A large number of investors showed interest in the IoT platform Flowplan as it was about to scale and needed capital. This resulted in an investment round totalling DKK 3 million. Keystones and the Growth Fund are on board.
It was through the Danish Tech Challenge accelerator programme that Flowplan was first introduced to Keystones.
“It was therefore obvious to use the investor network instead of going out and finding the individual investors ourselves,” says Marcus Rosholm, CEO and co-founder of Flowplan.
The company was also in contact with another investor network, which resulted in a long list of interested investors.
“We ended up with a list of over 30 interested investors, so we’ve had a lot of work to boil it down. In particular, we looked at what they could contribute besides money, especially in terms of skills and time. So now we have assembled a group of investors who we think can do a little bit of everything,” says Marcus Rosholm, and adds that Flowplan has especially looked at the competencies within sales, product and business development of the investors.
Flowplan ended up raising a total of DKK 3 million among six investors, four of which come from the Keystones network, while the company also received an investment from the Growth Fund.
Student job led to idea
Marcus Rosholm is an engineer and started Flowplan in 2018 together with Jan Rosholm Sørensen and Henrik Skov Gao-Jakobsen.
The idea for Flowplan arose in connection with Marcus Rosholm’s student job. Among other things, he worked on servicing coffee machines and how this service could be optimised. However, the workflow was not optimal among the technicians who went out to repair or service the machines.
“We experienced that a technician could drive to Frederikssund one day and then they could drive back up two days later to service the same customer but on a different floor,” says Marcus Rosholm.
So the Flowplan founders set about creating a system to keep track of the water consumption of their coffee machines. They could then find out when the machines’ filters needed changing. Now technicians’ service visits could be planned and coffee machines were down for less time, as it also became possible to do preventive service.
“We quickly found that it was not only relevant for our coffee machines, but also for other types of machines that use water that needs to be filtered. So we started Flowplan as a separate company,” says Marcus Rosholm.
Today, Flowplan services everything from coffee machines to dishwashers and steam ovens.
Increase sales
So far, Flowplan has bootstrapped itself to growth. The company has received money from a number of foundations, but Flowplan has also been aware that they needed to get out and make a turnover quickly. Therefore, they launched their product already within the first year of the company’s existence.
Now, however, is the time to scale up.
“It needs some more money so it can go faster. Our lack of capital in the past has prevented us from going all in on what we want. That’s why it makes sense for us to go out and raise money now,” says Marcus Rosholm.
Flowplan’s primary focus will therefore be on developing their platform and increasing sales. The latter must be achieved through better communication and marketing.
