Today the first meet up, the first town hall meeting, for the Copenhagen startups scene was held at Børsen in Denmark.
350 startup people on boxes
It was definitely a somewhat different event. The location, the big hall in the historic Børsen, became a sharp contrast to the DIY chairs, that consisted of moving boxes, also known as “sitzkartons“. These gave rise to a somewhat different scene – with everybody starting out the meet-up with folding their own chairs.
Workshops
The evening consisted of three parts. The first one was to talk about the community, and how it could be made better. It also got some background to how it all started, with the #cphftw workshop in december.
One part of the workshops was going into details of why a strong community is important. Some of the thoughts and knowledge that were shared:
“There’s a lot of stuff happening but nobody knows about it. A lot of people are working in the same direction but not together. And it would be nice to get more then 30 people to also the smaller events.” was voiced by Michael Reibel Boesen.
“This is a three way process. You start with a meeting like this, and then within 6 month, the press will start to be there. And once the media gives it attention, the politicians will too. And that is when a community becomes a force that can change politics.” were Tyler Crowley words of advice to the community.
“It is important with the commons, something that is shared by all entreprenuers. Just like the air, or the roads, a framework that provides shared interest. We need a place where Startups are not competing. Where they can share knowledge.” said Martin von Hallers
During the workshops that followed the DIY chairs were put to good use as well, with them being stand-ins for pappers or drawing boards. This resulted in a lot of boxes filled with doodles and suggestions of how to improve the community.
Also announced was that a logo for #cphftw would be crowdsoured, with suggestions welcomed to be sent in – either as complete logos, or just as ideas for a logo.
Inspirational round
After the workshops and a background on the community, the even more exciting parts started. 8 startups that had been in the news recently or were for another reason relevant, got 2 minutes each to talk about who they are, what they do and what they had achieved recently. The presentations were:
Adam Wiggins who has founded Heroku and was a special guest. He talked about why sharing stories and community is important and what it has meant for him. However, he also emphasised the most important part:
“Get out there and build some great Startups”
Lars Thinggaard from Milestone – probably the most unknown of the big startups in the region:
“50% of our profits in the U.S., we are 400 people and have 13 offices around the world.”
Jonas Gyalokay, from Airtame, about their recent successful crowdfunding:
“We started out as a hobby projects two years ago. We just closed a crowdfunding round of over 1 million dollars. Now we are in delivery mode, we need to ship by summer, so I am going back to work.”
Rasmus Makwarth from OpBeat, who told what they are doing, but also with a focus on the business angels that have invested in the startup.
Michael Buch Sandager presented AdQuota and their recent aquisition and plans:
“We have a vision to create the best pan-European mobile advertising platform. We recently raised 2,5 million euro, and also bought a company in Spain, to continue our pan-European expansion.”
Bertrand Bisson from DealCircle, about how they want to make angel investment easier and smoother in Europe:
“I am crazy enough to think I can distrust the legal industry.”
Mette Lykke from Endomondo:
“We were three consultants, that wanted to solve a big problem. We decided healthcare was that problem. We wanted to use technology to make fitness more fun.”
And last, but no means least, was Gert Sylvest from Tradeshift, who recently closed the €55M investment round.
“Our company started as a tweet, to Morten Lund, who put us into contact with the startup eco-system. Today we are 150 people, and just landet our biggest investment” he said.
“We are solving a problem, and aim to connect every company in the world, so that no one has to type data from one paper to another.”
He also ended with a small advertisment: They are having a hackathon in their offices this thursday.
The round of presentation all got large applauses, and it was great to see the atmosphere that arouse from the short but well done presentations.
Which startups that will be on stage at the next meeting was also announced will be crowdsourced – so follow this link if you know a company that should be promoted to the entire scene.
Community
The last part was that seven community events were presented. These were:
- Kenneth Auchenberg who presented the monthly CPH JS meetups
- Ben Page, who presented the Nordic Next conference, and said that new entrepreneurs and business angels were welcome to apply, but had best chance if by referals
- Techbbq was presented by Klaus Nyengaard, and he said that it will be even bigger this year, and also took the opportunity to invite to better collaboration with Nordic Startup Conference, so that these two big conference not are that closely timed.
- Dave Mariner talked about the Founder Anonymous concept, and about opening a chapter in this region.
- Jasenko Hadzic presented the Nordic Startup Conference, and echoed Klaus opening for increasing collaboration for the next.
- Neil Murray presented Nordic Web, a website that will focus on content and being data provider for the nordic startup scene. The site has been in progress, and launched officially today!
- Martin LeBlanc presenter Forge, and how they aimed to do a mix between a meetup and a conference.
Very inspiring to hear all the great events that happen and the people behind it!
As with the other parts, what community arrangements that will be presented on the next meet-up will also be crowdsourced. Anyone can make suggestions here.
This was a packed and intense event, and we look forward to how the community will evolve during the next couple of month – and we are excited about the next #cphftw meetup, which was announced to be on the 3rd of June!
