In 2017, Malte Scholz, then a project manager at a 200-person startup, was struggling to find a product management tool that worked both for him and the teams under his purview. After piloting a few solutions, he eventually decided to create his own — and built a business around it.
That turned out to be a wise move.
Today, Scholz’s business, Airfocus, has ~800 customers, including Caterpillar, The Washington Post and Orange, and annual recurring revenue hovering around the “single-digit” millions, according to Scholz.
Evidently pleased with the momentum, investors are pouring money into Airfocus, most recently in the form of a $7.5 million tranche led by Newion with participation from XAnge, Nauta, Riverside Acceleration Capital and Picea Capital. (To date, Airfocus has raised $15 million.)
“Despite the broader slowdown in tech, we’re in the fortunate position of still experiencing rapid growth,” Scholz told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Our operations are efficient, with a burn rate in the low six figures — positioning us well to navigate any potential challenges ahead.”
Airfocus, which Scholz co-founded with Valentin Firak and Christian Hoffmeister, provides a modular platform with workspaces and templates for product management use cases. Using Airfocus, teams can track progress and OKRs in one place and build product roadmaps, which can be consolidated into product portfolios.
Image Credits: Airfocus
Scoring frameworks within Airfocus help prioritize goals, Scholz says, while a dashboard to consolidate insights from various channels (e.g. a user feedback form) help inform next steps. All roadmaps, plans and launch calendars can be shared internally or externally via branded front-end portals configured to accept feedback.
“Product managers often juggle spreadsheets and disjointed tools, struggling to align execution with strategy,” Scholz said. “Our solution [is a platform] that’s flexible enough to suit each team’s unique needs while ensuring strategic alignment and efficiency … Airfocus [provides] a unified system that adapts to diverse workflows, helping manage strategy, OKRs, user needs, prioritization and team alignment with clear roadmaps.”
Now, Airfocus isn’t the only company on the block going after the product management software market. Outside of incumbents like Aha, there’s Cycle, for example, and ProductBoard.
But Airfocus isn’t resting on its laurels.
Scholz says that the company, which a source familiar with the matter tells TechCrunch is valued in the “double digit” millions currently, is investing in “significant” enterprise features like team fields, a public API, AI functionality for feedback processing and user insights and integrations with third-party systems such as Miro and Figma. Airfocus also intends to launch a new tool, Airfocus Docs, designed to help product managers articulate product strategy and guidance.
“The capital we’ve raised will back key initiatives including updating our messaging, scaling our outbound sales to attract larger customers and refining our enterprise playbook for landing major deals,” Scholz said. “Our primary goals are to significantly grow revenue while maintaining cost efficiency, becoming the leading end-to-end product management platform and creating an environment focused on employee happiness and high performance.”
Airfocus, which currently has 46 employees, plans to end the year with between 60 and 80, focusing on its development, sales and customer success teams.