Product Manager of Airtame: “We made our hobbies into a business”

 

Marius Klausen is the Product Manager and co-founder of AIRTAME. His career as a successful entrepreneur had already started when he was 19.

Story and photos by Josefine Maria Hansen

AIRTAME’s office is on the second floor through a courtyard on a street outside the city of Copenhagen. I will be meeting with Marius Klausen, Product Manager and co-founder of the company. He is in a meeting, so I sit down at his desk and wait.

A small AIRTAME-dongle flashes from one of the three flat screens on his table. On the wall behind the desk hangs a small framed diploma from the Danish Technical University with the text: “Student start-up in 2014: For the courage to believe in their professional dreams and efforts to realize them.” A description I will later find fits perfectly with Marius.

When Marius finishes his meeting, we go up to a room where he has prepared a PowerPoint presentation  on his eight-year career, so I can get a better overview of things. 

Let’s start at the beginning
At the age of 19, Marius started his first company with three fellow students. As part of a school project, they had to  find an everyday problem and develop a solution for it. They chose perfume allergies,  and developed a solution in the form a a perfume patch named Sentiv.

The project surpassed all expectations. They entered their project into the entrepreneurship course Young Enterprise Company Programme, where they competed with projects from other technical colleges, were passed forward to a sales fair in Odense, and then entered the Denmark Cup, a business competition, which they won.

“It was crazy. We didn’t expect to go that far. It was just a school project, and we suddenly ended up winning the Denmark Cup!“, says Marius.

After the surprising success of their perfume patch, Marius and his friends got a taste for starting new businesses.  “Hey, it was not so difficult,” he says, although this fact points more towards his special mentality and work ethic, than the realities of starting your own business from scratch.

Take a hobby and make it a business
Sentiv was only the beginning of a series of projects Marius Klausen started with a partner, Soren Aamand and childhood friend, Brian Kyed. After Sentiv, they built a mobile cocktail bar called Bargruppen and later a film company, Stik I Rend Film. Their starting point for the projects was simple: take a hobby and make it a business.

Volunteering with a film-startup
Besides working with Sentiv and Bargruppen, Marius began to volunteer with Young Enterprise, an alumni organization.  It was through this network he got his next idea: He would make films.

“Because we joined this network, we found out how incredibly difficult it was to explain to new volunteers why they should be members, and how they could use the network. And so we  came up with the idea that the best way to do that was by making movies, “says Marius.

None of the volunteers had ever tried to make a film before, so Marius and his partner Soren took matters into their own hands. It was straightforward learning by doing, emphasizes Marius. The film was a great success, and he continued to produce films for Young Enterprise throughout the year.

“I can do that much better”
That summer, Marius and his family vacationed in Romania. his family had booked the trip through a local travel agency in Vejle.  Here, he discovered his next project.

“Frankly, they made some crap movies at the travel agency.  So asked the head of the agency, if my partners and I were to take a trip to Romania, I could make a proper film for them.  We just went in, showed some backbone, and said, we can do this so much better.  Fortunately, he he did not ask to see any references, ” laughs Marius.

It occurred to them while on the plane bound for Romania that they had never made films with a professional camera before. 

“We had made films before, but it was only in auto mode.  You could not compare it to a professional camera. So on the plane ride over, we were all sitting and reading manuals, until we finally figured out how to use them.  The movie ended up really good, and is in fact still in use”, says Marius with a proud smile.

Stik i Rend Film
The travel film sparked the enterprise Stik i Rend Film (today Moving Monday). They began with small commercials, and eventually developed the page to include advanced animation and illustration films.

“Among other things, we had these ‘speeddrawings’, where you see a hand that draws illustrations for a voiceover,” explains Marius continues:

“This was some years ago, but I am pretty sure we re number two in the world for making that kind of animation, in collaboration with Bigger Picture.  That was back in 2009. MYC4 was our first development project, after that Novo Nordisk ordered the first of what ended up totaling 15 movies. “

You can see Marius’ MYC4-film here.

Learning by doing
By now, Marius and his friends had 6 years of starting successful businesses, all by throwing themselves into it with hard work, focus, and a good attitude. 

“Everything started out  as a hobby, which became a business, so it was never complicated.  We though it was fun, and that made it easy to take things as they come.”

Missing the sleepless nights
After a few years, began Marius started to tire of his projects. Marius exhales and leans forward.

“When you’re a consultant, you live by going out and meeting new customers all the time, making new movies and so on, and I was beginning to get tired of it. You never get the feeling you own anything when you’re a consultant,” he says, and continues:

“I could feel that I was missing that feeling of excitement, something to dream about on nights where you can’t fall asleep,” he says.

A technology for hardcore gaming
It was at that time that he serendipitously met  Jonas Gyalokay  from BIT BLUEBPRINT (today Socialsquare). There was good chemistry from the start. Jonas asked whether Marius would be interested in a development project with him, which ended with a LEGO stop-motion film that explains the concept of Open Source, and can be found on Wikipedia.  After nine months of work, Jonas called one day with an exciting proposition.

“He told me that Attilla Sükösd, the CTO of BIT BLUE PRINT, had been working on a technology called Airtame. Attila would use it when he played his hardcore 3D games. It’s a bit technical to explain, but it was all basically to get the image from one screen to another – without cables, “explains Marius.

Jonas Gyalokay immediately saw that the technology had great potential. It could be used for more than just gaming. It could be used to shape the future of streaming solution and replace HDMI, VGA, and all the other frustrating video cables. Jonas had Marius and Brian make their crowdfunding film, but since they also saw the huge potential in the technology, they offered to do more than just make the film.

Part of the AIRTAME  team
This is how Marius became part of AIRTAME, which today occupies all of his time. The team has won awards, received massive crow funding, and sold 15,000 devices corresponding to 20,000 users worldwide. Last year, AIRTAME elected the best startup at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“You could say that I used my many initial projects to be young and naive and was just shooting in the dark to figure out what I liked to do.  Now I have finally found my profession, “says Marius.

Presently, Marius has no plans for what to do after AIRTAME. He feels, in fact, that he has finally found the perfect job.

“The only thing I know is that, on a personal level, I plan to throw myself into something extreme physical exertion alongside AIRTAME. Most likely something like an ultramarathon, “says Marius.