Meet our Premium Member: Atilla Färber, Co-Founder & CEO of Raumpioniere

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing one of our Premium Members: Atilla Färber, the Co-Founder and CEO of Raumpioniere AG. It’s always great to see our Startup Members succeed and to learn about their how and why. Read on to find out more about Raumpioniere AG and be inspired by their story!

Introducing the Startup: Raumpioniere AG

We at RAUMPIONIERE have taken up the challenge of developing real estate without land. To be more specific: With our application, we localize and analyze densification potential for every single property at the push of a button – as-a-service. The magic behind is the combination of publicly available data (what is built on a certain plot?) with our exclusive proprietary building regulations data. We have digitalized a great number of Switzerland’s building regulations so far. This means that we can calculate the densification potential for any property – quickly, reliably, and also very accurately.

But why do we do this? For us, building on greenfield sites is definitely yesterday’s news. Or, in other words: From now on it’s no longer possible to continue developing real estate in the same way as today. What just​ starts to happen in the real estate industry is the restrictive use of land as a resource, the big wave of renovation and optimization of existing buildings, and the densification of urban areas – and not only here in Switzerland, but everywhere where the pressure on urban areas is imminent. And all the players in the real estate industry are already familiar with this huge challenge. So, densifying and optimizing is actually the name of the game. And this is exactly where RAUMPIONIERE comes into play.

RAUMPIONIERE was founded in December 2020 in St. Gallen and today consists of a team of 9 people. Until April 2022, we have financed our startup by ourselves. We have been live since May 1, 2022, and have already been able to win our first renowned business customers such as Walde, Implenia, and Häring.

What are your plans for 2022/2023? What is your long-term vision?

In Q2 of 2022, we closed our seed financing. And now we continue to invest in our market entry and in the further development of our highly innovative products. In addition, we are already testing the replicability of our business model in other countries. In the long term, we want to turn the way real estate is valued online on its head and also make a major contribution to accelerating densification and thus protecting our living space.

What has been the biggest success that you have achieved in your startup?

We have made very good progress in the past 1.5 years: We have founded a company, created a sexy name and a cool logo, created a couple of innovative products, constantly questioned, validated, and optimized these products, and developed and discarded business models, created new models, participated in pitches, met countless exciting people, won investors for us, converted our company into an Ltd. Company (AG) and successfully launched RAUMPIONIERE AG. So, there have been an incredible number of successes along the way – but the biggest one for us was probably that we were able to create an extremely powerful team from a small group of very, very cool cracks.

If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? What are your biggest learnings?

First of all, I would definitely do it again! Then three points spontaneously come to my mind:

1. Go into the market even faster and test as early as possible if there is a market at all. Don’t wait until you have brought a product to perfection. Only one example: Without us knowing it, our beta version was published on a test website in a big business newspaper. Of course, we were surprised and in the beginning, we didn’t like it. However, we learned very quickly that what we had was met with a lot of interest. In the end, we were able to win our first customers and even an investor. So being courageous eventually pays off!
2. The second point is somewhat related to the first point: I would try to focus even faster on the business model and the products.
3. As an inexperienced startup person, you inevitably get to hear a lot of third-party opinions -in part, you are also somewhat dependent on them. I would question these much more strongly and no longer make decisions that you have to make dependent on these opinions.

In retrospect, we have made the best and above all the greatest progress where we have decided ourselves and taken the reins into our own hands.

One piece of advice for someone who is just starting out with their startup?

In general, you can say that the startup phase is the phase where you have to go from a lot of uncertainty to certainty – as quickly as possible. Therefore, an important piece of advice is: Test quickly, preferably by tomorrow, whether there is a market or not. Or in other words: Are customers willing to pay money for your product? If you know that, then you have won, to put it bluntly, already half of the battle.

What does it mean to you to be a member of the Swiss Startup Association? 

Today we live in a world that is strongly based on networks. Accordingly, it makes a lot of sense, especially for a start-up that wants to move forward quickly, to network. For us, the Swiss Startup Association is a must when it comes to building a network. We look forward to making contacts with like-minded people, but also simply exciting personalities who are enthusiastic about topics such as entrepreneurship, innovation, digitalization, and many more. So we clearly recommend joining the Swiss Startup Association because they can provide suitable offers for startups, such as their fabulous network, and also improved purchasing conditions for third-party services/products (software, for example).

A big thank you to Atilla Färber and the Raumpioniere AG team for sharing your story with us! 

If you want to know more about Raumpioniere AG, visit www.raumpioniere.io

Would you like to be portrayed as well? Become a premium member now, and our team will contact you shortly!