A small Swedish cinema, brought back into use —
and the software that lets it run mostly on its own.
Nyvyn is a disused cinema we'd like to reopen as a flexible venue for hire. VomeHire is the booking and automation layer that makes that practical — and a product in its own right, for any small venue owner who'd rather not sit behind a desk.
We have a disused cinema. We'd like to use it.
It's a single-screen Swedish cinema, owner-occupied, that hasn't been trading for some time. It needs heating sorting, a few practical bits, and a plan that doesn't rely on selling tickets to fill it every Saturday night.
What it is
Single screen, large flat floor (no fixed seats), good projection wall, established power and broadband, reasonable acoustics. Walking distance from the founder.
What it needs
Heating, accessibility, insurance, the right licences, and a way to operate it without paying someone to babysit it. Plus a website and a booking flow.
Rather than reopen it as a traditional cinema (high fixed cost, narrow audience), we turn it into a flexible venue for hire — meetings, screenings, recordings, podcasts — and treat the operations layer as a product.
Nyvyn — a flexible Swedish venue.
One room, several uses. The empty floor and big screen turn out to be a feature: nothing is bolted down, so the space reconfigures for the booking type. We lean towards the less-corporate end of the market — small businesses, freelancers and work-from-home people, artists, weddings and private events.
Talks & presentations
Authors, clubs, charities, small businesses, schools. Audience seating, projector, lapel mic, recording optional.
Private screenings & celebrations
Birthdays, hen / stag dos, family film nights, small wedding receptions. Booker brings the film or the playlist; we provide the rest.
Recording & podcasts
Independent podcasters, video creators, training producers. Big-screen monitoring, multiple mics, controlled lighting, files delivered through the platform.
Workshops & off-sites
Freelancer meet-ups, small-team away-days, artist workshops, supper-clubs. Conference cam plus virtual attendees on the big screen, coffee on.
"Nyvyn" is the working trading name for the venue. The legal structure is open — possibly an enskild firma to begin, possibly a separate AB.
Small venues don't make sense with a person at the desk.
Bookings cluster in evenings and weekends. Hiring someone to babysit a venue is expensive, especially in a small Swedish town. Most small function spaces respond by either staying empty, opening only when the owner is personally there, or running on a clunky shared calendar.
The economics
At small venue revenue, every staff hour spent on door duty erases the margin on the booking. Self-operation moves the cost into software, where it scales.
Trust + automation
Time-bounded door codes (or NFC), a camera at the entrance, a check-in/checkout flow, a damage-deposit hold, and an on-call number cover most situations.
Cleaning is the bit you don't automate
A local cleaner gets a notification with each turnover. The software handles "the room knows it's been booked"; humans handle the mop.
VomeHire — booking & operations, productised.
A SaaS for small venue owners. The booking calendar is one piece; the rest is the operations layer that turns the booking into a configured experience.
What it does
- Public booking calendar with per-room rules and per-package pricing
- Stripe checkout, VAT-compliant invoices, refunds
- Time-bounded access (codes, NFC, e-keys) via off-the-shelf locks
- Climate, lights, projector, sound and screen presets per booking type
- Check-in / checkout flow with camera-confirmed handover
- Cleaner notifications, damage-deposit holds, on-call routing
How it's built
Same Home Assistant DNA as VomeHome — the on-site control layer is HA running on a small box at the venue, talking outbound to the VomeHire portal over WireGuard. Off-the-shelf locks (Salto KS, Aqara, Yale), AV gear and projectors plug in through standard HA integrations. Stripe and Auth0 carry payments and identity.
One outbound tunnel, one room, several presets.
Guests book and pay on the venue's VomeHire page. At the start of the booking, the venue's HA controller flips climate / lights / AV into the right preset; a one-time door code is delivered to the guest's phone or email. At the end, the same logic reverses, locks the door, and notifies the cleaner.
- Isolation: one HA controller per venue; the SaaS never holds long-lived credentials to the room.
