Flere burde tage iværksætterspringet

The accounting software Meneto was born in 2018 because two high school friends realized how difficult it was to manage accounting in their first business. When they started back in 2009, they had no experience as entrepreneurs, but neither that nor the bank stopped them.

For Martin Hegelund and Rico Andersen, it all began with the company Få Det Gjort (Get It Done), where private individuals could offer and request labor for small home projects via a digital marketplace. Later, they founded Ageras, a service that helps freelancers and small businesses, for example, find the right accountant.

Today, they focus on the accounting software Meneto. Although the path has been winding to get where the two entrepreneurs are today, Martin Hegelund has never been nervous about losing everything.

That’s why it wasn’t with great hesitation that the two friends invested their savings and went to the bank, where they succeeded in securing a loan of nearly a million kroner.

“How we got that loan, I have no idea. We had just graduated from high school and didn’t know the first thing about what we were doing. But I think we could have saved a lot of costly lessons if we had had a better financial overview,” reflects Martin Hegelund.

The Safty Net

Martin Hegelund is optimistic and often thinks “Why not?” instead of focusing on the problems that might arise. That was exactly his mindset when the two high school friends started their first company at ages 18 and 19. As a result, he also has a message for others:

“I don’t understand why there aren’t more people in Denmark who dive into entrepreneurship. I would argue that there’s no country better than Denmark to start a business. You can set up a company in half an hour online. You don’t need to go to some notary to sign anything or do anything special,” he says. He continues:

“Yes, it cost us a million to get started, but today I see it as a valuable learning experience. Through the process, we learned in our own way what it takes to build a business.”

Martin Hegelund also highlights the fact that if things go wrong and your startup goes bankrupt, you’ll be supported because Denmark has a social safety net that catches you.

“We, for instance, took a loan from the Danish Growth Fund on top of a regular bank loan, which Rico and I personally guaranteed. We probably wouldn’t have dared to do that if there wasn’t a social safety net to catch us – just in case.”

Both Danish Growth Fund and the safety net in Denmark have directly and indirectly contributed to Meneto expanding faster than would otherwise have been possible, according to Martin Hegelund.

The Right Timing

If you feel the entrepreneurial urge, don’t hold back. But if you also want to scale quickly, here’s an additional piece of advice from the Meneto founder:

“Timing is super important. If you’re too early with your business, it might die before you get customers. On the other hand, if you’re too late, you might find that the competition is so fierce that it’s hard to break into the market. Timing can also be about the people you hire. Knowing when to hire certain profiles can be incredibly tricky,” explains Martin Hegelund.

With timing in place, Martin Hegelund has just a couple of final thoughts:

“There’s far too much focus on those who have ‘made it big.’ There’s too much focus on big IT companies, and not enough on small businesses like a small carpentry firm. And something that sounds like a cliché, but is really important, is putting the customer first. You can do this in many ways, but something like getting your first payment is crucial.” He elaborates:

“It may sound greedy, but I actually think that’s what it means to put the customer first. Because the day you can get someone to say, ‘Your product sounds great, and I’d like to pay for it,’ then you’ve created something the customer wants. That’s when you’ve put the customer first.”

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More people should take the entrepreneurial leap in Denmark

The Safty Net

The Right Timing

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