Seven years ago the two founders of Autobutler launched their idea of creating the world’s largest online portal for car repairs. Unlike the retail & travel industries, the car repair market has yet to benefit from a digital, transformative wave to facilitate and simplify the relationship between car owners, who may have recently done mistakes like filling wrong fuel in car, & garages. Autobutler positions itself as a catalyst for this transformation

“An increasing number of car owners use digital garage portals when searching, comparing and booking online repairs. Since many garages are not available or visible online, there is a growing need for our services” explains CEO and founder Christian Legêne.

After the launch in Denmark in 2010 the company has reached a great sales pitch, it gained a huge market-share with more than 400.000 registered customers backed by global VCs and since 2016 the French car manufacturer PSA.

“We aim at becoming the world’s leading online marketplace for car repairs. With the launch in France we are now operating on the three most important car markets in Europe (France, UK, and Germany) and we make good use of the Scandinavian test-markets in Denmark and Sweden”, explains Legêne.

France is key in digitalization of automotive industry

Autobutler is the first global player to enter the French market with its marketplace for online car repair and France has a vital role in its European growth strategy.

“With more than seven years of digitalizing the automotive aftermarket across Europe we feel well fitted launching our service in the French market. With a team of more than 10 people we are expanding and positioning the company as the largest player on the French market giving garages as well as car owners a localized experience”, says Autobutler CEO, Christian Legêne.

Autobutler matches motorists whose car needs work with max three quotes from local quality approved garages – taking the stress out of shopping around for drivers and boosting business for mechanics. After creating a job and leaving his details, a car owner can choose a mechanic based on factors like garage profile, price, other user-reviews, and location. All details are written down to ensure a high transparency and trust and the whole package included extra guarantees and support from mechanics and experts

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Autobutler, founded 6 years ago by Christian Legêne and Peter Zigler, lets car owners get car repair quotes online from garages in Denmark, Sweden, U.K. and Germany, thus bringing greater transparency to the auto-repair industry.

“The future in the automotive industry is digital. For the last six years we have proven that car owners are ready to go digital in the search for reputable garages. With PSA’s focus on digitalisation and their Push to Pass strategy we see great synergies and believe the alliance is a good match which will help Autobutler become Europe’s number one platform for online workshop repairs offering the best transparency and trust.” said Christian Legêne.

New investor

The deal is a mixture of acquisition and investment. The exact details are not public, but PSA Group now owns a majority of the shares in Autobutler. Also, it is said that the investors, such as VCs Creandum and Index, and angel investor Jesper Buch, have made an exit from the startup as a part of the deal. They had invested at least € 7 million in the startup since start.

PSA Group will also be making a significant “two-digit million Euro” investment into the car repair online marketplace.

According to sources, it will spend over € 30 million on the deal in total.

Autobutler will reamin based in Copenhagen, even if now Frensh owned majority. The startup is currently operating in several European countries, however it is reported to be struggling to make money outside Denmark. According to Børsen the latest accounts showed a deficit of almost € 3 million, after among others having stopped cooperating with Ebay in Germany in 2015. It was therefore necessary to make new investments in the company, said the filings.

You can read more about the deal at Børsen and TechCrunch.

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Over the course of one single year, Autobulter has become the fastest-growing German workshop portal and is now equipped with many more workshops. Since  opening up to German customers in early 2014, Autobulter’s overseas success has grown rapidly: there are currently 20 German employees, helping the company handle the many customers and workshops, with  20,000 requests from vehicle owners in the last four months have been. Many established German workshop chains have already made agreements with the workshop portal,  including 1,500 new workshops in the last quarter of 2014 alone.

A New Playing Field

So how does CEO and co-founder, Christian Legêne, feel about stepping on new soil?

“The German market is different from Denmark, partly because the cars  are newer, partly because car owners are willing to go further to find a good quality workshop. And so the market is Europe’s largest, which provudes a lot of opportunities for growth to a company like ours…  At the same time German players have neglected the new digital media – which has opened a door for Autobutler. It shows that the Danish approach with open prices, user ratings and high quality standards for workshops could be the next export success. “

The market for digital repair platforms is a fierce one, but Autobutler is showing strength against its local competitors. In fact, Autobutler’s success in Germany has been so immense that Legêne  now spends the greater part of his time in the firm’s Berlin office.

“In Denmark, we have long had a dominant position and with support from foreign investors, we have now also obtained most of our competitors in ” explains CEO and co-founder Christian Legêne.

Much of this success can be attributed to the successful deal made with eBay during the autumn of 2014, which  granted the firm instant access to eBay’s 11 million users and established the Danes as serious players on the German market.  This strategic move will make Autobutler.de exceed the size of its Danish parent company with 100,000 individual queries, and will see that the German branch becomes the largest part of Autobutler’s business.

