The Sun Has a Score — Introducing Sunscore from Shadowmap

Sunlight Matters Podcast

Episode: 

In this special episode of Sunlight Matters, David Wallace sits down with Shadowmap founder and CEO Georg Molzer to reflect on the journey behind Shadowmap, humanity’s relationship with the Sun, and the launch of a genuine world first: Sunscore — the first property-specific sunlight metric, now live on Redfin.

Together, they explore:

• Why sunlight profoundly shapes health, wellbeing, and human experience
• How Shadowmap began from a simple craving for winter sunlight in Vienna
• The philosophy behind visualizing sunlight and shadow in 3D
• Why Sunscore could fundamentally change real estate search
• The future of environmental intelligence, AI, and sunlight-aware living
• Startup lessons, luck, and building breakthrough technology from Austria

This episode is both a reflection on the past and a look into the future — where sunlight becomes measurable, searchable, and central to how we design and choose the spaces we inhabit.

Key Topics Covered

☀️ Why the Sun Matters

Georg shares his deeply personal relationship with sunlight and explains why he increasingly sees the Sun not simply as light, but as the core energy source for life itself.

🏙️ The Origins of Shadowmap

The story begins in wintertime Vienna, where dense urban shadows and limited winter sunlight inspired Georg to build a tool that could help people find sunlight anywhere in the world.

🗺️ What Shadowmap Actually Does

A discussion about Shadowmap as a global 3D sunlight visualization platform:

• Real-time shadow mapping
• Sun-path analysis
• Seasonal sunlight simulation
• Solar exposure visualization
• Environmental intelligence for the built world

🏡 Introducing Sunscore

The major announcement:
Shadowmap and Redfin have launched Sunscore — the world’s first property-specific sunlight score.

The episode explores:

• How Sunscore works
• Why sunlight matters to homebuyers
• The value of natural light in real estate
• Why Redfin recognized sunlight as a missing property metric
• The future potential of sunlight-based property intelligence

🧠 AI, Conversational Search & Environmental Data

The conversation explores how Sunscore transforms sunlight into structured, machine-readable data that can power:

• AI systems
• Conversational real estate search
• Property recommendation engines
• Environmental analytics

🌱 Health, Circadian Biology & Morning Light

David and Georg discuss:

• Morning sunlight
• Circadian rhythms
• Skin adaptation to sunlight
• Infrared light
• Sunlight as a health input rather than simply an aesthetic feature

🚀 Building a Startup Around the Sun

Georg shares candid reflections on:

• Entrepreneurship in Austria
• Raising investment for unconventional ideas
• Finding alignment with investors and teams
• Why mission-driven startups require deep conviction

🌍 The Bigger Mission

The episode closes with Shadowmap’s long-term vision:

Reconnecting humanity with the Sun.

Sunlight Matters is a podcast exploring the role of the Sun in human health, architecture, cities, and everyday life.

Through conversations with scientists, architects, and technologists, the series examines how natural light shapes our bodies, our buildings, and the way we live indoors.

Hosted by Dave Wallace, Sunlight Matters asks a simple but overlooked question: what happens when we disconnect from the Sun?

Because sunlight isn’t optional. It matters.

Please do not forget to Like and Subscribe. 

Transcript

Georg (00:00)
I think we want to establish Sunscore in the world. I think it's ⁓ important to have this in every platform that somehow deals with real estate because it's simple to use, it's efficient, it works. We want to get it out there. That's one thing. then big topic is health. And we do have some great ideas up our sleeves to

help people live a healthier life in sunlight. And yeah, it's going to be some extensions of the app ⁓ that make it easy to find morning sun, to find evening sun, like those periods where you can also train your skin to allow more sunlight. to build more.

melatonin and then you can get more tanned and you can get even more energy into your cells and I think that's a good mission. Our mission is to reconnect humanity with the sun and always has been and it's gonna stick to us like this is really what we're doing and then we have of course this manifold of endpoints that enable people to do that.

David Wallace (01:26)
Welcome, Georg. This is a special Sunlight Matters where we're going to look back a bit on what we've talked about in the podcast series so far, make a big announcement as well and talk about that. ⁓ But I think the reality is, I know strange as it may sound, but some people may not know much about you or even Shadowmap.

I wanted to start with a really big question, which is what does the sun mean to you? So this podcast is called Sunlight Matters and does it matter to you?

Georg (02:07)
It

does, it does definitely. Hi Dave, good morning, thanks for having me. Yeah, the sun, I mean, I think the sun is the star of the show. Like literally if you think about it, you know, like I think we as humans, we often stop thinking about something too early. We don't go deep enough, but if you go really deep enough, then you realize that the sun is really the...

I mean, we say this often, like in, I don't know, posts or...

little videos that we do on social media, but the sun is really the source of all life on Earth. Like it's the core energy, it gives us warmth and light and energy. And what we learned in the last year or so is that it really is also the source for the energy of our cells. And then like what we learned with Jonathan Jarecki that the cells themselves, were like more primal.

life forms before they collected to build human bodies and they were running on sunlight. So it's really a core ingredient of life in general. And that's also what it means to me. And I feel it more and more. know, like when I started this whole shadow map thing, ⁓ like I was missing the sun. I was just not feeling energized and well. And I thought it would be cool to have a solution to have more sun in my

And over the years now, I realized that the more I'm in the sun, the better I'm really trying to be in the sun as much as possible. And it gives me energy and health and vitality. I love the sun.

