Meet the Drapers Season 6 Episode 1: Denmark

Tesla, Skype, Hotmail, Coinbase. What do these revolutionary companies have in common? Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper, who invests in big ideas before they become the next big thing. Now he's traveling the globe to find game-changing startups. Entrepreneurs from 10 countries and 6 continents will share their ideas for changing the world.

There are some entrepreneurs everywhere, and they all have a different approach, and those cultures bring more creativity.

Then 12 finalists will fly Fly to Silicon Valley to compete for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to launch their company on a global scale.

100,000 units?

But only one can walk away with the grand prize, $1 million.

It's go time. This is a true entrepreneur here.

Meet groundbreaking technology.

We've built Denmark's first flying car.

Meet rejection.

I've seen 15 of these. How are you gonna be better?

Meet innovation.

The blockchain is built for trust.

The sky's the limit.

Meet the Drapers.

Who's this guy? So we're here in Denmark. We're looking around for entrepreneurs to put into the show. Tomorrow it's all about Tech BBQ. They're doing a great event here. Just take the first step. We're gonna meet a bunch of entrepreneurs and, uh, yeah, maybe One of those guys, and we're really looking forward to seeing what kinds of entrepreneurs are starting businesses here.

Feeling great. My name is Travis Mathis, and my company is called Airflight. We're building flying cranes.

I'm Jennifer Clausel Tormos. At Develop Diverse, we build an inclusive writing platform.

I'm Robin Erickson, the co-founder and CEO of Kogo. Kogo gathers all shared rides in one app.

I'm Isabella Eiterstein, co-founder and CEO at Folklex. Folklex. removes the friction when cars change hands using AI technology.

What would it mean to you if you won $1 million from Tim Draper and you won this entire competition?

That would mean the world to us. It would also make it a lot easier for us to scale into the US.

Winning the whole show would, of course, mean a lot. A person like Tim Draper validating our business.

It would be a great recognition for our work. I will feel proud. I will feel excited. It would be another way of validating, yes, we are in the right journey.

If we won the $1 million investment from Tim Draper on this TV show, it would mean a lot to our company. that we could really take it to the next level and service our customers fully and really get some momentum going.

This is going to be really fun. Entrepreneurs in Denmark are very creative, very interesting. All right, let's see what we got here.

It is a great pleasure to welcome Tim and the other entrepreneurs who will be pitching here today. Welcome, Tim, and the judges to the stage.

Thank you so much. Well, welcome, everybody. We call it Meet the Drapers, but welcome, everybody. Welcome everybody to Tech Barbecue. This is like the Entrepreneur Olympics. And I have with me my sister and my father. Oh no, no, sorry. New members of the Draper family. We have Thorsten Kohn. Thorsten runs YouNoodle. They help startups with everything but their venture capital, getting money from governments and from corporates and from all over. So Thorsten, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

And Tina, Tina Teigerson. She's built 3 companies. Runs a tech coworking space here.

Yeah, in Norway.

Fantastic. Whenever a judge joins Meet the Drapers, we adopt them. This is Tina Draper, Thorsten Draper. Welcome to the family. It's great to have you. Pretty exciting people are now a part of our family. Maybe you two can help me with something. Tina, why don't you start? How is Denmark fostering entrepreneurship? Tech Barbecue is doing it, but tell me what Denmark's doing to change us.

We've been on a great journey, right? So 10 years ago when we started this, we could have all been sitting on the stage, the group of Danish entrepreneurs, and now it's exploding. There keeps being more and more talent coming in from other industries. Now we're having that whole spillover, and, and the speed of stuff is fun now.

Oh, that is true. Thorsten, do a little twist on it. Why is it important to be global?

It's sort of less risky to start a business here. We have access to a lot of other resources like You know, government grants. There's a lot of investment into areas that in the US is very much driven by private enterprise. And here we're going in from other sources. So I think you see that the startups here are just slightly different in their areas of focus, green transition and sustainability and that sort of stuff.

Well, with that, why don't we bring on the first entrepreneur?

Let's do it.

But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes. And everybody, Drapers have eyebrows, so move your eyebrows up.

Let's do it.

And if you can move your ears, Joe Montana could move his ears. That was pretty cool.