- Outbound only: nothing on the venue LAN is exposed to the public internet.
- Standard HA: the venue keeps an off-the-shelf HA installation; integrations and add-ons work unchanged.
- Owner override: a physical button on the wall always wins. Nothing the SaaS does is irreversible from the room itself.
Packages, not just hours.
Generic booking SaaS gets you a calendar and a room. The interesting bit is what happens between the booking and the guest walking in. We sell the configured experience.
Off-site & workshop
- Small-team away-days, freelancer meet-ups, training
- Meeting layout, projector, conference cam, virtual attendees
- Coffee, water, snacks topped up
- Recording on request, file delivered the next day
Private celebration
- Birthdays, hen / stag dos, small wedding receptions
- Cinema or open-floor layout, sofas & bean-bags optional
- Slideshow on the big screen, playlist or live DJ input
- Drinks add-on (alcohol licence permitting), tidy-up included
Private screening
- Cinema layout, sofas & bean-bags optional
- Booker provides the film; we provide playback & sound
- Lights dim on schedule, intermission scene available
- Snacks/drink add-ons at checkout
Recording / podcast
- Independent podcasters, video creators, training producers
- Recording preset: lights, mics live, camera framed
- Big screen as a monitor; share to remote guests
- Files delivered through the portal, optional editing add-on
Packages are configured in software, not in a venue manager's head. New ones are a few minutes' work per venue.
Each works alone. Together they reinforce.
Nyvyn for VomeHire
Gives the SaaS a real venue to refine on, a public showcase, photo & video assets, and a permanent first reference customer. The founder lives in walking distance, so iteration is fast and friction is low.
VomeHire for Nyvyn
Gives the venue a software stack it would otherwise have to assemble from a calendar app, a separate access-control box, a separate AV controller, and a separate payment flow. The cost of building it is largely already sunk into Vome's shared platform.
Who buys VomeHire.
Anywhere with a room that gets booked by the hour or by the evening, currently operated manually. The shape is similar across types; the package logic is what differs. We deliberately court venues that serve the less-corporate end of the market — small businesses, freelancers and work-from-home people, artists, weddings and private events — rather than chasing enterprise meeting-room procurement.
Community halls
Föreningslokaler, parish halls, scout huts, community centres. Often booked through a single volunteer with a paper diary.
Podcast & photo studios
Hour-by-hour rentals where the configuration matters more than the calendar. Existing tools manage the calendar; almost none manage the room.
Independent cinemas & film clubs
Small venues that already have the gear and just need fewer humans at the door to be viable.
Art / gallery / pop-up spaces
Short-let exhibition spaces. Need scheduled access, lighting scenes, and a payment flow.
Small event & meeting rooms
Wedding receptions, business off-sites, AGMs, training rooms. Heavy weekend use, light midweek — ideal for automation.
Sports halls & studios
Dance, climbing, padel, fitness studios. Often already run on a clunky calendar with shared physical keys. Access and lighting automation is a real upgrade.
Sweden alone has thousands of these venues. EU + UK count is comfortably in the tens of thousands. We don't need a double-digit percentage of any of them — a small operator can grow slowly.
Where VomeHire sits vs. what's out there.
| Option | Bookings | Access & AV | Packages | Indicative cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skedda / Tutum / Cobot (booking SaaS) | Yes — mature | No — calendar only | No | ~500–1,500 SEK / month per location |
| Spacebase / Tagvenue (marketplaces) | Yes — on their site | No | No | Commission, ~10–20 % per booking |
| Salto KS / smart-lock vendor portals | No — access only | Access only | No | Hardware + ~100–300 SEK / lock / month |
| Calendly + Stripe + spreadsheets | Loose | No | No | "Free" plus human time |
| VomeHire | Yes — with per-package pricing | Yes — access + climate + AV presets | Yes — first-class | ~500–1,500 SEK / month + small transaction fee |
Skedda is the closest comparable; we sit one level deeper into the venue. Marketplaces are complementary — a venue using VomeHire can still list itself on Tagvenue and accept the booking through our flow.
