Shortcut acquires Greener Pastures
We are delighted to share that Shortcut has acquired Danish app company Greener Pastures. Greener Pastures has 30 employees, and after the merger of the two companies into Shortcut Denmark will have 40 employees in Copenhagen and Bucharest.
We are delighted to share that Shortcut has acquired Danish app company Greener Pastures. Greener Pastures has 30 employees, and after the merger of the two companies into Shortcut Denmark will have 40 employees in Copenhagen and Bucharest.
New colleagues hanging out at the office in Nyhavn
Rather than start this post with the hard facts about each company and our position in the market, we want to start out with what’s most important to us: our culture and what drives us when we get to work each morning. In our initial discussions we started out with each company showing the Keynote decks we use when we meet new clients. Who are we, what have we done, and what are we trying to achieve? Both Greener Pastures and Shortcut are app-first companies, built by founders with a vision of how apps will change and improve our lives. We had identical slides saying how important our craft is to us, the little details which makes all the difference in practice. And both companies see smartphones as the by far most relevant platform to create new products and get closer to the end user. On the end user’s terms. Our developers have strong opinions about the visuals of an app, and our developers are curious about what problem the app is trying to solve.
While any acquisition is a long process of negotiation, planning and organizational design and legal documents, the decision was made when we looked across the table and saw eagerly nodding faces while we were telling our story. Greener Pastures and Shortcut share a history of being early adopters in the Nordic tech industry, and we share a vision of using technology to improve people’s lives.
Coop Medlem is one of the apps Greener Pastures has built
Greener Pastures was established in Copenhagen 2010, and has 30 employees. Since the beginning they have had a sharp focus on mobile apps, and have created apps for companies such as Coop, BroBizz, Berlingske Media and Danmarks Radio. Their employees are specialists in development and design of iOS and Android applications. Greener Pastures is managed by the three founders Jakob Mikkelsen, Michael Nexø and Jens Willy Johannsen. As one of our competitors in the Danish app market we have only heard good things about the people in Greener Pastures and the work they do.
Shortcut was established in Oslo in 2007, and has 90 app specialists employed in our Oslo and Bergen offices in Norway. Like Greener Pastures, we have been making apps since the beginning, and we have helped create many of the most popular apps in Norway, such as REMA 1000’s Æ, the Ruter apps, Vipps and Telia. In 2019 we set up our first office outside of Norway in Copenhagen, and they are making apps for companies like Danmarks Radio, Tryg and Fastr.
Shortcut Danmark A/S and Greener Pastures A/S will merge into a single company, Shortcut Danmark A/S. A new organizational structure has been established, where the current CEO of Shortcut Danmark will be CEO of the merged company and the founders of Greener Pastures along with key employees from both companies will form a new management team.
The two Danish companies will be located in Greener Pastures’ wonderful office in Nyhavn in the centre of Copenhagen starting this week. In the coming weeks we are looking forward to getting to know our new colleagues and clients and start sharing code, prototypes and knowledge.
With this acquisition, Shortcut will have 140 app specialists across our offices in Copenhagen, Oslo, Bergen and Bucharest. While each company will continue working with their local clients, we will have the largest community of app specialists across the Scandinavian countries. We already have several projects where we work cross-border, and will use this kind of collaboration to nurture a common culture across national boundaries.
While both companies as well as the app industry has come a long way, we strongly believe that we have only seen the beginning. Not only are there thousand of apps which are still to be created, as a company we have only just begun our journey. With the position as the largest app company in Scandinavia secured we have our eyes set on the countries which still don’t have a local Shortcut office.
So Jakob, Jens, Michael, Cosmin as well as all the rest of the Greener Pastures team which I haven’t met yet: welcome to Shortcut ❤️