Founder Series #4 ft. Wouter Merkestein: “It’s all about speed and engagement”

In this episode of the PropTech Talks Founder Series, I spoke with Wouter Merkestein, Co-founder & CEO at laiout.

Wouter met his co-founder in a covid quarantine hotel. After two years of intensive R&D and product development, Laiout is now tackling the long-standing bottleneck in the early-stage design phase: delivering high quality floor plans within mere seconds. Having successfully completed projects in 28 countries, laiout is now bringing its technology to the masses across the globe. It was a pleasure to interview Wouter during this accelerated growth phase.

Tune into this session to hear about the benefits of speed, how to maximise returns of existing assets in a period of economic turmoil, future office trends, and how laiout will be scaling its product vertically across real estate asset classes.

You can access the full interview through the link below:

https://proptechtalks.buzzsprout.com/share

Interview highlights

Matthew: How did you determine the niche for your business?

Wouter: At the time, there was already quite a bit of hype around generative AI in the architectural space with the likes of Spacemaker coming out of Oslo where we were located at the time. These companies were very good at informing decisions about new buildings, and by now there are a lot of other companies that do the same. We realised that no one was tackling one of the problems that is closer to our hearts, and that is related to existing buildings. Instead of building software to build more and new buildings, why don’t we focus on how to reuse what is already there? The sustainability angle, as well as the complexity of what we are doing and the lack of competition because of it is what triggered us to focus on this niche.

Matthew: How has the philosophy of speed impacted the value that you're delivering to your clients, and also your ability to grow your business?

Wouter: Anyone who's ever been involved in sales, either on a receiving end or on the one trying to get the sale across, knows that you want to hook that person while you have them.

One of the biggest things that kills sales is a long sales cycle. Floor plan design comes very early on in the sales cycle, and it could take weeks for a real estate owner to even find someone who can draw a floor plan for a potential tenant. This is not an interactive conversation overall, and there is a loss of attention. That's exactly where we position ourself. We are able to generate high quality personalised floor plans within mere seconds so that when the potential clients walk out of that first meeting, they already know how the space could be populated and they have been part of that creation. This really shortens that sales cycle a lot, while saving costs and helping you lease your buildings quicker.

Matthew: Investing in Real Estate used to be a safe investment that would always go up in value. Now, investors need to be smarter about investing, it is a completely different playing field where only some can stay ahead. How are you responding to this shift in investor mentality?

Wouter: Through rough times such as currently, you see roughly two kinds of profiles in Commercial Real Estate. On the one hand, you have people that go in defensive mode, who want to avoid costs and sit out the ‘storm. But what I also see and what I'm of course looking for as an entrepreneur and as a CEO, are those profiles that believe that this is the time to double down on technology, to double down on cost savings and process optimization, to make sure that they are in an advantaged position for when things start to get better. And the industry is going to get better.

Another thing that we're really benefiting from is that there are less new developments being approved in many geographies, so the focus on existing buildings is increasing. If you look at software and especially in the architectural design space, there are not many softwares that will help you handle existing buildings. This is where we have an advantage over all these other solutions that help you build new buildings. We are responding to the need for increased speed and efficiency in dealing with tenancy turnarounds.

Matthew: What’s next for laiout?

Wouter: We've got an incredible amount of interest coming from different verticals, such as hotels, data centres, and warehouses. We are also in conversation with several developers about office to residential conversions. This is because we have this unique ability to generate within existing spaces taking into account regulations and design.

Matthew: What would your advice be to other entrepreneurs who are just launching and growing a company?

Wouter: Something I've learned throughout my journey is that you need to find a problem that is felt by yourself or by whoever you're doing the journey with. In my case, it was Cristiano who could very clearly see that many architects don’t particularly enjoy this design phase and tenants feel like they have to do 10 different meetings just to see a floorplan they like, while losing interest due to this lengthy process. Ideally, you should also find a problem that you can automate. I'm a big believer of technology more so than services. As a company, we really wanted something that can be hands off and scalable. So, think about optimization problems where humans lack the time and capabilities to compete with advanced algorithms. For me, that is the recipe for success.

It was a pleasure interviewing Wouter and learning more about his entrepreneurial journey and plans for the future. Stay tuned for the upcoming Investor, Founder, and Executive Series interviews!