Learn to love your paperwork! What’s the problem you solve with docomondo?

docomondo helps people organize their paperwork fast and easily. Everyone has to deal with physical and digital paperwork. Usually, people don’t store all their documents in one online or offline channel but on several ones. You might have bank statements in your bank account, insurance statements in your email account, and posted bills in your paper stack at home, etc. This makes finding the right document at the right time difficult. docomondo is a platform where you can store and organize anything in one single place. No matter if invoices, warranty receipts, bills, or even recipes. Everything can be stored and organized easily with docomondo.

How docomondo works in a nutshell: 

1. Upon receiving documents, you can store them via drag and drop or scan it with our app. The system then automatically assigns a digital number to each document. This number is then written on the original document which can then be stacked chronically in a folder or shoebox.
2. To find your document you can use docomondo’s full-text search enabled by OCR technology. This means, instead of remembering the right document title you can search for any type of content in the document.
3. The system will find the document within seconds and thanks to the number displayed on your digital document you find the original within seconds as well. 

The benefits: All your documents are available when needed from any device, you can find them within seconds & the gap between the online and the offline world is closed.

What are your biggest learnings to running and growing a business from the ground up?

After working at a bank, I started my entrepreneurial track by building a catering business with 6 restaurants. With docomondo I then transitioned into the digital world, which I knew as a user, but not as an IT entrepreneur. The (offline) restaurant business is a people business; once people hear about your offer they come and try – and if they like it, they usually visit again and tell their friends about it. The digital business is a mass business; you reach a huge audience through launching your App in the App Stores. However, to get them to download, try, and eventually like, and even pay for the app is the bigger challenge. 

My greatest learning about building up a business, especially in an area where you’re new is: Hard work pays off. You learn something new every day, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Additionally, we had to realize that marketing is almost as important as the product – and you can’t build up a business without it.

What were the biggest challenges you faced with docomondo?

In the beginning, it was a lack of experience in this field. I knew how to build a business and run a company but didn’t know anything about programming. The first challenge, therefore, was to get a good team of developers and reliable partners. 

For legal, we found LEXR which helped us a lot with the set-up and for the digital part, we initially worked with Taikonauten from Berlin. Right now, we have our own, awesome team and work with contractors whenever needed.

What role does Data Privacy play for docomondo and how was working with LEXR on this topic?

People upload very sensitive data to our app. Right from the beginning, it was crucial to make sure that the documents are stored securely and that no one else can access them. Our system is built in a way that no one (not even us) can access the user’s documents. People are very sensitive with their data nowadays, especially being afraid that big corporations steal their data or use it without them knowing it. 

For us, privacy has to be excellent technically and legally. We found LEXR at Startsummit and are very happy with the collaboration. LEXR helped us figure out the whole privacy topic from start to finish. We didn’t have the experience, needed a partner with strong expertise and LEXR was the ideal match.

Where do you see the most potential for your solution in the future?

When it comes to functions, our main priorities are setting up our own docomondo cloud in Switzerland and creating a “digital butler” that makes it even easier for users to manage their documents. Our goal is to relieve our users as much as possible from tedious, nerving paperwork so they can spend their precious lifetime on fun things and not on paperwork.

Currently, we mainly focus on the DACH region – as we continue to grow in the future we plan to expand to other larger regions, e.g. the United States.

What would you say is key to your customer and user satisfaction?

From the beginning, it was important for us to build a product that really solves a relevant user problem.

We needed to find out whether current document storage & organization was a problem only for ourselves or many other users as well. We did large marketing research where we asked over 1500 potential users about their experience with paperwork. The outcome: 80% said that they were fed up with paperwork and they wanted a solution for it. After identifying this huge market potential, we gathered a group of 300 beta users and created our system with the help of their feedback. 

This way, we were able to meet the needs of real (not imaginary) people and created a product together with 300 users that wanted a solution for dealing with annoying paperwork. And I am proud to say that the outcome has exceeded our wildest dreams!