a year in Berkeley and then the half year after,she’s studying in Hong Kong so we decided to mix that and she worked while I was in Berkeley she worked at the us as well as an intern.And I decided after Berkeley and not going back home to Munich but.Go with her to Hong Kong and was perfect match to it to get the chance to dive into operational BC work there and that’s what I did at Nova founders.And after your girlfriend been done with a study so you basically moved back.
[7:24] And yeah that was planned and after you degree you,it looks like you’re right out of your master’s degree you started capmo dproptech startup in Munich which everybody who’s watching this on YouTube can still see you are wearing very nicely on your shirt so.Europe proptech you guys are building buildings right correct.What we’re doing whatever one has to understand on the podcast or wherever he or she is watching the construction industry isno matter what country you’re watching from construction is most likely the biggest industry in your in your country.
[8:09] But if you look at how they workit’s also very likely that’s it’s the least digital industry in your country particularly in Europe construction is second least digital industryonly the hunting and fishing sector is is less digital over here and.I I could totally get why hunting and fishing I see a big a big future for virtual reality there but go aheadif the lockdown continues there’s a huge potential for VR fishing I’m pretty sure butyeah my grandparents originally up from from the construction industry so I always had.Kind of an idea how it’s going and that it’s not going that well and particularly not that digital and when we started right out of University we said if we want to start something we want to start.
[9:11] Building literally something that that has an impact on society and does not just do a tiny little process better but really help an entire industry to move from.
[9:24] Plans paper pens and fax machines to working digitally having fun again in their jobs,and to be honest most rewarding if you help those people just get a tidy little bit better in their workwhat we get is our Flats our house has finished quicker cheaper and also more sustainably because there was also a driver.Most people don’t know but construction accounts for for for.Roughly three times the CO2 emissions then the whole airline industry and whenever you,do a bit there on the efficiency level you have a you have an enormous impact not just on the people but also on on the industry and the society,and when somebody is looking at your website as I’m doing right now you see a lot of plants a lot of pictures a lot of talk about digitalization and what do you guys,actually offering because what I had in mind what the hell what I had in mind when you guys when I first went through your.
[10:33] The website was basically that you just bring construction plans to tablets or everybody is like literally on the same plan.Is that the case or do you actually guys do really more stuff and how did he come up with the.
[10:51] Idea was it just efficiency driving or was it did you bump into like any problem in your life.Know what we are doing at capmo is if you’re a construction manager or an architect.And you work with capmo you can be sure that your project is a success because the biggest challenge and construction is not.Designing something perfectly but actually executing it and getting it done so what we’re doing is we enable everybody on a construction site,to be on the same page have all the information they need so that being plans but also the collaboration aspect and.This this goes for the so digitizing processes like having the plans online having all your information at hand but also automating these processes so.Imagine you’re on a construction site you’re building a new Hotel 6 600 rooms that all look the same.
[11:52] That all have to be fitted that all I don’t know power plugs have to be checked.And you just lose the overview if you if you do not digitally keep track of everything and that’s what we’re doing in the first instancebut it doesn’t end there because if you if you kept track of all the 700 broken Power Plus.You need you need to fix them so in the background there’s a whole workflow going on that supports you in managing the whole construction site so basically what we’re doing is we help construction professionals,to finish projects on time and on budget by providing them with a simple tool that helps to coordinate and collaborate,so project management solution or as we call it construction management so you guys basically make sure if like there’s an update on a.
[12:48] On a construction plan that everybody has it as soon as this plan is released on the tablets so they assurethis is not a flat building but actually we have to build a tower on it and not half of the crew knows and half of the crew doesn’t know that’s that’s exactly it and you want to leave it do but one of the main reasons why construction projects fail or Adelaide,is because an architect prints out the plan at home puts it on the construction side.Updates it all the time but doesn’t drive again to the construction site to to update the paper plant there so that people who actually built the building have the wrong information and just build the wall is wrong.And when the architect arrives on site two weeks later he realizes.What the heck this is totally wrong and half of the side has to be tear down again and equipping everybody with the latest information.Just prevents this and you’re just building the project much more sustainable and much more cost-efficient and you.
