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During our couch-hustling days, we occasionally stumbled upon the infamous sofa-bed from Ikea. Over time, it got to a point where no amount of money justified the sheer strain of transporting this couch. It was a real possibility that you could be carrying such a mammoth up to the eighth floor, sans elevator.

Our first encounter with this couch was at a plush apartment located in the heart of Helsinki. When you’re off to pick a piece from a posh neighborhood, you anticipate top-notch quality. While the sofa-bed itself was reasonably fine, its affiliation with Ikea was an indicator of its mammoth-like weight. We approached the couch with innocent confidence, expecting just another day at the office. But as we grabbed a hold of the couch, we soon found ourselves struggling. Two young fit lads barely managing to get it up – and yes, that’s what we said, not she.

The entire pickup operation quickly descended into a farce. ‘Shambles’, a term we started using during our couch ventures, perfectly described a situation gone so haywire, it couldn’t possibly get worse. We failed to lift the couch out of the door, resorting instead to shoving it, much to the detriment of the pristine corridor. It all made sense why the kind lady was so eager to part with it – who could possibly move this behemoth to a new apartment after our ridiculous 15-minute ordeal just to get it out of the house?

After managing to move it a mere 10 meters from the house, our struggles out of public view, we were still faced with the task of hoisting it into the van. With an elevator too small for the couch and a spiraling staircase (typical of central Helsinki apartments), our next 20 minutes morphed into the most grueling workout of our lives. A mix of sweat, screams, and helpless laughter peppered the scene, painting a picture of tragicomic desperation. Carrying that couch down the stairs, you couldn’t help but question your life decisions. At some point, we may have let the behemoth slide down the stairs – it was that heavy. But let’s stop the story there. We have a professional furniture company reputation to uphold, after all, don’t we?

Though we were newcomers to the couch-hustling scene, it was hardly a niche industry. Established companies, with their large workforces, massive warehouses, and physical storefronts, dwarfed us – a compact team with one van and a relatively small-sized warehouse. To survive, we knew we had to outsmart the competition, leverage what we had that they didn’t: programming skills.

From day one, we channeled our tech-savvy nature to build our competitive edge: “Botterna.” This bot, fully programmed by the programming minds inside Dubs, scouted the marketplace on tori.fi every ten seconds, with whatever desired filters. Each time a fresh listing popped up, Botterna sprang into action, pushing a notification to all our phones with a product image and a direct link to message the seller. Thanks to Botterna, we outpaced the competition, snatching the cream of the couch crop around the clock.

The speed of our responses left sellers in awe. Prime couches would attract a flurry of messages within minutes of being listed – a testament to the competition. It was the tireless operation of Botterna that was instrumental in the success of our venture. Impressively, the bot never crashed, and it remains fully functional today, two years after its inception. Dubs, rightfully, holds Botterna’s code as a prized asset. After all, it was this intrepid little script that catalyzed our revenue stream, one couch at a time. Botterna is a part of the Dubs hall of fame.