80 is a Mileage Book that helps you keep track of your car mileage and makes it easy to export your trips when you need to file expense reports, do your taxes or other deductions. In short, 80 is a simple tool to track your driving and filing your expenses. There are many ways of doing this, but the founders are “here to create the most simple – painless solution on the market.” They say, “In everything we do, we try and make the scenario for the user as easy as possible but at the same time give them an eye pleasing experience so they actually want to use our tool and not only the result that it provides them.”
80™ was founded by Martin Høst Normark and Mathias Høst Normark, Danish brothers who grew up together on the west coast of Denmark. Martin had a deep interest in technology from a very young age and Mathias was interested in branding and design. As they grew up, they started creating projects together. Today Martin is a Developer and Mathias is an Art Director & Designer.
“We were visiting our parents on a weekend and when we are hanging out we are usually talking about ideas, technology and design.” Mathias recalls. He adds, “We came up with the idea because Martin drives to his office several times a week and needed an app to track his driving and later file the expenses. That weekend we created a prototype and it basically went on from there.”
When they started creating 80, Mathias was living in Stockholm and he later moved to New York. He now lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. Martin lives on the west coast, close to their home-town. Because of this, the brothers have been working remotely on 80™ which can “sometimes be challenging”. However, according to Mathias, it was also an advantage in a way – It gives them the flexibility to work on other projects. “Once in a while we meet up for a weekend to do sprints together which does make it easier to get things done and of course it’s nice to see each-other in real life instead of being on Google Hangout. ” Mathias tells us.
There are a few solutions in the market, trying to solve the same problem. Mathias thinks that’s good. “It means there is a real problem to solve.” he says. The brothers “don’t use much time on thinking about them”. They try and focus on having fun with the problem they are trying to solve and make sure the solution works fine.
The founders of 80 hope to grow their user base and develop more features to make their app better and they “already have a lot of great stuff in the making.” 80’s target users are primarily people with the need of tracking their driving. Also, since Martin and Mathias are passionate about design and technology, they hope the users get to know them through the design and the technology.
When asked about the expansion plans, Mathias says, “To be honest we don’t really have a larger business plan. For us it’s not about being big, but being better.” He adds, “We didn’t create the app to get funding or grow a big team, we created the app because we wanted to make a project together and because we could solve a problem that both Martin and some of our friends face everyday. We charge a bit of money for the app so we basically monetize by getting more users.”
Do make it a point to visit http://geteighty.com/ for more information.
