From student life to spin-out: Three students founded Heart2Heart

Heart2Heart’s office is located in a space at Kitchen at Aarhus University and is predominantly pink. There are pink prototypes and beta versions, pink beanbags and pink-painted wooden backdrops. And lots of pink hearts. Sofie Lundby Andersen and Sofie Fürsterling Mønster are sitting in the middle of it all. Nina Isis Kinch Bolton is out of the office.

When the three co-founders of the spin-out company Heart2Heart look back on their time studying Digital Design at the School of Communication and Culture, Heart2Heart is a major part of the story. The idea for the keyring and app emerged in their fourth semester, and their work on gendered insecurity became the focal point of both their joint Bachelor’s project and their joint Master’s thesis.

- Safety is the value of our product, says Sofie Fürsterling Mønster.

A keyring that vibrates
When you squeeze the keyring twice, an SMS is sent to selected contacts. They can see the keyring’s live location and send a message back, which appears as a vibration in the heart.

- When the keyring vibrates in my pocket on my way home, I know that someone I feel safe with is virtually walking me home, says Sofie Fürsterling Mønster.

If a situation becomes threatening or dangerous, you can hold down the button on the keyring for three seconds to ask your network to come and pick you up.

Unlike traditional personal alarms, which are activated when something has already gone wrong, the keyring is primarily designed to prevent feelings of insecurity in the first place.

Surveillance and care
In their fourth semester, the students were working on a theme about surveillance and care. The three women wanted to explore how surveillance could be turned into care rather than control, and the initial discussions drew on their own experiences earlier in life.

- We drew on our own experiences of, for example, feeling unsafe when walking home alone in the evening. We would walk with our phones to our ears and pretend to be on a call to feel more at ease, says Sofie Fürsterling Mønster.

- And shortly before we started this project, the Mia Skadhauge Stevn case happened (a rape and murder case from Aalborg in 2022, ed.). It was something that affected us deeply. It created a lot of insecurity. We took so many precautions when walking home from a night out, says Sofie Lundby Andersen.

And from there, things took off.

The three women developed their pink, heart-shaped keyring to make it easy and discreet to reach out to the people closest to you and thereby help prevent feelings of insecurity. They also wanted to make sure this could be done without constantly sharing your location, as that would mean compromising your privacy. Their hope is that a pink heart dangling from a bag or set of keys can open up conversations about safety and security.

- Our keyring is also a physical symbol that we hope can help drive structural change and contribute to starting conversations about insecurity, says Sofie Fürsterling Mønster.

Co-creation and internship
As part of their studies and throughout the process of developing both the product and the company, the three women conducted qualitative surveys with more than 500 women across Europe.

- In our design process, we have focused enormously on co-creation. We started by working with a problem and then talked to a lot of different young women so that we could get a clearer understanding of which problem we should actually be solving, says Sofie Lundby Andersen.

But the idea of starting a company and taking the project further did not originate with the three students themselves. A researcher from the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies encouraged Nina Isis Kinch Bolton, Sofie Lundby Andersen and Sofie Fürsterling Mønster to continue developing their product and pay a visit to Kitchen at Aarhus University. Here, students can take part in workshops and gain advice and experience in innovation and entrepreneurship. It was also through Kitchen that the three women were able to do an internship in their own company, Heart2Heart, as part of their Master’s degree.

- We developed learning objectives together with our supervisor, and then took part in a programme with various workshops and a pitching session at Kitchen. That was also where we started to see the business side of our project. I don't think we would have had a company if it hadn't been for Kitchen, says Sofie Lundby Andersen.

Launch on the horizon
Heart2Heart has received support from Aarhus University, including through AU Launch, and the company has received a Mikrolegat from Fonden for Entreprenørskab and Innofounder from Innovationsfonden. The funding enabled the three founders to work full-time in the company after completing their Master’s degree in Digital Design in late summer 2025.

Since then, they have been working on business and product development. At present, they have around 50 paying beta users. On 1 October, they will launch a crowdfunding campaign for Heart2Heart on Kickstarter, where people can be among the first to order the keyring.

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Visit Heart2heart on their webpage
Se photos on Instagram @Heart2Heart_dk

Nina Isis Kinch Bolton, co-founder & CTO
Sofie Lundby Andersen, co-founder & COO
Sofie Fürsterling Mønster, co-founder & CCO
 

CONTACT

Sofie Fürsterling Mønster
Mail: sfm@heart-2-heart.dk