airfocus, the world’s first modular product management platform, has raised USD5 million in series A funding, led by XAnge with participation from Nauta Capital.
airfocus, the world’s first modular product management platform, has raised USD5 million in series A funding, led by XAnge with participation from Nauta Capital.
airfocus has become the leading solution for product teams to collaborate on strategic product initiatives. By centralising product management in an easy and flexible way, airfocus ultimately transforms how teams can nail their strategy and build better products.
Today, the Hamburg-based startup has more than 700 customers and thousands of users from startups to enterprises across the US, Europe, and beyond – including Shopify, Bird, and The Washington Post. Despite the pandemic, the company was able to triple its customer base and revenue in 2020,
As software has eaten the world, product management and a solid strategy have become the most important drivers for a company’s success. In the past, companies would thrive by simply launching more and more features. Today, that’s not enough. Businesses will either win or lose based on the quality of their products and their ability to define and implement the right product strategy.
Malte Scholz, co-founder and CEO of airfocus, explains: “It seems unthinkable that in this era of product-centricity and remote work, the teams responsible for bringing software to life don’t have a central place to organise and share their work. But the reality is that product teams are stuck between developer tools, inefficient spreadsheets, and rigid systems that dictate workflows, which never really fit a team’s individual needs.
“That’s why airfocus built a home for products and teams, one that combines product strategy superpowers with modularity. Every company and product is different. airfocus embraces this individuality by allowing teams to build and use the tooling that best fits their specific product management needs. This includes feedback handling, insights management, prioritization, roadmapping, and collaborative decision-making. Every team needs a different combination of these tools at a given time. For this reason, the airfocus software adapts to user needs, and not the other way around.”
Most of airfocus’ customers already use a wide variety of tools like Jira, Trello, GitHub, Slack, or Intercom to get stuff done and communicate internally and externally. That’s why the software has deeply integrated with these systems to provide a central hub where product teams can learn what users need, prioritise what to build with confidence, and create clear, outcome-based roadmaps.
Joakim Wissing, Director of product at Oriflame and one of airfocus’ customers, says: “airfocus has been incredibly useful when it comes to aligning everyone around the vision and handling ideas. We are now focusing on what really matters. We are more coordinated, and everyone is pushing their part to get the right things done.”
Following this progress, airfocus has now partnered with XAnge for this series A to accelerate and to continue taking airfocus to the next level. In addition, Nauta Capital, who led the seed round, also participates in this round and continues to bring on its SaaS insights and networks.
The additional USD5 million in series A funding brings airfocus’ total funding close to USD8 million, with Bernhard Schmid and Arnaud Baraër from XAnge joining the company’s board.
Arnaud Baraër, principal at XAnge, says: “Defining a product strategy that creates business outcomes is a struggle for many companies. Today they can make better strategic decisions by using airfocus, the leading product management tool. The company founders Malte, Christian, and Valentin embody that vision, and customers worldwide agree with them as we have seen a rapid increase in usage of their platform. XAnge is thrilled to back the team building a true category leader.
“We admire and resonate with XAnge’s long-term approach to company building and respect their exceptional track record of backing category-defining companies. The capital and the support from our new and existing investors give us the resources to accelerate and pursue defining the new standard for product management. This includes further developing our market-leading technology, establishing a sales department, and hiring the very best in new talent,” adds Malte Scholz.
XAnge will now join existing investors Picea Capital, Klaus Schlumpberger, Christian Heimerl, Paul Schwarzenholz, and Björn Kolbmüller.
