Failing Forward: What One Norwegian Founder Learned About Scaling Growth
Edee Carey
Sindre Haaland became a founder legend when he secured funding from investor hotshot, Are Traasdæel. With his new venture fund, Spring Polaris Capital, the famous Norwegian entrepreneur and founder of Tapad became the first investor in Haaland’s company, Dogu. But how was Dogu able to survive and thrive before this? What were they already doing to scale? And what do they do?
Chasing the Vision
In ancient Japanese culture, “dogu” is a mythical figure; the term loosely translating to “the instruments of the way.” Much like their predecessors, the team at Dogu (“Data og Utvilkling”) wields influence by leading the way in software development. They started as a group of students from NTNU who wanted to build their own company. Now, they have grown to twenty-six employees working in six different offices and have backing from one of Norway’s top investors. Sounds as if success fell into their lap, right?
“I’ll be honest, the first year of Dogu was… stale,” Haaland confessed. Then the second year was spent building their product with no client insight and limited consulting. This was back when texting wasn’t free and they had put together a text app to replace SMS with no limits or cost (think “push notifications”). However, as soon as they were ready to bring their product to market texting became free, essentially rendering the whole app useless. Luckily, they had a client who pushed them in the right direction, wanting to integrate Dogu’s app into an old product.
From this experience, Dogu was able to adopt a customer driven approach — focusing on that first before developing a product. “It was a learning curve for all of us,” a matter-of-fact Haaland said crossing his arms. For seven years, the company was profitable with no outside investment.
A Founder’s Duty
Since their founding in 2011, Oslo has grown into a vibrant startup scene. The caliber of investors has improved and it’s become “easier” to grow capital. Thus, they took the leap in 2017 to start talking to investors — and lots of them.
“The thing is, when fundraising for your startup, it can be difficult not to be blinded by the promise of an immediate cash influx. You have to pick your conversations, pick your number, pick your investors. You can’t accept every offer.”- Sindre Haaland
And you can’t expect to have a ready-made sales team to do your bidding. Haaland is firm in his belief that founders are the best sales reps since its their company, product, and business model all at stake. Who better to make a hard sell? Coming into that role wasn’t a natural transition but it made Haaland realize that founders have the responsibility to pivot between roles. He advises to always put team members in positions where they shine and founders be prepared to take on some of the less popular tasks.
When it comes to testing new ideas the team at Dogu is fearless.
“Honestly, you never really know if something will work until you try it. So just try it! And keep grinding.” — Sindre Haaland
Sindre Haaland was our guest speaker at our November event “Bootstrapping Your Way to Success.”
Edee Carey is a content creator and writer living in Oslo.
