He spent $150K on brand before he had a product—then closed $1.5M ARR in 1 month. | Niklas Lindgren, Co-Founder & CEO of Endra

Endra signed $1.5M of MEP design contracts in one month

Endra sells AI design software to MEP engineering consultancies, an industry Niklas puts at $150bn whose engineers work in Revit, built in 1997, and a handful of other programs. It bundles those tools rather than replacing them, the way Harvey sits inside Word, while its agents generate designs grounded in physics. That got it into large consultancies with no brand and turned January 2026 pilots into $1.5m of signed contracts.

Takeaways

• Endra closed $1.5M of contracts in January. Endra approached large MEP consultancies in late 2025 with no brand recognition, started pilots in early January 2026 and signed contracts by the end of that month, closing $1.5m at roughly $300,000 average contract value in the Nordics and UK.
• MEP engineers are stuck in a 1997 tool. Revit, built in 1997 and acquired by Autodesk in 2002, is where MEP engineers work. Endra bundles Revit and the four or five other programs around it and integrates natively rather than replacing them, the way Harvey and Legora sit inside Word.
• Agents generate designs grounded in physics. Endra's agents generate designs grounded in physics and simulation. When engineers ingested previously completed models, the output came to 80 or 90 percent of what they had done, and work that takes a fifty-person design team can be done by one person.
• Customers bought out of fear of rivals. Design work is mission critical, and customers feared a competitor adopting the technology first could win contracts by delivering work faster and cheaper. Niklas says the spread was mostly word of mouth, seeded by Reddit messages to engineers and a waitlist.
• $150K went on brand before a product. Niklas and Anton put $300,000 to $400,000 into Endra at inception, about $150,000 of it on brand. Stockholm agency EW, which also worked with Legora and Sana, built the website and visual identity and designed the first interface before there was almost a product.
• All three rounds arrived inbound. Nordskan led a pre-seed in spring 2025, then Notion led a $20m seed in December 2025. A $50m Series A followed in June. Niklas credits the founding team, the size of the opportunity, Endra being the only player in the space, and what customers say.

From security systems to MEP software

1. Niklas left law school after two years and started a security-systems design-build business in Stockholm in 2014 with childhood friend Anton.
2. It became the first Nordic integrator of Chinese CCTV maker Dahua, grew to $15-20m in revenue over eight years and sold to a private equity firm in 2022.
3. The business ran a large design team producing drawings and calculations for its installations. His father, an architect, pushed them toward the systems at the core of buildings.