[13:52] For everybody who doesn’t know some construction plans as they made in Germany they usually includeeverything down to your life the power energy and heater plans and you’re not only,tracking this and helping it to keep up-to-date but you’re also digitizing the process ofbuilding right like when they’re something to fix basically what you do in Germany if you have like a new building for example you are a board townhouse and you basically then walk throughthe whole building one final time and then you say okay it’s approved or we have some stuff we need fixing and that’s also what you doing.Correct and that’s that’s the same process globally to put it very simply,first we digitize all that so you have the plans with you you can take your notes digitally second we automate as you said all the processes in the background.And third if you have done this we a couple of thousands tens of thousands of projects you also learn from it so what we can do in the future is.To tell you hey on a typical Hotel project with 500 rooms that takes normally one and a half years.
[15:16] If you mess up this and that and that face that will most likely take you one month longer to finish the project.And being able to digitize automate and in the last step also predict how the processes will be that helps it to plant everything better because.
[15:36] There’s there’s really nothing worse than having a family you tell them yes your house is ready in April they show up with the suitcases in April and it’s just done in June,that’s that’s really not good and if you tell them in January that it’s delayed two month at least they can plan,also for like when you arebuilding like your own house in many places of the world this is not the usual process but basically.On average happens in Germany outside of the big cities where you buy an apartment you basically buy a lot of land.And then you start talking to your architect and you build like an almost 100%tailored house and you guys also offer the option for like a diary there for the house builder in door in Deutsch house hair bow hair.Um to actually really keep track of what he’s doing and and make memories good or bad.It’s it’s slightly different it’s you can yeah it’s kind of a daily report.
[16:51] But that’s yes on the one hand if an owner wants to see that that’s that’s good but more important it has.It has process implications so you want to have documented the process how it is going so everybody has the knowledge Who’s involved with the project.What is going well what has been finished whatnot because just imagine 30 different subcontractors working together on a project.If you finish the walls late.
[17:25] The the painter should know because otherwise he or she arrives.Weak weak too early and has to go again because the wall is not built so there’s nothing to paint,and these daily reports that we offer for construction project really help everybody to understand hey where is the project at the moment so it helps you to map reality against the plan.It’s always good if you keep your plan in line with reality I’ve heard okay yeah I get that one and basicallyyou are digitizing the planning and.Hopefully helping with the execution of the building so basically what what is like the,type of plants you taking in because I assume not every architecture standing there in front of his big plan that’s a photograph with his or her cell phone and then puts it into the app thatworks I assume with API from the planning software either that correct so what our input is.
[18:35] We do not do the design or the designing of buildings and that’s imported from normally.CID system so AutoCAD or you name it that all the engineers and all the architects.Noble hard and some and some integrated directly some use PDF drag and drop so that depends very much on the how technical Advance the users,tennis I would assume like personallythe more digital the plan is like not only picture not only PDF but if you consume like in an evening look where the the power lines actually suppose I was young that’s quite helpful if you have everythingalldigital you guys are around for like now two years we are talking in times of Corona and still partial lockdown here in Germany even though there is a silver lining on the horizon can you tell us a little bit how you,personally like capmo experienced this lock down here in Germany,yeah what I would answer that in two ways so how do we from a business side of things.
[19:47] See that and how is it going it’s going pretty well because as I as I explained before construction is the second least digital industry in Europewhich is crazy and what they are feeling is oh now there’s Corona and suddenly I have to think about,how do I collaborate with each other how do we manage to get the Project’s done even when we cannot meet everyday orbeyond the construction site every day so there’s a huge push towards digitization in construction at the moment because people understand or a forced to understand,that the digital collaboration and working together and automating processes really makes their life easier so.Corona had a very positive impact their so to say because it gave the industry a huge push towards digitization and obviously we’re benefiting a ton of that,second how are we doing internally at capmo so.That’s that’s a challenge and not because we don’t have all the tools that’s obviously the case we’re using,zoom and slackened all the collaboration tools here you have in mind but over the past year since the lockdown is going on.We added more people to the team than have been.
