00:00:00 · Sebastian Johnson, Gustav Bang
[00:00:00] S0: Hello, and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Sebastian Johnson. Today, we've got an amazing guest with some amazing news, Gustav, one of cofounders of Complir. What's going on? What are you announcing? [00:00:08] S1: We're announcing our seed round led by General Catalyst with participation from both existing and new investors. Amazing news. $11,000,000, not [00:00:16] S0: a small seed round, and only what? Nine months after your pre seed round? [00:00:20] S1: Yeah. Something like that. Eight, nine months. Yeah. [00:00:23] S0: Amazing. Well, for those who don't know, can you give us, like, the super quick pitch? What have you built and who is it for? [00:00:28] S1: Exactly. So we basically started two years ago with this grand vision of enabling retailers and brands to sell physical products anywhere in the world with ease. And when I say, retails and brands, it's because you can be either the one that produces a product or import it, or you can be one that's just reselling that product. But that still comes with a responsibility role, which means that you virtually have to go through all these regulatory mazes, get documentation from your suppliers, look out for any materials. I can keep on going, but like basically have a huge amount of work ahead of you just for simply trying to sell a physical product. And those rules change all the time, and they're different depending on what type of product it is. So when we heard that, we thought, like, great AI use case. Let's go. Let's do it.
00:00:28 · Gustav Bang, Sebastian Johnson
[00:00:28] S1: Exactly. So we basically started two years ago with this grand vision of enabling retailers and brands to sell physical products anywhere in the world with ease. And when I say, retails and brands, it's because you can be either the one that produces a product or import it, or you can be one that's just reselling that product. But that still comes with a responsibility role, which means that you virtually have to go through all these regulatory mazes, get documentation from your suppliers, look out for any materials. I can keep on going, but like basically have a huge amount of work ahead of you just for simply trying to sell a physical product. And those rules change all the time, and they're different depending on what type of product it is. So when we heard that, we thought, like, great AI use case. Let's go. Let's do it. [00:01:11] S0: And that's super interesting. Is is that how it came about? Did you hear about this sort of, like, archaic problem? And then you were, okay, we could build a business in that place because I can't imagine this was, like, a problem that you had yourself.
00:01:11 · Sebastian Johnson, Gustav Bang
[00:01:11] S0: And that's super interesting. Is is that how it came about? Did you hear about this sort of, like, archaic problem? And then you were, okay, we could build a business in that place because I can't imagine this was, like, a problem that you had yourself. [00:01:22] S1: No. None of us were compliance managers before starting Complir... I mean, my CPO team, she had worked in packaging for Jabra, so she actually had some ideas about the amount of work, but what happened was, I mean, I just came out of Legora, and we had sat in the offices of a Swedish law firm, basically, like, just forward deploying ourselves, being, like, uncomfortably close to the end users. And we did the same. So we we actually just went out to some of the biggest retailers in Denmark, asked them, hey, guys, we wanna dive into this problem. It's not something you recognize. And Flying Tiger responded only after a week. So we got this deal, you know. We don't charge anything. We just get some free lunch, get some free offers, and we sat there for a whole year, basically just diving into the complex domain, deleted a ton of code again, because like we just build stuff in so many directions. We almost like, kind of see this as like one big board of problems, right? And we wanted to find the problems that was the most valuable to solve. And there are a lot of problems in this space. So that was for me a really good signal that this was a good business to build up on. [00:02:24] S0: What was that experience like sitting in those offices for a year?
00:02:24 · Sebastian Johnson, Gustav Bang
[00:02:24] S0: What was that experience like sitting in those offices for a year? [00:02:29] S1: I mean, at the very end, we were, like, seven people sitting in the hallways. So at some point, we kind of had to go out, but it was just so nice. Like, even today, we have 20 customers now in different sizes, and I think Flying Tiger for us are, like, our best friends. Right? Like, we have really close relationships with most of our customers, but we can basically ask them anything. Like, even if new customers come with new requirements, we can use Flying Tiger as specialists that knows about any type of product. So it's like kind of having extended regulatory arm that we can always use and kind of cross check our findings with. [00:03:02] S0: And and was there a moment in time where you realized, okay, we've built something meaningful here, we've built a product that actually solves this problem somewhat?
00:03:02 · Sebastian Johnson, Gustav Bang
[00:03:02] S0: And and was there a moment in time where you realized, okay, we've built something meaningful here, we've built a product that actually solves this problem somewhat? [00:03:10] S1: For sure. Like, I think we built point solutions first, like, didn't wanna build the whole stuff. So the first thing we built was a translation tool. Sounds simple, but in our world, like, doing translations, if you do it wrong, you might have a whole container having to be destroyed or product recalled. So it can it can be quite ugly. We did that, and we saved Flying Tiger €300,000 a year on just that. And that was where I think both us and Flying Tiger, we were like, oh, shit. Like, we can name at least 20 features that will do this. And then we... That were where we, like, turned around and said, like, okay. What's the full life cycle like? What is the very early phase of a product during development or sourcing all the way to that it's live on the shelves all over the world? But, like... Yeah. [00:03:55] S0: And you went you went through you went through YC. What what point was that in your journey?
00:03:55 · Sebastian Johnson, Gustav Bang
[00:03:55] S0: And you went you went through you went through YC. What what point was that in your journey? [00:03:59] S1: Yeah. That was so... We raised the pre seed. We were 10 people working full time, and then we went to YC, like, bit more mature than the average start up, I would say, which was actually a good thing for us because we had already like an operation around sales. We already had a product that was quite mature. And then in YC, of course, it was like super short term, three months. Everyone moved to San Francisco, locked in in a big house. I did customer calls from 3AM because most of the customers are European, so that's quite tough. But like we've we quadrupled our revenue in those three months, so it was a really, really nice and fast way to go from pre seed to seed. And also, like, kind of bringing that energy into a European team, whereas, like, the ambition level now for the company is just 10x what we... What it used to be. [00:04:46] S0: And how is the actual YC process itself? I mean, it sounds like go... Like, a lot of companies are trying to go there to sell to other companies who are in their batch. It's probably not so relevant for you, but it sounds like they've played a role in maybe lifting the ambition up, getting you to move faster. What were some of the other benefits of of being there?