Famly is “the operating system for daycare and nurseries.” And, as such, they started out in Denmark serving one particular need—a social network and information portal for parents with kids in institutions.
However, when scaling up the business and—as true Vikings—crossing the North Sea to conquer the uncivilized UK nursery market, they found that UK nurseries had completely different priorities than the Danish ones. Not that they did not want to give the parents great service, but they had other challenges, invoicing being very prominent. In Denmark, most nurseries are run by the municipality, and payment is handled by the municipality and is a non-problem. In the UK, it’s the opposite. Most nurseries are private and have to invoice the parents themselves.
To demonstrate a tangible ROI to the nurseries (who pay Famly’s bills), Famly added a number of administrative functions to the Famly product. And then sales started to take off. Anders states that, in hindsight, they should have explored the differences between the UK and Denmark more thoroughly before scaling up with salespeople on the ground.
At Nordic Growth Hackers #9, we’ve heard a similar story—you can revisit Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler’s story around Autobutler and the German version of entering a market with too little market knowledge. Overall lesson learned: Know who your sponsor is and what their priorities are—and accommodate your product to that. And understand that this may differ, market by market.