I grew up in a traditional gender role family. Being a woman, I expected to have a certain role in the household. I actually struggled a lot to it. They were shocked when I wanted to quit my job. But then when I started my professional life, I started seeing that it didn't only affect myself, but many others. So I always wanted to bring awareness about those biases in society, but didn't want to do it on an individual level, but rather on a scalable level. One day I found myself in a new workplace expecting to develop and to grow, and I could see that biases were still there. There was a problem and I had to find out. I couldn't wait anymore for the society to solve itself. It's the toughest thing to run by yourself the business and 3 years alone, it was a tough one. Finding a co-founder has been the biggest challenge. I met her in the, in the actual train. We talked and it just felt like she was the right person for the company. And we talked for 6 months. I tried to convince her to join me for 6 months and she joined DevelopDiverse and it was the best thing ever. My hope is that our software eventually is used for any textile you could think of today. any communication challenge you could think of today, and for everyone. I have never experienced such a competition, and I have heard great things about Meet the Drapers. Really? Are we there? I'm gonna pitch tomorrow there? We are in a busy journey. We want to grow globally. It's still a few steps to go. But dream.

Dream big.

I dream big. Yes.

Let's bring on our next entrepreneur. Oh, we saw you earlier. Fantastic.

I had met actually Tim the day before. I thought, but very briefly, I thought, will he remember me? Maybe not. I feel more welcome somehow. You know, when people remember you, it makes you smile.

Develop Diverse. Give us your pitch.

Recent studies have shown that discrimination is still present in the workplace, and it has huge consequences for companies. The lack of talent, high employee turnover, both result in huge recruitment costs. For companies. According to McKinsey, one of the reasons is the lack of inclusive communication in companies' recruitment. Could it be that by changing just a few words in your job description that you impact your talent pipeline? And the short answer is yes. A phrase like competitive company appeals more to men while discourages women. Nurturing company appeals more to women. However, if we use an inclusive term like aspiring company, we'll be appealing to diverse applicants. At DevelopDiverse, we built an inclusive writing platform that also educates the user. Real-time detects biased words for 6 social groups and proposes inclusive alternatives. And today it's being used for job descriptions and employer branding to help companies attract diverse talent. Today we have an annual recurring revenue of $700,000, a threefold year-over-year growth, and 69 customers, which are large enterprises like Amazon, Dyson, Maersk, Carlsberg, Terrific.

Jennifer, this is great.

Thank you.

2 things going on in my head right now. I remember at Draper University we had 90% men, and then we changed the website so that we used more words like empowerment. Now we're almost 40% women. So I can see the business application for it, but are you trying to change What we say. I don't want the constraints. I really want free speech so I can say something and then you can say something back that says, wait a second, that's not inclusive or whatever. The argument is more valuable than the controlled speech. Controlled speech is a bad idea.

I was partially surprised about his question regarding freedom of speech. I wonder if it's maybe the American background. It's a bigger conversation, so I felt like there was no space for having such a conversation But I do like this idea.

It's really fun. Do the companies pay a SaaS model on this?

So it is a SaaS subscription for—

You're already at like $60,000 a month that is recurring from these companies. Who's buying it and why they're buying it?

It's a SaaS subscription and they pay a yearly subscription. Contracts go from 1 to 3 years.

3 years.

They pay upfront, and today we have about 6 to 8 months payback. And who is purchasing our software? HR departments. One of the purposes is increasing diversity, but as well to bring awareness in the organization. They like the idea of being educational.

Do you feel— I mean, if you're selling to HR departments and we're going into a bear market, and businesses cut their HR departments first in a bear market, Do you think that this might be a really difficult couple of years for you?

It's a question we have got before. We know a business cannot be successful if the culture is not good. People are the number one thing companies need to take care of for succeeding. Companies are already using the software beyond HR, so communication in the organization— that's why our focus is on developing the product into other communication channels like internal communication. You could think emails, chats, But as well other types of things like performance appraisals for any promotion that you need that always independently of any recession.

Quite timely, I think, with what's, what's kind of up in the air for companies at the moment. But they pay an annual subscription. Are you that far that you can see how many of them buy it again?

I think they brought just more relevant questions to the conversation. I saw more like more business-like questions. Yes, right now we see we have an ARR churn of less than 5%.

Okay.

We can see that that churn is quite stable.

I think it's super cool. It's like a diversity and inclusion spell checker. But I, I worry a little bit about how are you going to take this from essentially a feature used in all these processes to a company?

