Ibrahim Imam and the trouble with being early

Before Ibrahim Imam tried to change the way buildings were documented, he learned something awkward about software: a good idea can arrive at the wrong time. He took an earlier software-services business to California and came away believing the market had needed another decade. Silicon Valley, it turned out, could be too early even for Silicon Valley.

Years later, his explanation was wonderfully unadorned: “the market needs to be really ready for a solution.” It is a useful starting point for understanding the Austrian entrepreneur now helping run PlanRadar from Dubai. His business concerns an industry that can assemble a tower while still passing important information around on paper. The opportunity lives in the distance between those two achievements.

A business education with actual failures

Imam was born and raised in Vienna. His father is Egyptian, and after secondary school he spent time in Cairo studying Arabic. Back in Vienna, he studied business informatics at the Technical University. Technology and commerce were already sharing the same desk.

He also began building businesses while studying. Two companies were founded during his university years. The experience that followed included exits, failures and ventures that continued under other managers. In his own accounting, there were two exits and two complete failures before PlanRadar. “From the failures, you learn the most,” he said. There is a certain economy to that verdict. Failure supplies the tuition bill without promising a graduation ceremony.

The California experience added a particular lesson: technical possibility does not establish demand. That distinction becomes central to his later work. Selling construction software means persuading people with buildings to deliver that changing a familiar routine will make tomorrow easier. An elegant demonstration can open a conversation. The next morning on site decides whether it mattered.

The motorcycle in the origin story

PlanRadar’s beginnings belong to a group. Domagoj Dolinsek brought years of construction project management and the frustration that supplied the original idea. In Imam’s telling, a project manager had been sent between construction sites on a motorcycle to transport documents. The documents had acquired their own transport operation. A building site could apparently summon considerable engineering skill before someone asked whether the paperwork needed a chauffeur.

Dolinsek approached Imam and Sander van de Rijdt, experienced entrepreneurs, for advice. Constantin Köck and Clemens Hammerl brought development and design skills. The company took shape in Vienna in 2013. Its early proposition was concrete enough to explain without a conference stage: put information about a building where the people working on it could find it.

Imam and van de Rijdt had met at university and had already founded technology businesses together. Their partnership therefore preceded the construction venture. They joined full time as co-CEOs in 2015. PlanRadar brought together people who understood construction, people who could build software, and people who could build a business around it.

The persuasion happens on Tuesday

Imam’s commercial thinking becomes clearest when he discusses resistance. In 2019, he described established companies as having structures and routines that existed for reasons. An outsider could hardly expect everyone to abandon those habits because a startup had arrived with an app. His prescription included “the right tact and patience.” Neither phrase tends to sell many motivational posters.

For large customers, he described beginning with an agreed pilot. Employees could test the software during ordinary work; PlanRadar could understand what they actually needed. Specialist departments, purchasing and IT each brought requirements. Getting through those requirements was part of the sale. So was convincing the individual employee that the tool reduced effort rather than adding another obligation.

He also said the company had never met most customers personally. A free trial could begin online, with people testing the product for themselves. The product could be tried independently, while organisations that needed a longer courtship had room to take their time. Usability had a commercial purpose. Every unnecessary complication asks a prospective customer for another favour.

A shared title, different desks

Co-CEO can sound like an invitation to hold every meeting twice. At PlanRadar, the responsibilities give the arrangement more definition. Imam leads the group’s corporate and growth strategy alongside the teams that bring the product to customers: marketing, business development, sales, channel management and customer success. Van de Rijdt’s remit includes finance, people, legal and operations.

Imam’s role thus extends beyond winning an account. Customer success sits on the same organisational side as sales. The responsibility continues after a contract is signed, when the person who approved the purchase discovers whether colleagues will use it. His background in marketing and sales, developed across earlier IT ventures and international networks, fits that practical task.

He has also offered a refreshingly short account of leadership. On a 2023 podcast, his lesson came down to hiring: “a good team can deliver good results. Simple as that.” The simplicity leaves plenty of work unstated. Finding those people, giving them useful responsibilities and coordinating a growing international company are substantial jobs. The sentence does at least keep the founder from claiming all the credit.

“A good team can deliver good results. Simple as that.”

Ibrahim Imam, 2023

Why the next office was Dubai

In early 2022, PlanRadar raised $69 million in a Series B round co-led by Insight Partners and Quadrille Capital. The money supported expansion beyond its European base and further product development. In February that year, Imam moved to Dubai. For someone born in Vienna with family roots in Egypt, the move placed an existing international outlook inside a new operating responsibility.

Dubai became the regional headquarters for the Middle East, North Africa and Asia-Pacific. In explaining the decision, Imam pointed to customers already in the region and the amount of construction taking place. Singapore and Sydney were part of the wider expansion. His title as CEO for MENA and APAC describes the geographical work attached to his group leadership position.

That expansion had a visible local example at Expo 2020 Dubai. BeWunder used PlanRadar while delivering audiovisual and lighting installations across exhibition pavilions. The practical requirements included communication, task tracking and reporting progress. A world exhibition may be a temporary spectacle, but coordinating the people who make it work produces familiar administrative demands. Someone still needs to know which task is finished.

The building outlives the handover

By December 2024, Imam was describing a platform that had expanded from defect management into documentation, communication and monitoring. He spoke about offline use, flexible deployment, local support and customer education. These are the details that give his construction-technology argument substance. A tool has to survive the conditions in which people need it, including the inconvenient ones.

SiteView, introduced in 2024, added a visual record: a person walks the site with a 360-degree camera, and images are mapped to the floor plan. The proposition extends the original concern with a documented issue into a broader view of what a place looked like at a given time. Memory becomes something colleagues can revisit together.

Imam also describes work across the building’s lifecycle, including operation after construction. Handover changes who is responsible, while records continue to matter. Owners and facility managers inherit the consequences of decisions made earlier. His ambition reaches beyond the construction phase because the information about a building remains useful after the contractors have packed away their equipment.

Artificial intelligence meets the missing approval

In April 2026, Imam’s examples were still deliberately small: an unclear drawing detail, an inspection requested late, a change carried out before approval. These were the beginnings of larger delays and disputes. He argued for records tied to locations, named responsibilities and evidence captured while work happened. His account of progress was rooted in fewer ambiguities.

That emphasis gives context to PlanRadar’s August 2026 introduction of AI agents. Customers can describe tasks in everyday language or use prepared agents. One example reads an incoming request for information, searches project documents and prepares a reply naming the relevant material. Actions are recorded and attributed; an agent’s access is bounded by the permissions of its creator.

Imam’s explanation of the demand was straightforward: customers wanted routine project work to take care of itself while retaining control. His earlier insistence on usable software has acquired a new mechanism. The ambition is for fewer things to be forgotten between noticing a problem and doing something about it. Better records give automation something dependable to work with.

He has said he wants PlanRadar to become the leading digital platform for construction and real estate worldwide. The scale of that aspiration is considerable. Yet the most persuasive parts of his story remain modest: a trial that convinces a reluctant employee, a photograph attached to the right location, an answer that reaches the person waiting for it. After the early venture that arrived too soon, Imam has spent years attending to the moment when a customer is ready. The paperwork has waited long enough.