Hey, I’m Rasmus! I’m building DoBu🚀: an AI-based client experience platform that saves real estate developers time and resources and makes their client experience digital while making it easy for homeowners to manage and own their homes, with: - Our home chatbot answers all the homeowner's technical questions about the home based on the documentation 🤖 - Homeowner gets reminders on when and how to do maintenance 🔔 - Real estate developer or builder can set maintenance reminders and set their impact on warranty 🏗️ - When filing a warranty claim, our chatbot specifies and categorises the problem and sends it to the relevant party 📝 - The homeowner has a real-time overview of all their claim statuses 🏡 Visit dobu.ee to see more. If you have ideas or questions, message me here on LinkedIn 😁 Positions: CEO & Founder at DoBu (2022 - Present), Founder & CEO at ÕF Nullivann (2023 - 2024), Business Development Intern at Salv (2022 - 2022), Sales Associate at YuMuuv (2021 - 2021) Skills: Start-ups, Problem Solving, Public Speaking, Sales Operations, Pipelines, Client Relations Recent Posts: We have finally launched DoBu’s mobile app! This has definitely been the most requested thing by our users, as it almost came up in every client interview 😄 Despite having a very limited user base only from the new developments using us, the spike in interest from our existing users last week, brought us into the TOP10 in our category on the app store. DoBu has begun collaboration on yet another development project, this time at the Madli 1 apartment building developed by Oma Ehitaja. 🏙️ Located in the city center, the Madli development, with its 75 apartments, is the largest building DoBu has implemented all at once so far. Chairman of the Board at Oma Ehitaja, Indrek Moorats: “At Oma Ehitaja, we think every day about how to make our customers’ lives easier and offer better services. We see DoBu’s AI solution as a great opportunity to bring our efforts and hard work to our home buyers in a simple way for everyday use.” 🤝 📸 In the pictures are me and Chairman of the Board at Oma Ehitaja, Indrek Moorats, celebrating the start of our cooperation and a few photos of the Madli development. Great to announce that another development will start using DoBu, this time the Raadiraja, with 240 apartments 🏡 being built in the coming years and the first stage getting ready early next year. Developed and built by Ehitustrust and Avaare kinnisvara. It is always good to work with developers who take serious interest in client satisfaction. For example Raadiraja homeowners will get access to 360° pictures 📸 of the cables and pipes in their walls + on the floors. 🔍 So you can just ask DoBu about drilling in the living room wall and get a 360° view of where exactly to do that. In the pictures are me 🤝 along with Olari Pihlapuu, the Head of Development for Ehitustrust and the first 2 apartments of the Raadiraja development. I was invited to the Algorütm podcast to share my personal and DoBu’s journey in more detail. I also told a few stories that I haven't shared before ;) Thank you for the great chat Priit Liivak, Martin Kapp and Tiit Paananen 🙏 Since it is the most popular technical 🤖 podcast in Estonia, we went more in depth into our product, both on the tech side and on future plans in terms of features and product development. Watch it on Youtube or give it a listen on Spotify (only in Estonian): I’m excited to announce our partnership with Capital Mill - one of the largest real estate developers in Estonia and the company behind the unique Skyon tower in Tallinn's center.🏙️ In August, the first homeowners of the Laaneserva Homes development in Viimsi gained access to DoBu. 💡Capital Mill has made a strong entry into the housing market with their first residential development under their own brand: the row houses in Viimsi. Also, Laaneserva Homes is the first residential area in Estonia to use green asphalt. As Capital Mill put it: "DoBu creates a genuine win-win situation, enhancing client communication while significantly reducing their team’s workload." 🏆 📸 Pictured are Capital Mill's CEO Kaarel Loigu and me, along with a photos of the Laaneserva development. Great to announce that another developer in Tartu has started using DoBu in their new development! This time Dorpat Kinnisvara - a relatively new company that has shown impressive growth and increase in market size. 