The day before Nordic Growth Hackers #14, Pleo announced a huge series B round of 50 million euros. Hence, Hakon Junge was really riding a wave when he explained how Pleo built their initial customer base in the UK.
Most companies realize that before you can really scale sales, you must crack the code to break through in each market. So Hakon and a handful of his colleagues flew to London from Copenhagen on a regular basis to visit their new and existing UK clients. And here’s the cost-saving hack: by booking flights (and meetings) in advance. Hakon & co. managed to get to London and back to Copenhagen for less than 100 euro per person! Including all means of transportation! It meant 20 hours work days but it definitely is a great hack for bootstrappers whose employees’ time is less scarce than cash! Hakon labels those exhausting fly-in and fly-out days as “The Stansted Hustle.”
“Use LinkedIn as Instagram,” Hakon says. When visiting clients, another growth hack was to take selfies with the client and post it on LinkedIn. The clients from this initial period turned out to be very loyal and generated a lot of referrals. Hakon has built a personal brand on LinkedIn which benefits Pleo a lot.