David Wallace (03:54)
I mean, it's because we met because of the sun, you know, so I happen to be thinking thoughts around the sun and then I sort of bumped into you. ⁓ And yeah, I mean, we've been really lucky actually with this podcast series because we've been able to talk to some of the most renowned experts from ⁓ astrophysics to health to

Georg (03:58)
Yeah.

Okay.

David Wallace (04:21)
architecture to lighting to glass. And it's been fascinating really that the more we kind of delve into the subject, the more you realize, A, how important the sun is, you know, but often how we just don't think about it. We're all subconsciously connected to it. And it's been fascinating that whole process of almost discovery of the thing that

Georg (04:40)
Mm.

David Wallace (04:50)
know, is literally shining on me at this moment in time as I sort of sit here with my doors open recording this pub.

Georg (04:56)
Lucky you. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's true. Like this whole podcast journey is incredible. Like you're doing such a great job and the people we get in touch with it's really quite amazing. I mean, it's the elite of some people around the world that we are talking with. And I think it's good for us. We learn a lot and our audience learns a lot. And I think also for the people who join us on the podcast.

They also enjoy talking about the sun because it's still like it's only a minority who is aware of the benefits. yeah, like when I'm running around and dealing with people of different kinds, like I'm usually the one who brings the message how awesome the sun is. the usual reaction is more like, my God, the sun, but it's so dangerous, you know?

David Wallace (05:51)
I know.

Georg (05:55)
Yeah, I like to live

dangerously, you know, I guess.

David Wallace (05:59)
It's

so true and yet, you know, I mean, I'm sat here, I've got three dogs, you know, my three dogs and I've got a cat and they're all stretched out in the sun. So the animals intuitively know that there's something good there.

Georg (06:16)
Yeah, think, I mean, it's a lot about your connection to your body, being aware of your body signals. You know, like if your body signals are, hey, I'm burning in the sun right now, maybe go into some shit, you should just do it, you know? And I think many of us lost that connection. I also lost it myself. Like it took me now years to learn to listen to my body more. And the body is highly intelligent, you know, it tells you really what it needs and...

pay attention to that, but it also needs sunlight and putting sunscreen on your face in winter time is just nonsense. Of course, might be some individuals who need that as well, but I think the general caution distribution average is better off not putting sunscreen on their faces in winter. But yeah, that's just one example.

David Wallace (07:08)
Yeah, no, no, totally, totally. So I wondered, like for those who don't know about Shadowmap, who may be listening to this and they've just sort of found us, could you kind of explain what Shadowmap is and also, you know, why you started it?

Georg (07:23)
Yes.

Yeah, so I mean, I Shadowmap is, or actually I'm convinced Shadowmap is the best tool, the easiest tool to understand availability of sunlight in the high quality, you know, like it's precise enough to give you accurate information, ⁓ works anywhere in the world and it's like a

like Google Earth you could imagine or Google Maps in 3D but you have a time component so you can set a date and a time and then you have an accurate position of the sun in the sky and you see how the shadows behave on the surface level of Earth. ⁓ It's pretty simple. It's really like ⁓ Google Maps with a time thing on top and you can on any location on Earth for any time see whether you have sunlight or not and of course this opens up

many fold of application scenarios. And I think the specialty is that it's easy to use. It runs on any device. It runs in your web browser, on your smartphone, on your tablet. And I mean, we're serving now over 500,000 users each month and we still have only one person in customer success. So it shows that the design of the app is simple enough that most people get it right away. ⁓

which is important because if you don't build software that is easy to use then nobody benefits from it. So this was always a core component of having a good usability and there are still some glitches of course and some potential improvements but we are always working on that and improving it.

David Wallace (09:04)
Well, if you have software, you've never finished, have you? So ⁓ it's interesting because the one person in customer success also does a lot of work on our marketing as well. And I actually really like that.

Georg (09:08)
Yeah, that's kind of true.

Yes.

No, Mac is

amazing. So cheers. Cheers to Mac.

David Wallace (09:22)
Yeah, no, no, but I think

it's good because he's sort of seeing what customers are saying as they kind of, know, in terms of feedback and, you know, that's certainly fed into some of the kind of messaging around marketing. as you say, at the moment, his job is a massive one on the customer success side, which I think is is good evidence of ⁓ a robust platform. And yeah, mean,

Georg (09:40)
Yeah.

And he's going on vacation

soon, so it's me and some other people taking care of customer success. It's always also good to have a check-in here and there see what the people are saying. ⁓

David Wallace (09:57)
Fantastic. so just, mean, can you touch on why you started Shadow Man?

