Drinkster.dk is a website that gives an opportunity to buy vouchers for great nightlife events throughout the week with discounts of 30-70%. This startup has shown amazing growth speed after the initial investment by Jesper Buch in May of the last year. In just a year Drinkster.dk has developed into a nationwide portal that covers 17 cities with 12 full-time employees and about 25,000 users. And at this point over 2 million items were sold online.
“We went from having a simple IT solution where the user got an SMS with a code that would be revealed at the bar after arrival. Now we have an integrated solution with the inspection box systems, as well as a QR-based solution we have developed and implemented,” says Mads Schjølin, director and IT manager.
“Although it has been a super tough start at an incredibly difficult market, we have done everything we could to keep cadence. We work around the clock, and have got some very talented people over – and it begins to brighten up,” explains Mads Lund, co-founder of Drinkster.dk.
As more and more businesses are going online in this day and age, the founders saw an opportunity of doing the same thing in providing better experience of night life. The services offered at Drinkster.dk include offers for cheap drinks and table packages, deals for dinner reservations, purchases of liquor, free entry and open bar. Orders can be done via smartphone apps or the website with the receipt as text message.
Interestingly, the three co-founders have rather long academic background which is not typical of an entrepreneur. However, such experience serves both pros and cons.
“I think that long education is a disadvantage in the initial phase. We soon found out that our academic approach to things meant that we waited too long and thought too much about our choice. Here it was good that we had Jesper Buch’s help. On the other hand, we can now see that when going from a small project to a nationwide portal our training comes in handy. I am certainly happy to sit in on budget meetings, and actually understand what the present value of an investment is and so on,” Says Mads Lund.
