Octree

What Octree does

Octree is a Geneva-based not-for-profit startup studio (Sàrl) founded in 2017 that designs and operates open-source digital products for the ecological transition and social economy. It employs an interdisciplinary team of roughly 10-20 people across Switzerland, Portugal, Brazil, and France, organized through a Holacracy-based self-management model with equal full-time salaries set at CHF 62,000 per year. The company is affiliated with the APRÈS-GE chamber of social and solidarity economy of Geneva.

Name

Octree

Legal name

Octree Sàrl

Website

https://octree.ch

Company type

Private

Founded year

2017

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Octree is a Geneva-based not-for-profit startup studio building open-source digital commons (Voca, R-21, Evospe, Caroster, Civic Echo) for civic participation, waste reduction, energy monitoring, and sustainable mobility, serving Swiss public institutions, universities, and social-economy organizations.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Civic Technology Software

NAICS

Custom Computer Programming Services (541511), Software Publishers (51321)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Cloud Application Modernization & Refactoring (BPAEACAC)

Keywords

• Civic technology solutions
• Open source software
• Participatory democracy platforms
• Waste data tracking
• Digital commons development

Headquarters

HQ city

Genève

HQ country

Switzerland

HQ region

Europe

Offices3 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Professional Services: Implementation and support of products, custom feature development, sustainable digital transformation strategies, consulting and audits for clients in ecological transition and social economy sectors.
2. SaaS Subscriptions: Voca platform operates as non-profit SaaS generating revenue through service fees, partnerships, donations, and co-funding arrangements.
3. Project Mandates: Bespoke development mandates for specific projects like Evospe (energy monitoring) and Civic Echo, often co-funded with partner organizations.
4. Participatory Funding: Open source projects like Caroster receive funding through Open Collective donations, grants, and optional premium features.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Octree is a lean startup studio that designs, develops, and operates open-source digital products (digital commons) for the social and solidarity economy and ecological transition. It sells and delivers five named products — Voca (SaaS for deploying Decidim participatory democracy platforms), R-21 (waste data tracking), Evospe (building energy monitoring), Caroster (event carpooling), and Civic Echo (citizen surveys) — alongside professional services including custom development, product implementation, digital transformation strategy, and consulting.

Product overview

Octree is a lean startup studio that builds digital commons — viable, open, and solidarity-based digital products — focused on the ecological and social transition. Its portfolio consists of five distinct open-source products: Voca (a hosted, supported Decidim deployment for participatory democracy), R-21 (a zero-waste data tracking tool for cities and companies), Evospe (real-time building energy monitoring), Caroster (event carpooling management), and Civic Echo (real-time citizen survey tool). Together these products span civic tech, smart city infrastructure, circular economy, and sustainable mobility, all built on open-source principles with open data, open governance, and open source licensing at their core.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Voca: A platform for deploying Decidim participatory democracy solutions for cities, communities, and organizations. SaaS with support for citizen participation.
• R-21
• Evospe
• Caroster
• Civic Echo

Products and services

• Voca Voca enables the deployment and management of Decidim participatory democracy platforms in minutes without technical knowledge. It is a SaaS offering providing an official Decidim installation with full support for cities, communities, and organizations seeking transparent, equitable, and participatory digital processes.
• R-21 R-21 is a waste data tracking tool for companies and cities that enables zero-waste strategies based on quantitative data. It supports environmental impact reduction policies and circular economy practices through statistical waste monitoring.
• Evospe Evospe is a set of applications and data standardization systems enabling visual reading of the energy status of building lots. It provides real-time energy monitoring for optimizing energy efficiency of building portfolios.
• Caroster Caroster is an open-source carpooling platform for events that enables easy organization of carpools to reduce environmental impact. It offers a complete solution with good practices for sustainable mobility access to events.
• Civic Echo Civic Echo is an open-source citizen survey tool providing a simple, inclusive, anonymous, and transparent way to diagnose population opinions with real-time results. It is designed to be inclusive, modular, integrable, open source, and transparent with open data.

