Online lost-and-found office

“Zentrales Fundbüro” is located on the fourth floor of an old office building in Fechenheim, an industrial district in Frankfurt, Germany. Three men are working on computers at their desks. They can gaze out of the window at the banks and office towers of the Frankfurt skyline that lend the city its nickname "Mainhattan" thanks to its location on the Main River. The view is magnificent, just the right setting. It is reminiscent of the USA, the country where the success of Zentrales Fundbüro will largely be decided. Their aim is clear: "We want to be No. 1 in the world," says Antonio Vega.

Since 2015, Markus Schaarschmidt (34), Antonio Vega (32) and Tobias Freyberg (54) have been on the road to becoming the global leader. Their industry: lost and found. Everyone loses something at some point in their lives. Sometimes it's something important like a smart phone with your holiday photos, a laptop with data from your company, a child's teddy bear, earrings from your wedding, a set of important keys or, the classic case, a wallet with all of your cards. All of these are typical cases for “Zentrales Fundbüro”, as the start-up is still called in Germany, while operating globally online as “Have it Back” at haveitback.com.

Once the idea grabbed them, Mr Schaarschmidt and Mr Freyberg, the computer scientists, and the marketing expert Mr Vega soon learned: many countries (like Greece) don't even have lost-and-found offices. Other countries (like France) don't list lost and found items online. And in still others (like Germany), lost-and-found offices still rely mainly on Excel lists. According to Mr Schaarschmidt, Excel lists are a sign of resistance to new technology. For him and his colleagues, having to fight one's way through scores of lost-and-found listings to find a forgotten mobile phone is an antiquated process.

On the have it back website, the proprietary software assigns lost and found items (or pets) to categories and locations on the map. New entries are automatically compared to old entries in the database. Widening the search radius increases the chances of success. A hiker, for example, doesn't necessarily turn in something he finds along the owner's route, but at his own destination. And another advantage: unlike a lost-and-found office, haveitback is always open.

The young entrepreneurs are already doing business with the US company Hallmark Aviation which, among other things, handles baggage at US airports. A contract with an airport in the Rhine-Main region is slated for signature in the near future. The sale of licences for the proprietary software is one source of income. According to Mr Schaarschmidt, Have it Back’s main income currently still comes from sending found items.

But it's still enough for all three of them to make a living, partly because, according to Mr Schaarschmidt, their cost structure is "very lean". They plan to raise venture capital for further expansion. The next steps are to optimise the image recognition programme on their website which simplifies and accelerates the process of documenting and searching for an item, and investing in sales and marketing.

As they see it, one of the unique features of the Frankfurt start-up is that no-one else is working to network private individuals, companies and local offices in the international lost-and-found industry. Or, as Mr Schaarschmidt puts it: "We are setting the global standard." The three entrepreneurs from Zentrales Fundbüro now just need to make sure that everyone has heard of them.