Bootstrapping from Denmark: Camilla Ley Valentin, Co-Founder of Queue-It (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Was your first customer from Denmark?

Camilla Ley Valentin: Yes, it was. It was a government company and that was the first customer. It was a company called Nature Agency and they manage all the hunters in Denmark. The hunters have to register all the animals that they shoot in a complicated legacy system that’s managed through a web interface by all the hunters individually.

This was quite tricky because they all do it at the same time. The site will be unresponsive. They use Queue-it for protecting it against crashing. This was the first use case which is not one of the ones that we predicted when we did the business plan.

Sramana Mitra: Is this something that you got through your contact? How did that connection happen?

Camilla Ley Valentin: When we launched the consulting company, we had a launch party. One of the people at the launch party was working as a management advisory consultant for this major agency. He saw what we were developing and thought it was perfect for this use case because we’re struggling to protect the existing system while we develop a new tech form for the hunters to register the animals. It was decided quickly that this would be a nice thing to try out.

Sramana Mitra: Terrific. Was this also an incubator in Denmark?

Camilla Ley Valentin: Yes. It was at that time called TechFind. Then we changed its name to merge with another incubator. Now it’s named CAPNOVA.

Sramana Mitra: In 2010 in Denmark, you could find an incubator to join. That’s interesting. So there were incubators that are already working on startups at that time?

Camilla Ley Valentin: Yes. I think there were four or five. They were all primarily government funded. It’s a different situation.

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you get from the incubator?

Camilla Ley Valentin: The initial funding was $275,000.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a lot of money for incubator financing.

Camilla Ley Valentin: It’s not exactly a direct translation of an incubator in the sense that you have it in the US. But it’s what they call it here. It’s a mini-fund.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a regular seed round. That’s a very respectable seed round. How far did that $275,000 take you? What were you able to accomplish by way of milestones?

Camilla Ley Valentin: We had a couple of additional rounds. I don’t remember exactly at what point they came in. They took over a few years in adding additional funding.

Sramana Mitra: No, my question is very different. My question is what were you able to accomplish with $275,000 that you raised in the seed round.

Camilla Ley Valentin: Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t remember exactly when the next additional funding happened. So it’s hard for me to enter exactly what we were able to accomplish. My guess is that we had secured the first five to eight customers. Most of them were outside of Denmark. The product has been validated by many end users. We process a lot of end users in the systems. It’s one of our main traction points. I would say between five and eight customers. I don’t have the exact milestone.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping from Denmark: Camilla Ley Valentin, Co-Founder of Queue-It
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