BAREWAYS in Podcasts: Digital Growth

Our Co-Founder Moritz sat down with Pascal Lehnert from Digital Umsetzen for their Podcast Digital Growth to talk about the business model of BAREWAYS, how competing in start-up competitions can lead to great customer connections, the great individualization of our product, and much much more.

Listen to the whole episode below or on your usual podcast apps.
For a sneak peek: read on.

Pascal: In a few sentences, what does Bareways do?

Moritz: We develop software solutions for navigation with focus on the automotive industry. We are able to create a much more individual navigation than standard manufacturers. For example, if you are driving from Frankfurt to Hamburg, no matter what vehicle you are driving, what your interests are and what the weather is like, all navigation systems will guide you in the same way and on the same motorways. We can take a very differentiated approach and respond more individually. 

What exactly makes it so individual, how is it adaptable to your target groups? 

We see 3 major areas that should influence navigation, but they don’t normally. One is the vehicle. Then there are your preferences. Sports cars need different routes, you are looking for top speed and curves. An SUV driver may want to drive legal bad roads to test their car rather than just drive on the motorway. If there are children in the car, you want to drive to restaurants with playgrounds. Then there is the weather issue. If there are high winds, you don’t want to cross the high bridge where the camper gets into trouble. If the summer tires are already on and there is late snow in the Kassel mountains, then there is a smarter, safer route you can take. 

It’s these three factors: Vehicle, Driver and Ecosystem. We incorporate all these factors to get highly individual routing and navigation.

What I would also like to talk about is your business case. Who are your customers, is it the end customer or B2B business?

At the beginning of our foundation and the business plan, there was the question: do we want to create our own app/navigation that we want to distribute/license B2C? During the Corona period, we also worked on this path, but then in the course of time, we went in the direction of only B2B. We continue to use our app for testing and also drive ourselves with our app. However, our customers are now no longer individual drivers who use the navigation solution on a daily basis. We license our software solutions to car manufacturers so that they can be deeply integrated into their navigation software. Be it an app or an embedded navigation system. We are cloud-based. The car manufacturer knows what you drive, how the car reacts etc, they have the profile. We calculate individual route suggestions based on that profile. Standard, most economical, strongest acceleration, fastest, most fun… From these, the driver chooses and is given the corresponding navigation instructions. The navigation can come from us or from someone else, we are open there. We are fully integrated into the client’s UX/UI, we are in the background and offer white-label service. Always within the wishes of how the client wants to offer routes. 

We do not build end-customer profiles, we do not store preferences. Our customer is only the car manufacturer. Our business model is based on consumption, a bit as software as a service. Consumption can depend on various factors. How many vehicles or apps on the mobile phones drive with our solutions, how many routes are queried, and do we only deliver routing or also navigation? We then configure the licensing model. 

Pascal: Where does Bareways currently stand, where are you integrated? 

Moritz: At the moment, our solutions are already running in customer systems and we see that our routes are being requested globally. The focus is currently on the USA and Western Europe. But then it also goes from Japan to China, South Africa, and South America. Everywhere we find (the first) users who request routes based on our technology and then also drive them.