🎯 💡You can read more about the collaboration in the DoBu post, but as a side note it might be interesting to see behind the deals. Even though the building was completed in August and DoBu came into use then, we first met with Dorpat in February this year - and agreed on the collab a bit after. Their process of understanding our product and its applications was deep and rigorous - which shows to us that our product has been tested and thought through in almost all the ways making it trustable to real estate developers. DoBu’s partnership with our clients and their feedback was featured in all the major Estonian news outlets. Our CEO Rasmus Merirand also gave an interview to Ärileht about our story and initial clients. "DoBu has made our customer service faster and smoother. Homeowners receive immediate, practical answers to their questions and useful guidance, whether it's adjusting a door, using a thermostat, or the color tone of the paint on their apartment wall. This has significantly improved daily communication with customers while greatly reducing the Reterra team's workload. For the developer, DoBu certainly means fewer administrative concerns and simpler communication, while homeowners gain, for example, a clear overview of warranty work and maintenance schedules," shared Reterra Estate CEO Reigo Randmets. Read more from: Postimees Grupp: https://lnkd.in/dD55fnw6 Geenius Meedia: https://lnkd.in/d4mY6M2u foundME: https://lnkd.in/dFUjaJ97 Ehitusleht: https://lnkd.in/drwNMh98 What do real estate developers actually think about our product? 🤔 How did DoBu begin? etc.. Some and more of these questions are answered in my first interview with the business portal Ärileht - of the biggest news site in Estonia: Delfi Meedia 📰 It was great to take a quick look back on my personal and DoBu’s journey and explain to the wider public why do we exist and what are we trying to solve. Reigo Randmets the CEO of our second client Reterra Estate, also talked about why they started using DoBu and what value it brings to them. A part of that was also covered in other Estonian news outlets like Postimees Grupp, Geenius Meedia, foundME (links in the comments) 🔗 Read the interview here (In Estonian, but you can use translate 😉) For more than a month now, DoBu’s second pilot project has been underway with Reterra Estate in their new Raemõisa development. 🏗️ ☀️In July this summer the homeowners of the two new apartments buildings of Raemõisa got access to DoBu. 💬 DoBu CEO Rasmus Merirand: “I was amazed by how quickly every homeowner started using DoBu in this development and picked up on trying AI for their home-related issues. From how to regulate their door to if DoBu knows what is the best internet provider for their apartment. 😄 Also, I've been really pleased with the cooperation between all the parties in this pilot 🙏: the quick action from Reterra to pilot DoBu in a development that was just being completed, bouncing around many ideas with the warranty management team from Mapri Ehitus OÜ and already executing and implementing some of them. We also added extra information to DoBu to ensure that clients receive answers to every question." 💡Reterra is one of the developers behind WoHo kvartal (Telia and Pipedrive towers) and one of the largest real estate developments in Tallinn's history: Hipodroomi kvartal, as well as thousands of other apartments. 🏢 🤳In the pictures, you can see DoBu’s CEO and Reterra CEO Reigo Randmets 🤝 celebrating the beginning of our cooperation, along with some images of the Raemõisa development and the beautiful apartments where DoBu is being used. For more than a month now, our second pilot project has been underway with Reterra Estate in their new Raemõisa development. 🏗️ ☀️In July this summer the homeowners of the two new apartments buildings of Raemõisa got access to DoBu. I was amazed of how quickly every homeowner started using DoBu in this development and picked up on trying AI to their home-related issues. From how to regulate their door to if DoBu knows what is the best internet provider for their apartment. 😄 Also, I've been really pleased with the cooperation between all the parties in this pilot 🙏: the quick action from Reterra to pilot DoBu in a development that was just being completed, bouncing around many ideas with the warranty management team from Mapri Ehitus OÜ and already executing and implementing some of them. We also added extra information to DoBu to ensure that clients receive answers to every question. 💬 💡Reterra is one of the developers behind WoHo kvartal (Telia and Pipedrive towers) and one of the largest real estate developments in Tallinn's history: Hipodroomi kvartal, as well as thousands of other apartments. 🏢 In the pictures, you can see me and Reterra CEO Reigo Randmets 🤝 celebrating the beginning of our cooperation, along with some images of the Raemõisa development and the beautiful apartments where DoBu is being used. And yes, there are are already more developments that are actively using us at this moment, hopefully you’ll hear about them soon 😉 DoBu has started our first full-scale pilot with Embach Ehitus - the daughter company of Nordecon AS - one of the largest construction companies in Estonia. 🥳 The pilot is taking place in Tartu, within the last (8th) apartment building of their Mõisavahe development. In the pictures, you can see the whole development and me 🤝 with Embach’s CEO Andres Salusaar, standing in front of the building where the homeowners are now using DoBu. Personally, this is an unbelievable achievement and the biggest one yet 🌟, as we have gotten our first paying client and DoBu is being used every day by real users. While we have done smaller-scale testing with different developers, doing the process from 0 to handover to clients is a totally different story. Very cool to see our warranty chatbot assisting and resolving the first warranty cases, clarifying the details of cases and saving time for both parties. And homeowners getting the answers in DoBu to their questions, instead of calling and messaging the developer. 