Georg (10:03)
Yeah,

that's an easy story. was like this typical winter in Vienna 14 years ago. I've told this story so often, but it's still true. ⁓ So in Viennese winters, we have pretty narrow roads and pretty high buildings and the sun doesn't rise so high. So you basically don't have any sun. Like I'm living in the first floor and like from...

I think mid-October or November on until February or so. I don't have direct sunlight into my apartment. It's blocked from the neighboring buildings and that's the same situation around the city. So unless you live high up there or you go to a big park where you have like broader area without blocking buildings, you don't see direct sunlight. And I was standing on this balcony at an office I was working back then.

And I just looked over the city, it was another foggy winter day and I thought, hey, at least if the sun ever gets out of the fog and the clouds, I need to know where I can go to spend some 30 minutes in the sun, you know, like some square or like some restaurant or cafe or something that I just have a map and see this directly. And this is really essentially what I have built back then as the first version of Shadowmap. So what I think in retrospect is really cool is that

David Wallace (11:28)
you

Georg (11:28)
whatever

I had in mind, know, like with ideas or some how this thing should behave. This is really how it came out. I mean, a little bit better than I had in mind because you of course, you figure out some details along the way, but it's really manifested the way I always had it in mind.

David Wallace (11:45)
I mean that's really interesting, one of the things I was going to ask is what we've delivered in terms of the interface today, that the thing you kind of imagined all those years ago?

Georg (11:57)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I also remember when I started out and I was talking with a few people about how I wanted to be and I got a lot of ⁓ like naysayers that know this should be this way or that way or whatever. And I just have a strong intuition on how software should be. And that's how I build it. And of course, I mean, you adjust along the way and you change some details.

pretty much like in essence it's what I had in mind and it actually it's much better than I had in mind back then. I mean it's also some years now in the making which is kind of logic but we do have some really really cool features that like back then I didn't plan and some of them ⁓ we shipped quite recently actually some of them

Also like they are alive for some years now. Yeah, and we still have a lot of things in our heads that we want to get out there. yeah, it's not stopping.

David Wallace (13:03)
But I mean,

I really like every time I use it, I sort of feel it's got the wow factor, which I think is really, you know, I guess there's a group of us who are the people who, you know, we're closely connected to the sun. So when you and I met for the first time, I think I was saying to you, I've got a really, my house is dark and I, but I just can't quite picture the sun's relationship.

And you sort of went to my house and showed me and it was like immediately I was like, wow, it's and actually, you know, and I've talked about this before, but it's changed my relationship with my house because now I've realized that actually my son has massive son benefits, which I know it's weird because you kind of live there. But, know, I'm now appreciating much more.

Georg (13:39)
Yeah.

David Wallace (13:58)
like the morning light that we get in the property is unbelievable. ⁓ And going back to the podcast, I mean, one of the things we've learned is just how important morning light is. you know, that's that's been a massive change and I'm sort of getting up every morning with the sunrise. Well, I have to say, I mean, so far I haven't I haven't got sunburn on the back of it and

Georg (14:01)
Yeah

Yeah, you're a role model here.

David Wallace (14:27)
You know, the science behind that is kind of interesting, let's not go in there. But it's certainly for me have the wow factor. And I think as time's gone on and you know, now there's things like Google 3D. So, you know, the fidelity of the property or the place that you've got, if you've got availability is amazing, isn't it? And as Google improves what it does then.

Georg (14:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

David Wallace (14:54)
that the interface will kind of continue to improve, won't it?

Georg (15:00)
Yeah, I mean, I think Dave, what you describe is the magic of visualization. know, we are like, as human beings, we are very visual beings. Our visual sense is the strongest one in terms of bandwidth. And if you want to communicate a message, using something visual is very effective and we are intuitively driven to understand that stuff. then, know, like back then when you think about how to visualize shadows.

I mean, it's an inherent light or no light problem situation. So of course you basically just do what you, what reality does. You take a light source and you project shadows into a virtual scene. And we intuitively understand pretty much immediately what's going on. mean, of course, like there are some few, few people who really don't get it at all, but most people understand what's happening. ⁓ I think as you described, like seeing your house,

across the day, across the season, having some understanding how the sunlight behaves, how the shadows behave in your garden, how your own house casts a shadow into the back of your garden and all these things. I think it makes you appreciate the whole situation. It gives you some understanding how this unfolds, how the days unfold, how the seasons unfold. And then you can just choose, okay, maybe I need another house or I just change my rhythm.

and act more according to the big star and earth and how they behave and how that house, is already built, and you just learn to ⁓ navigate that space with the given facts that you have. as I said, think visualization is an amazing tool to bring the message across. And it also reminds me, you back then when I had the idea, ⁓ I also knew that

If I don't do a good job in building a good prototype that makes it somehow tangible what I have in my mind, people won't appreciate it. It's like as a startup founder, investors always tell you, just throw out an MVP, just make an email survey or whatever and just understand whether people want what you even want to offer them. Intuitively, I always knew that if I don't do a good job in building a

good prototype that somehow gets the message across. People won't like it at all. They just don't see the value in it. I knew it has to have some wow factor, some interactivity, ⁓ good looks, good interface so that people really understand what this thing is going to be. And I think we succeeded in this.

