From paper logbooks to over 2000 paid installations: building visitor management software in Europe
Hey fellow hackers! I'm Pieter-Jan, co-founder of Vizito. We build visitor management software, basically replacing the paper sign-in sheet at company front desks with a self-service check-in on a tablet.
How it started
We kept walking into offices: companies with badge systems, cameras everywhere, proper access control, and there'd be a spiral notebook at the front desk. Please write your name and who you're here to see.
No record anyone could actually use, no way to tell the host their visitor arrived, and in Europe, technically a GDPR problem since you're exposing every previous visitor's name to anyone who signs in after them.
So we built the thing and kept adding features: Pre-registration, self check-in on a tablet, ID scanning, document signing, badge printing, host gets a automated notification. Pretty boring when you describe it like that, but it turns out boring infrastructure is what companies actually pay for.
Where things stand
We're installed at over 2000 locations now, mostly across Europe. Bootstrapped, profitable, small team in Belgium. We got ISO 27001 certified because enough enterprise procurement teams asked for it that we stopped debating whether it was worth the effort (it was worth it, but barely fun ...).
What I'd tell other founders selling B2B in Europe
Compliance isn't a checkbox here, it's the entire first conversation. Before anyone asks about features or pricing, you'll get a security questionnaire, a DPA review, and questions about where your servers are physically located. We fully host in Europe, and I've typed that sentence more times than I can count.
The other thing nobody warned me about: when your product is literally the front door of a company, every minute of downtime is visible to real people standing in a lobby. That's a different kind of pressure than most SaaS.
Happy to talk about any of this: B2B in Europe, GDPR as a product constraint, or the visitor management space if anyone's curious.