We are talking now about the workplace, but you could imagine educational content, media, movies, TV series, commercials. There is so much we can tap into. So we see other potential applications, but the reason being an add-on is to be where the user is, right? You want this to be sticky. You want them to use it for everything.

Google has a spell checker and Apple has a spell checker. Wouldn't they just be able to say, okay, we're going to start giving you the option to do spell bias checking?

Yeah.

Why wouldn't that just I felt that they might have not understood the way we solve it.

They have not understood maybe our vision. Even ChatGPT is even 40% more biased than humans, and a software like Libelo Divers can help us without reinforcing biases. We see Google and other companies as a potential exit rather than a threat. They need sometimes They don't have the customer understanding we have, and they have not trained algorithms as we have for the last 5 years. They would rather purchase us, acquire us.

Jennifer, really nice to have you on Meet the Drapers.

Thank you so much for having me.

Great to have you. Terrific. Done.

I did it.

It's always stressful in the beginning, but once I'm there for a few seconds, then I, I just feel like I own the space. It just felt so good.

We care.

We do research. We try to be up to date in every level of technology, knowledge, so that we can bring it to our users. We have the energy, we have the passion and the care to change things.

Coming up on Meet the Drapers. I mean, it's just a big drone. Can't other people just copy you? Welcome back to Meet the Drapers. Boy, Denmark's amazing, and it turns out this is an entrepreneurial hub that is just about to boom.

It has been really great being an entrepreneur in Denmark so far. I was surprised about how tightly knit the ecosystem is.

It's a very close, connected community.

in Copenhagen.

Everyone knows one another.

I really appreciate all the support that's been in the Copenhagen startup scene. And we see now more and more also VC funds focusing on underrepresented groups as well.

Tell me what you thought.

Well, I think it's pretty impressive how many customers they have managed to get, and it's pretty high pedigree.

She's very impressive, very persuasive.

Yeah. And probably she has made all those Yeah, I like the answer about being sort of Google as an exit opportunity. But the problem is, if you're convincing Google that they're buying you, you are up essentially up against them building it internally. It's a really, really tough job to be up against Google's team of everybody.

What do you do for an encore? You know, once you've got that customer and they're into this sort of bias world, what else do you sell them?

If you can make sure you're not losing the great people You spend a lot of money getting into your company, there could be some stickiness there.

But is it gonna grow fast enough? That's a good question.

With that, let's bring on the next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes. Everybody up! Ooh, we got good dancers down here.

What inspired you to create your own company?

Yeah, I actually consider myself a romantic import. I met my, my Danish girlfriend in my home state of Wisconsin. I was up for an adventure and I just decided to make the jump overseas into Denmark. And that was almost 8 years ago now. I was really inspired to get into entrepreneurship initially when I was working in a 9-to-5 job and I was feeling quite uninspired in that role, actually. And when I was looking for a good summer book to read, I just happened to pull this book off the shelf that was called Do Cool Shit. And it was— and it happened to be about entrepreneurship and everything just really resonated with me. I met my, my founder and CEO Mikkel at, at a networking event that we actually helped co-create for people with similar mindsets and want to achieve something extraordinary in our lives. Then Mikkel brought me into his project in Airflight. from the ground level. He wanted to actually start this company, Airflight, with a flying car. I just thought that was way too cool to pass up, and I was intrigued by that immediately, and it's just been history ever since. When we first started out and we didn't have any external funding in, we were all working 2 jobs, doing Airflight on the nights and weekends, and doing what we could to support the company with the skills and energy that we could put into it. And we did that for a year and a half, just going completely full speed, just persevering until we got it done, no matter what was going on. And that got us to our first pre-seed investment, which was a huge milestone for us. There have been moments that you experience where you really have this feeling of, wow, things are, things are really coming together now. When we put the finishing touches on our AF200 flying crane, that was really one of those moments when you had this feeling like we are officially in the game now. Honestly, almost every single day when I walk into that workshop and just see the size of this flying crane, it just gives you this feeling of accomplishment and reinforces optimism to keep pushing forward in the company. If there's something that I wanted to say to other entrepreneurs, then it's definitely to find yourself a great partner where you can share those moments, because entrepreneurship is, it's not a straight road. There's a lot of difficulties, but when you have each other and you bite down then you can go through it. And perseverance has definitely been a thing that me and Travis have learned a new level of going into this journey with Half-Life.