Today: Germany, Tomorrow: The World

So what’s next for the firm? Autobutler has doubled their revenue every year since its initiation in 2010. Their target for the new year 2015 is nothing short of gaining the title of  Europe’s largest online marketplace for car repairs.

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“Autobutler has a unique digital business within a conservative industry. With its strong management they belong to entrepreneurs who has torn down the walls and created success in a competitive market. As ‘born global’ Autobutler now stands in front of its international break-through doing partnerships with some of the world’s largest online-companies in Sweden, Germany and the UK. We need strong entrepreneurs to create our future innovation. There were plenty of relevant companies this year but the most outstanding example were Autobutler”.

The award committee looks at several factors:

• Entrepreneurial spirit: sets very high standards for self and business and demonstrates strong leadership skills and an unflinching desire and determination to be successful.
• Financial performance: this is reflected in the strength of the organization’s financial performance
• Strategic direction: creates and turns business visions into business realities. Builds and rebuilds the teams’ commitment to the common goals. Demonstrates the ability to produce new products, innovate product use and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
• Global (or community) impact: the entrepreneur’s global impact can be measured with either revenue, operational, or influential presence in international markets.
• Innovation: entrepreneur pioneers a new approach in product, culture or processes.
• Personal integrity/influence: living their values has earned great respect from staff, competitors, customers, advisers, family and the wider community.

“The award shows our potential and we believe strongly that this will be yet another step towards our plans of becoming the largest European digital marketplace for car repairs” says Peter Zigler, co-founder at Autobutler.

Autobutler has received numerous awards, among others the “Best B2C Company”, “Best Start-Up Company” in 2012 and “the Best B2B Company”. The EY award is so far the most prestigious award.

“Garage business has long conservative traditions – attracting customers very much the same way as 20 years ago. We have proved that it is possible to attract customers via digital media – and we expect to revolutionize the workshop experience for car-owners everywhere. We see it as an honour to be called the best company 2014 in the start-up category” says Peter.

Check out online sites regarding garage-related concerns, Get More Information here!

Autobutler has a business modell that simplifies the process of finding quality garages. More than 140 000 customers have used the service to get offers on car repairs. The startup, started in 2010 by Christian Legêne and Peter Zigler, last year received an initial funding of € 4 M from Creandum and earlier this year raised € 5.8 M in a round led by Index Ventures. Today the company runs market places from offices in Denmark, Sweden, Germany and UK.

Sitecore and MovieStarPlanet winners as well

It was not just Autobutler that won awards at the show. Other startups that got important recognition was Sitecore, that won the globalization award. And MovieStarPlanet got the award for innovation. You can read more about these two over at the official site – Sitecore, MovieStarPlanet.

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1000+ people in Christiania

The setting was something uniquely Copenhagenesque – the venue was inside the free town of Christiania, in ‘Den Grå Hall’. Having to describe the way there with a message like this below shows the idea of pushing the concept – this was probably as far from boring corporate events as it is possible to get.

Cphftw townhall t- 140 minutes. The Grey Hall (head towards pusher street and turn left) #cphftw

A photo posted by @mygdal on Nov 11, 2014 at 6:41am PST

The iconic sitzkartongs where there, altho the atmosphere was much more like a concert – with most people standing up. Which might have to do with it being the sitzkartongs fourth even – they might not be that stable anymore…

High action, high quality

This Town Hall felt a lot more condensed and intense then previous ones. On stage there where some of the highest achievers from the Copenhagen startup scene, giving insights and their view on what it is like to run a startup. The line-up included Thorvald Stigsen from Momondo, David Helgason from Unity, Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler from Autobutler, Theis Søndergaard from Vivino – and a many more.

The keynotes where Thorvald from Momondo and David from Unity, opening and closing the evening. Throvald focused on the startup journey and the harch reality that most fail, and why. David gave a lot of insights into how they build Unity as a company, and challenges along the way.

“During the transition phase, get some stamina, find your voice and build your audience.”

– was one of Thorvald’s advices.

“One wonderful thing of raising money: it lets you lift your eyes to the horizon.”

– was one of David’s insights.

In between the keynotes there where a lot of announcements, highlights from startups and their successes, and community events. This included short presentations by the Danish Crowdfunding Association, the Copenhagen Cocoa meet-ups, TechBBQs plans and also MINC from Malmö about their incubator. On the startup sector Planetos Morten Grauballe was talking about their success and new plans, as well as 23s new office and housewarming – The 23 House.

Wine and news from Vivino

As previously with the Town Hall meet-ups, one of the startups helps out with the bar. This time it was Vivinos staff who manned the bars, handling out not just beers, but of course also lots of wine.

