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Looking back at a promising year 2021

Published on
Jan 12, 2024
Written by
Ivan Cardoso

After having raised €1 Million in Seed financing and having grown substantially over the last year, kodehyve has big plans for 2022.

2022 is just around the corner, and we are taking this opportunity to reflect on the past year, and so are kodehyve CTO Julien Casse and CEO Felix Hemmerling.


Looking back at 2021, what has changed for kodehyve?

Felix Hemmerling: It is astonishing how much a team, product and entire venture can evolve in one year. After working a lot with existing clients and partners on our collaboration tool in 2020, we also primarily focused our efforts on improving the kodehyve platform at the beginning of this year, taking into consideration the valuable feedback we gathered from clients and partners. In June 2021, we then closed our first ever funding round of €1 Million in seed financing with strategic investors from Luxembourg and Singapore. Additionally, kodehyve has been accepted into the Fit4Start #11 acceleration program, which has been a challenging but highly rewarding opportunity thus far. We also moved into our new office in Luxembourg City and hired new team members.

One thing that hasn’t really changed in 2021 is our mission of changing how the real estate ecosystem works in Luxembourg and abroad. This is still at the core of what we do, and we are grateful to get so much support and positive feedback from clients and partners.

We quickly grew out of the House of Startups, and in June 2021 we were able to celebrate a new milestone - moving into our own office in the heart of Luxembourg City. Just a 7’ walk from the Central Station, our office features standing desks, user-friendly screens, a table football, and of course, a PlayStation.  - Felix Hemmerling, Co-Founder & CEO of kodehyve


Do you have any major insights from discussing and working with real estate professionals in 2021? Are there any changes worth noting?

Felix Hemmerling:
The pandemic seems far from being over. It has undoubtedly brought a lot of change with it and has not only accelerated digital adoption, but it has foremost triggered a change in mindset and openness regarding digital transformation efforts at a lot of the property development organisations we are meeting and working with. On the one hand, work from home and work from “anywhere” has become the new standard, and we see more and more teams that are executing from a variety of locations. This dispersed model of working and collaborating with internal teams as well as with external partners has made the need for digitalisation much more evident to a wide range of ventures. On the other hand, Millennials and Gen Z are entering the real estate market, being “digital-first” generations. This new type of consumer demands direct access to information and powerful digital experiences, and real estate professionals are starting to realise there is a real lack of customer-centric solutions specifically tailored to the real estate ecosystem. All that being said, we acknowledge the fact that real estate professionals are changing the way they operate and are increasingly becoming more open to digitalise their businesses.

Julien Casse: On a technical level, we have realised a major shift in property developers’ mindset when it comes to cloud hosting. While we’ve invested a lot of time into the analysis and education around cloud versus local servers in 2020, we recently realised that real estate professionals are much less reluctant to use Cloud servers in 2021 than before the pandemic. The added values are much clearer, and one can tell that real estate professionals have also educated themselves on best practices in this regard. Nevertheless, it is still our task to educate the market and support as well as guide businesses in their process of digitalisation.


Are there any trends you have observed in the real estate market?

Felix Hemmerling:
We have indeed, which is why we wrote an entire blog post dedicated to this topic. To sum up, we are convinced that real estate will undergo a massive transformation in the upcoming years due to the fact that information exchanges and communication can and will be facilitated in more efficient and user-friendly ways; virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) will increasingly be used to optimise the work of real estate professionals, chiefly within the planning and construction execution phases; blockchain technology will profoundly impact the evolution of real estate transactions; stakeholders will come to understand the importance of consumer-driven and generational changes in real estate; and the real estate sector will see significant improvements in terms of its environmental impact thanks to technological advancements.

Moreover, I would like to emphasise the importance of the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) commitment. In the context of a company’s digitalisation efforts with kodehyve, their carbon footprint will significantly be reduced when using our collaboration platform. A property developer, for instance, will save a significant amount of paper, ink and shipping costs (if applicable) because nearly all the documents are now approved and signed digitally - from anywhere and at any time. Furthermore, time spent on previously physically-executed tasks are being substantially reduced. Generally speaking, there is no requirement to meet physically or to send physical papers around if they can be downloaded, approved and signed online - which obviously makes the e-signature feature a key added value in our collaboration tool

To illustrate these opportunity cost savings, human resource efficiencies and positive impact on an ESG level, we crafted a case study together with real estate fund Holon Real Estate and real estate developer P&P Promotions. The case study can be read here.


How has the kodehyve collaboration tool evolved in 2021?

Julien Casse: The kodehyve collaboration tool has substantially matured since the beginning of the year. Together with our clients we onboarded in 2020, we have identified countless use cases and workflows that are specific to real estate. Subsequently, we have constantly been improving our collaboration platform and have implemented a wide range of new functionalities and workflows to accustom to real estate professionals’ ever-evolving use cases and challenges so as to make their work smoother, easier and faster. More precisely, we focused our efforts on counteracting productivity and efficiency losses. Therefore, the kodehyve collaboration tool now covers a large panel of modules, such as:

  • Property development and project planning;
  • Project coordination and monitoring with task list creation and project status;
  • Collaboration workspaces for partners and suppliers;
  • Document Management System (DMS);
  • Advanced e-signature and approval flows for documents and tasks;
  • Invoicing;
  • Commercialisation of projects and properties;
  • Financial analysis and budgeting;
  • Business intelligence and data analytics modules;
  • Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures;
  • Client Relationship Management (CRM) with collaboration and communication spaces for clients and stakeholders with live chat rooms, as well as document and information exchange flows;
  • Post-development communication with clients and partners;
  • And many more…

What is more, we put a lot of emphasis on automation, since it facilitates the seamless collaboration between multiple stakeholders. As our clients continue to grow, we at kodehyve and our collaboration platform are evolving with them, which proves to be a highly exhilarating and rewarding process.


What are your plans for 2022?

Felix Hemmerling:
We have big plans for 2022. First of all, we have a wide range of new functionalities and product integrations lined up, and are looking forward to implementing them for our clients. Additionally, we are going to announce a new exciting product at the beginning of 2022, adding substantial value to the entire real estate ecosystem in Luxembourg and eventually abroad. Long story short, there are a lot of news coming on a product level, which we are very much looking forward to sharing with the public soon. Furthermore, we are continuing our growth phase and are in hiring mode! Hence, we are hiring passionate Product Owners, Senior Software Engineers and Software Engineers who truly enjoy and master their craft. Check out the detailed job descriptions on our website. We will also continue to hire new team members over the course of the next few months.


(All our positions are remote, in-office or hybrid - depending on personal situation and preferences 🌏 Timezones: UTC-1 to UTC+2) |

Disclaimers:

• We only recruit full-time team members at this stage and do not outsource.

• We do not need a lengthy motivation letter, CV or other certainly impressive documents. Please apply by API as described on our website.


Are you thinking of digitalising your business in 2022? Get in touch with us here, and we would be glad to discuss your needs and ambitions together with you. You may also find our blog post on how to choose the right IT partner useful. All that being said, the kodehyve team would like to wish you a wonderful and successful year 2022.