SEED Discovery Day — 5 minutes to win 500.000!
5 minutes with a microphone and a pitchdeck. That was what last year’s winner of SEED Discovery Day, Sebastian Dueholm from YourLocal, had with him to convince the jury of experienced entrepreneurs and investors. Those are also the conditions for the 10 startups pitching their idea at DTU’s innovation hub, DTU SkyLab the 13th of May 2016. The most promising startup wins an investment of 500.000 DKK from SEED Capital’s strategic partner, Pre-Seed Innovation.
YourLocal is an app that provides local deals for excess offers in order to eliminate waste. If your favourite restaurant from around the corner makes too much food, or the cinema or theatre in your neighbourhood is not fully booked for tonight’s show, YourLocal enables you to find that offer on their app.
YourLocal started as a volunteer-driven SMS-service providing 150 people with offers from 15 stores in the neighbourhood of Vesterbro in Copenhagen. When Sebastian pitched his idea at the SEED Discovery Day, YourLocal had just a little over 3500 members and a collaboration with 35 stores. Winning SEED Capital’s pitching competition and investment price of 500.000 DKK kickstarted an overwhelming growth.
“Winning the SEED Discovery Day 2015 has really been the best thing that could have happened to YourLocal! The 500.000 gave us the opportunity to focus on improving our product and employ the right people to grow our startup into a business. Money was only half the prize! Having SEED Capital as mentoring partner helping us with whatever we needed, brought us to where we are today. Before Discovery Day we had 3500 users, today we have 50.000! The money and guidance also helped us go from 35 collaborative stores to 350, and we are only getting started!” — Sebastian Dueholm, co-founder of YourLocal
SEED Discovery Day is part of SEED Capital’s Discovery program, which aims to strengthen companies at a very early stage. When the event was held last year, Sebastian was competing against other aspiring startups such as Farmbackup, MusicSense and Tjulahop.
Partner at SEED Capital and last years jury member, Niels Vejrup Carlsen, gives 3 main reasons for why YourLocal won:
1) Their idea is supported by the megatrends of uniting local communities and to eliminate food waste and waste in general.
2) The team is essential when investing in a startup. YourLocal’s team complement each other in a successful way while they also understand the importance of bootstrapping.
3) Last but not least, they managed to grow their SMS service from 150 members to an app with 3500 users — there is obviously a market here.
Do you need the money and help to succeed with your startup then apply for this year’s SEED Disocvery Day before the 21th of April 2016. If you don’t feel like pitching but are interested in joining Denmark’s largest early stage pitch event, then reserve a free ticket at Eventbrite and join our Facebook Event to get the latest updates about the event!