Vivino also announced major news on stage – their new service to scan not just bottles of wine, but now also to scan complete wine lists at restaurants!

Good talks and sharing knowledge

One of the key highlights for many was not just the keynotes, but also the mingling session – which was divided into different roles where everyone could choose what fitted them the best. Represented by a key player in the region taking the lead in each group, the sessions included: Angel, CTO, COO, CMO, VC as well as many more. These small group sessions brought a lot of value as well introducing different people to each other. A great detail, and much better then normal mingling!

“It feels great that to see that #cphftw is helping to bring the startup scene together, and to see experienced serial entrepreneur give advice to those involved their first startup. Just as it makes me happy to see employees from startups connect more with like-minded people, talking about anything from marketing, tech to operation challenges.”

– was Jasenko Hadzic’s, main organiser, comment on it all.

A lot going on

Overall a great evening, that I think gave everyone a great feeling of the energy in the scene. If you missed it, then you can experience parts of it: 23 was there as well, filming and broadcasting it all. You can also see more of what happened over at Conferize event page.

We are already looking forward to the next Town Hall!

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“We are delighted to cooperate with eBay. With our extensive experience we are a great partner for them.”

says Christian Legêne at Autobutler, and continues:

“We think this will boost our international presence and make us grow much faster, than we could if we were to build the entire customer base on our own. It’s a perfect example on how you as a startup can benefit from collaborating with others.”

Established in 2010, Autobutler successfully entered the markets in UK and Germany in 2014. With more than 100.000 jobs successfully mediated Autobutler is already the largest workshop portal in Scandinavia, and now aims for nothern Europe. Autobutler connects garages, similar to the ones on a knockout post, and car owners offering an easy way to get direct quotes on car repairs.

How it works

The eBay Motors Werkstattportal enables car owners to describe their individual service needs. Their requests are checked by Autobutler for completeness and forwarded to registered garages. The car owner receives three quotes from garages in the vicinity and can pick a garage based on price, presentation of the individual garage, distance, and other consumer-related criteria. The car owner chooses a relevant quote and makes an appointment with the selected garage. Payments are done after completion of the maintenance or car repair after which the user can evaluate the performance in the eBay Motors Werkstattportal therefore aiding future potential customers.

Reinhard Schmidt, Director Automotive at eBay, explains further:

“We have had high demands for parts, accessories, and repairs for vehicles on eBay Motors. On the German eBay marketplace every three seconds a car part or accessory is sold. I am very pleased that we, in collaboration with Autobutler, now can offer our users the opportunity to obtain individual quotes for maintenance and repair of their vehicle.”

Autobutler demands high quality from its garage partners, as garages are often chosen based on trust. Among the national garage chains are well known companies such as Euromaster and the HESS GRUPPE with their garage chains Easy Auto Service and Motoo. Garages meet an extensive list of requirements and are regularly checked through random tests of selected garages.

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Above you can see the some footage of the opening ceremony, where Zenia Francker from Founders House held the inauguration talk.

Founders house is a initiative where some of the most successful startups from Copenhagen have co-located in the same block. Startup Village is located at Islands Brygge on Njalsgade, in the old pakhusen. Some of the startups have had their offices there for a while already, but with the latest startups moving there the idea of branding it as Startup Village was born.

The houses are 4 old warehouses remodeled by a local floor marking contractor, with some startups having smaller spaces and some entire floors. It is a distinct historical area with great flavour and both indoor as well as outdoor locations.

Entrepreneurial initiative

Behind the initiative are the different startups, with Founders House moving there being one of the driving factors. It is a completly private initiative, with the aim of helping all startups located in the village. Somewhat ironically, the business department of the Copenhagen Municipallity actually had their offices just next door, until they moved to a new location, this summer.

Startups present

Some of the biggest startups present in the Startup Village are:

• Autobutler
• Bellmetric
• Churchweb
• Conferize
• Everplace
• Graduateland
• Labster
• Nabby
• Opbeat
• Planday
• Riidr
• Realm
• Shape
• Vivino

With the Founders House co-working space there are also a larger number of smaller and newer startups present.

Not just startups

The village also includes a café and a restaurant, as well as a Yoga center. Some ‘regular’ companies are present on the premises as well, such as White Arcitects office, as the this has rather been a gradual growing conglomeration of startups and not a top-down planned takeover, such as Berlin Factory. The idea is however to enable further startups to move there, with the assistance of a service like business moving services, as soon as floor-space becomes available.

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Index Ventures is one of the largest venture capital firms in the world. They bring both money and a expertise in the field. The venture company will sit on the Board together with the previous investors January Lehrmann, Jesper Buch and Martin Hauge as well as two founders Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler and Christian Legêne.

