Dashfactory is a Germany-based country founded in Jena in December 2019. The company is focused on innovation for smart cities and urban mobility, especially for cycling traffic and infrastructure planning.
Their product Dashbike is a unique cycling dashcam with distance measurement and lots of sensors. It creates geo-referenced video recordings in dangerous situations and thus provides legally binding evidence.
Due to the multitude of sensors, infrastructure data and data on bicycle traffic can be collected and evaluated. This makes danger spots for cyclists visible, such as heavily frequented routes, accident blackspots, roads where passing is often too close, heavy braking and acceleration maneuvers, and much more.
All this data is analyzed by Dashfactory’s Urban Data Platform Dashtrack and processed into heatmaps, dashboards, etc. as well as implemented into the cities’ local Urban Data Platform. This supports cities and urban planners in their planning processes.
A diverse team focused on offering better safety to cyclists
Dashfactory’s team is made up of 14 people from diverse backgrounds. The team has athlete cyclists as well as urban cyclists. Also, most of the members have a technical background in hardware and software, while the others have expertise in marketing, finance, and law.
They started in 2019 with the vision to make cycling safer with their special cycling dashcam Dashbike. Thanks to the great concept of the hardware device, they became part of a German startup accelerator where the city of Leipzig is a partner.
Today, most European cities are lacking cycling data. So in order to provide a solution to this problem, they developed the Urban Data Platform Dashtrack based on the cities’ needs. Now the company has an existing data flow from Dashbike > App > Dashtrack > UDP of the city.
The company’s vision is to make cycling safer. This way they aim to make cycling more attractive for people, helping them embrace a healthier and more sustainable transportation alternative. Since, according to them, Helsinki is one of the most attractive cities for cyclists, they want to collect cycling data in this city as well. Then they want to improve the infrastructure by evaluating what goes well and where they can make some changes.
Dashfactory and the urban tech helsinki program
Along with their plans to collaborate with the City of Helsinki, Dashfactory also joined the Urban Tech Helsinki program. In this program, the team has had an awesome experience and they especially like the one on one sessions with individual mentoring and structured analysis of their current status around team, product, market, finance, sales, and much more.
Because they think it gives them a very good overview of what they are doing well and where they can keep an eye on to always improve themselves. Also, they like to work with the nice people from UTH.
What the one-on-one sessions in the UTH program have provided for the company is an objective look at the company from outside, combined with the structured way to analyze every part of their company and business. So they think that it was the most useful part of the program for them.
By 2022, the Dashfactory team aims to scale globally. First of all, they want to make cycling safer in Europe. Then they want to work even closer with more international cities on improving the cycling traffic and infrastructure planning with Dashbike and Dashtrack. In addition, they are working on product diversification and scaling of Dashtrack
In order to achieve these goals, the company needs sales and distribution partners which can help it reach more cyclists with its hardware. Also, it needs more cities gibing cyclists the possibility to actively contribute to an improvement of their own cycling infrastructure.
Moreover, the company is always looking for motivated people from tech, marketing, and sales to grow its team successfully. You can learn more about the company on its website at dashbike.de/en/.
This article is done in collaboration with ArcticStartup.