Startup of the Week at Tyinternety.cz

Czech start-up Spaceti began with a focus on saving people in buildings during emergencies. Over time the firm, headquartered in Prague with a branch in London, decided to go further. Its services now save people time, help them find their way, and optimize buildings, their management, and their operational costs.

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“We concentrate on key customers with the potential for long-term scaling. We try to meet their needs, which is why we often start with smaller pilot projects. We’ve opened talks with some of them to extend our solutions to other buildings in their portfolios,” Spaceti CEO Max Verteletskyi told Tyinternety in an interview.

Investors are bullish on the firm — Spaceti received CZK 28 million in investments this May from Reflex Capital led by Ondřej Fryc. Radomír Čech, CEO of the Fast Forward/Y&amp;R communication agency, also took part in the investment.
<h5>In one sentence, tell us what Spaceti does.</h5>
Spaceti digitizes buildings using a mobile application and smart devices that together help improve people’s wellbeing, optimize space, and cut operating costs.
<h5>What makes you better than your competition?</h5>
Contrary to other providers, we have integrated hardware, a web-based platform, and software with an open API.
<h5>What are the markets where you operate?</h5>
In terms of customers, we’re active in the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland.
<h5>Where did you get the idea for this business?</h5>
At first, we concentrated on saving people in emergencies, focusing on evacuating them to the nearest safe emergency exit. Today we’ve advanced our products and services. We save people time, helping them find their way, and save money by optimizing management and operating costs.
<h5>How many customers do you have?</h5>
We hope to exceed 20 customers by the end of the year.
<h5>How are your revenues and what is your growth rate?</h5>
We are growing quite quickly, but we’re focused on our key customers with the potential for long-term upscaling. We try to meet their needs, which is why we often start with smaller pilot projects. We’ve opened talks with some of them about expanding the solution to other buildings in their portfolio.
<h5>What developments do you expect in the near future?</h5>
In general, we expect demand for digitizing buildings to grow. We’re focus on expanding the functionality of our applications and our portfolio of hardware sensors while at the same time offering our hardware and software separately. Finally, we’re always seeking partners to expand our network so that we can concentrate on developing the technology as such.
<h5>Have you received investment funding, or are you financing in some other way?</h5>
We financed the firm out of our own pocket for 9 months. In May 2017, we received a CZK 28 million infusion from Reflex Capital and Fast Forward. We’re grateful for the extensive support and advice both investors gave us.
<h5>How big is your team? Are they all in one office or do you have branches abroad?</h5>
We currently have 21 employees from 11 countries. We’re headquartered in Prague and have a branch office in London.
<h5>Do you plan to expand?</h5>
We’re planning to expand to North America in January 2018 and we have projects planned for New York. We also looking at Asia having received interest from Dubai and Australia, as well as South Africa, but there we’re hoping to expand with the help of partners.
<h5>Where do you see your startup in 5 years?</h5>
We want to be the standard bearer for digitizing buildings.
<h5>Thinking back, when did you get yourself screwed up? How can other firms avoid them?</h5>
When developing our own hardware, we ran into trouble with delivery times and discovered that we can’t control everything. For example, one deployment ended up lasting until midnight.

Read the original article in Czech at <a href="http://tyinternety.cz/startupy/startup-tydne-79-spaceti-diky-kteremu-se-neztratite-uvnitr-budov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://tyinternety.cz/startupy/startup-tydne-79-spaceti-diky-kteremu-se-neztratite-uvnitr-budov/</a>.

Startup of the Week at Tyinternety.cz

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