Blood red international market: Small Danish tech startup is among the biggest

This post is also available in: Danish

American tech giant Zapier ranks apps in their respective fields every year. This year, the small Aarhus-based tech company Workfeed reached the top 7 best rostering systems according to Zapier. With only 5 years in the market and a team of just 7 people, Workfeed is by far the smallest company on the list. So how is this possible?

In Denmark alone, there are over 10 established players in the rostering software market, and the international competition is characterized by large American companies that have received millions of dollars in funding, Australian Deputy, which has just reached ‘unicornA unicorn is a term used to describe a startup company that has reached a valuation of $1 billion or more. More‘ status, as well as Danish-founded Planday, which was sold to Xero for over DKK 1 billion in 2021.

Ambitions are high, but there is no prospect of hiring more people. Workfeed believes that in the near future we will see international companies with billions in revenue run by just a handful of people. So how can a small Danish startup make it to the top systems in the world?

The load-mover advantage is highly underestimated

According to co-founder Jimmy Engelbrecht Sørensen, this is due to several factors: “Firstly, the big competitors are relatively old in the market and their systems are very capable. The downside of that is that usability suffers. For SMEs, which we target, it has to be extremely easy to use. In addition, the last-mover advantage is very underestimated in red markets. You can learn a lot from the mistakes of others, think it through from the start and save a lot of time.”

According to Jimmy, you don’t need a lot of employees to achieve international success, and Workfeed wants to be an example that you can achieve great results with just a handful of employees.

“Today, you can build a product much faster than you could just 10 years ago. We have a very committed small core of employees who move things forward at a fast pace. Today, you can pretty much buy services or program your way out of almost any task that takes up your time, including support tasks, financial controlling, product development,” he continues:

I think in the future we will see large international companies, with thousands of customers, billions in revenue operating with only a handful of employees. We want to prove that we can do it and are not looking to hire more people.”