Tooling depth
Skedda owns the calendar. We own the calendar, the door, the lights, the projector, the conference cam and the payment flow — in one product, with packages.
Positioning
Skedda et al. lean enterprise / coworking / corporate procurement. We lean the warmer end: small businesses, freelancers and work-from-home people, artists, weddings and private events. Same building, different audience.
What the cinema actually needs to open.
Indicative, not committed. Numbers come from local quotes and a few comparable Swedish renovations; the business plan has the breakdown.
Heating & building work
Air-source heat pump sized for the room, a small amount of insulation work, and a basic kitchenette upgrade. ~120,000–180,000 SEK (€10–€16k).
Accessibility & safety
Step-free entry route, accessible WC, fire-safety equipment refresh, signage, evacuation plan. ~30,000–60,000 SEK.
Licences & insurance
Public-venue insurance, eventual alcohol permit (serveringstillstånd), STIM/SAMI music licensing where relevant. ~20,000 SEK first-year cost.
AV & control
Existing projector and screen retained; add conference cam, lapel mics, lighting control, smart locks, HA controller. ~40,000–70,000 SEK.
Listing & launch
Website, photography, listing on Tagvenue / Bookbarn-equivalent, soft-launch event for the town. ~10,000–15,000 SEK.
All-in to open
Realistic minimum to open responsibly: ~220,000 SEK (≈ €19k). Comfortable launch budget: ~350,000 SEK (≈ €30k).
First 18 months.
Heating & soft opening
Building works completed. Nyvyn opens for friends-and-family hires. VomeHire MVP live (calendar, Stripe, access codes, basic packages).
Packages & first external venue
Service packages launched at Nyvyn. First external venue customer on VomeHire (likely a community hall or podcast studio in the same region).
Five paying venues
5–10 venues on VomeHire (Sweden + Nordics). Cinema running at target utilisation (3–5 events/week). Marketplace listings (Tagvenue etc.) as complementary funnels.
20+ venues & light hardware bundle
20+ venues on VomeHire; consider a "VomeHire-in-a-box" hardware bundle (HA controller + lock + sensors, pre-configured). Cinema cash-flow positive.
Targets are deliberately modest. The business plan has the projections and sensitivities.
Three sizes of cheque, three plans.
Both ventures can be funded together or separately. The combined ask covers the cinema's opening cost and the focused build of VomeHire as a stand-alone product.
Bootstrap
Founder's own capital for the AB and a slow cinema renovation. Nyvyn opens in stages; VomeHire stays as the cinema's own backend for the first year.
- No external investors
- Cinema opens in 6–9 months
- VomeHire as SaaS launches in year two
Friends & contacts
~350k SEK for Nyvyn's opening budget + ~300k SEK runway for VomeHire's first year. SAFE or convertible from one or two known investors.
- Cinema opens within 3 months
- VomeHire reaches 5–10 paying venues in 12 months
- Cap table stays simple; grants remain open
Pre-seed
Faster — two or three early venues in parallel, a part-time hardware engineer, regional marketing. Range: 1.7–3.5 mln SEK depending on grant overlap.
- 20+ venues on VomeHire within 18 months
- "VomeHire-in-a-box" hardware bundle piloted
- Second engineer in month 6
Indicative SEK→EUR conversion at ~11.50 SEK / €1. Grant overlap with Almi mikrolån and local-development instruments is being explored separately for Nyvyn.
If any of this lands, drop me a line.
The cinema is real and walkable; the SaaS exists in prototype form on the same platform that powers Vome's existing demonstration. The business plan has the numbers, structure and risks — everything else is on request, under NDA where appropriate.
© 2026 Andrew Lyeklint Hancock / Vome (in formation). Confidential; intended for the named recipient.