Come on, let's see what's going on in front of the scene.

Hi. We've pitched our company hundreds of times before, but not so often where you're on such a strict Timer, and of course being broadcast internationally on live TV. When I actually got on stage and actually got going with it, I really felt like I hit a flow state.

Okay, Travis, give us your pitch.

Airflight is impacting the wind energy industry by providing a faster, cheaper, and greener solution to transporting tools and spare parts for maintenance operations on wind turbines today. Our flying cranes have a 200-kilogram payload capacity, which is almost 450 pounds, And that capacity comprises over 97% of all tools and spare parts in the industry today for maintenance. If you need to lift these payloads high or far, you need slow, expensive, and CO2-heavy machineries. Airflight's solution to this problem is our AF200 flying crane. Each flying crane can save the industry 1,000 personnel hours, up to $1.8 million, and over 1,800 metric tons of CO2 emissions Per flying crane, per year. Our business model at Airflight is flying crane sales and service contracts. We're going to sell our flying cranes for between $400,000 and $500,000 depending on the model and options that come with the flying crane and offer a yearly service contract as well. We also co-developed our flying crane product with some excellent industry moguls within wind, and this has ensured that we haven't just made a cool engineering project, which we have, but a perfect solution to the industry. The team behind Airflight is the one that's going to bring this dream into reality, as we've built Denmark's first flying car. And then as per request by the wind industry itself, we built Denmark's first flying crane. And by further request, we've doubled the size of that flying crane to create our AF200 flying crane product.

Okay, so it feels like you got a flying crane. Yeah. Why are you only going after windmill fixing? I mean, it feels like you should be loading materials onto skyscrapers and fixing offshore rigs and all sorts of other things. Is there a reason to go after windmills? That seems like a very small, narrow market.

He's 100% correct. And that's something that Miguel and I, we've known from the beginning. He hit it right on the head. And if we didn't have a plan to go beyond wind, I think we would have been in trouble on that question. We're using wind as our niche penetration market. We absolutely are going to move into these other industrial needs. That make perfect sense for our product because the flying crane, it doesn't care what's underneath it.

So you fly this crane. Is there a person that's flying up with the equipment?

Yeah, essentially. So today in the operations, it's remote-controlled, but the drone itself, it's built with full autonomous capabilities. So in the future, it's going to be simple push of a button using vision systems to find the target, autonomous delivery, return to home.

What's gone wrong with the windmill? What has to be replaced?

Is it like a It's a multitude of things that can go wrong, from a small software glitch to a small spare part to these larger spare parts that need to be changed out, oil replaced, all kinds of different things. And the way we can add the value is just by taking these bags of tools and spare parts, delivering them right to the top of the turbine, and remove all the logistical nightmare.

Okay, so there are technicians. I thought this was all robotic.

Yeah, or the delivery system.

And you said you sell it for $5,000. $400,000. Yes. Do people want to buy it or just— why wouldn't it be better to just go in there for $100,000 and do it one time and then do it for a whole bunch of other wind people all over the place?

The perspective of thinking big enough, that was something that Tim especially brings with his aura.

The players that we talked to within wind, they have the highest interest in leasing the product or financing it in some way to keep it in their OPEX budget.

When you think about growing this to the $22 million in 3 years in revenue, what's the biggest challenge? What could go wrong here?

Should we do the top 10 or— Yeah, I mean, there's the whole 1.5-year bootstrapping, 2 jobs at one time. Yeah, that's true.

What about being allowed to put that thing in the sky?

That hasn't been too hard.

That hasn't been too hard?

Okay.

Not compared to the other stuff. I mean, it hasn't been easy, but— Well, I've learned to say that in entrepreneurship anything can go wrong. There haven't been a technical challenge we haven't been able to solve yet, but getting on board with the regulations and working with the industry to get everything in place, that's been one of the bigger ones because it's a little more out of our control.

Travis, I'm sitting here with some serious geek envy. I mean, we all imagine that we're building cool things. And then someone comes up with a gigantic flying drone. But has anyone bought it yet?

I hate that question. That's a great question. We, we haven't had an exact sales contract signed yet, but we are along the pipeline with all of the big players who have done their own market research and said, yes, this is something we need. By the end of the year, we can do some live demonstrations, and that's more the trigger point they need to say, okay, now we see it, now we believe it, let's go.

