Good sound in the office: rethink office acoustics and plan in minutes
Start-up founders often have to prove a lot of courage. It starts with the idea to solve a real problem and extends to finding investors. This is also the case for David Dorolti, who provides the players in the market for noise-absorbing interior design products with a practical and efficient web app for room acoustics planning and sales software.
Photos ©VRASQA
Every room has its own individual acoustics. To optimise them for the respective type of use, interior design uses products such as acoustic curtains, panels, but also acoustic lamps. They absorb noise and contribute immensely to creating a pleasant atmosphere. This is particularly important in rooms such as offices, lecture halls, business premises or restaurants. Because there, background noises are often particularly disturbing. To know which products and how many of them are necessary for a room, an acoustic room analysis is needed. This is expensive and only a few people want to afford an acoustician. For this reason, the manufacturers usually take over the planning of the products for their dealers and office fitters. It can take a few weeks until the offer is made. David Dorolti, Founder and Managing Director of VRASQA, had a brilliant idea to solve this problem: "We are developing a room acoustics planning and sales software for manufacturers and dealers of noise-absorbing materials. The room data is entered into the VRASQA web app and within twenty minutes, a meaningful acoustic plan and an offer are ready to be presented to customers immediately. "Compared to the global market, this corresponds to a time reduction of one to two weeks," says Dorolti.
Product development à la start-up
VRASQA's product development process is a typical start-up story. At the beginning, David Dorolti's approach to solving a real problem faced by room acoustics dealers and architects: Acoustics planning and the long waiting times for quotations. He gathered the necessary professions around him, such as acoustics and programming, to develop the idea into a product. He was able to take away many learnings for this as a participant in the Innovation Agent Academy course "Human Centered Innovation & Design Thinking" of the Creative Region and Pro Active. "There I learned methods that I can more than use in practice. We tested our assumptions and developed a first Minimal Viable Product (note: MVP = the smallest possible feasible or realisable product), we tested prototypes, interviewed our stakeholders, the manufacturers, retailers, architects and acousticians. This enabled us to avoid many mistakes and we hardly had to take any steps backwards. We are currently in the monetisation phase," David Dorolti explains the development process of the software. VRASQA's web app is about 80 % ready for sale and the market. VRASQA's partners already include five renowned manufacturers - more are to follow this year. The first step is to convince retailers and office furnishers in the DACH region, England, Italy, Spain and the Nordic countries of the benefits of the application. The team is also set to grow, with VRASQA planning to hire acousticians and programmers.
You want to take your company to the next level, learn innovation processes and expand your network? Then we recommend the Innovation Academy from the Creative Region and Pro Active. The next course "Human Centered Innovation & Design Thinking" starts in September - all information is now available at innovationagent.academy. Scholarships will be awarded again this year. If you are interested, send an email to mission@innovationagent.academy