Plancraft: software for tradespeople

“I come from a family of carpenters. My CPO and co-founder Alexander comes from a carpentry family business too, so we’ve seen the challenges the trade is facing as times are changing. We saw that carpentry was struggling in the absence of a solution that connects the construction site with back office,” explains Julian Wiedenhaus, CEO and co-founder of plancraft.

Based in Hamburg, with offices in Amsterdam, Vienna and soon Milan, plancraft is where modern meets traditional, developing software to meet the needs of craftspeople.

Their goal is to digitalise and simplify work processes, from project calculations to time tracking and team collaboration.

With software making office work more efficient, plancraft creates more time and space for craftsmen to focus on what they truly love - their craft.

“From planning to quotation and then invoicing…it takes too much time,” Julian adds. “We wanted to bring better web interface, user interface, and web applications. This is standard in other areas.

So we ran around 100 interviews to understand the issues and challenges. Is it just this one company? No. All companies are struggling with digitalisation. The available solutions were just too complex. And it’s challenging because after eight hours on the construction site, the amount of time available for digital tools is really limited.”

We believe our core product serves clients across Europe. They all have common problems. ”

- Julian Wiedenhaus, CEO and co-founder of plancraft

Plancraft’s mission is to create space for tradespeople, save time, introduce automation, and ultimately create freedom. First the company rolled out the product in the German and Austrian market, and in 2025, they started internationalisation, looking at the Polish, Spanish and Italian markets, even though with things like invoicing, tax and accounting, the solution needs to adapt to each country’s standards.

“We believe our core product serves clients across Europe. They all have common problems. Demography has similar trends and the change is massive.

There’s a new generation stepping into these companies, taking over, with a very different understanding of what software should do for you. This is driving technological adaptation and we’re seeing it accelerate.”

With support in the form of an equity investment from Headline, a VC firm backed by the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), the company has been able to expand.

“We are now working on using AI as an accelerator, moving to one interface and making an AI-first tool for people. We built-up the teams and are looking into opening up other markets. We want to build that European Champion company,” Julian says.

At the same time, Julian is convinced that expansion and flexibility need to go hand in hand: “We want to bake flexibility into our DNA as we scale. We have teams split by country and by process, splitting competencies to serve different markets.

We need to maintain that capability of working across different markets and different realities. Scaling is an easy task but scaling the culture is harder.

We’re hiring 10-20 people per month but always looking for the same set of core values and good fit for the company. We need a cohesive team that understands our values if we want to succeed as we scale.”