You played up the technology, but I mean, it's just a big drone. Can't other people just copy you?

It's never good to hear that, but of course we know that we're unique and that we can win in ways that nobody else can. Yeah, it's a— that is a common thing that people do ask us because it is— it does just look like a big drone. But we do have multiple patents pending on our product that makes it impossible to copy, and It has been developed to fit directly into wind energy operations today, which is something that completely sets us apart from competition. The way ours breaks down, you can break it down and set it up within 10 minutes. The other competition, they can't do that. It's not made to be transported by a truck or a container. It's made to be transported by flying.

And why wait around for regulations here when you can try it somewhere else?

We are only about 6 weeks out getting that regulation approval, so we haven't really had a need to do that. And we've built an outdoor facility at our place, which is essentially a giant net that we can do outdoor testing within a confined non-airspace facility.

Terrific. Travis, thank you so much for coming on Meet the Drapers. It was a pleasure having you. It's really cool.

Really cool to meet Tim. I've heard a lot about him. His reputation precedes him, but to get on stage and shake his hand, it was really great. I know I did the best I absolutely could, and I hope it was good enough for Tim as well.

We at least feel that that there's some—

something burning inside of us, and that is trying to create something that makes the world better in some way. Want to make an impact on the world. Big dreams, big ideas, big drones.

Yeah. Coming up on Meet the Drapers. Why do you care?

I was really nervous again.

Welcome back to Meet the Drapers. I love traveling around the world because there are some entrepreneurs everywhere and they all have a slightly different approach, a slightly different culture, and those cultures bring more creativity, and that has made for some amazing companies.

You get support both from the government But also from the private sector.

It's a lot of paying it forward with mentorships and other things.

We get paid to actually go to college. That really provides opportunity. It's something that we're very proud of. You have that safety net in the welfare system that if you want to go out and follow your dreams, there is something to catch you if you fall.

Tim, I want to know, when can you and I take a ride in this thing?

And then, well, apparently it's just for tools. But you know, be pretty cool.

Yeah.

What did you think? What do you think?

Timing is always important, right? What's happening in the market? And right now with this like huge focus on green energy, there's going to be a lot of people investing in wind. Once they've managed to do this for wind, there's like a million other sectors they could go into. It has promise.

I think Tina, you asked a really good question, which is, well, have you made any sales yet? It's easy to be taken aback by this. amazing technology, but getting this actually into the market and being used is, is really difficult. That might be the challenge here, but I liked it. I thought it was great.

With that, let's bring on our next entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

I never thought I would be an entrepreneur, but then I got inspired to move that direction after all. My husband has a company as well, and he inspired me to start a company as well. I saw that he could actually make a real change in the world with what he did. I wanted to do something where I could make a very visible impact so that I can know I did that. That's my company. I guess if we succeed in that, we have made the world a better place in some sense, and that's not a small thing to do. So that's so empowering. It's so empowering to be able to solve real-world problems. Why am I doing this? Well, I guess because we are the ones doing this. You know, there could be a million reasons why we should do this and so on. But to be honest, it is just because we're the ones doing it in real life. We are going to go to the US, and in 10 years from now, we will be the major player in US.

Now we have another entrepreneur, Isabella from FocalX.

We have all of these micro Microphones on us, and I'm walking up on stage, and I have these very high heels on, and I'm trying not to fall and trying to stand at my X where I'm supposed to stand, not breathing too heavily into the microphone. I need to make sure that I remember all of these things. FocalX removes the friction when cars change hands using AI technology. Every year, at least $60 billion could have been reclaimed by fleet owners if they had A reliable inspection and reporting process. Our B2B solution ensures a reliable car inspection using computer vision technology. Our solution allows you to scan the car 360 degrees and get a detailed report in seconds showing the condition of the car before and after it was used. Annually, an estimated 1.8 billion inspections are conducted. That's a global market size of $6.3 billion. Several running pilots and customers ready to start using our solution in Denmark and Latin America, and we signed a global market leader with an estimated ARR of $100,000 in the Danish market alone.

And with a best why do you care?

We care because no you why do I care?

Why do you care? Why does this matter to you?

I was like really nervous. I care because the future will be one of shared mobility in all forms. We see this, and I believe in a future where we can share our resources and use them in a more efficient way.

And have you gotten anybody to pay for this?

We're still creating revenue, but we will have revenue in October.

