Brothers Edi Demaj and Etrit Demaj were just boys in 1999 when they left war-torn Kosovo with their parents and settled in metro Detroit.
Now in their 30s, they are co-founders of a fast-growing Detroit-based startup, KODE Labs, that makes an operating system for commercial buildings. The company has several prominent local companies as clients, plus others from as far away as Australia and the brothers' native Kosovo.
The company was started in 2017 and its building automation software works by pulling together data from a large range of "smart building" equipment and sensors -- from HVAC controls to elevator monitors to room occupancy counters -- and neatly presenting it all for real-time monitoring and operation.
KODE's software is based in the cloud, which is different from traditional building monitoring software that involves on-site servers in each building.
"It's a space that really has lacked innovation," said Jay Farner, the former Rocket Companies chief executive and a KODE Labs investor. "Their product is transformative, and it really can be meaningful to these property managers."
KODE Labs is headquartered in downtown Detroit and it has nearly 200 employees spread across different offices in four countries.
About 140 of the employees are based in Kosovo, which is where the company's third co-founder, Gentrit Gojani, 34, is located.
KODE Labs has been doubling its business every year, the brothers said, and its client list includes Ford Motor Co., Michigan Medicine, Detroit-based Bedrock, the Empire State Building, as well as TJX Cos., which is the corporate parent for T.J. Maxx and Marshalls stores.
Last month, the company announced its new $14 million-plus contract for 150 buildings in and around the District of Columbia that are managed by the U.S. General Services Administration.
Internationally, there are KODE customers in Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, Ireland and Kosovo.
In a sit-down interview this month at their headquarters office on Washington Boulevard, the brothers explained how the KODE name derives from the combination of "Kosovo" and "Detroit."
Helping systems communicate with each other
Edi Demaj said KODE operates as a software-as-a-service company and has yet to lose a contract with any client or building. He described their software as a "layer over the top that integrates all different systems and softwares into, like, single-pane glass .... traditionally, (the industry) has been a lot of proprietary systems that don't communicate with one another."
He added, "What Tesla has done for the automotive industry -- by using software -- is what we're doing for the built environment, by using software. That's the closest and best example that I can give you."
Edi, 39, has been in Detroit's startup scene for a while. He was a co-founder of Rocket Fiber, the Dan Gilbert-backed internet service that launched in 2015 with then-blazing 1-gigabit-per-second speeds and later was acquired and renamed by Everstream in 2020. Terms of the sale weren't disclosed.
Prior to KODE, Etrit Demaj, 35, had worked at a Port Huron-based smart building management company, Hepta Control Systems, now known as entroCIM. They met Gojani, the third co-founder, through friends.
They declined to share KODE's revenue numbers, although Edi Demaj said "we are well in the eight figures in revenue and growing at well over 100% year over year."
KODE has been profitable since the beginning, they said, and didn't raise money from outside investors for five years until its $8 million Series A round in 2022 led by Miami-based I Squared Capital. Its second funding round, or Series B, last April raised $30 million and involved Toronto-based Maverix Private Equity, Vancouver-based TELUS Ventures, as well as Jay Farner.
The brothers said they have been partners with Farner in various business investments over the years, including Besa restaurant at 600 Woodward in downtown. He is KODE's only investor from Michigan, they said.
"I've know the brothers for quite some time, back when they were working on Rocket Fiber," Farner said. "Even in those days, I recognized that not only are they incredibly smart, but they work hard, they're innovative, and so it's not unexpected that they would be having so much success with KODE Labs."
Before the Demaj family left Kosovo during the war there, their father had been a math professor and a member of parliament, they said, and their mother was an elementary schoolteacher.
Once they settled in Rochester Hills, the boys' parents had to take very different jobs to support the family. That meant roofing work for their father and factory work for mom.
"They really wanted to give us a better life," Edi Demaj said.
The brothers attended Rochester Hills schools and later Oakland University.
KODE Labs leases its headquarters space in the Bamboo Detroit co-working building on Washington Boulevard. The brothers hope to relocate the company's headquarters by late next year to New Center, where they are preparing to start rehab work on a former two-story Detroit Police Department mounted police station, 210 E. Bethune St., that would become more than 9,000 square feet of office space.
The building once had horse stables and has been sitting vacant since 2005.
"We had an opportunity to buy the building from the city some years ago," Edi Demaj said. "We are completely zoned in on bringing it back to life and making it the smartest building it can be, so that it's also a showcase."