David Wallace (17:43)
I think it's really interesting. I completely agree. But it's kind of interesting because we're moving into a world in which interfaces are changing. as we get the rise of a prompt-based, chat-based interfaces, we were having then to think about, what does this mean for us as a business? And that was one of the inputs that we had to

Georg (17:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

David Wallace (18:13)
what we're going to move on and talk about now, which is Sunscore. So, you know, the big news is, is we launched Sunscore yesterday on Redfin, which ⁓ is a huge US real estate platform. ⁓ And yeah, so I wondered if you could kind of talk about Sunscore and the thinking behind it and also what it is.

Georg (18:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

David Wallace (18:41)
And then maybe we can get into, you know, how the score is calculated.

Georg (18:47)
Sure, Yeah, I mean Sunscore in essence. So when you think about the typical real estate use case, which is still like if we ask our B2C customers, what is the most prominent use case? Still more than 50 % of these people say they use it to find the right home, like home buyers. They want to understand how much sunlight a home gets. And they use it to go to the location and then look at this house or apartment at different...

times of the year, different times of the day, and then they have an understanding. ⁓ That's a cool process. And I love the process and I think it's always going to be there because it gives you some tangible results. But of course, if you, I don't know, we want to evaluate 50 apartments, this might take some time and maybe you just don't, maybe just you want to skip the darkest ⁓ half of apartments in the city. You want to buy an apartment.

And then you need some rating, you need some score. And this is also actually a very old idea that we finally built and shipped. And we have an amazing partner with Redfin, the third largest relicite platform in the US who launched this with us. think it's really, really amazing, but we can talk about that later. ⁓ So what you can do is you can just look at an apartment and you get a score. That score is from zero to...

100 and 100 means that house is extremely sun exposed and zero would mean there is no sun at all. ⁓ And these places exist. is, ⁓ for example, Cedar Street in Manhattan, where buildings in that street don't get any sunlight. they not at all during the whole year, there's no single minute where you have direct sunlight. So they would have a sunscope zero.

On the other hand, if you have a house on the top of a hill and there are no trees and no other buildings in the neighborhood or no other large mountain in the area who casts a shadow, that house would get a Sun score of 100. So it's a simple metric. You can order by that. You can say, give me the 50 brightest homes in San Francisco or in Vienna, or give me the darkest ones. So you really have a metric that is precise.

that is accurate, that reflects reality and use it to filter or order your locations.

David James Vaughan Wallace (21:20)


David Wallace (21:42)
I mean, to me, it's such an interesting innovation because, you know, I love exploring, you know, as you say, I love going on and kind of looking at the sum profile of a property and, ⁓ but actually having that sort of one metric, which immediately gives you like, this is worth exploring or not. think it's so, so, so critical.

Georg (22:10)
Yeah. I think,

mean, what's, what's sorry, just to add to this, ⁓ what's so cool is that you have this score and then you can still click on that thing and explore it in 3d yourself. So you basically can confirm what the score distills, you know, like you have one number, it distills like the exposure into one number, but then you can still click into it and the 3d model opens up and you can look at it from any direction throughout the year, throughout the day. And you can basically confirm what the score. ⁓

compressors. ⁓ I think the combination is magic, you know.

David Wallace (22:44)
I completely agree and I think, you know, what is kind of obvious is that that sunlight and light matters to a huge amount of people ⁓ as part of their searching for places to live or, you know, maybe even going forward based on what we know places to work as well. And, you know, I guess what's surprising is that

Georg (23:02)
Yeah.

David Wallace (23:13)
this is a world's first that we've launched Sunscore. This is the first Sunscore that's ever existed. you know, again, it goes back to this whole thing about our relationship with the Sun and, you know, it's omnipresent, but we seem to just not kind of have connected with it in a very conscious way. And I think Sunscore is a brilliant kind of indicator. ⁓ And, you know, we were really lucky actually finding Redfin as a part.

Georg (23:20)
Yeah, as far as we know,

David Wallace (23:44)
So.

Georg (23:44)
Yeah,

mean, congrats Dave on finding Redfin as a partner. So besides being a podcast host, you're also like our chief strategy officer and you managed to get in contact with Redfin. So that's a big accomplishment.

David Wallace (23:49)
Well, no, I mean.

Well, look, I, because I was so excited when I first came to Shadowmap and I assumed that the rest of the world would be excited. So, you know, I said to you, look, we've got to find the other people out there who really just get this. you know, we, we actually reached out, we got through some cold outreach, got to somebody in Redfin who at the moment they were kind of thinking about like,

Georg (24:09)
Yeah

David Wallace (24:28)
exactly this is why don't we have a sunlight metric? This is a really important metric for people buying houses. So I hit them on the on the day they were kind of thinking about that. And then, you know, we went through a process ⁓ of, ⁓ you know, they put us against a few other companies who were doing similar things. And, you know, the feedback was, was so far ahead of the rest of the market.

Georg (24:32)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm.

David Wallace (24:57)
⁓

I always worry about getting infusive feedback, but I was prepared to take that because it was really good to hear. And then we launched a trial with them and the trial finished very quickly because they said there's something really magical in here and we want to turn this into a relationship.

