Please find the German version of this press release here.
19th November 2019 – airfocus, a collaborative product management and roadmapping software, has today announced closing a €1.7M seed round from pan-European VC, Nauta Capital.
The German SaaS company allows product managers and decision-makers in both enterprises and small businesses, to prioritize projects and features while aligning everyone across the organization 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, the airfocus web-app is heavily built around visualizing priorities and plans to make strategies understandable and clear.
With a mission to empower businesses to make ‘better decisions’, the Hamburg-based startup 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 explains: “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 organizations, 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 visualize 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 its product by utilizing 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 its team across all functions to support its 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.”
“We are thrilled to have closed this round from partners who understand our space and have the international network to help us take our company to the next level,” added Malte.
For more information about this Press Release, contact:
Malte Scholz: malte@airfocus.com
Sam Ahmed: sam.ahmed@nautacapital.com
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Established in Hamburg in 2018, airfocus GmbH offers modern software solutions for prioritization, roadmapping, and product management. The cloud-based software (SaaS) is now in use by hundreds of companies on all continents. Existing customers include the Washington Post, eToro, Freeletics, Shell, and Eventim, among others. For more information, visit our homepage.
Nauta Capital is a pan-European Venture Capital firm investing in early-stage technology companies, with offices in London, Barcelona, and Munich. Nauta’s main areas of investment interests include B2B Software propositions, disruptive digital media companies, and enabling technologies for mobile and the Internet. Nauta has €365M million under management and invests in Western Europe. Nauta has led investments in more than 50 companies including Brandwatch, Marfeel, Nextail, Talentry, zenloop, Mercaux, BeMyEye, Geoblink, Smarp, and Smart Protection. Find out more www.nautacapital.com
Malte Scholz