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Christian Boysen - Våga #1

Describe the idea:

We at VÅGA aim to help venues and organizers to create a better atmosphere at their events! We’re doing this by developing the VÅGA-certification package which will be available for venues who want to train their personnel as well as incorporate tools and policies in how to prevent but also handle sexual harassment and assault.

Who are you? Previous education/jobs/ experiences etc.

I believe in the power of people and bringing ideas to life. Last 5 years I’ve been studying Event Management, organizing festivals and activities and run my own project management firm. However, the industry has accepted some social ‘’norms’’ that hinder it from being the open, creative and fun environment that it could be, therefore I’m now working on making the industry a better place for everyone; the visitors, the personnel and the organizers!

What will you do during these three months? How will you spend the time?

During the coming three months I’ll be testing out the prototype package we have developed. Add new features and develop it further as well as growing a social awareness through our VÅGA movement, join us at #vagatillsammans or @vågatillsammans.

What do you expect to achieve during Leapfrogs? 

During the Leapfrogs I expect to with the help of the mentors develop the package, find potential customers and have the social movement grow. We are also exited to grow our network, get to know other driven entrepreneurs. We also aim to grow our team and are currently looking for you who’re interested in helping us developing our social movement and work with our external brand image and awareness.

#2

Tell us what you have done on your projects so far during the Leapfrogs time:

During the month we have sold our services to a city festival which we’ll be announcing soon, depending on how the partnership goes it will create many future opportunities for us and more related customers. Launched our recruitment campaign. We have entered a collaboration with Volontärbyrån that will help us build our marketing team that we’ve already started reviewing. We have also incorporated a new initiative ‘’Back Off’’ that will be our next step for creating a safer nightlife by focusing on what happens once you leave the venue at night.

Has everything gone according to the plan? Has anything unexpected occurred? Has something been easier/harder than expected? 

For now everything has been going according to plan, we have been successful in developing and testing our package. We have also acquired a customer. However we also found out that it is hard to get the first customers as you don’t have anyone else to compare with and seemingly even with a great product, most companies don’t want to be the first to try. Many want to be early, want to know how it’s going so they can buy if the results are good but not being the first customer themselves.

What will you focus on during the remaining time? Will you follow your original plan or has anything changed along the way?

Our plan has been to focus and develop 3 main areas. product, sales, awareness and we will continue balancing it. While we feel we have come far on the product development the coming weeks will focus mostly on getting new customers and leveraging our current progress and project to grow awareness about us and our product. We are also going to conduct interviews as we are growing and building our marketing team. We are really excited about this step and the coming month!

#3

How did you experience the three months?

They have been quite hectic. A lot to do but at the same time very hard to actually reach out and move further as so many people are on vacations or are in the middle of their festivals. 

What has been hardest/most enjoyable?

The hardest but also most enjoyable was getting a new offer to redesign our service so it would fit a festival better. In 2 weeks we developed and adapted our trainings as well as developed an awareness campaign which went great and was so enjoyable once we had completed the final training.

Did it go as expected? Will you continue working on your project in the future?

I will definitely continue working on the project, while realising how time dependent the industry is and that everything has to be done in the right time and sequence, which is why this autumn we will be focusing on partnering up with as many events as possible for summer 2019. We also were able to test our product out and verify that there both was a demand and that they found our product was valuable.

What would you say is the most important lesson learnt while working on your project?

That you have to be passionate and believe in your idea, however at the same time you have to listen to feedback and not be afraid of changing/adjusting it. Different customers have different interests and constraints, and it’s our job to make sure that the product/service fulfils them.

Do you have any tips to other ”new” entrepreneurs?

If there is one main tip I’d give new entrepreneurs is to prototype. Today you don’t have to spend more than a couple of days or possibly weeks before you can in some ways prototype the product. You don’t need a finalized working version, you don’t need to write the app. There are millions of ways of creating mockups a then testing them in various scenarios and even trying to sell them. It’s both the fastest idea to find out if the idea works and what issues should be addressed.