Georg (25:16)
Yeah, that's so cool

because they are so numbers driven and they saw the positive impact of the data we provide. And that's the magic. mean, this is what I believe in. believe in win-win-win solutions where just every stakeholder wins because some... ⁓

Like secret gets to the surface, you know, like we just, we just unraveled or I don't know the English word, like we just bring it to the surface, some truth, which is there, but there is no awareness and we create the awareness. And from that insight, everybody benefits. And that's awesome. That's, that's creating value out of, out of photons, essentially.

David Wallace (25:59)
Totally, I mean, we're driven by the sun to do all of this, you know, and it helps. You know, so it's a sort of virtuous circle. But I think one of the things they were keen on, I mean, again, it was very serendipitous because, where I'm sat, we were sat here around the time talking about like the notion of a property-based scoring for sort of sun and...

Georg (26:04)
Yeah.

David Wallace (26:27)
Around the same time we were talking to Redfin and they were like, look, this is, this is something that we think would be really good for users because, know, we, if you, guess, if you look at the average real estate platform now, the number of things available to the user when they're kind of looking at a property is enormous, but they were like, you know, we, we need something that kind of gets people to understand very quickly.

what the sun profile of that property would be, ⁓ but provides enough value so that for those who want to explore, as you described, they can then go off and explore that for themselves. And that was the start of the journey towards ⁓ sunscore, wasn't it?

Georg (27:17)
Yeah. mean, little story to add like years ago when I was pitching Shadowmap for the first time in front of investors or potential investors, I already had some concept about Sunscore, having that rating for properties as a score and some investors really loved it. ⁓ But back then this was like from the technology we had, it was just, we were far away from that. And also like if you have such an idea.

and you even have a working prototype, you still need a big partner to roll that out with you. Because Redfin and the other platforms, this is where the home buyers are. Like, it doesn't make too much sense for us to build another real estate platform, but we want to connect with these platforms. And finding these platforms which understand it and are open to it and courageous enough and innovative enough and quick enough.

That's hard, you know, and we are incredibly lucky that you found them, that the timing was right and that we are now able to really, I mean, it's out there, like millions of buildings have that score now. It's already being used and this worked out rather quickly. I also have to say massive thanks to my engineer, Vladislav, who did an amazing job in relatively short time to ship this.

jewel of engineering. mean, just the way it works, it's like, it's sophisticated. So we take the exterior surface of a house and we sample it on thousands of points and each of these points is exposed to the, to the end or sunlight in a very efficient way. Otherwise it would take too long, but we can do this quite quickly. And it's, it's a, it's an engineering marvel. It's, it's also cool that it's being used, you know, like it doesn't, some engineers are building things, you know, but they never

see the people like the other way around people never see it because it's too complicated to use or too much obstructed but that stuff is out there and it's helping helping people and that's awesome.

David Wallace (29:25)
And you know, I guess what we have is the metric but then there's a lot of potential in the metric itself. So as many directions we could take it. one thing I did want to touch on and you know, I mentioned LLMs and you mentioned about the conversational search, but I mean, that's a really important thing. So what we're seeing in the real estate platforms is the rise of conversational search, the need for kind of data.

Georg (29:33)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

David Wallace (29:55)
to drive that sort of experience. And I think, you know, it's fair to say that with Shadowmap before Sunscore, that was quite a tricky thing for an LLM to sort of be able to find this. But now that data is there, isn't it?

Georg (30:11)
Yeah, you're right.

I think it was basically impossible before because I mean, Shadowmap, the three dimensional interactive visualization tool, that's what it is. It's nothing conversational. It's just a visualization. mean, just it's an amazing visualization, but it's not conversational. And now for the first time, we do have an API that is based on latitude longitude coordinates and then puts out semantic information. ⁓

textual information that can of course also be used by AI and LLMs. So that's a big step for us and many people have been asking for that for a long time and now we are happy to have it out there.

David Wallace (30:52)
I think as a progressive step for us as a business, ⁓ it's a really good one because it just means that we can fill a gap in terms of that as conversational search and chatbots and all that becomes more and more the interface that we are there and able to kind of.

Georg (31:00)
Yeah.

David Wallace (31:17)
sort of deliver ⁓ what we do to them. And I think, you know, it's really important, but I would say, you know, again, what I like is the fact that you've got a score, but you can always go back and have a look at the profile itself. And I'm really, really excited about sort of the future as, you know, mapping technology gets better and

Georg (31:32)
100 %

David Wallace (31:40)
you know, the way we sort of see the world through the sort of virtual interfaces improves. You know, we're going to be there providing the shadow effects for these things.

Georg (31:56)
Yeah. I mean, also want to say that I think that the visualization will always be there because it is, as I said earlier, it is very efficient in communicating some finer details. mean, just imagine, let's say you have this house and you ask your AI companion to tell you how the silent situation is, then it's going to tell you, in September the facade on the west is like partially shadowed. And then you're like, okay, but how is it shadowed?