[21:08] On the team before the lockdown so we added more than 30 people you guys could pay a crew by more than 100 percent right correct and in terms of people.And that’s a challenge because some people have only met their colleagues remotely yet.But we adapted I think pretty well for a lot of things from your from your routine one-on-one random Zoom meeting roulette that you have to.The new Diane to having remote cooking events together which really well ties the team together.And what’s really motivating for everyone on the team is that everyone that everyone is super pumped by it but what we are doing because this covid situation shows shows us internally and all our customers,but what we doing is really overdue and and can help people even in the pandemic or to better cope with it because they still can run the project,hmm I see so you guys are I see I’m really looking forward to the opening of the opening up of Germany again.
[22:25] I was wondering what are your next plans and how good how are you guys financed by now ya then.Good question we started capmo.Roughly three years ago and got our first financing round two years ago by now have had raised two rounds directly 10 Millions.From from B2B SAS focused investors which I’m very happy with.
[22:54] And for us the next step we have with more than more than tripled our or base in the last year and that’s also the plan for this year.And.Next up for us early next year is looking into different markets where only active in Central Central Europe at the moment,and with that also very open to it investor conversations there’s somethingthis year who if somebody approaches us who is who very well fits with us that might be an option we’re open to that but other than that.
[23:34] That’s also a topic for for next year what in terms of markers what are you looking at like North America Asia Africa South America what would you also.First your geography of expansion and secondly are you also looking for like local investors in those geographies.
[23:59] Yes so what again to two-fold answer so where are we active at the moment,and we focus very much on the.The central European Market at the moment and all our customers are from there but what’s happening some of our customers are big firms who do projects all over the world,so cut more is going with them to all these different locations.But from a focus perspective the the company’s we target will be headquartered in Europe.But that means also that they are taking they are taking a couple more to construction sites around the globe.So customers mostly located in Europe construction projects are located around the globe I see see see see see okay that answers this question.
[24:57] I do believe we covered now almost everything important you think we got we forgot any important aspect.I think one important aspect that I always mention when you’re when you’re starting a start-up or when you phoning something.There.
[25:17] Are there different kinds of how you start so we on on purpose focus on an industry that for many people in The Tech Community at First Sight sounds or looks very unsexybut I think that’s that’s a learning that I want to give to everyone.Don’t don’t judge the book by its cover and construction is really an industry that is that is responsible for the biggest CO2 emissions.Of all it’s the industry that that builds your flat do it it’s the industry that builds UC Berkeley or whatever universities people are listening from.And I think one as an entrepreneur or even if you’re only interested in startups you should looknot only on the tech or the Cool Tech the startup is doing but really onon the industry that that the Venture is changing and I’m super proud on that that we have that we have found an industry where have a huge impact.
[26:18] That’s really worthwhile pursuing because it’s so big you help so many people and,yeah it’s not unsexy at all that always reminds me of an issue of discussion around as a hosting like a talk show and they were several,robot visors when robot Rising was just starting out and one of the guys said investing is the opposite of sexy yeah I really know where you’re going but we try to keep it,still as entertaining it to possible flow yet.
[26:52] Thank you it was a great pleasure having you as a guest here looking forward to to get an update from you like next year.
[27:00] Perfect and obviously anybody interested in joining cup more or helping us for the growth we have.Roughly 20 open positions so check out capmo.com or dot d e.Or ping me on LinkedIn and of course the down here in the show notes way ever you are watching this or listening to us there are show notes and you can of course find the link to the company website there,thank you very much perfect tell thanks a lot for having me take care my pleasure by.
[27:33] If you are a professional looking at the European startup scene Germany is a place you cannot miss.
[27:39] Music.
[27:50] Most likely you have never heard or read anything only startups before an English but you will in the future be ahead of the curve And subscribe to.
[28:00] Music.
Comments