A Nordic PropTech View with Jesper Ring, Frame

Welcome to ‘A Nordic PropTech View, by Sanna Walfridsson’ our Q&A focused on Nordic PropTech’s.

Our Q&A series is an opportunity for our Nordic team, headed by Sanna Walfridsson to discuss all things PropTech, Start-ups, and Career with different founders from across the region. Each week we will ask PropTech innovators burning questions and quiz them about their product, we hope you find it insightful and enjoy getting to know the founders as much as we have.

This week we have been in touch with Jesper Ring, CEO at Frame.

Frame is an innovative digital platform for managing, designing and documenting the sustainability of your construction from start to finish. Frame shows the way from vision to measurable criteria, so you can realise your construction – without compromising on either creativity, quality or economy. Frame guides you through the entire sustainability process step by step, whether you want to use a standard certification of the project or want to set your own sustainability criteria.

Frame organises and structures your sustainable construction by gathering everything in one place. 

With Frames’ digital platform, you can make your construction as sustainable as your visions. You decide – but with the bottom line you get reduced operating costs by up to 15% and the number of working hours per. project with up to 40%.

What is your view on the Danish PropTech market and its adoption?

The Danish PropTech market is growing rapidly. It is clear that the construction industry is beginning to see the benefits and seek out technological solutions that can support everyday life. The investments in this area have multiplied and both the industry and the investors are aware of this.

In our conversations with investors, just as before, they want financial security, but they all express that our segment is very interesting and needs to be optimized. The construction industry is a very conservative industry and one of the least digitized. A few years ago, a McKinsey report stated that, unlike other industries, the construction industry worldwide has not increased productivity and efficiency in the past 50 years.

At Frame, we only work with sustainability, and we see an industry that is in the process of changing from black to green and thus going from traditional linear to sustainable and circular construction. What we also see is an industry that is not at all ready for that shift. This is where Frame can make a difference. With our digital platform, it is possible to manage, design, document and certify sustainable construction. Frame makes it simple and concrete to work with sustainability.

What are some of the challenges Frame has been facing?

When we started our journey, the market was not mature, but it is slowly getting there now. Our Frame platform has great momentum now due to political drive and stricter requirements for sustainability in construction. We were among the first ones to talk about sustainability in the industry, and it has required a lot of investment to help mature the market. Maturing a market is not something investors traditionally want to participate in and not least pay for. There has been a lot of bootstrapping, and it is only now that we are starting to see a multiplication of investments and the benefit of our hard work.

The construction industry is not very digital – so both the transformation from traditional construction as well as going from analogue to digital management has been a big leap for most people. So many changes can seem very overwhelming to a very conservative industry.

What opportunities do you see in the market following COVID-19?

COVID-19 has forced more people to work remotely and use digital solutions for communication etc.  At Frame, we already took advantage of the digital opportunities, but we can now see that the industry has also come along and has become much more familiar with the digital tools. This is clearly an advantage and will hopefully give courage to try more digital solutions and thus promote the much needed digitization of the industry.

Development in remote work also opens up more opportunities for broader geographical recruitment of employees. We clearly see this as a great potential, even if it is not new to us. We have always worked with developers at a distance, but we see that the industry has changed regarding this.

What are your expansion plans?

The overall goal is expansion in Northern Europe with Sweden as the first country. We are raising money for the first part of that journey. Our current goal is funding of 3 million Euros in Q1, 2022, and we are constantly looking for relevant investors with the same interests to become part of our journey.

In the coming years, we expect continued expansion both on the bottom line with a monthly double digit growth and to further strengthen our team and resources. We are constantly looking for new colleagues who can help develop our platform and assist our customers succeed with their sustainable construction projects.

Can you please share your predictions for the PropTech sector?

We believe that data will be the basis of the green transition and it will not succeed until data is available. Data is the prerequisite for making the right choices and thus for the green transition. Data must be able to flow freely between tools and platforms to support the collaboration.

 We are currently seeing an explosion in the Proptech area, and for Proptech companies, it’s all about being present. We are going to see thousands of digital tools that will emerge and die. The area is in rapid development and an exciting place to be at the moment.

We see Frame as a HUB for sustainability and in a key position. When sustainability becomes important for future decisions, the data and tools we can provide will be paramount to the success of sustainable construction projects.

The focal point of the construction industry will be sustainability and to succeed, it requires collaboration, communication and data sharing – all of Frame’s core competencies.

We have chosen to support the analogue processes and what is already being done – just more efficiently and digitally. Visions, architecture, communication and professional pride are made traceable and transparent.

We focus on a digital solution of what is being done now and what has been around for many years. Other tools are a rethinking of what is done analogue, and it becomes too big a step for the industry and gives opposition to the needed digital change.