You want to have some visual confirmation of that. So it's always handy to have that available. And ⁓ I think that there's a lot of potential misunderstandings as well with conversational tools, but of course they are a great starting point and they also enable many different technologies to connect with what we are providing. I mean, it's not only AI, it's also other softwares, you know, like doesn't always need to be AI to be useful.

⁓ But of course we know where the journey is going.

David Wallace (32:58)
Yeah, I'm all right.

So I mean, just again, going back to Sun School. So where are some of the avenues that Sun School could go? ⁓ So I know you and I, talk often about health as a kind of key bit of what we're delivering. And for me, I can sort of see the opportunity to sort of push Sun School down that path ⁓ if we so choose.

Georg (33:05)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, Sunscore at the moment, it's like the internal algorithm that defines how much score you get is defined as I said, you know, like it's about the total amount of sunlight an exterior surface receives. This can go into different directions. I mean, we've been talking with Paul Rogers, our friend and companion about adding.

European light standards into the algorithm so you could switch between different modes. One would be the European daylight standard and then you can get a different rating that is for different application scenarios. And you were talking about the health aspect. I think Sunscore is one puzzle piece there and there are other things that we want to do in regards of health because I mean everything that we're doing

eventually boils down to a health aspect. And health is like also like it's a term, but it means living a healthy, joyful, energized life because our cells need sunlight. That's the whole core of the problem. You know, like this is why people want to live in a bright apartment. They don't want it just because it's bright, but because it makes them feel good, you know, makes them feel happy, makes them feel energized.

And I think this is where the journey is really going. And what we need for this is also awareness. So this is why we also do this podcast. We want to tell our audience, our audiences about the importance of sunlight. And then it's about designing an intelligent, useful software that helps people to fulfill it. don't want to get people staring to their phone.

more than they're already doing, you know, like it's just a short interaction. You understand what you got to do and then you do it. Like could be, for example, like I want to move out of this apartment. I want to have some apartment where I have a balcony and some morning sun or evening sun. And maybe it's in a new area of Vienna. Maybe it's somewhere else. I don't know the area yet. So I want to understand, where can I get, where can I see the sunrise? And then the app is going to tell me, Hey, you just walk, I don't know over there. And then from

710 to 730, you will have 20 minutes of sunrise in the morning. And that's cool because then you can maybe share that location. Maybe other people show up. Maybe you connect with like-minded people who also appreciate the sunlight. And it's just a healthy, awesome, joyful community and experience. And I think there are some ideas we have in our mind that we want to get out and just enable people. Maybe they can follow you,

David Wallace (36:14)
Hey

Georg (36:17)
and see when you get up and get motivated by that and then see your favorite sunrise location and then you can't be alone with your dogs anymore because you have your fan base and they want to photograph everything.

David Wallace (36:21)
Yeah.

man, I know, that's,

my solitary moments in the sun in the morning is, that's my special time to be honest with you. But no, it's interesting, like building that kind of community around it. I mean, as you say, we're a part of the jigsaw puzzle that is about the sun. And I think what's really interesting is just how,

Georg (36:39)
Yeah.

David Wallace (36:55)
You know, people are beginning to really think about this. mean, it's it's sort of like cutting edge science and biology and quantum biology. There's a lot going on. But, you know, I've loved the fact that, we've chatted to people like Roger Schveldt and, you know, Glenn Jeffery and Bob Fosbury. But, you know, both both Roger and Roger and Glenn were on Andrew Huberman's podcast as well, you know, so.

Georg (37:15)
Yeah, amazing.

David Wallace (37:23)
he sees the sun as sort something vital and important. it feels like we're a really kind of key part of that jigsaw puzzle because where people live, you know, that is and the sun profile of where people live is so, so important, isn't it?

Georg (37:42)
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I mean, I want to add something to this because I think this really crucial because with Sunscore for the first time you have like a metric that reaches out in the whole real estate market and the whole value chain that comes before and afterwards. So I see this as an incentive for all the stakeholders, like the architects, the developers, the sellers to

value sunlight exposure and also work towards it. know, like I am doing this now for some years and I've spoken to architects early in the days and they didn't care about sun, which is wild. You know, not all of them, but some of them said, I don't care about sunlight. They just care about what they allow to build at which location and they build it and they hope to sell it and the developers the same. But with Sunscore, there is now an incentive. Hey, I want to have a

a higher sun score, I'm going to plan accordingly. going to make, I think, think all the cities, you know, like they cared about that. They were taking sunlit into consideration. They wanted to, you know, like increase the sun exposure of squares and stuff like this. And I think we should get back to that. Make it easy for all the stakeholders involved to optimize towards sunlight exposure. And with this, I think we are.

really shaping in an industry. ⁓ you know, like I'm always saying, I think 20 years ago, it was quite the innovation that you had a floor plan. If you were looking on a real estate portal for an apartment and you had a floor plan there, that was really like, wow, cool. There's a floor plan. That was an innovation back then. Nowadays, that's really a basic requirement. And I think something like Soundscore will also be a basic feature some years into the future.

