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„Founding a business is all about connecting the dots“: Accelerator Team Batch #19: 3/5 – Tanzguru
26. September 2019, 12:43 :: Accelerator | Community
Autor: Bianca Kuehn
The third part of our Accelerator series revolves around dancing. Since Tanzguru was founded in 2018, Isa, Luis and André have been working towards bringing together dance schools, dance teachers and dance enthusiasts more easily and quickly and thus encourage more people to dance in Germany. We met Isa, co-founder of Tanzguru, who told us more about her experience with founding a company and about her passion to dance.
What problem is your startup solving? Can you give an example?
„Our startup Tanzguru is developing an Online-Plattform for dance schools, helping people looking for a dance class find the right offer. You can find the right dance style at the right time, the perfect location for a suitable price. We are saving people time and enable them to find the best offer with our platform. At the moment it’s still very time consuming and difficult to click through all the Google Search results and websites to find the right price, time, and location for the right type of dance class. We’re also developing a matchmaking function where you find the best offer for you in a few clicks. On the other hand, we also want to help dance schools to fill up their classes, generate more leads and make their life easier as well.“
What is your educational background? Did you always see yourself starting your own business?
„I studied International Business at Maastricht University and I had a Masters degree in Marketing, but I honestly never thought about starting something myself. At the beginning of this year, my Co-founder and friend Dominik asked me if I wanted to join in for this exact idea and I was just thinking: If not now then when. And because I’m a passionate dancer myself, I decided to try it and see on the way how it goes. So far it’s a lot of fun and challenging and I think it was a very good decision.“
What was your inspiration for your startup?
„The inspiration for Tanzguru came from my friend Dominik. One and a half or two years ago, he looked for a dance class with his girlfriend and found himself searching through Google. The whole process was just so time-consuming that he thought: „Ok, there’s Amazon, Foodora and other platforms for all sorts of services so why not establish a platform for dance classes to save potential customers time in that area as well.“ So he sat down, started to program a little bit to see if it was actually possible to make something like that and he figured out it was, so he continued the idea and asked me later if I wanted to join.“
What was the first obstacle you faced and how did you overcome it?
„The first and probably also the biggest obstacle we faced came with outsourcing parts of our programming to Bangladesh. It was very challenging to communicate our wants and needs and to convey the right image and standards that we wanted to have on our website. It turned out to be a huge challenge to outsource the ideas we had in our mind to programmers in a foreign country. We managed to overcome it by trying to make our vision as clear as possible through lots of powerpoint presentations including callouts, images, texts, and phone calls.“
What is the next milestone for your startup?
„Right now we’re working on a campaign in Düsseldorf for dance schools that offer Salsa classes and our next milestone is to get our first 5 bookings. We will hopefully get there in the next two to three weeks and that’s very exciting.“
What are some short term and especially long term goals of yours?
„Our short term goals are getting our platform running and getting the dance schools on board by gaining their trust and of course getting the dance-interested people on our website. We will be focusing on Düsseldorf for the short term but in the long term, we want to expand throughout Germany and get more and more people to join dance classes. The long long term goal is to offer different services, such as events or maybe a dance-partner-matching service or a job platform for dance teachers. We have plenty of ideas and will see what features we will be adding to Tanzguru in the future.“
If you could start over again, what would you do differently?
„If we could start over again, I think we wouldn’t outsource the programming part as soon as we did. We would probably talk to more German programmers in advance and gain experience about it beforehand. But besides that, I guess founding a business is all about connecting the dots, so every little mistake will lead you somewhere. Although some things may not make sense yet, in the end, they will.“
Why did you choose STARTPLATZ Accelerator?
„We chose STARTPLATZ Accelerator because STARTPLATZ is the buzzword that comes up the most when you google „Startup in Rhineland“ or on networking events etc. We joined because of the network and resources that help us get our business running.“
What and who has helped you the most outside and inside STARTPLATZ to getting you on the road?
„I think the most helpful tool here is the Slack Channel. Whatever you need or whatever question you have, you can ask in your virtual network and get help straight away.“
If you could give another startup a tip, what would it be? Any words of advice?
„Just start and don’t think too much about how it all works, how it is supposed to be and that it should be perfect. Just start and you’ll figure everything else out on the way.“
You also have a business idea with which you want to get started? Startups with scalable business models can apply for the Accelerator. TheJubilee Batch #20 is expected to start in March 2020. Here you’ll find all information about the STARTPLATZ Accelerator as well as the application form.
Apply now!
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