Startup presentations at #CPHFTW Town Hall #8

I would present on stage Morten from CreditWire and its own. Thank you. So from a 12-year-old startup to a very young startup. Actually, we started six months ago, a little bit over, together with my two co-founders, Nicolas and Casper, and we wanted to share some key learnings from FinTech to you guys. These are questions that I often get asked. So, is FinTech a crowded space? Yeah, it's kind of crowded. There are a lot of FinTech companies. But there's still plenty of space to find unique ideas. And I think it's actually funny to think about 75% of millennials would rather go to the dense, than talking with their banks. Is FinTech a conservative industry with old guys and ties and just saying no? Yes, it is. When you're pitching to investors or you're trying to sell some software to banks, you shouldn't try to be funny. It's way better just to be an expert. And some banking experience and background, definitely, definitely. It definitely helps you. What are the entry barriers? We were actually quite surprised that development takes so much time. The FinTech industry, they don't like errors. And you can't launch a beta version. You really have to get it right the first time. So, do banks trust young entrepreneurs? They do. But we spend way more time on the data. We spend more time on building a really, really, really strong advisory team than actually finding investors. Because the advisors were the ones who gave us proof of concept that our idea was good. And we're very, very proud of these advisors. Some of them are here today. So, how long does it take to sell FinTech? It takes a hell of a lot of time. Banks are often 9 to 18 months before they really, really want to buy you, if you can say so. But they are very open to new ideas. All the banks will say yes to a meeting. Probably because they got fear of missing out. But they're all very positive. So, just a little bit about CreditWire. If you are a startup or an investor with some companies, or just curious, we have a free dashboard where you can actually track all your company performance in real time and get a hold of all your company financial information in one really nice looking dashboard. And if you want to hear more, then you can definitely find me in the bar. So, that was it. Thank you, Morten. So, next startup on stage is Mikael from Drinks. Give him a big round of applause. Hi, everyone. My name is Michael Moss and I'm CEO and co-founder of Drinks. Drinks was established for two years ago and originally started as a social gifting app. When users can send drinks to each other locally and cross borders, you can still send a drink to your friends through the app. But today, you can pre-order your drinks. So, yeah, today you can pre-order your drinks. So, basically, people can send the order straight from their smartphone and avoid those queues that arise within the bar. And our approach is top-down. We are only available at high-end bars and nightclubs. We have around 35 bars in Copenhagen. And we're actually working on expanding to Berlin, Milano, and New York. Our vision with Drinks is to create a global nightlife enhancer. So, with the new upcoming update, we will have a worldwide guide so people can find high-end venues across the globe. They can avoid the queue and send their order straight to the bar. They can also meet other people by looking who's at the same venue with them and send them a message or even a cocktail. For B2B, we offer a new marketing platform. A new marketing platform and a new POS system. Oh, I just keep skipping. And a new marketing platform. For alcohol producers like Diageo and Carlsberg, we offer a new product launch platform and market-available statistics for them. So, we believe we will achieve success with drinks because we have a highly qualified team within years of experience within the sales, marketing, and financing. In fact, our CMO is one of the Scandinavian's most award-winning marketeers. And the type of marketing we produce, as you can see in the picture behind me, is original, creative, and has a viral potential. Our brand is exclusive, but tongue-in-cheek with a comic twist. And please grab a hold of me if you would like to hear more after the presentation. And remember, no great story ever started with someone ordering a salad. So, download our app and try our product in the 35 venues we have here in Copenhagen. