airfocus, the collaborative product management and roadmapping software startup from Germany, has just closed a €1.7 million seed round from pan-European VC, Nauta Capital. The Hamburg-based SaaS startup allows product managers and decision-makers in both enterprises and small businesses, to prioritise projects and features while aligning everyone across the organisation around their roadmaps.
Integrated with some of the most commonly used task management systems such as Trello, Jira, and Asana, airfocus provides an intuitive solution with ready-to-use templates for all kinds of planning use cases. Furthermore, to make strategies understandable and clear, the airfocus web-app is heavily built around visualising priorities and plans.
With a mission to empower businesses to make ‘better decisions’, airfocus was founded by Malte Scholz, Christian Hoffmeister, and Valentin Firak in 2018 out of frustration with fragmented decision-making processes in companies and the lack of planning tools in the market.
Malte Scholz, co-founder and CEO of airfocus explained: “The lack of strategic planning literary kills companies and we have big plans to change that. Allocating limited resources across projects and then communicating roadmaps are omnipresent challenges for most organisations, regardless of size or industry. Issues such as a lack of methodology, silo-thinking, reliance on gut-instinct, and ineffective tools lead to poor decision-making. At airfocus we want to help teams identify and visualise their priorities and give everyone a clear overview of what is important and what is not.”
According to Gartner research, 30% of all investments are wasted with ineffective roadmaps with companies not doing the right work. This glaring gap in the market for a modern strategy platform has propelled airfocus to rapidly attract over 300 global customers – from small businesses to large corporates including Nike, Shell, Johnson & Johnson, The Washington Post, and The Boston Consulting Group.
The company, which previously raised a pre-seed round from Picea Capital and business angels, will use the fresh capital to further enhance their product by utilising internal and external data sources to help businesses put decision-making on autopilot and achieve business goals. Additionally, the funding will enable airfocus to hire and triple their team across all functions to support their growth plans
Commenting on the investment, Guillem Sagué , Nauta’s Munich-based Partner who has joined airfocus’ board said: “airfocus has customers around the globe. We have been captivated by the growth and the global reach that airfocus is showing from such an early stage.”