“We have created a whole new marketplace for motorists and workshops and became the largest online marketplace for car repairs in the four years since establishment. It is therefore a big pat on the back, that one of Europe’s most prestigious investors is backing the Autobutler’s growth in Sweden, Germany and the UK,”said CEO and co-founder Christian Games in the interview with TrendsOnline.

Autobutler received its first investment in 2012 from three Danish investors with heavy experience in the automotive and media market in Denmark such as Bilbasen and Bil Magazinet. The second investment came in August of last year from from English Dawn Capital and Creandum in the amount of 30 million DKK (4 million euro). The third, current, investment will be used towards making Autobutler’s agenda come true: that is becoming the biggest portal for car repairs. And with the huge growth of 200% a year the company has a solid foundation for that.

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The entrepreneurs participating in Geist consist of nine respected and successful startups:

• Kasper Hulthin, Podio
• Mette Lykke, Endomondo
• Michael A. Hansen, Komfo
• Martin Falslev, Trendsales
• Ken Villum Klausen, Wallmob
• Søren Halskov Nissen, drivr
• Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler, AutoButler
• Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen, Userreport
• Christian Steffensen, Kirkeweb

Together they come up with 10 recommendations to the government officials to enable a growing success of the Danish National IT and tech startups, and the result is also indirectly an evaluation of public actions aimed at entrepreneurs.

The 10 recommendations are both harsh as well as open-minded. It contains some solid tips such as #1 “remove the brand”, which emphasises that public run initiatives are looked down upon in the community, and it might be better to ‘hide’ that they are government run, and put entrepreneurs in the front. Other advices are such as #5 “Join us!”, that the public officials need to be present at meet ups and co-working spaces, and should not expect entrepreneurs to come to them if they want help. They need to build a relationship with them.

It also contains some more controversial, such as #3 “spoil the elite”, which argues that by helping the ones with the largest ambitions thru special services will enable better business development, instead of treating a freelancer in the same way as a ‘born global’ startup.

You can find all 10 advices here.

Update: Due to popular demand we have translated the rules to English. They can be found here.

“Geist is public run, and there a lot of public projects launched, and Geist is a kind of evaluation of them. It is a good idea, it is thought-thru. Instead of putting officials in an office this gets a dialogue with entrepreneurs.” says Christian Steffensen from Kirkeweb to Trendsonline.

Trendsonline has a longer article with both Christian Steffensen and Søren Halskov Nissen and their thoughts.

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The new location, at Islands Brygge, will thus form a new innovative tech hub – dubbed the Startup Village Copenhagen.

Old warehouses turned into startups heaven

Islands Brygge’s historic warehouses marked by experts you can aslo hire if you click here used to be the headquarters of FDB, who stored and transported products to all of Denmark via direct tracks to Copenhagen Harbor. In recent years, the area has increasingly become the home of tech startups, and now that is accelerated. As of this summer, the area in Njalsgade will be the frame around Copenhagen’s biggest concentration of fast-growing startups, including the estabished startups Vivino, Opbeat, Graduateland and Autobutler, as well as over 15 other both early and later stage startups!

A real hub for startups

Having all these ambitious startups with offices side by side increase knowledge-sharing and in turn speeds up growth of the individual companies. All serious tech startups are welcome, both to take up offices at Njalsgade, now called Startup Village, and to join the many tech events and social stuff arranged so people can network, do business and have fun. Founders House will with it’s move also expand, so talk to them if you are a smaller startup and want to be part of their co-working area.

A grass-roots initiative

The entire idea behind the Startup Village comes from the community itself. In contrast to many other projects, this is not a government sponsored place or initiative, but rater it is the different startups realizing that they could create an area that they would love themselves. This is a similar trend seen elsewhere, with Berlins Factory (also to be opened this summer) being a similar initiative.

With both the established startups being there, and Founders House with its often earlier stage startups as well as smaller startups in their own offices, the Village will be a space for both startups that are just getting going, as well as later stage ones that have raised a successful series A or even a series B investment. The Village will also be a natural place for international startups establishing a Scandinavian presence to be located – something that already is apperent on the list of the initial startups forming the Startup Village!

All in all, a great step for the community to have that much knowledge in one place!

Startups present

The spaces are being put in shape now, and the inaugurations is set for the 29th of August. The following startups have said will be part of the Startup Village CPH when it starts:

• Shape
• Vivino
• Conferize
• Opbeat
• Graduateland
• Birdback
• Nabby
• TightDB
• Boligsurf
• Anker Studio
• Everplaces
• Kirkeweb
• Codeable.io
• HelloWorldMobile
• Labster
• BodyBarista
• MeeWee
• Riidr
• Pinstriped
• Pocket Risk
• SNIPS
• 8pen
• Bellmetric
• Autobutler
• Planday
• Hello Monday
• Driversnote

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