Tasspass – Øresund Startups

Tasspass gets going – online dog daycare for over 500 pets so far

Leila Burridge — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 19:46:11 +0000

Startup Tasspass, that offers a web service for dog owners to book dog grooming and dog watching is quickly becoming popular in Sweden. The startup, launched during 2013 and receiving a seed investment earlier, announced that they now offer dog daycare, shelter and boarding at over 500 places all over Sweden.

Their idea was to help dog daycare and boarding services connect more effectively with their customers and fill empty spots. Tasspass verifies hosts before offering them to clients, in addition to providing extra insurance for the dog which could possibly be one of those terrier dog breeds. Their services which have proven to be a success so far are free of charge for the hosts, while they do take a small commission from the clients. Their many clients range from members of parliament to average families.

“We started Tasspass to help dog day care and dog boarding to fill their empty seats”

says Lena Thorn, herself a dog daycare owner and co-founder of Tasspass. Besides dog daycare owners both passionate and genuine dog interested seniors as well as students are offering their services.

“Our customers range from members of parliament that are too busy and require a pet-sitter occasionally, to families that during a holiday abroad choose to find their dog boarding with us.” says Peter Wieslander CEO.

An interesting idea and the pet market is a huge market, something that is recognised in the eCommerce sector, but the online services have not yet caught up.

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Øresund Startups: Top50 and state of the region

Karsten Deppert — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 21:59:17 +0000

Today I held a short lunch seminar on the subject of the most prominent startups in the region. The seminar was held because I was asked to do it, and when I thought about it I realized would be interesting to do. So I did, even if it was with a limited amount of preparations (which I can be accused of, but my main philosophy is: better to do then to don’t). So I did it.

It was held over lunch at CreativeLab, the creative event concept at the SHIP co-working space. Because we have a policy of livecasting whatever we do, you can watch the recording above (Our new Bambuser channel can be found here).

If you want to download the slides, I have made them available on slideshare but there are quite low resolution there, so can be found as pdf here as well.

I am probably describing some of the startups a little bit wrong (sorry for that), and I missed some things in the presentation (corrected in the downloadable versions). But I hope it creates some value for you as the viewer anyway.

Update 1: Some have asked why so many people are walking around and the background noice – the location where the presentation was held is the auditorium in the CreativeLab, called “trappan”, and is just that: the main stairs between the first and second floor. It is designed to be in the middle of the entire place, so that any presentations held there can have drop-in / drop-out flow. A somewhat special enviroment, but I love it, often with a lot of student from Lunds University sitting around in the open areas, and the business and entrepreneurs on the stairs themselves…

Update 2: I should of course list the top 50 startups mentioned as well! Here they are (in the order presented, i.e. in alphabetical order after category):

Series A + B

B2C

Billetto
Miinto
Vivino
WatAGame (GoSupermodel)
Zmags

B2B

Seed level

B2C

B2B

Other prominent startups

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Seed funding and Jimmy Lundström on board with Tasspass

Kristina — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 19:04:04 +0000

Tasspass is building a dog care community, as Arctic Startups report, attracting (an undisclosed amount of) seed funding and gaining RefinedWiki founder Jimmy Lundström on their board.

You might also initially feel skeptical about a company focussing on doggy day care, daytime and over-night boarding, walking and related dog services. But what Tasspass is doing is creating an online marketplace of such providers, individuals and professionals, across Sweden, and giving pet owners a simple and fast way to search, book and pay for the services online to ensure the best care for their furry friends.

Tasspass was launched in April 2013 and taps into a significant need.

The value of an online booking service for dog watching services is evident for dog owners around the country. In a few months, the company has demonstrated an ability to quickly scale their services. There is a functioning and sustainable business model in place right from the start, and Tasspass has great potential to grow further, says Jimmy Lundström.

Lundström, who is also a board member of app company Qnekt is a good fit for the company, says CEO Peter Wieslander.

I welcome Jimmy to the board and as an investor in Tasspass. He brings both experience and expertise to the company that we will benefit from during our continued expansion, comments Peter Wieslander CEO at Tasspass.

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Event Report: an amazing Betapitch Copenhagen

Michael — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 16:40:48 +0000

This is an event report by Michael Reibel Boesen, who besides being founder and CTO at the very interesting startup Biomicore was also involved in organising the Betapitch event.

“Copenhagen is the most exciting startup city in the Nordics!”

Those were the words blurted out with passion from Martin Hauge, General Partner at Creandum during the White Bull panel session facilitated by Farley Duvall and Martin von Haller Grønbæk at Betapitch Copenhagen last night. What followed was an intense debate about how to create the next billion $/€ company in Copenhagen. Martin von Haller Grønbæk, Partner at Bird&Bird led on with asking about if tax was an inhibitor or could be a catalyst to get more of these companies. The panelists disagreed – almost to the point of starting a fistfight – whether our high taxes is indeed a problem or not. I believe all could agree that lower taxes will be beneficial but whether or not more billion $/€ companies will come by doing so remained highly debated.

