Startup Story: Cove.tool Launches a Beta Test and Signs Its First Customer

This is part two of a series covering the entrepreneurial journey of Sandeep Ahuja from architectural designer to CEO of tech company Cove.tool. Read part one here. The third and final part will be published in mid-December.

Creating version one of the Cove.tool platform was not easy. As architects, Patrick Chopson, AIA, and I were privy to the architectural design process and the needs of the industry, but we needed technical expertise to build an app for calculating and comparing cost and energy usage for an array of building projects. At that point, we conducted our cost and energy optimization analysis by running a series of scripts we had created using MATLAB, Python, and a few Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The very manual process required a significant amount of debugging to ensure the tool would run error-free. When Daniel Chopson joined the company in 2017, he immediately focused on smoothing the user experience, streamlining systems, and reducing the number of bugs in the tool. We moved from using the short scripts Patrick and I had strung together to running the tool in Python using the Django open-source web framework, along with a proper SQL database instead of Excel. The result was more structure and stability to build out the app.

As our then-sole software developer, Daniel worked on building the tool for six months straight, February to August 2017, until we had our first MVP (minimum viable product). We began with hand drawing mock-ups for the platform on paper. Daniel used our sketches to develop the front-end user interface, which he then connected to the back end of the platform. This version of the tool, hosted on Amazon Web Services, could run a basic cost versus energy optimization, estimate energy use intensity, and incorporate benchmarking tied to the American Institute of Architects 2030 commitment.

Once the app was up and running, we launched the beta version of Cove.tool. We emailed the hundreds of contacts in our network, established from our consulting days, with an invitation to test it out for free. From our initial outreach, 80 beta users—a mix of architects, energy modeling experts, and mechanical engineers—signed up. Our goal was to collect as much feedback as possible to continue growing the software.

After a one-month testing period, we contacted every beta user to understand how they used the platform; what they were trying to do with it; what they were able to accomplish; and how we could improve the software for their needs. By September 2017, we began working through the user feedback, which included requests for daylight analysis, cost databases for referencing purposes, 3D functionality, and plugins to SketchUp, Rhino, and Grasshopper.

We wanted to address the key requests quickly because we were aiming to launch Cove.tool version one to the public in November, at the 2017 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, held that year in Boston. We divided the feedback into tasks and prioritized high-demand features we felt we could accomplish before the launch. We focused on adding basic cost parameters and SketchUp and Rhino plugins. At the time, our platform simply didn’t have the capacity for 3D functionality or analyzing daylight or views.

Still, we had come a long way. Our tool incorporated multiple tools onto one centralized platform—and it was more robust than any software I had used as a sustainability consultant. We believed that the attendees at Greenbuild would think the same—and we were right.

Architects, engineers, and owners wanted to learn more about our company and software. By the end of Greenbuild 2017, we had signed up a couple hundred users for a two-month free trial. We then repeated our feedback process of reaching out to users for suggestions for improvement and then realizing their ideas.

In March 2018, we sold our first commercial license. To support the platform, we hired four new team members: a software developer, an energy modeler/mechanical engineer, a computational researcher, and a sales representative. We evaluated several different business models to sell our software. We knew what to charge for our tool in terms of return on investment, but the industry had no clear precedent for the value our software delivered. We studied business-to-business, software as a service, service-based, and project-based business models, and broke down financial models for monthly, yearly, and multiyear pricing.

First, we tried self-service SaaS, which meant we had no customer interaction throughout the entire sales process: They would simply go online and buy. We quickly learned this was not a good fit for the cost of our product or the industry to which we were selling because education would become critical to our sales process. We learned that our most successful sales strategy was to rally support behind our overarching mission to address climate change and to save project costs for our users’ clients.

In early 2019, we homed in on a B2B SaaS annual contract business model. By then, we had implemented every initial request from our beta and trial users. However, our users began to see more possibilities for our product and highlighted even more challenges we could tackle through data and automation.

One of the biggest obstacles is the notorious lack of interoperability of other AEC software products. Collaboration is difficult among project team members because the architects’ and engineers’ models often do not communicate with each other. As a result, every time we update our platform, we are working to bridge this data-connection gap and create a holistic system for efficiency through every stage of design.

Next up: Attracting outside funding and setting long-term business goals …

• Startup Story: From Architectural Designer to Software Company CEO

  Cove.tool co-founder and trained architect Sandeep Ahuja shares her entrepreneurial journey to address climate change by developing a cost and energy analysis tool.

  

• Startup Story: Cove.tool Launches a Beta Test and Signs Its First Customer

  In part two of Cove.tool co-founder Sandeep Ahuja's entrepreneurial journey, she discusses how her company developed a beta product and attracted its first paying customer.