KICKBOX Success Story: Office Monitoring With thingdust

rready: Hi Stefan, it’s great to talk to you. Your project has come up in quite a few interviews so far. Let’s start by hearing more about thingdust in your own words.

Stefan: thingdust is a system of sensors that companies can use to monitor and analyze their office spaces 24/7. They can then use this data on a day-to-day basis. For example, users can check how many workstations are free before heading to the office or find an empty meeting room ad-hoc. These use cases are particularly beneficial in so-called “shared desk” offices, where employees don’t have a fixed cubicle but can sit wherever they like.

However, the data is also incredibly useful for optimizing office spaces in the mid and long term. Are certain office solutions being used as much as envisaged? Do employees prefer workstations with one or two monitors?

thingdust allows organizations to bring more structure to these new, very flexible ways of working.

rready: Can you tell us how the idea came about?

Stefan: When I started the RedBox phase of the KICKBOX process, I actually had a rather different idea in mind. At the time, I was living in an apartment block where the laundry room was on the top floor. So I came up with the idea to make a sensor that would send me a notification when my laundry was done to save trips upstairs, only to find that it was still running. I had other use cases in mind, such as letting me know when I had mail in my mailbox or when I had forgotten to close the fridge.

As such, the idea was for a multi-functional sensor that could measure several factors – e.g., pressure and air humidity – and send notifications. In fact, thingdust started life as a B2C product.

rready: What brought about the pivot that led to make thingdust what it is today? And was it challenging to make this switch?

Stefan: While moving through the KICKBOX journey, I was working in B2B at Swisscom, so I had a lot more contact with B2B partners. I also had two colleagues on my team who were very interested in the project; they quickly got on board and made a prototype. Since they had already worked on a project to analyze meeting room utilization, we started to think more about how this new solution could work in that scenario.

Thanks to the validation process and extensive coaching sessions that are part of the KICKBOX program, we could also face certain challenges of the original idea head-on, e.g., network limitations and consumer willingness to pay. This allowed us to keep moving closer to the B2B solution, and the concept for thingdust as it stands today evolved from that!

Although the original idea stemmed from a personal pain point, fortunately, I wasn’t too attached to the concept at that time in the process. I was also surrounded by experts from Swisscom  who had a lot of know-how and experience in the area, making me feel more confident to make the switch.

We quickly built a Proof-of-concept and realized that this solution would be much easier to scale. Since I was working in B2B already, it wasn’t long before we found a willing customer to test the solution.

So, all of these aspects combined, resulted in perfect conditions to leave the original idea behind and focus on the new one. And I’d now say that this readiness to let ideas go, and make significant changes is an essential part of the innovation process.

rready: The KICKBOX process certainly had a significant impact on your idea! How did the process impact you personally?

Stefan: One key lesson that I learned from the KICKBOX process was the importance of feedback – whether that’s from the market itself or experts around you.

For example, I created a kind of smoke test for thingdust. I made a fake website and ran Google ads to find out if anyone would be interested in a solution like this. This approach also taught me that it’s okay to go ahead even if the idea hasn't 100% matured yet. You can test something that isn’t perfect on a small scale and gain beneficial insights.

This mindset of experimentation allows for greater flexibility to grow and progress, instead of constantly waiting for perfection before taking action.

rready: thingdust has now been an independent company since 2017. How have things developed since then, and what is your future vision for the product?

Stefan: Since we first spun out from Swisscom, we’ve grown to a team of six, which means we can now handle most software and hardware aspects in-house. We decided quite early that we didn’t want to work with large-scale external investment, so we all have other jobs alongside thingdust. That was important to us to maintain our independence and secure our income, which is not always easy in a start-up.

Today most of our customers are in the DACH region, and our projects vary in size and duration. Overall, we have approximately 4000 sensors  in use at present! Now that we have more experience as a team and our existing product and projects are running smoothly, we’ve been able to focus on coming up with new ideas. We have a new project in the pipeline with an increased focus on sustainability, which is an area we would like to explore further.

Other than that, we want to continue with our current model of combining our work at thingdust with our other jobs. I enjoy being able to work on my passion project while maintaining variety in my working life. For us, this is a sustainable model for the future.

You can find out more about thingdust, or get into contact with them here. 

Note: This blogpost was written in 2021