Tomas LaurentChief Product Officer · Essays & perspectiveTomas Laurent Chief Product Officer · Europe
A selected perspective
Landlord and tenant5 min read
Building software around a number both parties trust
Building-performance software is bought by landlords, but in a multi-let office the tenants control most of the energy used. A product that serves only the buyer produces reports rather than reductions.
Declining to sell a label estimator before the Dutch office deadline
In early 2022, with the Dutch requirement approaching that most offices hold an energy label of C or better from January 2023, our customers' asset managers wanted one answer from us: which of their buildings would pass.
When I joined Lindevaart in 2021, we charged landlords €1.60 a month for every data point connected to the platform: each meter channel, temperature sensor, valve position and alarm.
Until 2024 every building on our platform was connected through a Lindevaart gateway: a small industrial computer that our field partners installed in the plant room to read the building automation system and meters.
A building is measured honestly when the meter, the energy label and the occupant's complaint are allowed to disagree on the same screen, and someone is responsible for finding out why.
Landlords need tenants' energy data to report how their buildings perform, and many now write blanket access into new leases. Data obtained through a clause arrives patchy and resented; data shared through a consent the tenant can see, narrow and withdraw is more complete and more useful.
Building software is often priced per connected data point or as a share of the energy it is said to save. Both models charge landlords for the behaviour the product ought to encourage. Pricing by floor area is less elegant and more honest.
Annual recurring revenue, June 2026
€68m
Lindevaart Systems, across the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany
Buildings connected to the platform
5,200
31 million square metres of lettable area for about 260 landlords
Median time from contract to first data
6 days
Down from 19 days after we stopped selling gateway hardware
Building software earns its place when the landlord who pays for it and the tenant who occupies the floor can read the same measured number and agree what to do about it.
I am chief product officer of Lindevaart Systems, a fictional Rotterdam software company whose platform reads the meters and building automation systems of about 5,200 commercial buildings in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Our customers are some 260 landlords, from pension-fund managers with a hundred offices to families who own three distribution warehouses. They use us to report how much energy their buildings actually consume, to find heating and cooling faults before tenants feel them, and to share consumption with the people who occupy the floors. We earned €61.4 million of revenue in 2025.
I came to software from the plant room. I spent eight years as a Belgian building-services engineer, first designing heating and ventilation in Brussels and then commissioning controls in offices and hospitals around Antwerp, where I learnt how far a building's behaviour drifts from its drawings. Six years in product management at a German maker of building controllers taught me how equipment reaches a building through installers. Four and a half years running member product for a flexible-office operator in Amsterdam taught me the occupant's side: the door that will not open, the meeting room that is always too warm, and the person who cannot use the app at all.
Those two sides meet in my present job. Landlords buy our software, but in a multi-let office the tenants decide the lights, the plug loads, the opening hours and much of the heating demand. A product designed only for the asset manager produces handsome reports and little change in the building. Since 2021 I have rebuilt our platform so that a landlord and a tenant can look at the same measured figure, on a page each of them can read, and settle what happens next. Most of my decisions, including the ones that cost us revenue, follow from that.
Measured consumption beside the label
When most Dutch offices needed an energy label of C or better from January 2023, we declined to sell a label-estimating tool and showed measured consumption beside each building's calculated label instead. In buildings using that view with fault detection, consumption per square metre fell by an average of 11 per cent over two heating seasons.
A price that rewards measuring more
We replaced a charge per connected data point with a price per square metre of lettable area. We gave up €2.3 million of annual recurring revenue from heavily instrumented accounts; connected points per building more than doubled within eighteen months, and net revenue retention rose from 103 to 111 per cent.
A building connected in six days
We stopped selling our own gateway hardware and connected buildings through the open protocols their controllers already use. The median time from signed contract to first data fell from 19 days to 6, and we connected 1,050 new buildings in 2025 against 610 in 2023.
Entry that every member could use
At Hallenbrook Workspaces I reversed an app-only door system I had supported. Failed entries fell from 4.8 per cent of attempts to 0.6 per cent, and an external audit's count of accessibility defects in the member app fell from 212 to 9.
Current focus
I am preparing our product for the recast EU directive on the energy performance of buildings as member states write it into national law, which will bring minimum performance standards closer for the worst-performing non-residential buildings. My immediate work is a tenant data-sharing agreement that a facilities manager can grant, narrow or withdraw in two minutes, and a renovation-planning view that shows a landlord which measures lift a building out of the lowest band at the least cost.
Conversations I welcome
I am not looking to leave Lindevaart, where the platform changes I have started need another two years. I would consider one non-executive or supervisory board seat at an organisation that owns or operates buildings or infrastructure and is not a Lindevaart customer, competitor or supplier, joining a committee on sustainability, technology or data. I can give about twenty days a year with my chief executive's agreement. I also accept a few invitations to speak to landlord, facilities-management and accessibility audiences.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
Haverwijk Foundation for Accessible BuildingsBoard member, unpaid and non-executive · 2020–present
Formation
Master of Science in Electromechanical EngineeringVerdonck Institute of Engineering · 2003
Executive Master in Management, part-timeAldegonde School of Management · 2015
Tomas asked this board to attach a condition to his own proposal, a quarterly churn report on the gateway decision, before any of us thought to. He brings decisions that cost revenue with the cost already counted, and he reports back when the numbers move against him.
Marijke HoogendaalFictional chair of the supervisory board, Lindevaart Systems B.V.The full record ↗
Contact
I am not looking to leave Lindevaart, where the platform changes I have started need another two years. I would consider one non-executive or supervisory board seat at an organisation that owns or operates buildings or infrastructure and is not a Lindevaart customer, competitor or supplier, joining a committee on sustainability, technology or data. I can give about twenty days a year with my chief executive's agreement. I also accept a few invitations to speak to landlord, facilities-management and accessibility audiences.
