Startup Interview with Robin Eriksson, Co-founder/CEO of Cogo

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I’m a serial entrepreneur, and previously the Regional Director at momondo and CMO of the Swedish electric car company Uniti.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Cogo gathers all shared electric scooters, bikes, cars, and mopeds from 190 different mobility operators in 500 cities worldwide. We want to help the transition from private car ownership to shared electric vehicles to improve the cities we live in.

What is the origin story?

I saw the increased popularity of shared mobility, and specifically for electric scooters in 2018. Back then I was involved in another mobility startup in Sweden called Uniti (electric car), and I saw this new industry growing in front of my eyes and I felt that I was missing out. I really wanted to be part of this transition and help reduce our dependency on private gasoline cars. I thought long and hard to figure out how I could bring value into this space, another scooter operator wouldn't change the world as there were literally already hundreds of them. I realised that I had over 10 different apps to move around in Copenhagen and Malmö, and for me as a user it was a very complex and annoying experience. It dawned on me that no one had solved this problem yet, and this is where I could really have an impact, so I started working on it! Luckily my co-founder Bibi heard about the idea through mutual friends so we started talking and launched the company together last year.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

Everybody is so passionate about the fundamental problem that we’re trying to solve and the team has a relevant background from building momondo, from foundation to internationalisation and a finally $550 million acquisition by Booking Holdings. Just like we transformed the airline industry we’ve now set out to do the same in the shared mobility space.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Probably work on another business idea, and hopefully do some more kitesurfing.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

User growth and user stickiness (our retention rate). We’re building Cogo to help our users, and we’re monitoring closely how new features are being received. Many of the features that we’re currently working on come from our users.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

We have the best operator coverage in the Nordics, were finalists as ‘newcomer of the year’ at Nordic Startups awards 2020 (and nominated again this year) and we have received a lot of great press coverage in Sweden, Denmark and even internationally. What’s most exciting is that Cogo has already been used in over 100 countries without any paid marketing!

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

Excited about Bitcoin and other cryptos: because they will change how we do commerce. Worried about AI robots: You just know it’s going to go wrong at some point

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

We were nominated and after looking into Hackernoon I really like the way you write your content. For us, as a startup, this is also a great way to showcase all the good things we’re working on!

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Trust the process and know that things usually turn out just fine if you keep working hard.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

A humpback whale eats up to 2,5 tons of plankton, krill and small fish every day!

Be sure to vote for Cogo as Startup of the Year in Copenhagen:

https://startups.hackernoon.com/northern-europe/copenhagen-denmark