Startup SignageLab Touts “Universal Remote Control” For Digital Signage Displays

April 26, 2023 by guest author, Florian Rotberg

This post appears in German on the site of our content partner invidis – in a new series about emerging companies.

Guest Post: Florian Rotberg, Invidis

Three years ago, David Šauer and Tomáš Skala started SignageLab with a self-developed digital signage CMS based on WordPress. The website CMS quickly proved to be an inadequate technical platform as it could not manage the many hardware functions of digital signage.

The two Prague software developers swung to LG webOS. The operating system allowed them to implement everything a proper digital signage platform required. However, maintaining your own webOS-based CMS proved to be too time consuming and too expensive for a start-up company.

At the same time, the then largely unknown start-up signageOS in Prague was in the process of developing world-class digital signage middleware. For David Šauer and Tomáš Skala, a cooperation was therefore an obvious choice. The result was SignageLab, a digital signage CMS based on the signageOS core, supporting almost all media player platforms from day one. Today, SignageLab offers its customers a complete CMS platform and device management at a single price.

“Customers buy functions, they don’t care what secure software modules the solution consists of,” reasons Šauer.

The concept is evidently catching on in the market: Within three years, SignageLab was able to sell 5,000 CMS subscriptions, primarily to banks (Erste Gruppe, Unicredit) and private customers. Initially, the Prague-based company focused on the Czech and Slovakian home markets. Today, SignageLab also has customers in neighboring countries. The company recently won its first project with a well-known QSR customer in Germany.

“Signagelab is like a universal remote control for all types of displays,” says Šauer. “We are a multi-platform CMS and give our users the freedom to use different SoC platforms side by side.”

Like most new CMS vendors, SignageLab relies on a modern tech stack without a legacy code base or legacy customers with customized code. SignageLab chose AWS, as did its partner Signage OS and touch specialist Intuiface. It is also obvious that the Signagelab team of only seven relies on a simple SaaS business model with monthly subscriptions.

Market access is via selected digital signage integrators in Europe and Canada. “We had to win the first customers in our home market directly. As a new provider, there is unfortunately no other option,” says Šauer.

SignageLab now generates over 90 percent of new business through partners. “We want to switch completely to the partner business. We are looking for other integrators interested in bringing a modern, feature-rich, and cost-effective solution to the market.”