profitize Talk with Simon Falkensteiner

Starting over twice - that wasn’t the plan. It was instinct. Raised in an entrepreneurial family that is one of the best-known in the industry, Simon Falkensteiner chose his own path: In 2015, he founded RateBoard, a revenue management system that he successfully sold to the Zucchetti Group five years later. In 2024, he started over again -this time with profitize, an AI-powered financial analytics platform for hotels. Not on the revenue side. But where he believes the real potential lies: in profit.

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Simon, you built, scaled, and sold a company with RateBoard. What made you decide to start over from scratch?

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It wasn’t a single moment. I stayed on for four more years after the sale of RateBoard, saw where the industry was headed, and one issue kept nagging at me: the cost side. What does running the business really cost? Where are costs creeping in unnoticed? Revenue management is about optimizing revenue - that’s the foundation for doing a good job. But in the end, what counts is what’s left at the bottom line. Paying off loans, investing, retaining employees: all of that depends on profit. And in my view, there was a huge untapped opportunity in the hotel industry - not just to cut costs, but to become more profitable while maintaining or even improving quality.

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And on a personal note - what drives you?

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I enjoy building things - things that I might even use myself and that make a real difference for other hoteliers. I enjoy being a problem-solver - that might sound a bit odd, but that’s exactly what it is. When you see how a business uses better data transparency to make decisions it couldn’t make before, that’s rewarding. And the topic of financial management in the hotel industry has so many unresolved issues that I won’t run out of work anytime soon.

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You have a name that’s generating a lot of buzz in the industry.
What does that mean for you as a founder?

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It’s both an opportunity and a challenge. The network is larger than if you were starting from scratch - you know people, and people know you, which is especially helpful in the early stages. At the same time, it forces you to deliver. You can’t sugarcoat things. All in all, it’s a good mix - but you can’t delude yourself on either side.

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How did the profitize team come together?

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I’d known Michael Gorfer, our current co-CEO, for quite some time. We’d often talk, including about cost management in the hotel industry - it was a topic that concerned both of us. At some point, I said to him, “This sounds good to me; let’s do something.” That’s how it all started. Michael brings primarily sales and support experience to the table - that’s his specialty. I contribute more in terms of product and strategy. Our CTO, Mark Nardi, joined us through a mutual acquaintance - a school friend of my cousin’s. We first had him develop a small app, which worked out well, and that led to more. We also have former colleagues from our RateBoard days on the team. That creates a bond.

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What was the biggest difference compared to your first startup?

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You approach the situation with a bit more ease. Not because you don’t take it seriously - but because you know that problems will arise and that you can solve them. The first time, everything is new; there are moments when you think: now it’s really all over. The second time around, you know: That’s just part of it. And you have the advantage of knowing the mistakes you don’t have to make again. Especially when it comes to interfaces - that was already complex at RateBoard and continues to be so at profitize. We prioritized things differently from the start.

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What specific problem does profitize solve?

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Many hotels don’t find out until very late - often long after the end of the month, when they consult their tax advisor - how much they actually earned. What was the profit? How high were the costs really? The cost side, in particular, was a blind spot for a long time. People focused on revenue because it looked good. But if costs get out of hand, even strong revenue won’t help.

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profitize provides near-real-time transparency: You see the actual figures at the end of the month - not just in the annual financial statements. And you have a basis for making informed decisions. Who is saving where? What is going better than planned? What needs attention?

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That sounds like a clear need. Why hasn't anyone addressed it yet?

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Because the interfaces are so complex. On average, a hotel uses seven to ten different systems: PMS, point-of-sale, accounting, HR, e-invoicing. Automating the integration of all these systems so that the hotelier doesn’t have to enter everything manually is technically very challenging. We’ve now built over 40 interfaces. A large portion of our IT capacity goes into exactly that. But it’s the foundation that makes the system useful in the first place.

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What role does AI play in this?

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A central one - but always with a specific purpose. We use AI for mapping and importing data, meaning we use it to automatically assign invoices to the correct cost centers. We use it for forecasting: How many arrivals can we expect, and what does that mean for variable costs? And we have an AI chatbot in the system that allows users to query their own data directly - “How much cash will come in next month?” or “How have my labor costs changed compared to last month?” AI makes the system user-friendly, even for hoteliers who don’t have a background in financial management.

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How is the industry responding to this?

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The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. What interests me is that there are actually two very different types of users. Some of them barely knew their numbers before - for them, profitize primarily provides a level of clarity they never had before. The others had their numbers well under control, but did everything manually: entering invoices, reconciling systems, making accruals in accounting. They mainly see the time savings. Both are valuable, just in very different ways.

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And something I personally didn’t expect: just how much input we’ve gotten from the hoteliers themselves. A lot of things we hadn’t thought of ourselves while building the product came out of those conversations. That’s the best part about having an early customer base - you learn very quickly.

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Currently, around 150 hotels use the platform - ranging from small family-run businesses in South Tyrol and multi-property operators (i.e., smaller hotel groups with several properties) to larger hotels in Germany.

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This spring, you closed a seed funding round worth 1.4 million euros. What exactly does that allow you to do?

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We’re expanding the team - especially in sales and support - and continuing to develop the platform in a targeted manner. There are a few areas we’ve been wanting to tackle for some time: ESG tracking, which involves automatically calculating a CO₂ footprint without manual input; inventory management and procurement, so hotels can make proactive purchasing decisions based on forecasts; And benchmarking - the ability to anonymously compare one’s own figures with those of comparable businesses. Especially for the vacation hotel industry, such a feature has been virtually nonexistent until now. These are the next steps.

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Where will profitize be in three years?

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At least 1,000 hotels on the platform - that’s a realistic goal. Right now, we have a strong presence in South Tyrol, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Our next market is all of Italy. After that, we’ll look north: Scandinavia, the Netherlands. These are markets where there’s a strong affinity for data-driven work. The goal is clear: to grow as large as possible. And I believe we can do it.

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Simon, thank you very much for talking with us.

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About – Simon Falkensteiner

Simon Falkensteiner is the co-founder and co-CEO of profitize. Raised in a family of hoteliers, he founded the revenue management system RateBoard in 2015, which he successfully sold to the Zucchetti Group in 2020. In 2024, together with Michael Gorfer and Mark Nardi, he founded profitize - an AI-powered financial analytics platform for hotels that helps businesses manage their costs and specifically increase profitability. profitize is headquartered at the NOI Techpark in Bolzano.

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