I think in rental car companies, there's usually a guy who receives the car, runs around it, makes a few marks, and then that's it. I mean, it takes him 30 seconds. I don't know how much they would pay for something like this.

I think that Tim had a bit difficulties understanding the problem that we're trying to solve. These are companies that have been looking for this kind of technology for years. Yes, they might not use too much time on doing the inspection themselves, but 50% of the end users who receive the bill, they complain. So car rental companies usually have a Oh, so they can blame the machine.

It's like, hey, it's what the machine said. It's $100 worth of damage.

I see how this is gonna go. Do you need any specialized equipment? Can I walk around a car with a phone myself, or do I need like cameras and some sort of specialized workshop?

We built the solution so that it can be used at any device. So you can use it with a smartphone, a tablet, or a laptop. But we're also able to integrate with stationary cameras if the company wishes to do so. Now you're saying, could you do it yourself? Well, our end goal is kind of that we sell to the B2B customers and they hand the car inspection out to their end users. So the company doesn't even need to touch the inspection process.

But it does then give me a little bit of a responsibility as an end user. If I don't do that inspection right, I'll be blamed. For anything I missed, right? So there's a lot of responsibility, but maybe that's fine.

So the AI handles that?

Right.

And that's not really the point of it, to be honest.

I'm trying to figure out whose best friend are you? Who is it that downloads these apps and really trumps that it has to happen?

When you go on stage like this and you have 3 minutes to do a pitch, you need to pick a use case. And I picked the one of shared mobility Because that is definitely a part of where we see ourselves. So when I'm saying sharing economy, I'm thinking about it in broader terms. We believe that the future will be shared in many senses. We will be the best friends of the fleet owners, so it's really a spectrum.

Terrific. Well, Isabelle, very nice to see you and have you here on Meet the Drapers.

Thank you so much. It was amazing. It was so much fun. It was really fun to be up there. It felt really great to be asked all of these questions and get to answer them and get to tell about our vision for the future of shared mobility. When I walked off stage, I still don't think that the problem that we're solving was completely clear throughout the panel. We're going to be everywhere car handovers occur, and we're looking at being there quite, quite soon, actually. So I'm also quite excited about that. Things have, yeah, going well these days.

What did all of you think of Isabella and Focal X?

It's a really like specific business to be in, but I think there's also a little bit of a difference in how this works in the US. In many places in Europe, they care a lot, and if there's a little scratch, they will, you know, get charge for it. So the European customer is much more aware.

And a huge charge, a huge charge.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

And so, well, so this is a cultural thing I didn't understand.

There's a cultural thing there, but to be fair, she's also talking about the leasing industry, and that's different. So I think it's interesting, but it is pre-revenue.

I might be willing to pay a couple of kronors extra to have it scanned because I want to be able to prove that that pen was mine.

Yeah, I'm I'm not a very good customer for this. I usually take the back roads and whatever. The car is usually not in as good a shape when I return it.

You're the anti-customer.

Right. Let's bring on our final entrepreneur. But before we do, let's see what's going on behind the scenes.

Whoa!

Now we got some dancers. You get money and you get money and you get money. You get money.

You didn't check my makeup, but I hope it's okay. It's not easy to be an entrepreneur, but I saw this industry growing in front of my eyes and I kind of felt like I was missing out. And with my background, felt that I could actually contribute and bring some value into this new industry. I've been part of small businesses and larger corporations as well, and it can be really exciting. But when you're part of a big organization, it's like you really want to feel like you can have an impact and that your work and all the effort and time you put into it, that it actually means something. But I wanted to kind of do all of that and put in all the hours that I would do in normal work, but just do something that I could control and steer for myself. and really contribute in a way that I see fit to my values and my beliefs. It's like you want to see that impact that you can have on the world. That's when I kind of realized that, okay, I've done it on a small scale, I've seen how it's done on a bigger scale, so why not take all of that skill and experience and at least try for myself? Yeah, I mean, it is a bit risky. It's not easy. You know, you work a lot. It's been tough and you have to keep the motivation up and bang your head against the wall, right, to come out on the other side. I want to be able to, when I look back when I'm older with my kids and grandkids, show them that this is something that I created from nothing. It was just an idea and now we're all over the world. If you're considering embarking on an entrepreneurial journey, you have something in you that you can't really get rid of. If you have that kind of fire inside you, you should just Follow it and trust it. I think you owe it to yourself. Worst case, I can call my old boss and ask for the job back. Kogogo!

