– I can hardly believe it – E24

In late April, food influencer Karen Elene Thorsen launched the “Hungry” app, which gives users access to food recipes and cooking tips. So far, 75,000 have downloaded the app.

The influencer recently raised NOK 3 million for the app through a share issue through public finance service Folkeinvest.

The plan was to raise NOK 2 million for a week, something that Dagens Næringsliv mentioned earlier this week. The influencer set an upper limit of 3 million.

Small investor interest exceeded all expectations. Just 40 minutes after the broadcast began, all shares had been ripped off.

– The campaign should last a week. Folkeinvest had a lot of faith that the stock would disappear before the week was out, but I was a little more skeptical and thought it would take a little longer, says Thorsen.

– Never in my wildest imagination had I thought that we would sell everything so quickly. I can hardly believe it, she says.

I don’t want grocery stores on the owner’s side

330 small investors subscribed shares in raising funds.

– I am created by my followers and I am nothing without them. “They are the reason I have had the opportunity to develop an application. So I think it was appropriate that they also participate in the project,” says Thorsen.

In the issue, a total of 1,543,750 shares were issued, corresponding to 13.37 percent of the company. Before the broadcast, he passed on the idea to other investors.

– The plan has always been to include “the people”, but we have also been in a series of investor meetings with several major players in the food industry. We finally decided that we wanted to be more consumer-driven, and therefore we decided to do the whole thing through public funding, says the influencer.

Progress log

It gave a record listing in the public finance company.

– Even though we are not done with number processing yet, we can safely say that we have not handled such volumes with people who will go through the system to an investment firm sooner, says client manager Amalie Holt at Folkeinvest.

The influx of shareholders caused data problems for the finance company.

– It is rare that we experience such great interest that we have challenges dealing with the volume of stakeholders as we experience it today. It’s clear to us that many have been interested in investing in Hunger, says Holt.

With a price of 35 million

Before the fundraiser, the company behind the app was priced at NOK 35 million from the app developer Shortcut. However, Thorsen thought the value was too high and reduced the value to 20 million.

– We haven’t won anything yet. So it is difficult to land with the correct value, and I think 35 million crowns sounded a lot. I’m not that high in my hat, so I reduced the value to 20 million, which is also very high, he says.

– But based on the data we have, and the success behind the personalized weekly menus both on Instagram and in the Poor Student cookbook, So we think the $ 20 million valuation is measurable, says Thorsen.

Everything for further development

The 3 million fresh capital will be used to cover development costs for the version that is now available, a planned version two of the application, and to develop the company behind the application. Version two is also coming to Android phones.

– I had never thought that Hunger would become so popular in such a short time. The first version was only made for Apple phones, to check if there was a market for a student food app, Thorsen says.

Version two will contain, among other things, the complete weekly menu archive, and the company is developing a feature in which the app suggests a recipe based on the ingredients it has in the fridge.

The new version will also be opened to earn money with the application. Additionally, Thorsen and the development team discuss three business models.

– One is a premium offer, where the app can still be downloaded and used for free, but those who want more features can take advantage of a premium offer. The other is product placement from stores or food manufacturers. The last one is a coupon page with various ads and offers that give users an added edge in stores, he says.

– We haven’t landed on a model yet, but we see it as an advantage. We now have data from 75,000 users that we can use as a starting point and more than 300 shareholders that we can use to find the best model, says Thorsen.