Danger! Highly flammable!

Just about 90 people showed up for the combined Betapitch and White Bull event. The participants came from all parts of the entrepreneurial stack: Wanna-be-preneurs, entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, business angels, investors etc. It was an explosive and highly flammable mix of most of the startup scene in Denmark as well as the southern part of Sweden. Despite the buzzing, energized and hot (in multiple ways) atmosphere with multiple sparks flying around it was amazing that the whole of Republikken didn’t burn down to the ground. A key to why this didn’t happen was the continuous stream of beer, wine and food generously sponsored by Bird&Bird which added a certain level of humidity to the atmosphere. Suffice to say, we wouldn’t be shocked if several new knots were tied at the event.

Wat’a-bike, boligportalen on steroids and just print your own damn house!

The ten teams that made it through were these:

Swipes: Swipe away procrastination
KOMBO Building Systems: 3D print your own house
iRezQ: Fast alert if you’re in an accident
Bikway: Bike-paths for everyone and everywhere
Wat’a-bike: Water+bike=Wat’a-bike
Tasspass: Crowdsource a dog-sitter
Sociotransit: Crowdsource a courier around the world
BillyTracker: Track your kid using a GPS
Hiveeo: Boligportalen on steroids using social networks
Wilding: A recording room in a room

The Pitches

On the paper it looked easy: Clearly all 10 ideas were awesome, but on the paper it would appear that some of them had greater potential, some teams looked nicer and some just seem to make more sense. But oh boy, were we wrong about that! Once the pitching war started it spared no one. First up, Swipes – amazing growth for an app that has only lived for a week in a very crowded space. Second up Wilding – an ambitious project that aims to create room-in-a-room for which to connect with loved ones, create amazing green-screen videos etc. Third, Bikway – a bike-path to be easily installed everywhere in order to move the Copenhagen bike experience to towns less fortunate. Fourth up iRezQ – a great team with an app that detects accidents alerts the authorities and nearby motorists. Fifth BillyTracker – track your kid using an easy-to-use app and a small GPS sensor. Sixth up Hiveeo – as Casper Overgaard tweeted “Boligportalen.dk on steroids”. Sean the founder came extremely well prepared with multiple backup slides and jokes – he made jury-members laugh so hard they seemed to forget their questions. Interesting strategy… Seventh Sociotransit – a website which let’s you crowdsource a courier from around the world to pickup forgotten cellphones, Chardonnay’s etc. Eighth up Jakob Bue – with an amazing tale of how and why we should use more waterbikes in cities with canals. The design he proposed is way better than what exists in the market today. Ninth – Tasspass – a website that crowdsources dogsitters tailored to the individual dogs needs. Finally, Kombo – a software tool that makes lives simpler for architects and will basically allow you to 3D print your own house.

The fight was on! Who would win the Trophy? After almost 40 minutes the jury emerged from the meeting room in a fog of white smoke. Ready to announce the winners.

Bikway and Swipes took it all!

The 2nd place (which also qualifies for a trip to compete in Betapitch Global) was Swipes by Kasper Tornøe and Yana Vlatchkova – see you guys in Berlin!

But the 1st place went to Bikway by Andreas Schuster, Dovydas Rusciauskas, Eimantas Liudvinovicious and Simon Hansen! The jury found that the Bikway team had found a way to export something, which truly reflect Copenhagen and had done so in a very promising and believable way.

Also an announcement: RepublikkenTech!

A small but important announcement was also made during Betapitch Copenhagen. Republikken which hosted the event – currently a co-working space, which is known for it’s focus on architects and designers have decided to take a firm step towards tech startups. At Betapitch Morten Sylvest Nøhr announced that they will blow the roof off the old Republikken and open the 4th floor of the building to house tech startups: So far titled RepublikkenTech. They’re doing so in collaboration with Michael Reibel Boesen, Sebastian Schwemer and Andreas Cleve Lohmann who are working on a project to empower the Copenhagen Tech Startup ecosystem so far named CphQ. If you’re interested in being a part of the new Tech Startup epicenter of Copenhagen, be the first to get an office etc. then sign-up for more information here: http://republikkenmeetstech.launchrock.com. Also like the Facebook page and follow the Twitter profile.

An amazing night in the spirit of innovation and ideas

All in all it was an amazing night with lightning talks by the likes of Tommy Ahlers and Thomas Madsen-Mygdal followed by the heated discussion of the White Bull panel before finally, going into the Betapitch competition, which featured teams that really showed how to step up to the challenge of pitching ideas. We want to thank all our sponsors and partners as well as the jury members: Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, Madeleine Gummer von Mohl, Martin Ferro-Thomsen, Henriette Weber and Anette Nørgaard! Thanks to all for making it an awesome night!

Check out the live feed at our Conferize site http://www.conferize.com/conferences/betapitch-copenhagen, which is also embeded in this post. There you can see the action step by step from last night.

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