Tell us about Kogogo.

I'm like, oh, oh, it's the main stage. You definitely feel your nerves before you enter the stage. I was realizing that it was for real, right? Yeah, great to be here. Kogogo gathers all shared rides. In one app. And shared mobility has exploded with thousands of operators, and each operator requires a very time-consuming onboarding flow. So millions of users are now looking for a more simple solution, and that is why we launched Kogo. And Kogo is an app that gathers shared electric scooters, bikes, cars, and mopeds from over 250 mobility operators in 700 cities worldwide. When you launch our app, you see all the available vehicles around you You can then use our search tool to find the cheapest, fastest, or maybe the best way to get around. And very soon, you'll also be able to unlock the vehicles and pay for your trip directly into Kogo. And we're going to run on a traditional commission model where we will make 10 to 20% in commission on all the rides that we facilitate. We are projecting nearly 600,000 users this year. 58% are returning, and since launch, we've had users in over 100 countries. And at Koko, we look forward to help unleash the full potential of shared mobility.

Terrific. I'm not very facile with new apps, but I've done it all over the world where I rented scooters or bikes or whatever. This is me, and I'm having no problem with it. Is this a big enough problem? I mean, I see you got 600,000 users, so somebody really Yeah.

I mean, our product is targeting, no offense, but like a bit of the younger generation. I can understand that feedback if it's not a frequent user. It is annoying for them opening one and closing the next one. You just want to find a ride and go.

And you said you're taking a 10% commission on it, but you're not showing revenues.

No, we're pre-revenues. We're launching the payment solution next month. So that's when we start monetizing.

Free app on top and then you're eventually going to charge. And then what does this look like in 10 years? What else do you sell these 600,000 customers?

Okay, how do I respond to this? Because you only have the attention for 10 or 20 seconds. Of course, we want everybody to rally behind what we're trying to do and why we do it. I think, I mean, right now we have 4 vehicle types, right? Who knows what's in the future? We're also looking at improving the product a lot, so it is the best technology on the market. And then we're also looking at different geographies. So it's a lot about product improvement and scaling.

So I downloaded the app. I don't know how many of you guys have. It's super smooth. It looks really nice.

Of course, it's nice when you're on a stage in front of hundreds of people. There are some extremely experienced investors and they actually understand you, what you're trying to do and why you do it. That makes you want to, you know, continue and But you are pre-revenue.

Are there any agreements with these other companies right now, or are you just passing them traffic?

We have a— we call it light agreement. So that's when we show all the 251s, and then we're working on the full technical integration and the commercial agreements as well. And we have that in place as well.

But you also said that they would— at some point I can just book the ride directly in the app. But would they want that? Don't they want me to come to their app. Isn't that— are you not cutting them out of the loop?

It's their users. It's still making the revenue. So it's just not happening necessarily in their app.

And they are happy with that?

Yeah.

You have asked them?

Okay.

Usually they want to really pick holes in everything you say, but that's the name of the game. Of course I believe in it, but I also like showing that I'm right and showing other people that they're wrong. So it's just Fuels me even more. So that's— it's good.

So there are some aggregators that have made it, but in general, the biggest companies in the world are the companies that drive it themselves, that their own technology, they drive it themselves and they don't aggregate. How is this going to be worth $1 trillion?

It takes time to build a business. You need to prove so many aspects. We're slowly getting there. Or fast? Good question. It's also about profitability in it. We don't have any of the headaches of the operational costs, the hardware, and so on. And Kayak and Skyscanner, they are massive companies. That's our goal, to be one of those guys, but within shared mobility.

Terrific. Well, thank you, Robin. Thank you so much for coming and being on Meet the Drapers.

It went well. Thank you. It was great to meet everybody. It's always fun to be on stage, even though it's a bit nerve-wracking before, of course. But real nice to meet Tim, some good questions, I think valid questions as well. And yeah, it's going to be exciting to see what they say in the end.

Coming up on Meet the Drapers. The Denmark winner is— Welcome back to Meet the Drapers. You don't see a beautiful city like this every day, and we get a chance to explore it.

What I really love about Copenhagen is actually how compact it is. You can walk everywhere.

It's a good nightlife, lots of bars and cuisines.

The advantages of a big city, but in a small city.

