signals pre-seed presents: Meisterwerk
signals presents companies, people and partners from the signals innovation ecosystem. This week, we have seven questions for Meisterwerk from our Founder Fellowship program.
1) What is Meisterwerk and what problem are you solving?
Meisterwerk is a B2B cloud solution for SME craftsmen and construction companies that makes job and resource planning 60% more efficient.
We found out that construction and craftsmen companies waste half of their time in the office with planning jobs and resources and handling constant changes. You have to realise that in the end, no building is built as it was planned. In every project — large and small — there are many intertwined events and sequential tasks that need to happen before the project is really completed and you can not foresee or plan for them.
Some examples: Delays of partners and material orders, defects, employees calling in sick or even bad weather. These can turn the daily schedule of our customers upside-down. Reacting fast, quick decision making and good communication with your people on the construction sites are key here. With Meisterwerk, we provide an easy to adopt and industry-specialised solution that empowers our customers to manage these multitude of obstacles more efficiently.
2) What makes your team special and what skills are you still looking for?
It’s the construction industry experience combined with our product and tech knowledge. We worked in construction companies ourselves before we went into the digital space, so we experienced the problem we are solving today at first hand. We understand our customers and how this market works and apply this knowledge to product and sales to successfully build and market a digital product in this industry.
In terms of staff, we are currently building up our sales and marketing team and we’re looking for employees with B2B and construction industry experience.
3) Why did you join the signals Founder Fellowship?
When we joined the Founder Fellowship, we had just finished our MVP and wanted to get pre-seed invest ready. Therefore, signals helped us to validate our product market strategy and business model, and connected us with the right people. In retrospect, it was very individual and specialied mentoring that focused exactly on the right things we needed.
4) What are you most proud of?
That question is easy to answer. We’re very proud of the positive feedback from our customers and their support through purchasing our product. Additionally, we are experiencing positive validation from investors.
We have seen interest in our solution from the media. Deutsche Welle covered our vision to help craftsmen and construction companies to master digital transformation in this video:
5) What is your biggest challenge, how do you tackle it?
Achieving much with limited resources. You have to consistently drive business and product forward to reach your KPIs. Therefore, it’s an ongoing learning process on how to prioritise and allocate your resources as well as personal time in the most efficient way, even if there’s seemingly no time. We’re constantly iterating on the results of our actions in every field and adjusting our focus. That also means being able to quickly change opinions and solutions that worked before.
6) What will you have achieved in 1 year?
In one year from now, we will have successfully raised our seed round and expanded into new markets as the German DACH countries and Scandinavia.
7) What one piece of advice would you give someone starting a company?
Think MVP in every aspect. Make your 80/20 rule a 60/40 and be comfortable going with that. Most times it will get you where you want, if not, you get the feedback to improve exactly what’s needed to achieve your goal and you save a lot of time.
