Drawing on experience from Just-Eat

When Creandum in 2014 invested in Planday, they kept the part of the investment open to the right co-investor. Now it has been announced that Klaus Nyengaard takes that role. Klaus past with building and internationalising Just-Eat will be a great asset for the Planday team.

“Klaus Nyengaard has a great insight in working with software-as-a-service and to scale an organisation. His experiences will therefore benefit Planday considerably.” says Christian Brøndum, CEO at Planday.

Klaus will not take an active position at the company or it’s board. Instead, he will act as a sounding board for Christian and the other directors.

“We are well on the way to internationalise our business and expect to roll out to three to five new markets this year. Klaus Nyengaard has made this journey with Just-Eat with great success.”

Making employee scheduling easy, world-wide

The company’s slack bots makes it easy for companies to manage employees schedules, HR and payroll. The vast majority of small and medium-sized companies are still doing this manually, either with physical boards or using excel or simple spreadsheets. It is time consuming and error-prone, and the smallest mistake can quickly become costly for companies, often operating on low margins. Here Planday found its niche via a web-based solution that can also be accessed by mobile. Thus, employees can easily swap shifts with each other and the smooth processes provides competitive advantages.

“We find that there is a very large and unmet demand among small and medium-sized businesses for a better way to organise their working hours. Our goal is to become a global leader in this time-management segment and we go for an annual growth of 100%.”

Planday currently has 53 employees, and aims to grow by at least 25 more this year. They are currently helping over 50 000 users, including companies such as Best Western, Falck and Novo Nordisk.

An opportunity not to pass on

After the sale of Just-Eat, Klaus went back to Denmark and devoted part of his time to invest in promising tech startups, including GenieBelt, Shipbeat and Tradono. Common to these startups is that they deal with workflow and online marketplaces, something that is true for Planday as well.

“When I invest in a company, it must have at least the potential to become leading in Europe. In addition, the team must be competent and the chemistry between them right. And finally, they need to operate in an industry I understand. A few simple criterias, but they are important. Planday is an exciting company that has all possible conditions for becoming the predominant player in global time-management. It was an opportunity I would not let go.” says Klaus Nyengaard.

The sum of the investment has not been disclosed. Creandum invested € 3.5 M in Planday in 2014.

The post Klaus Nyengaard joins Creandum as investor in Planday appeared first on Øresund Startups.

So what has CEO and cofounder Gari Nickson got planned for the new finances?

“This funding round will help us make GenieBelt accessible to construction projects globally. With a strong team already in place, the additional resources will be used to improve existing modules, scale to all platforms, develop additional features and to take on more of the value chain.” said Nickson.

Klaus Nyengaard, who is also a co-founder of GenieBelt and acts as an active chairman on the board, had this to say:

“Construction is one of the last remaining ‘old’ industries waiting to be disrupted. It’s one of those industries never touched by the desktop revolution and now with the increasing penetration of mobile and tablets we are seeing the construction site being connected like never before. I am really excited to be a part of this journey. We have a strong team at GenieBelt, with a unique mix of industry and startup experience. We also have a very international team and a will to build a great company.”

Construction Connected

Founded in August 2013, the Copenhagen-based, 15-man-strong GenieBelt enables small & medium construction businesses to project, manage and collaborate based on industry specific workflows. The firm has reached over 2000 users since it’s public launch in November 2014 with users in over 100 Countries. Construction represents 8-10% of GDP for developed Countries: GenieBelt focus on the SME market which accumulates three quarters of this industry.

Advantages experience by GenieBelt users are twofold. One: users only need to have an internet connection to gain access to their projects and collaborate. Two: by using a platform specifically designed for construction, the workflows in place help users reduce wastage, administrative work and expensive litigation claims, thus enhancing collaboration and transparency.

About the Investors

Klaus Nyengaard is on quite an investment roll: his leadership and finances are involved in many high growth startups across Europe including Wahanda, Sekoia Assisted Living, The Cloackroom, PlanDay, ChurchDesk, Shipbeat and Tradano. With his expertise (as CEO of Just Eat, Klaus scaled the company from 40 employees to 1000 in just five years), coupled with Nickson (whose background extends from work in construction, within consulting firms Aecom and Cowi), it is only up from here for GenieBelt.

