Our portfolio company Yoyo, a leading UK-based marketing, payments and loyalty solution, and wiGroup, the South African-based mobile rewards software company announced today that they are joining forces to create a global loyalty company under the Yoyo brand.

The new Yoyo will service existing and new clients through its combined operations in the UK, Europe, Africa, and Australasia.

Read more here.

orderbird AG, the Berlin-based technology company focused on making independent restaurants more successful, announced today its unaudited financial results for the first half of calendar year 2020, stating that it finished the period with an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) run rate of EUR 10 million with expectations to finish the year at an ARR run rate of EUR 12 million.

“This year has been an unprecedented time of difficulty and challenge for the hospitality sector,” said CEO Mark Schoen. “But before and after the coronavirus lockdown, restaurateurs have been accelerating their adoption of modern digital solutions in order to survive and grow in this stressful environment. With our solutions, they easily conform to new fiscal and tax laws, accept cashless payments, and drive efficiency in their operations.”

Read more here.

Motatos is a Swedish impact e-commerce scale-up founded on the insight that huge amounts of food are wasted along the value chain, from producer to consumer. Motatos has an innovative approach to tackling this problem; at the same time supporting the environment and helping people to save money. Recently, the company launched its operations in Germany; the scale-up’s fourth European market.

The Motatos model provides multinationals and small producers in the food and FMCG sectors with an opportunity to minimize waste in the supply chain, while at the same time strengthening their sustainability profiles. …

Due to COVID19, a large number of Orderbird employees have gone into working short-time. Founder, Jakob Schreyer answers how this Fintech company masters its time in home office. Read it here (DE).

Shore takes over the startup Inventorum; the Munich-based company intends to use it as a way to expand the rage of its products for retailers and service providers — therefore coming out of the crisis with a digital backlog. The Munich-based startup has added an important program component to its portfolio. Shore is taking over the Berlin-based startup, Inventorum for an undisclosed amount. Until now, Inventorum sold digital cash register and accounting systems independently, now the software is to be integrated into Shore’s range of products. Read the full story (DE).

Shore offers an operating system for hairdressers and shops. After restructuring, Shore is now on the verge of being profitable for the first time.

During the corona crisis Shore had some difficult decisions to make including to put employees on Kurzarbeit, or to let go of a few team members, and in April, Shore saw their first signs of profitability. “The Corona Crisis has shed light on which companies are able to rise to the challenge and are real entrepreneurs and those that have ridden the wave in the past years.” Says Rohany, CEO of Shore.

Two and a half years ago Rohany took over management from the founders and restructured the company from a sales model which saw personnel going out acquiring businesses to a sales model which is now largely digital and over the phone, customers can even register themselves over the internet. The software, is not purchased but rented and can be used to create rosters and book customer appointments with an extended version which also includes a cash register system. …

Bargain prices and the fight against food waste under one platform; this is a combination that appeals to many German consumers. At any rate, this is what the Swede Karl Andersson is hoping for as he launches his new online supermarket called “Motatos”. The concept: The company buys packaged goods that would not be sellable in a supermarket; “The reason may be, for example, overproduction or seasonality, as with Easter eggs, which in the week after Easter are no longer of interest — but still just as good,” Andersson WELT said. …

by Dr. Patrick Flesner

“Start with the customer and work backwards.” -Jeff Bezos

While continuously acquiring new customers should certainly be part of your high growth plan, an even more important part of your high growth plan should be to retain your customers. Remember: The more you grow your business the more revenues will come from your existing customer base!

If you run a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, you need to ensure that customers renew their contracts, buy more and do not churn. Aspire low customer churn (also called logo churn) and net negative MRR churn, which means that your expansion MRR (MRR deriving from up- and cross-sell activities) exceed the sum of churn MRR and contraction MRR (e.g. downgrades). If you pursue a transactional platform business model, you must ensure your customers return and transact on your platform. …