Two anglers with history at DTU are responsible for the newly launched web portal ‘fishtrip.dk’, where users can book fishing trips online.
It all started one day when avid angler Rasmus Dahl wanted to take a fishing boat out to sea to fish for cod. The first fisherman he called did not pick up the phone. Nor did the second. The third did not have room on his boat, and the fourth he caught in the middle of his dinner. It was around that time that the idea of creating fishtrip.dk began to surface.
"The fishing boats head on out every day, but they don’t always manage to fill all the available places. It’s a shame to use fuel and time taking boats out with 15 people when they have room for 35."
Philip Randgaard, co-founder of fishtrip.dk
“When Rasmus told me how difficult it was to get in touch with a fishing boat, we both thought: there must be a smarter way to do this. We knew there was a huge market. Almost 100 fishing boats offer angling trips every day, and 500,000 people in Denmark have been fishing at some point over the past six months. So we decided to give it the whole nine yards,” relates Philip Randgaard.
He first met Rasmus Dahl through business acquaintances. Rasmus had just finished his environmental studies at DTU, while Philip had just completed his IT course. They shared an interest in angling. At that point, they had both followed the usual practice of making arrangements with fishing boat owners they either already knew or found in the Yellow Pages. And now they wanted to drag anglers into the digital age.
“Our idea is for anglers to log onto fishtrip.dk and then use the site to find a fishing boat, a fishing guide or a Put&Take lake. Every time a user matchers a provider, we take a cut of the price of the trip as our commission,” explains Philip Randgaard.
“The concept is a bit like hotels.com, but we’ve also taken inspiration from Aribnb and Uber. We like the idea of following the sustainable approach and making use of the available resources. The fishing boats head on out every day, but they don’t always manage to fill all the available places. It’s a shame to use fuel and time taking boats out with 15 people when they have room for 35.
Evidence thus far suggests they may be onto something. In 2015, Rasmus and Philip won the Venture Cup Idea Competition in the ’Service’ category, along with DKK 25,000. Jesper Buch, the founder of Just-Eat, subsequently pumped funds into Fishtrip, and in February Christian Birk—the man behind Endomono—injected an appreciable sum into the booking portal.
Thanks to these investments, Fishtrip is working to develop an app that is scheduled for release this summer. The next step is to move into the markets of Sweden and Poland. And then the United States.