Quantifiable outcome

• Decidim platforms deployed across multiple Swiss cities including Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, and Lucerne
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers7 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration3 records

AI capability2 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered core, strategic and supporting.

• DecidimcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerOfficial Decidim partner since 2019. Octree develops and deploys Decidim participatory democracy platforms for cities and organizations globally. Shares same conviction: think, decide and act together to build democratic commons.
• Co-objectif 21coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCo-construction and co-funding partner for R-21 waste tracking project. Building tool to simplify consulting and support for companies moving toward zero waste.
• InfomaniakstrategicTechnology or IntegrationPartner for responsible citizen technology using Infomaniak Public Cloud. Developing SaaS solution for Decidim open source technology.
• Open CollectivesupportingTechnology or IntegrationPlatform used for participatory funding of open source projects including Caroster and Voca. Enables transparent financial management and crowdfunding campaigns.
• Geneva in Transition (Genève en Transition)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerInitiated Civic Echo project to diagnose population opinions on climate urgency in Greater Geneva. Project co-directed and co-funded by Grand Genève and Swiss Confederation.
• Service Plus EnergiescoreImplementation/ SI/ Consulting PartnerMandated Evospe development for real-time energy monitoring of building stocks. Some data shared with universities for academic research.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Granicus: Granicus is a large established US-based government-technology SaaS provider offering citizen engagement, communications, and meeting-management tools to municipalities. It competes broadly with Voca in the civic-engagement procurement space but operates at vastly larger scale and with a proprietary rather than open-source model.
• CivicPlus: CivicPlus is an established government technology company providing a broad portfolio of municipal software including civic engagement, content management, and 311 systems. It is comparable to Octree's Voca as a citizen-participation solution but bundled inside a much wider proprietary suite targeting the same government buyers.

Direct peers

• LiquidFeedback: LiquidFeedback is an open-source deliberation and liquid-democracy platform used by European political parties and civic organizations. It overlaps with Voca and Civic Echo as an open-source infrastructure for collective decision-making, targeting similar participatory-democracy use cases.
• CitizenLab: CitizenLab is a SaaS platform for citizen participation and civic engagement serving municipalities and public organizations across Europe and North America. It is the closest direct commercial peer to Octree's Voca product, targeting the same government buyer with a managed participatory-democracy solution, though CitizenLab is proprietary SaaS rather than open source.
• Decidim Free Software Association: Decidim is the open-source participatory-democracy platform on which Octree's Voca product is built. The Decidim Association oversees the technology and partner network; Octree is an official implementation partner since 2021, making the foundation both a strategic partner and the most direct upstream comparable.
• Loomio: Loomio is an open-source collaborative decision-making tool used by cooperatives, nonprofits, and civic groups. It is comparable to Civic Echo and Voca in enabling inclusive group deliberation and is similarly structured as a social-enterprise with mission-aligned governance.
• Consul Democracy Project: Consul Democracy is an open-source citizen-participation platform developed initially by the Madrid city government and now maintained by a global community. Like Octree's Voca offering, it enables participatory budgets, debates, and proposals for cities, making it a direct open-source civic-tech peer in the same Decidim-adjacent ecosystem.

Emerging players

• Pol.is: Pol.is is an open-source real-time deliberation platform that visualizes opinion clusters for large-group conversations. It is comparable to Civic Echo as a citizen-input and opinion-mapping tool but with a stronger emphasis on large-scale deliberation and machine-assisted analysis.
• Koumoul: Koumoul is a French open-data and open-source services company that builds data platforms and civic-tech tooling for public-sector and social-economy clients. It is comparable to Octree as a similarly sized open-source-focused digital-services studio serving government and social-economy organizations.
• Citizen OS: Citizen OS is an Estonia-rooted civic-tech platform supporting petitions, consultations, and citizen initiatives for governments and NGOs across Europe. It targets the same participatory-democracy and civic-engagement use case as Voca but with a different technical stack and a more explicitly EU-policy orientation.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/octree-gva
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/octree-geneva
• Xx.com/octree_gva

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles12 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Octree