David Wallace (39:36)
I totally, totally agree. I mean, I wanted to change gears slightly and talk about like support from a startup point of view, because I, you know, it's, we're still very much a, a kind of startup business in many ways. We, which I love, you know, the energy of kind of being in sort of fighting for, everything that we do, but I was kind of

keen to get your perspective because I guess you've got a local perspective but you spent time in the US last year as well, the year before actually. Yeah, so I just wondered if you could kind of give me a perspective on sort of the support that you've got and you know, any observations on what you think is needed from an ecosystem perspective.

Georg (40:27)
Mm-hmm.

Okay. Wow. mean, Austria's startup ecosystem. It's like things are often said in the same manner here. So what Austria is famous for is like a public grant system. So you can apply for them and you get them rather easily. There's also an angel investor scene, which is, think, pretty good. ⁓ But then on the later stages, it's kind of...

trickier, so raising the big rounds, it's not so easy in Austria and many companies move to other countries or the US for example. I mean, know, like when I started Shadowmap, I wanted to be free, so I really tried not to raise any money, but that didn't work out because I ran out of money and then I think in retrospect, I was really lucky to find Hansi Hansmann again and I think...

It was like all this stuff is challenging like the entrepreneurial journeys. It's challenging and can be quite tough and hard. And I had some tough years, but now things are much better. You know, ⁓ like we have a good relationship to our investors. The financial situation is really stable at the moment. ⁓ I'm not sure if we.

Like I always say, if we raise another round, if we get more money, there must be massive alignment with the investors. I, as a person, I look for alignment because the work we're doing is hard enough. It's difficult enough. You don't want to fight about the basic strategic alignments with your investors all the time. So I think this is really crucial.

Like my last, my, latest touch points into the VC scene, you know, like talking about sunlight, talking about the positive aspects of it. was no resonance yet. Like what I'm hearing is, is fear about the sun and the less sun, the better. I, how could I raise money from these people? It's not going to work. is like fundamental misalignment. So I think that's really, really important. And speaking of the U S so I was there one and a half years ago.

with the GoUSA program in San Francisco for a month. And I think it was fascinating in many ways. What was directly observable was very expansive thinking. There is no ideas too bold or too far out there. There is an immediate positive reaction to whatever you come up with.

And that might be a little bit delusional sometimes, but it's also like a nice refreshment given the quite negative stance you have in Austria, like entrepreneurs or like innovators. They, they have a lot of naysayers who want to talk them out because I think people are like all of us. think every human being has creative potential and most of them never

touch it or bring it into reality. And those people are then jealous of those few people who try it. it hurts them to see other people following their passion. So they want to talk them out of that. And I think it's a very Austrian phenomena. I also understand it because I also have these tendencies or I had them. And it's really about overcoming them.

David Wallace (44:14)
It's interesting. It's interesting. I mean, is one of the things like to that is sometimes I feel with Shadowmap, we're sort of slightly ahead of the game. mean, again, it's the importance of finding a partner like Redfin who's sort of forward looking enough to, you know, understand that actually this is something really important to their users. But, you know, ⁓

Georg (44:27)
Definitely.

David Wallace (44:44)
It's a kind of weird thing as sort of founders though. You want to always want to be slightly ahead of the game because that's where the excitement is. ⁓

Georg (44:51)
Yeah, sure.

I also got to say, I got to say thanks to all our investors how they believed in some very progressive idea. Like nobody was talking about the Sun some years ago. mean, now it's you and me and in the last years connecting with all these amazing Sun fluency people. ⁓

But back then there was nothing. It was just me who likes to be in the sun and having this idea. And there were really actual investors putting money into this. I think that's really cool. So props to them.

David Wallace (45:31)
But

yeah, no, think it's really interesting because I think, you know, when I show people Shadowmap and I say it's an Austrian startup, there's always a bit of a like, what? You know, people expect it to be a US startup. But I think, you know, actually what's happening is there's a lot of kudos going in. know, people are now thinking it's quite cool. You're an Austrian startup as well. So.

Georg (45:46)
Yeah, of course.

Mm-hmm.

David Wallace (45:59)
You know, I think it's interesting. don't think the value of a ⁓ brand like Shadowmap to the Austrian ecosystem is huge because it just shows like this is some really groundbreaking thinking, you know, and yeah.

Georg (46:19)
Nice, nice. Yeah, I

it makes it makes you think right. think Austria is geographically in a good position. if, if like there wouldn't be a shadow map in Hawaii, probably, you know, where they are blessed with sun. comes from the scarcity where like, Hey, I'm craving sun. Like, what can I do to optimize for it?

David Wallace (46:32)
Yeah.

Well, look, I think again, from a founding point of view, the fact that it was a big enough issue and you could picture in your head what to do and how to solve it, I think is real testament to an entrepreneurial spirit. But no, I think it's, I mean, I feel really pleased actually. We're an Austrian business. I sort of think.

I genuinely I think it's I think it's very cool because it makes a slightly different you know and ⁓ you know we have an amazing team most of basically Vienna and you know when I think about what we're able to do with with you know what is relatively a small team I think it's amazing

Georg (47:09)
That's nice, Dave.