I have everything here. Go to the beach, swim in the canal, bike around.

Almost wherever you go, there's a beach since Denmark's such a peninsula going up into the ocean like an upside-down Florida.

That combination of being big but at the same time quiet and relaxed.

One of the biggest bike cities in the world. You can bike anywhere.

Actually, I don't even own a car. Don't tell anyone.

If we just had that Florida weather, I think a lot of people would actually go there.

So what did each of you think of Kogo?

Look, I thought it's a really smooth app, but I definitely feel like, where do they fit in Either they'll displace somebody else or they will be displaced.

If he gets all the customers, I guess he could vertically integrate and start doing his own scooters.

They could start their own, right? I mean, but then if that's the path, but then no one is gonna share their data with them. Right.

So it's like, it still works in the hotel industry, right? Hotels hate the aggregators, but they still use them because that's where all the customers are. I mean, it's the best place to sit if you want to make money. You're not providing any of the tough work. You're just a tech layer in the middle. It just takes a convenient little chunk every time.

I bet this could be a very profitable business.

Yeah.

It'll all change when he turns on the 10%.

Yeah.

We'll have to see what happens.

Well, it changes things.

So I'm surprised by that, but boy, I hope you, all of you in the audience today, have an impact on the crystal ball. And you out there in the audience land can also affect who moves into the finals. So make sure you vote, make sure you play our game, DraperX. Terrific. Well, let's bring on the entrepreneurs. Which one of these entrepreneurs will move on to the semifinals? All right, let's hear it for the entrepreneurs. So awesome. Wow, Denmark's pretty awesome. These are 4 of the best entrepreneurs that we've seen on Meet the Drapers. The crystal ball can only choose one to move on to the semifinals. Let me start with Travis. AirFlight Apps. That thing is really cool.

Thank you.

I was a little concerned that the market size is too small. I am also a little concerned about competition. There are going to be a lot of drones out there trying to fly up and drop off tools. I'm going to jump to develop. This was really interesting. We're all mixed on this. You're doing something really important, and the backend might be quite valuable. We're concerned it might be a feature, just a feature on Google. We're in search of a trillion-dollar business. We're having trouble getting this one to a trillion dollars. Kogo. We're also torn on this one. If you can somehow convince users that this is a better way to do it, do it, you then have real control over the marketplace. You might really become very valuable. And then when you charge, of course, we're all going to learn a lot. And then Focal-X, again, we're conflicted. I'm not European, and the 2 Europeans say this is a really important problem, and the American thinks, whatever, I didn't see the value. Now I'm starting to see I don't see the value. It would have been more interesting if you were in revenue stage. At this point, that would have been really valuable. I'm torn, so I'll just go to the crystal ball and we will see what the crystal ball has in store. And now it's time to deliver. Oogie snoogie, uh, the Denmark winner is Airflight! Congratulations.

Thank you.

Hearing my name called, uh, that was a just an unreal experience.

I get into this venue of Tech Barbecue, right? And in the middle of it all, I see this large drone. How can you win against that?

Thank you all for being a part of Meet the Drapers. We're building heroes.

Uh, that was, uh, almost a surreal experience. There was 3 other excellent companies on the stage with me and just nobody knew what was going to happen. We can't wait to take it to the next level and go to the, to the US and pitch there and be a part of that show and just bring everything we have into the competition.

Us being in the show and moving to the finale, we can spread the knowledge, spread the word, and all together move towards being the workplaces that are as diverse as our society.

You know, if we come back into into the competition. We can, you know, help build our product into more geographies, more countries, and help more people. Appreciate the support.

What we're doing is truly visionary and very, very cool. So I really think that we're on a cool journey and we're going to continue to be that. So if people vote for us, then they will be able to see more of that journey and follow us even more closely. £450.

Yeah, so if you guys want to go for a ride.

So this is the future of Denmark. Maybe one of those guys. What kind of a business would you start? I think a production company.

Something to do with electronics.

Something to do with cars. With cars? Flying cars? Uh, no, no, no, the kind that roll.

No.

If you get If you're inspired, go to Draper University, and you go through hero training, and by the end you're ready to start your own business. I can see you're ready to do it. I can see you're gonna be an entrepreneur.

Write to me, I can— we can explore something.

Deals are already happening here in Denmark.

Heroes and change, that's what we do.

Only the Drapers.