Founders Everywhere: Diego Ferreiro Val
Founders Everywhere: Diego Ferreiro Val
Diego Ferreiro Val is the co-founder & CEO of Trebellar, a software providing businesses with actionable space insights, allowing them to make data-driven decisions about their operations.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators.
Most modern buildings are designed with automated systems and it’s not uncommon to find hundreds, if not thousands, of sensors that monitor various parameters such as occupancy, temperature, humidity, air quality, lighting levels, energy consumption, security, and more. Despite this abundance of data, most organizations fail to tap into the full power of their building data because systems are siloed, and extracting insights is messy and time-intensive. Trebellar is unifying this siloed data to help improve building efficiency, reduce costs and carbon, and enhance the occupant experience. Their unique platform fuses different systems into a seamless software experience, making it easy to gain building performance insights – and take action.
Trebellar co-founders, Diego Ferreiro Val and David Garcia Quintas are originally from Spain and have known each other for over 12 years. They both have extensive technical backgrounds that include working as engineers at large organizations: Diego at Salesforce and Yahoo, and David at Google. They wanted a change from the corporate world and decided to build Trebellar together. Diego, the CEO, shares more about how Trebellar is improving the efficiency and sustainability of company operations.
Want to know more?
Trebellar Virtual Open House + Demo is next Wednesday, July 19th, at 10AM PST. Register here.
What’s the story behind Trebellar?
When I was on paternity leave, I started building stuff for automating my home such as connecting the thermostats, cameras, the garage door, and other systems. It was a lot of fun and I found myself geeking out over integrating all this data for better efficiency. My co-founder David is my friend and we had been talking about building something together for a while. We started exploring how we could make this into a business. Through our network, we connected with the heads of real estate at big F500 companies and they all had the same problem: the challenge was not collecting the data, but making sense of it all.
Why the name Trebellar?
Trebellar is a Galician word that my grandmother used to say to me as a kid. It basically translates to “play with something until you master it.” This really speaks to one of our core values which is curiosity, and also reflects our mission which is to keep improving and making things more efficient and sustainable.
Tell us about a recent milestone.
We just completed a $3.5 million seed round with some remarkable investors. For us, this was a big milestone that validated our product and overall view on the market. We feel very fortunate to have new partners who have a proven track record and who want to be helpful.
You can read more in my blog post.
Why is Trebellar a must-have versus a nice-to-have?
The workplace has changed dramatically over the past few years and many buildings aren’t as full as they used to be. Everyone is grappling with questions about how to adapt their spaces, reduce costs, optimize facility operations, and face the challenges of climate change and sustainability. Our product is a must-have because our software addresses those issues and provides businesses with valuable information so they can make data-driven decisions about their operations.
What have been some of the greatest challenges founding Trebellar?
First, the market is tricky. Many people are skeptical because the concept of smart buildings was promised decades ago, without any real significant progress. Second, the real estate industry tends to lag behind in technological advancements so educating customers becomes a key part of what we do.
What’s Trebellar’s secret sauce?
Our secret sauce is our ability to seamlessly and rapidly normalize and integrate all of our data into a user-friendly experience. By applying ML and AI we can then get insights that were otherwise hidden. The result is a comprehensive and powerful platform that empowers organizations to extract maximum value from their data in a streamlined and scalable manner.
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