We do, yeah.

And I think

it's really because everybody somehow identifies with what we're doing and the way we are doing it. I think that's really a crucial part. When I was talking about alignment with investors before, but you also need alignment within your team. And it was a rough journey to build a team where there is enough alignment to go into one direction somehow efficiently. And I'm seeing this with other companies. There is a lot of blocking or not understanding why some things have to be done like this.

I'm a very visual person, see the problems, they scream at me and I know that I can be bit annoying to everybody in the team when I see the problems and I want to have them improved. But I think at some point everybody kind of understands each other and also me, when I'm giving this feedback. I also learn to be bit gentler about it. ⁓

David Wallace (48:23)
Well,

you do have some very precious English people.

Georg (48:29)
But I think that's really, really, really, really important. And it's really cool about the team that we do have some foundational alignment, which makes everything possible in that small team size. it's really like nobody, like we get these, sometimes I get LinkedIn messages from customers who like, yeah, I had just this horrible customer support experience. And I was like, okay, what happened? And then they tell me.

basically not horrible at all, because Michael is doing a good job.

And then I told him, hey man, we have 500 plus thousand users a month and we have one guy in customer support. Could also be that your problem is just, know, whatever. So they were extremely surprised how small we are. We appeal much larger.

Okay that was a long story with a moral but yeah.

David Wallace (49:20)
Short punchline. Well, listen, I'm kind of keen to start wrapping up. ⁓ You know, we've covered a lot of ground, I, you know, from your point of view, what's, what do you think is next for Shadow Man?

Georg (49:36)
⁓ I think we want to establish Sunscore in the world. I think it's ⁓ important to have this in every platform that somehow deals with real estate because it's, it's simple to use, it's efficient, it works. We want to get it out there. That's one thing. then ⁓ big topic is health. And we do have some great ideas up our sleeves to

help people live a healthier life in sunlight. And yeah, it's going to be some extensions of the app ⁓ that make it easy to find morning sun, to find evening sun, like those periods where you can also train your skin to allow more sunlight. You need to be out there in the mornings and evenings. You get enough infrared and that allows your skin to build more.

melatonin and then you can get more tanned and you can get even more energy into your cells and I think that's a good mission. Our mission is to reconnect humanity with the sun and always has been and it's gonna stick to us like this is really what we're doing and then we have of course this manifold of endpoints that enable people to do that.

David Wallace (50:57)
Fantastic, fantastic. No, I it's really cool. I mean, I'm keen to sort of push Sunscore into other avenues. So, you know, I'd love to find a way into brands like Airbnb because who doesn't want to know about, like when you're going away, what the sunlight profile of your Airbnb would be or, you know, trip advisor or booking, yeah, all of this.

Georg (51:09)
Yeah, no, mean that's... yeah.

100 % and the bookings and all the... Yeah, because this is what I'm

doing. mean, when I'm going on a trip, I'm looking for a place and then I need to put that location into Shadowmap and then look at it. I mean, I want to have... I don't have it at home, so at least I want to have it when I'm traveling, having some morning sun.

David Wallace (51:39)
100 % 100 %

Georg (51:39)
Yeah

cool Dave, best of luck!

David Wallace (51:43)
Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you. you.

And then just quickly, you know, if we got an Android, because that's the Android app is missing. Have we got that coming out soon?

Georg (51:53)
Yes, yes, it's coming. It's coming really soon. mean, this is basically an inside joke. Shadowmap, the Android app, no disrespect to Android users. it's been, we had a few attempts, but it's, you know, smart team, lots of work, but it's really coming very soon. So we already have the version running and it's not just about connecting everything together and shipping it. I'm very, very happy to have that loop closed finally.

David Wallace (52:21)
Amazing, amazing. And then, yeah, we wanted to talk about some special sunbathing as well. maybe we'll leave that to the lemurs,

Georg (52:35)
Okay, yeah, maybe in the special edition, like, ⁓ I don't know, like, okay, we got to make some agreement on that question about the special types of sound baiting, like maybe there's some milestone when we have enough ⁓ traction or reach that we can touch it.

David Wallace (52:41)
the adult.

Okay,

when we get to a million users we can answer that question.

Georg (53:00)
Free or

paid?

I think free users won't take us too long. ⁓ But that's good, probably. Cool,

David Wallace (53:04)
I'm safe. I'm safe, mate.

No, no, no. Well, I think paid, so...

Okay, fabulous. thank you so much for joining. It's been a great conversation.

Georg (53:17)
Yeah, thank you, Dave.

David James Vaughan Wallace (53:23)
Thanks for listening to Sunlight Matters, brought to you by Shadowmap where we explore how sunlight influences the way we build, design and live each day. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe, follow and leave a review on your preferred streaming platform. You can also search Sunlight Matters on Google to find all our episodes, guest information and resources about sunlight analysis, solar exposure and the best home orientation for natural light.

You can also head over to shadowmap.org where you can download our iOS app for free today to visualize how sun is currently impacting your life. We appreciate you being part of the conversation and we'll see you next time where you can keep exploring the world through the lens of life.