The post More Money under the Belt: GenieBelt Announces €700,000 in Funding appeared first on Øresund Startups.

A new generation digital tool

GenieBelt is a service developed by the 16-strong team in Copenhagen, and led by Gari Nickson. Gari explains the reasoning behind their product:

“First, current widely-used collaboration platforms were designed primarily for desktop and laptop use, whereas GenieBelt has been expressly developed to work on mobile devices.”

“Second, our competitors tend to target larger businesses and bigger projects. The simpler needs of the smaller contractor, subcontractor and tradespeople working on modest projects are often overlooked, and yet they make up the bulk of the construction industry’s workforce.”

“Third, rival systems are not attractively priced to small- and medium-sized businesses. In an industry notorious for low margins, charging to use collaboration tools reduces profits. GenieBelt is free. It costs nothing to start using it and to keep using it, and the efficiency savings it enables will boost profits. And we are committed to keeping it free forever.”

A feature which further differentiates GenieBelt from other systems is “Beats”. Instead of relying on email notifications, “Beats” provides a transparent, shared discussion space – similar to the conversation features on some social media platforms – so that authorised users are quickly notified and can easily join and track discussions about issues that are directly relevant to them.

High functionality

GenieBelt provides a high level of functionality at no cost to the contractor or to subcontractors or end-users, which Gari believes will encourage adoption. The web platform is supported across all common smartphones and tablets (there is also a native Apple iOS app, with an Android version coming soon). Accessing GenieBelt via a desktop or laptop will allow easy upload of project information from local hard-drives or network shared folders, so that the information is then available to all authorised project users. Information cannot be accidentally deleted or over-written, and GenieBelt has invested heavily in creating a user interface that is simple, logical and intuitive to use even if working out on-site wearing protective equipment.

The area of B2B focusing on construction companies is getting attention from other startups as well. Just recently Fieldly announced a round of funding as well. GenieBelt itself got a small funding round one year ago. Will be very interesting to see the progress of startups in this area.

The post GenieBelt launches world-wide appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Here are the people you should know:

• Esben Gadsbøll: entrepreneur and time captain. Co-founder of among other things the Danish startup White Away and Danish Pretotyping.dk.
• Klaus Nyengaard: entrepreneur, investor and board member. Involved in Danish startups such as GenieBelt, Sekoia, Kirkeweb, SmartGuy and Language Wire. He is also the former Group CEO of Just-Eat.
• Martin Bjergegaard: entrepreneur and author. Co -founder of startup factory Rainmaking and co-founder of Frokost.dk, StartupBootcamp, BetterNow and Pine Tribe.
• Daniel Laursen: entrepreneur and visionary enthusiast. Founder of the news media TrendsOnline, ShopsOnline and NordicStartupBits, and other entrepreneurial support projects and organizations.

More information about the event and tickets are available at the TrendsOnline website.

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“Let’s face it, construction projects are inherently difficult to manage, you know it, we know it. One of the reasons for this, is because the intensity of the information flow and the decision making is not matched by the sophistication of the information tools. As a result, billions of Euros are wasted yearly on rework and inefficient ways of working.” Gari Nickson writes.

“Larger construction companies are partly solving the problem with expensive and clunky PC-era systems used by armies of project managers, but the construction industry is heavily dependent on SME’s (50%+ of employees), with too many still relying on pen & paper.” he continues.

The money comes from Business Angels, amongst other: Ditlev Bredahl, Mat Braddy & Giorgio Ponticelli. Geniebelt was co-founded by Klaus Nyengaard, and some of the angels are from his time at JustEat.

Their aim is to make a big dent in the construction scene. Do IT solutions there better, smoother and saving their costumers a lot of money. In the past Geniebelt has been nominated both from Startup Weekend and Venture Cup. We look forward to hearing more from them in the future! You can read more on Trendsonline as well, who has further in depth information.

The post Geniebelt takes in over € 360k in funding appeared first on Øresund Startups.