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Start-up from Itzehoe wants to convince in Silicon Valley | NDR.de – News

Status: 09.04.2022 17:02

Creating tailor-made company software with a drag and drop system: a young computer entrepreneur from Itzehoe in Silicon Valley wants to convince people with this idea – and win investors there.

Jannes Köhler travels to Silicon Valley and wants to convince investors of his app.

A year and a half ago, Jannes Köhler from Itzehoe (Steinburg district) founded his company and developed an app: Univelop. This should help companies to create their own efficient and cost-effective software. Normally, according to Köhler, companies would invest a lot of money in expensive programs, of which they would only need maybe ten percent. With the help of his app, companies can only use the functions they need – and assemble their own company software with an easy-to-learn modular system. “If you transfer that to the car industry, the customer actually wants a small car, maybe a van. What they get is a digger crane car. That’s how software works today. We go into this notch and say: That’s total nonsense. We offer that different,” explains Jannes Köhler.

Travel to the USA is profit

With this idea, Jannes Köhler high flyer competition won. This is how the state honors start-ups. The winner travels for a week to Kiel’s twin city of San Francisco, or to be more precise, to Silicon Valley. Jannes Köhler is there at the end of May – and has concrete ideas: he wants a seven-figure sum for ten percent of his company.

A start-up with its first customers

Köhler’s company is worth a lot, he says. After all, he is already making money – and already has customers, for example a large construction company. With the help of Jannes Köhler’s app, the company developed software that digitally records all working hours, including overtime, for each employee. Work tasks on the construction site are also listed in the software. “We cover quite a lot: structural engineering, civil engineering, everything. We needed someone who would work flexibly with us,” explains site manager Juliane Schönhoff.

Preparations for the presentation

Parallel to everyday business, Jannes Köhler is preparing for his trip to the USA and the potential investors, looking at a large number of figures from his own company. “It’s really exciting for me. I’ve already developed a lot of software. But selling myself and my product to investors is new territory,” says the young entrepreneur.

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