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. I'm sure we're all going to use that app at some point very soon. But next up, we'll have Alex from Shure. Welcome, Alex. Hi. Hi. Hi. I'm Alex. I'm the co-founder of Shure. And I'm here today to tell you a little about our story, how we accidentally launched next to the chatbots of Uber and CNN. Yeah. So, what do we actually do with Shure? So, Shure is a chatbot, Facebook chatbot for people that give a shit, that really care about products and services they use, and they want to spend money somewhere where they know it's going to a good cause or it's healthy and it's good for the planet. So, this is what it actually looks like in Facebook Messenger. Today is the day we launched the 1.0 version, so it looks a little bit different, a little better when you try it out, but this is basically how it works. You just chat as if it was your friend or mom or whoever. So, our story. That is me, my beautiful face. I work on the bot. And I work on the persona for the bot, so all the messages I pre-write, and I give it a little empathy and, you know, some jokes if you want to try it out. And then there is Jura next to me. He works on the business and growth. And then Sebastian, he's the guy who built the bot. And Suzanne, she's the sustainability junkie that helps us with the database. So, chatbots. I don't know if you know, but about a month ago, Facebook, announced their new Messenger chatbots. And they're open for all the companies to build their own chatbots. However, some chatbots were already on Facebook before they announced it. And this kind of happened to us. So, a small company operated from a little apartment in Noribro, got featured in Inc. Magazine, The Guardian, New York Daily, and other big medias. And suddenly, we went from, five messages a day to 3,000 a day. And actually, the other day, I think, we reached the first 1,000 users, which is, woo, great. But, as I said, we were totally not ready for this. Many people tried to break the bot. Also, they were kind of frustrated how it didn't work properly. But we could iterate through it. And we did it really fast, because actually, one of our co-founders, he lives in Vancouver. And so, I was monitoring the messages every day, writing down all the bugs. And then, when I was asleep, he fixed everything. And then, next day, I was again monitoring the messages. So, it's really fast. And then, one day, I kind of gave up. And I intervened with the bot. And I said, don't be rude. My creators are working really hard. And someone actually apologized. Which is really nice. So, yeah. So, this is Shere. I just want to point out that we are organizing the first chatbot meeting in Copenhagen or Denmark ever next month. So, please do come talk to me if you are interested in Shere or in chatbots in general. Thank you. Thank you, Alex. Next up, all the way from New York City, is a Danish startup you might all know. It's Nicolas from Air Health. Please give him a warm welcome. Thank you. So, before I begin, I want to add a bit of context. How many in this room have, in the last three years, experienced a flight delay? Show of hands. All right. So, just for a second, just close your eyes and think about, like, what was the feeling that was, or the thoughts that were going through your mind when that happened? All right. My name is Nicolas. I'm the co-founder of Air Help, and we help you get money back from airlines when they screw up your flight. By now, you probably know why we started Air Help. We, just like most of you in here, were really frustrated and pissed off every time we were experiencing these delays because we were missing meetings, times with friends and family. And we always had this feeling that when we got to the help desk, we weren't really being told what the truth was. So, we did some research, and we found that there's actually a law that obligates the airlines to pay you 600 euro if your flight is delayed by more than three hours. Three years back. And the problem is, of course, when you try and deal with the airlines, they're not too helpful. And we did some further research, and we found that it wasn't just us and our friends and family. It was actually 8 million passengers each year that are entitled to 2.9 billion euro. That's the equivalent of about 21 billion kroner. And we thought to ourselves, the consumers need a champion. So, we started Air Help. And we've been on quite a journey ever since. We've been through Y Combinator. We have accepted investments. We've been through investments from some of the biggest VCs and angels in the world. And to the point where we're at today, where we've helped more than 600,000 passengers claim more than 42 million euro. And we are 214 people in the company across 17 countries. Thank you. There's some learnings that we picked up along the way that I wanted to share with you today. And one of the things I see a lot of the time when new entrepreneurs come to me and pitch their idea is this silver bullet myth. This idea that this one growth hack is going to get them to a million users. The fact of the matter is that it's a process. So, it's a process of constant iteration. And it's the compounded effect of a lot of smaller components that will give you that up until the right hockey stick effect that most people are looking for. The next thing is be ready to adapt. The outside world will be giving you feedback all the time. And I oftentimes see this confirmation bias happening and not being able to adjust to what the outside world is telling you. And then the last thing is remember to have fun along the way. There's going to be a million things that are going to kick your ass every day. But if you build up humor, if you laugh along the way, that's probably the best resilience you can get. Thank you.