🤖 It is great to partner with such a respected developer in the region in our first pilot, as in the current economic climate they still sold 90% of the apartments before the building was completed which is quite uncommon for current new developments. 🫡 But again, this is just the beginning, we have some more paid pilots closed that I can announce in some time. Of course, lots of stuff is in progress and much more to come 🚀 🚀🚀 DoBu has been quiet for some time. Since December we have had a new website and for the past 4 months a new focus 🎯 When we made DoBu available for everyone, the initial focus was on private homeowners. To get more direct feedback and initial users I started going door to door 🚪 on new real estate developments around Tallinn - which btw is not very common in Estonia, for a lot of people, I was probably the first and last person to sell something at their door. A few hundred doors later and after more feedback from initial users, we realized that the platform didn’t add too much value yet for many consumers to adopt it 👥 But almost no new real estate development owner was satisfied with the current documentation given to them by their developer, but getting everything to DoBu themselves seemed like too much of a hassle - this was in autumn 2023. So I started calling Estonian real estate developers, who said that they get bombarded with questions from clients about their home, that the documentation could have answered. And since then we have switched our focus and have now met/are meeting with most of the Estonian developers. The goal is that instead of the current long/complicated papers or PDF’s, you get our AI-powered home management platform 📄🔄🤖 In December we also made a new website for our new clients - check it out at: https://dobu.ee/ You can see our new features from there, if you have any feedback or thoughts, please let me know 🙏 We’ll continue to talk with Estonian real estate developers and hopefully, you’ll hear more soon 🤫 The second half of 2023 was not very active for me on LinkedIn as most of it has gone into building DoBu's product. Nevertheless, many interesting things happened that I thought I'd quickly share 🎤: In August, I participated in a panel discussion at Opinion Festival / Arvamusfestival with Priit Lilleväli and Aleksandr Afanasjev from Combat Ready, titled “Noored juhtima” or “The youth shall lead” in English. I had recently been through a leadership course by Combat Ready │ Leadership Consulting and Services and, along with a fellow student, we shared our experience and generally discussed leadership from the perspective of the youth. As of September, DoBu is based in the best coworking place and launchpad for startuppers - LIFT99 🚀. Thank you, Ragnar Sass and Rannar Park, for the opportunity! In the summer, I was a mentor at a youth hackathon called Hüppelaud, organised by Ede Schank Tamkivi. I also shared my experience and gave some tips about pitching in different situations 🥶. Since in school it was mandatory for me to create a student company and DoBu would not fit under the rules in any way, I decided to combine the side project with my passion 🧊. Going winter swimming always takes quite a bit of time and when looking for cold plunges in Estonia, you have the option of either small, low-quality Aliexpress dropshipped ones or expensive, professional-grade baths. I saw an opportunity and hence Nullivann (Zerobath in English) was born 🛁. We are building handmade ice baths and have mainly promoted ourselves at different winter swimming events🏊‍♂️. In December, we were at the Estonian Winter Swimming Championships, where I also participated myself and again, I gave an interview in an icetub (this time in Nullivann). If you are interested, message me or go to our website nullivann.com. You can also follow us by the same name on Instagram and Facebook. Of course, there were other interesting things that happened, but almost all my time remains on building DoBu and you’ll hear some updates about it soon📈. What is DoBu? Leave those LinkedIn TOP 10 AI prompts aside for a moment and create a DoBu account in under 2 min ;) DoBu’s home management platform is finally available to everyone!🎉🏡 What started as a personal problem of finding unchanged 10-year-old dusty air filters in my room and seeing how time-consuming finding the right replacement parts is - has turned into a mission to make homeowner lives better. After many pivots, errors, scrapped products and many learnings about an industry we knew very little about, you can now go to https://dobu.ee/ and create an account in 2 minutes. But Rasmus, what does DoBu’s product look like? 🤔 It is an all-in-one home management platform currently aimed at private houseowners to save their time on countless tasks and duties. In DoBu, with the help of our AI, they can turn their home documents into: 🏠 Quick access to all kinds of technical information about their home (measurements, product codes, manuals etc.) 