Wanting is less of a problem. More likely: As a result of the increased gas prices and of course because it is clear to more and more people why we should all urgently emit less CO2, electricity-powered heat pumps are in demand as an alternative to oil and gas heating. So in demand that German craft businesses can hardly keep up. The NDR, for example, reports that waiting times of six to twelve months are currently normal when homeowners want to have a heat pump installed. Installers are fully booked and materials sometimes have long delivery times.
A startup can’t help, produce heating installers or beam in heat pumps, that’s not possible. But what could work: Make the existing craftsmen faster. And that’s what Etienne-Noel Krause and Thies Hansen want to do. With their startup Autarc, they have developed software that is supposed to make the planning process and installation of heat pumps up to 50 percent faster. If this works, it would mean twice as many heat pumps could be installed in the same time.
Well-known investors and business angels
Investors seem to like this math, in a pre-seed round the Berlin startup raised a single-digit million amount – from well-known investors: PropTech1 Ventures took the lead. In addition, Better Ventures and business angels such as C1 founder Christian Vollmann , Lieferando founder Kai Hansen, GridX founders David Balensiefen and Andreas Booke, Titus Albrecht, founder of RealXdata, Jannes Fischer from Zenhomes and Reachbird founder Philipp Martin also took part .
A heating installer spends almost half of his working time on planning and administration. Krause, CEO of Autarc, also knows this because he studied heating engineering part-time and then worked in this industry for four years. This is of great benefit to him today, he says in an interview with Gründerszene, because it means he can easily meet the decision-makers from craft businesses. But he also has start-up experience; he founded his first company at the age of 17, before graduating from high school . His co-founder Thies Hansen, COO, also brings startup knowledge with him; he has worked in operations, finance and tech at Trade Republic and Partech. The two met while studying at the ESCP Business School. And they decided that they wanted to start something of their own, something with an impact.
Before Krause and Hansen, other startup founders had already discussed the topic of heat pumps , be it in the area of digitalization, but also in hardware. Which then has to be reinstalled by fitters. Who – according to Autarc – have more time if they use smart software for planning and organization.
