New Minds celebrates 8 years with mobile keys from Parakey

One evening in 2016, Parakey's CEO Jonas Arvidsson was in the ceiling of the IT recruitment company New Minds to install a Parakey Control Unit. Eight years and over 130,000 unlocks later, the same Control Unit is still sitting at Kungsportsavenyn 27 in Gothenburg and controls the office door that is unlocked with the smartphone as a key.

Nils Widmark, Vice President, CIO and co-founder of New Minds, met Parakey's CEO Jonas Arvidsson at Chalmers Ventures in 2014 and has since followed Parakey's success story - from a handful to over 1000 satisfied customers and from one product to five. 

In 2016, Nils made the decision to test Parakey at New Mind's new office, where they also wanted to rent out office space to other companies. Managing keys and fobs he no longer saw as an option, and then contacted his old Chalmers acquaintance Jonas Arvidsson who personally swung by and installed the Control Box. 

"I guess I was holding the ladder or something", Nils laughs and continues: "The system works very well, in the background, you don't have to do much, it just flows. So there haven't been many anecdotes since then."  

News Minds helps companies find talented engineers and has currently recruited 600-700 engineers, mainly in Gothenburg and Stockholm. Nils himself is also an engineer at heart, which helps a lot in his work as he gets a very good understanding of the customer's needs. 

Customer understanding is also something he highlights as one of Parakey's greatest strengths.

"That those who have founded the company really understand what the customer's needs are, what is the purpose. It feels like Parakey has a good management. Now I am mainly familiar with Jonas, but he is very good and I think it is reflected in the organization."

He adds:

"In Gothenburg, there aren't a lot of new, exciting companies coming up every year. So it's great to see." 

It has been eight years since New Minds started using mobile keys in its office and a few years ago the property owner Wallenstam also chose to install Parakey on the entrance gate.

"At present, however, we have keys to the office rooms, but I have heard that Parakey has a new product for that, so maybe we can talk about that later," says Nils happily, thinking of Parakey Door Handle.

He describes Parakey as flexible, something he particularly appreciates as they also have free office space where someone may sit for three months before someone new comes, as well as a lot of temporary visits.

"It is flexible in a way that keys are not. There's also no risk of giving keys away and then losing them. So that also feels like a security aspect."

Nils also returns to the value of not having to deal with fobs and sees the flexibility and speed as the biggest value of Parakey.

"A traditional access control system involves ordering fobs, you have to pay for them, it takes time." 

He also does not believe that it would have been an optimal solution to depend on something else, such as the internet, to get in somewhere and refers to the fact that unlocking with Parakey is done via Bluetooth. All Parakey devices are completely independent of the internet.

Nils also thinks that there has been an interesting change in people's views on keyless locks and mobile access.

"When we started using the system, many people were a little hesitant to have the smartphone as a key, but today it feels like the market has really adapted. It's very natural today and it would have felt a bit old-fashioned to hand out badges or similar."

Those who rent rooms at New Minds today have not given any direct feedback on the chosen access control system, which Nils believes is because it has been running smoothly and working well.

"I think it's become normalized, I don't think anyone thinks it's special anymore, it's just the way it should be. It just works."