Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Andreas Michel, Locaboo: Locaboo focuses on digitizing and automating the management of municipal resources and properties. Our cloud-based solution enables the efficient management of public buildings such as sports facilities, community centers, cultural and event areas, and much more.
Citizens can simply request these online on the respective city websites or even book them directly. Our software optimizes and analyses the utilization and intensity of use. Thus, our solution not only automates processes and increases citizen service in cities and municipalities, but also creates the data basis for future urban development topics.
Locaboo seeks to modernize and replace inefficient practices
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Andreas Michel: In fact, the current status quo in many places is based on manual management methods, often relying on Excel, Outlook and endless email traffic. Our mission is to modernize and replace these inefficient practices. We focus on comprehensive building and stakeholder management. We take on the entire process from start to finish, from resource management to client management to booking and occupancy planning, which is the core. Billing, invoicing and provision of data and reporting are integral parts of our approach. What many cities and municipalities appreciate about our solution is the ability to cover almost every municipal use case with just one platform.
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Andreas Michel: In our case, the actual founding of Locaboo GmbH was at the end of a development process. Michael completed his IT training years ago in a district town and already recognized back then that the administrative processes in the area of municipally used buildings and properties, especially the occupancy of sports facilities, were still very manual and little digitized. The realization that these buildings remain unused for up to 90 percent of their lifetime ultimately encouraged us to tackle this issue together. The focus was not only on digitizing the administration. Our goal was, and still is, to create a sustainable solution that enables everyone to make efficient use of existing and diverse resources while improving the quality of life in cities.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Andreas Michel: Where do I start? There are new challenges almost every week. It’s a rollercoaster ride that anyone who has ever founded or worked in a startup knows. In the beginning, the biggest hurdle was certainly to win important and relevant customers to be able to provide meaningful references. Unfortunately, this is often a chicken-and-egg problem, as many customers ask for references that are not available at the beginning. In the meantime, however, we have acquired more than 500 cities, municipalities and districts in the DACH region as customers, which solves this problem. Currently, the challenge is certainly to keep up with the growing number of customers. We are currently working on this challenge.
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Andreas Michel: Our focus remains on the public sector. In the area of modern SaaS solutions, the municipal market is still poorly developed. With over 500 customers in the DACH region, we have already left a strong footprint to drive this sector forward in the digitization and automation of important processes. In five years, however, we see ourselves not only limited to the DACH market, but also in other European countries.
Good chances of becoming a shooting star
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Andreas Michel: It is impressive how Munich has developed, especially in the last 10 years, in terms of events, financing, networking and the will to create new things. We are therefore excited about future developments and are sure that we have chosen the right location with Munich.
Munich Startup: Hidden Champion or Shooting Star?
Andreas Michel: At this point in time, I would say that we are a hidden champion. Since day 1, we have not only been self-financed, but also profitable with over 10 employees, which has given us a lot of freedom in terms of company development. However, as the govtech sector is currently picking up speed, I believe we have a good chance of becoming a shooting star as well.