Accelerace invests in Jungle, the go-to app for recommendations from gastronomic experts
Accelerace invests in Jungle, an app that lets local chefs, baristas and sommeliers guide you to their favorite spots. Jungle is an Accelerace alumnus from 2019.
Recommendations from gastronomic experts instead of strangers
When you are in need of inspiration and recommendations for new restaurants, wine bars, or eateries, the standard practice is to scan apps with user-generated content like reviews, ratings, and photos.
Jungle is moving against the trend of “the crowd knows best”. Instead of user-generated content from strangers, Jungle connects you with the favorite places of local gastronomic experts through storytelling. The team is getting ready to launch in Copenhagen as we speak:
“Once we have stories from 100 places, we’ll put them in the Jungle App and share our product and vision with all of Copenhagen. Our vision is to have a city guide that’s so alive, so fast and so engaging, that even the hippest folks in the meatpacking district will want to use it before asking anyone else.”
Kristoffer Hartwig, Co-founder and CEO at Jungle
Jungle will subsequently expand to bigger European food scenes in 2022.
A go-to-market model that will attract Millennials and Gen Z
Accelerace’s Sebastian von Wildenrath Løvgreen believes that the team has found a strong go-to-market model and that the option of getting recommendations directly from local chefs, baristas, and sommeliers will attract Millennials and Gen Z:
“Kristoffer, John, and the rest of the Jungle-team are moving against the trend of ‘the crowd knows best’. They don’t believe in a future where ‘Generation Food’ (Millennials and Gen Z) will use TripAdvisor and Yelp to find their next gastronomic experience. They believe Generation Food will listen to industry expert (so-called: ‘Tastemakers’) and get inspired about their favourite places to go out. That is non-consensus and really interesting. They have found a strong go-to-market model and obtained good traction.”
Sebastian von Wildenrath Løvgreen, Business accelerator and Investment manager at Accelerace
The co-founders met during the accelerator program
Jungle is an Accelerace alumnus from 2019. When you join an accelerator, you expect to be matched with a bunch of people, including mentors, industry experts, and investors. Kristoffer Hartwig also met the person that would help him build the company, that is, his co-founder John Connelly.
Both were working on business ideas to make cities more accessible. Kristoffer’s focus was on curation from local chefs and sommeliers, whereas John had iterated through a couple of apps to optimize the way places tell their stories.
The rest is, as you say, history.
About Accelerace:
Since 2008, Accelerace has supported 800+ Danish and international startups, including Trustpilot and Templafy, through our accelerator program, made 70+ pre-seed investments and matched startups with industry-leading companies such as Tetra Pak, Arla, and Elia. Accelerace is also responsible for the management of NOME (Nordic Mentor Network for Entrepreneurship), an elite mentoring program for Nordic life science startups.
Accelerace Invest II is the largest Danish fund in terms of the number of investments. By making approximately 30 new investments/year in pre-seed startups until 2023, the ambition is to be Denmark’s most aggressive early-stage investor. If you want an investment for your startup, please submit your pitch deck here.