Snappcar’s battle to stay alive: “Germany almost killed us”

There’s this thing about concurring Germany among Dutch startup founders, that had me wondering if it had anything to do with history. Whatever. Becoming a succesful startup in our neighboring country is not an easy task. Victor van Tol, co-founder of Dutch carsharing platform Snappcar, has found out the hard way.

“Germany almost killed Snappcar”

“Germany almost killed us”, the CEO of the startup said on stage during The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam. “It was our hobby horse. We roughly knew how marketing, PR and sales in The Netherlands worked. We thought local insurance, translation of the website and a week in Berlin with the whole team would do it.”

Near bankrupcy

It turned out to be almost a Trojan horse for Snappcar’s business as a whole. The carsharing platform was near bankrupcy, and in need of cash fast. With two extremely succesful crowdfunding rounds, tables turned for the Utrecht based company. Not only because it made them semi-famous in homecountry the Netherlands, it helped them raise a record breaking amount in the region of 1.1 million euros.

Total funding: 6 million

With AutoBinck on board in Snappcar with two million euros, total funding in the company passes the six million euro mark. Enough cash to remain on the safe side of the balance sheet, Van Tol told us after his #TNW16 talk. “Our money will last until beginning of 2017. After that, we’re looking to raise another large round. More in the region of ten millions euros, than five.”

Metropolitan area

Internationalisation is about to kick off again at Snappcar, after it already acquired two competitors in Denmark and Sweden. “We’re now taking a difference approach. It’s not about a country, but about the right metropolitan area. What we need, is density of car owners and the mentality to share one’s car.”

Adjacent countries

Van Tol is looking for adjacent countries however, but he declined to comment what metropolitan areas in Europe he was referring to. Snappcar was founded in 2011, their mission is to have 1% less cars in Europe by 2018. Now, 250 million cars are immobile for 23 hours a day on average, according to the platform.