🧹 Reminders about maintenance and guarantee deadlines for different parts and details of their home 🛠️ Quickly find and order any home-related service from fixing your plumbing and oiling your terrace to mowing your grass and cleaning your home. As always, message me or write a comment if you have any questions/feedback or just want to say the product is terrible 😄 (PS! All the homeowners go to https://dobu.ee/ now! 🏠⏰) Missed my speech at TechChill? No worries, I had a nice chat with Kristel Kont at the event and she made an excellent blog post about me with points from the talk for sTARTUp Day's blog. Go check it out here: https://lnkd.in/dwxrzk5Z #startupday #founder #story "The Journey of a 16 year-old founder" That was the title of the speech I gave last week at TechChill’s open mic session. I talked about what path and interesting stories led me to where I’m currently at. Thank you to everybody who voted for me so I could get this amazing opportunity. And all the people who came to listen and wanted to talk or messaged me afterwards! In case you missed the speech, here are a few key learning I have gotten on my journey: All the information is available online - I started by watching startup videos on youtube (many great channels) 💡 Take every chance - many amazing opportunities came to me just because I sent one email or said a few extra sentences when talking to someone 👀 Have fun - building a startup is hard, make jokes and take things lightly to keep the mood up 😎 If you are wondering why I and the public are wearing silent disco headphones - It's not because they didn’t t want to listen to me, the stage was set up this way, another interesting experience 😁 It was my first time at TechChill, a very nice and cosy Baltic startup event, hopefully, see everyone there next year! #techchill #speech #founder Hey LinkedIn friends! I’d really appreciate it if you can take 10 seconds and vote for me to be one of the speakers for TechChill’s open mic event. I’ll share my journey as a young founder. Vote here: https://lnkd.in/dV4YNA2q #techchill #speaker #journey Ringvaade x DoBu = Icetub pitching, again... Yesterday I appeared in one of Estonia’s most famous TV show’s with 130 000 viewers last week: Ringvaade. And of course, the reason was nothing else than me pitching in the ice tub. Along with 2 other startuppers, Raili Maripuu from MAP-U and Sirli Rosenvald from FUNKI, we competed for a fast pass to the most well-known Estonian startup accelerator Ajujaht’s TOP 40. Before arrival, I expected to go in shoulders deep into an ice tub like in Tartu. Turns out they had brought a kid’s pool full of ice instead. Almost like a sandbox, but the sand has been replaced with something much colder 🧊 Before we went in the water, Ringvaade’s legendary host Marko Reikop who is known for his honesty, mentioned multiple times: “Why are you doing this?”, and he definitely didn't like the cold water. Kristel Kruustuk, Founder of Testlio and Eve Peeterson Head of Startup Estonia were the judges for this challenge. They talked about Ajujaht and then had to quickly make the tough decision of who gets directly into the TOP 40. In the end, Funki won the challenge. But as I said on TV: “ We won’t give up and will definitely still apply to the program ” The link is in the comments If you want to see it yourself. Our segment starts at 37:55, my pitch is last 😉 #ringvaade #ajujaht #pitchcompetition Last week I along with DoBu’s team participated in the biggest business festival of the Baltics sTARTUp Day — the main event for every startupper in the region. On arrival, we started off by taking a nice cold swim during .Cocoon Program's winter swimming side event. It was a nice preparation for the next day😳 During the event was great to network with a lot of different people, thanks to everyone for the interesting conversations. I attended many great seminars and speeches. Personally, I liked the guys from Combat Ready: Remo Ojaste and Aleksandr Afanasjev's talk about extreme ownership, Martin Villig's talk about the early days of Bolt was very inspirational, and the great advice that Kaspar Korjus gave in 2 seminars. The highlight was definitely Ajujaht's icehole pitching event of which I talked more about in my last post. Me and Fred pitched DoBu’s solution to hundreds of viewers and the jury who were enjoying the hot tub. Since we won the tickets for the next startup day, then if I don't see you at Latitude59 or some other event before, then hopefully we meet again next year! #startupday #networking #dobu Ice swimming + startup pitching = DoBu way to convince investors Last Thursday me and Fred Kuiv took part in Ajujaht’s icy challenge to pitch DoBu while the jury aka investors soaked in the hot tub. Along with us 6 other start-ups took on the challenge. While Fred ate ice cream to show how the average homeowner who uses DoBu enjoys life. I explained in the icy conditions what makes their lives so easy. Both of us have done Winter swimming before. In general, it is a lot like building a start-up, it requires