Published on January 10, 2024
- Enterprise product management redefined: airfocus offers unmatched flexibility to tackle key challenges in road mapping, prioritization, and OKR alignment.
- Global adoption: Over 800 leading companies including Caterpillar, The Washington Post, and Orange trust airfocus for their product management needs.
- Pioneering the Product Operating System: The funding accelerates airfocus’ vision of a future where every enterprise thrives on a unified Product OS to build the right products faster.
Hamburg, Germany Jan 10, 2023 – Hamburg-based startup airfocus, a leading product management software, has successfully closed a $7.5M fundraising round led by Newion with the participation of XAnge, Nauta, Riverside Acceleration Capital, and Picea Capital. The investment brings airfocus’ total funding close to $15M and will support its global expansion in the multi-billion dollar market of product management software.
A Unique Solution for Complex Product Challenges
As the world’s 1st modular product management tool, airfocus addresses core enterprise challenges like roadmapping, prioritization, customer insights, and OKR alignment with unmatched flexibility. Already trusted by over 800 businesses worldwide, including Caterpillar, The Washington Post, and Orange, airfocus is setting a new standard in a market that strives for innovation and efficiency.
Newion: A New Strategic Partner
Mathijs de Wit, partner at Newion, highlights the investment’s significance: “airfocus’ flexibility-first approach is indispensable for enterprises navigating digital transformation. This is more than funding; it’s about empowering organizations to evolve and scale.”
Malte Scholz, co-founder and CEO of airfocus, shares his vision:
“This funding is pivotal. We’re not just developing software; we’re crafting a unified Product Operating System. Our AI-assisted platform will transform how product managers work. Decision-making becomes more efficient and impactful supported by a single source of product truth.”
“We admire and resonate with Newion’s dedication to long-term growth,” said Malte. “This funding empowers us to redefine product management standards, expand our technological capabilities, enhance market outreach, and attract top industry talent.”
Newion has joined existing investors Nauta Capital, XAnge, Picea Capital, About Riverside Acceleration Capital, Klaus Schlumpberger, Christian Heimerl, Paul Schwarzenholz, and Björn Kolbmüller, encouraged by airfocus’ outstanding progress and growth.
Beyond Spreadsheets: Envisioning A Unified Product Operating System
Nowadays, every company is a tech company, with software as the backbone of all operations and services. To survive, businesses must undergo digital transformation, making software integration crucial for efficiency and competitiveness.
Building and maintaining large software portfolios across various teams has become a key challenge. To address this, product management has emerged as the preferred approach for aligning portfolios and teams with a unified vision and strategy. This is essential for meeting customer needs effectively.
Gartner reports that 80% of organizations are now adopting this model. However, the reality of overseeing multiple products and teams often leads to issues like poor decision-making, unclear roadmaps, and missed deadlines. These problems result in lost revenue, wasted IT resources, and decreased efficiency.
In fact, 70% of all shipped features have little to no positive impact on organizations. (Pendo, Standish, Gartner, BCG source)
airfocus addresses these challenges head-on. As an end-to-end product management platform, it enables teams to swiftly and accurately deliver on their goals, leveraging tools and AI for OKRs, roadmaps, and customer insights.
Integrated seamlessly with Jira and other popular tools, airfocus acts as a single source of truth for the entire product organization, akin to what CRMs are for sales teams.
Malte Scholz, co-founder and CEO
“Sales teams have CRMs, developers have Git, and yet product managers are often left juggling multiple spreadsheets and scattered tools but are still expected to deliver impactful results,” Malte Scholz, co-founder and CEO of airfocus added.
Empowering Global Product Teams
airfocus is recognized by product teams worldwide for its transformative impact. Craig Unsworth, Chief Product Officer at Papirfly, shares: “In an ambitious year-long journey to unify 32 products and over 300 services, Papirfly delivered two to three years’ work in just 12 months. The power of airfocus was a crucial tool to the success of this project, providing clarity for everyone around our product vision and product strategy, which was needed to navigate this complex transformation.”
About airfocus
Founded in 2017 in Hamburg, airfocus offers a unique, flexible end-to-end Product Management platform. With a growing global presence and backed by major VCs, the company is committed to empowering teams to build better products faster. Learn more at airfocus.com.
Visit airfocus: airfocus.com
About XAnge
XAnge (xange.vc) is a leading European venture capital firm, Bcorp certified, based in Paris, Berlin, and Munich. With €600M Assets under Management, the company invests in European early-stage innovative technology companies operating in the fields of Digital consumer, Enterprise and data, Fintech, and Deeptech. Since its creation in 2003, XAnge has backed more than 200 fast-growing companies in their entrepreneurial journeys. The team works alongside visionary founders with strong values and international ambitions such as Ledger, Odoo, Lydia, or Believe Digital.
Visit XAnge: xange.vc
About Nauta Capital
Nauta is a pan-European venture capital firm investing in early-stage B2B software companies with offices in London and Barcelona. With over half a billion assets under management and a team of 20 people, Nauta is one of Europe’s largest B2B-focused VCs. As a sector-agnostic investor, Nauta’s main areas of interest include B2B SaaS solutions with strong network effects, vertically focused enterprise tech transforming large industries as well as those leveraging deep-tech applications to solve challenges faced by large enterprises. Nauta has led investments in more than 80 companies including Brandwatch, Lodgify, Mercaux, Holded, Onna, MishiPay, Landbot, AppFollow, ifeel, and Cledara.
Visit Nauta Capital: nautacapital.com
About Riverside Acceleration Capital
Riverside Acceleration Capital (RAC) provides flexible growth capital to expansion-stage B2B software and technology companies. RAC is part of The Riverside Company, a global private investment firm focused on investing in growing businesses valued at up to $400 million. Since its founding in 1988, Riverside has made more than 980 investments. The firm’s international private equity and structured capital portfolios include more than 150 companies.
Visit Riverside Acceleration Capital: riverside.ac
About Picea Capital
Picea Capital is a stage-agnostic Hamburg-based investment firm focused primarily on digital technology opportunities.
Visit Picea Capital: Picea Linkedin Page
About Newion
Newion is an Amsterdam-based VC active in Benelux, Germany, and the Nordics. For the latest fund, Newion 4, launched in 2022 with €130 million. For over 20 years, Newion focuses exclusively on supporting B2B SaaS startups that demonstrate early signs of product-market fit. The portfolio includes more than 25 companies in Germany (Parloa, Delphai, or Filestage) and in the rest of Northwest Europe (Occtoo, Collibra, Deliverect, and many others). Newion 4 is supported by the European Union through the InvestEU fund.
Visit Newion: newion.com
Newion IV is supported by the European Union through the InvestEU fund.
