Digital innovation
SwipeGuide was founded in 2015 by Willemijn Schneyder and Daan Assen. The company developed a software platform that made the huge amount of paper instructions on the work floor redundant. On the platform, companies can easily create their own digital work instructions and then immediately optimize them. In this way, the company ensures fewer errors by employees and therefore less downtime of machines through better instructions.
Corona disaster
In 2020, the coronavirus emerged and demand for Swipeguide's services almost completely ground to a halt. Ultimately, July 2020 is a Corona Bridging Loan (COL) requested and received via ROM InWest. For approval of the application, all kinds of detailed information was requested, such as a business plan and a feasibility analysis. The loan received is an important reason that the company survived the corona crisis. Ultimately, the loan was fully repaid at the end of August 2024 when Swipeguide was acquired by L2L.
ROM InWest as COL executor
The Corona Bridging Loan (COL) was created in 2020 for innovative companies and growth companies that were not eligible for emergency measures such as the BMKB-C and GO-C. With the loan, they were able to temporarily improve their liquidity position. The COL was partly responsible for the establishment of ROM InWest. A total of 350 million euros was lent nationwide, 79 million of which went to 285 start-ups and SMEs in North Holland. Four years later, a large part of this portfolio has been phased out and many of these entrepreneurs – including Swipeguide – have experienced significant growth.
Stormy growth
In April 2021, Swipeguide raised money in a new investment round. This allowed the company to continue to grow independently. The desire to improve its services led to Swipeguide ending up in the United States and eventually merging with L2L. Swipeguide was looking for a partner who could expand its offering, because customers asked whether Swipeguide could also help with assigning tasks and reporting deviations in the production process. This is how the company ended up with L2L. They provide communication with machines. If a machine has an error message, it communicates this to an L2L platform. With the swipequide manual they can then go back to the machine to solve it. Together Swipeguide and L2L support the entire process.
Expand further
The merger will result in a company with 110 employees, of whom more than a quarter from SwipeGuide, and a turnover of more than 22 million euros. Schneyder is chief strategy officer at the new company and Assen is responsible for Europe. The merged company has plenty of growth ambitions. "In two years, I want us to serve 1,500 to 2,000 factories and grow to 1 million users," Schneyder said in an earlier interview following the acquisition. "We want to grow with new software products in both the United States and Europe. We will also look at Asia."
Vision of the future
Employees can now also provide feedback on instructions or report problems on the platform, which can be used to further optimize the process. In addition, the company measures how quickly employees pick up the instructions. It then sends this data to the creator, who can use the data to improve future instructions. The platform's AI-driven technology ultimately ensures that employees acquire critical knowledge more quickly. This further reduces dropouts, which is good for both employees and customers.