discipline and getting out of your comfort zone, plus you are constantly in pain 😄 I liked the format more than other types of pitching as you could go for as long as you are in the water, so no time limit 🥶 After we came out of the tub I thought we could finally warm up, but turns out the media likes extreme conditions so we ended up going in two more times for some quick interviews. One of them was for TV3. In the end, we won sTARTUp Day 2024 tickets to come back next year to melt the ice even more with our hot idea. PS! If you want to see the pitch just DM me. #ajujaht #icehole #startupday We won STARTERtallinn with team DoBu! Last Wednesday we participated in the finals for the top 10 of the Business idea development program STARTERtallinn. The program is organized by all Tallinn universities, Edu & Tegu and led by Kristy Tättar. After coming up with the prototype of DoBu at a Garage48 Digital Construction hackathon this September, we joined the program to start developing our idea. We got much new information and constructive feedback from all the different sessions. In November, there was a Startup Speed Dating Night organized by STARTER, where around 50 mentors and experts gave feedback on our ideas. They could invest “fake money” into their favourites. We raised the most investment by night and got the Biggest Hustler award. Back to the finals, after 3 months of hard work, we won the Grand Prix of STARTERtallinn which included: 1000€ from Tallinna ettevõtluskeskus represented by the Deputy Mayor of Tallinn Joosep Vimm 3 years of free hosting services from Veebimajutus.ee Latitude59 tickets for the DoBu team Goodie bags from Startup Estonia and SEB Eesti Also a big thank you to the Estonian Business Angels Network (EstBAN) and Tehnopol for their special prizes that we received. We are very grateful to everyone who organised the program and who gave us advice along with our wonderful mentor Sven Idarand! After the STARTERtallinn finals, Prototron fund autumn batch top 10 started pitching, where we also participated this year but unfortunately did not reach the top 10. It was nice to see everyone in real life and we really appreciate all the people who helped us on Prototon’s side as well. Now that all the programs and competitions are over for a bit, we can finally do some real work :) #STARTERtallinn #prototon #startup What is this digital technical pass all about? So what did you exactly do to win the “Õpilaslejutajate riiklik konkurss”? Hopefully, most of these questions will be answered soon. Yesterday In the science section of Vikerraadio - Estonia's most listened-to radio station me and Siim Viilukas talked about our project “Digital technical passport for homes” which won us first prize in the Estonian student inventor competition “Õpilasleiutajate riiklik konkurss 2022”. The radio show was called “Nutikas”. Along with us, The Chairman of the Evaluation Committee Tanel Liira talked about the competition in general and gave insight into other interesting ideas featured in the competition. We got to talk a little bit about how we got the idea for DoBu and its founding story, of course about our solution, how it works and what problems it solves. Along with that, we answered some questions about the competition and why we decided to apply. I have added the link to the recording in the comments if you would like to listen to it. (It’s in Estonian btw - sorry to all the foreign friends 😄). The full title is “Nutikas”. Õpilasleiutajate konkurss ja esimese preemia idee. Siim Viilukas, Rasmus Merirand, Tanel Liira” A big thank you to ETAG - Estonian Research Council, who’s amazing people got us this wonderful opportunity! Happy listening! #dobu #radio #vikerraadio Last Tuesday me, Siim Viilukas and Fred Kuiv won the first prize in the Estonian student inventor competition “Õpilasleiutajate riiklik konkurss 2022” organized by ETAG - Estonian Research Council. We had the honour of being handed the award by the President of Estonia Alar Karis, who congratulated us on our victory and wished us the best for the future. We participated with DoBu’s solution to the current problem of homeowner manuals being stacks of paper that nobody reads and is therefore unaware and confused about their home. The 11-page research paper is called “Digital technical pass for homes”. There we talk about the problem along with the current market situation that DoBu is solving and describe how our solution gives reminders to homeowners about when to change or repair details of their home. (If you want to read the original Estonian version, you can message me here on LinkedIn.) After the ceremony, we got interviewed by ETV, the biggest TV channel in Estonia. And later that night were shown in “Aktuaalne kaamera” where we introduced DoBu. (The link for the clip is in the comments) It was a very eventful day, if you would like to learn more about us then you can follow DoBu on LinkedIn, visit dobu.me or if there is anything else that you are curious about, message me. #dobu #innovation #realestate I'm excited to spend this summer fighting financial crime as a Sales Intern at Salv.