Above is a spreadsheet from my investment newsletter club with all the investments that we have gotten to our attention during 2013.
Disclaimer: There are, most likely, many more investments that we do not know about (yet), and we will try to update the document when we get to know about more.

Some interesting stats from investments in the region 2013

Updated 2014-01-02: got more information from Hampus Jakobsson. If you have any further info we should add, let us know.

• Total sum of investments: 55 million euros (roughly, with qualified estimates in those cases where the sum is unknown)
• Total number of investments: 52
• Most number of investments: SEED Capital (7)
• Largest investments: Sol Voltaics and Vivino

As can be seen from the numbers, none of them is big single investment (such as last years € 45M investment in Zendesk). So this year it has been mostly seed, series A and series B investments in the region.

Other interesting things from 2013

A very noteworthy happening from 2013 was Unitys rumored ‘no thanks’ to a € 575 million deal. Very interesting for them and the whole startup and gaming scene in the region!

There where also some interesting crowdfunding projects, most notably the release of the game Forced which got a lot of attention for its story, but also gadgets such as Leikr and NSA defeating services such as Heml.is. Also two very high profile ones, that however are still ongoing – Airtame and No More Woof. These are not in the list (even though they are already 100% financed) because they will first close in the beginning of 2014.

Why a focus on investments and funding?

We look at investment and funding for a couple of reasons:

1. It is relatively easy to get the information.
2. A startup that receives investment is ‘validated’ – it is not just a cool idea, somebody believes in it enough to put money into it.
3. Especially the later stage investment rounds (series A and above) are crucial for a startup to make it big. Therefor we deem those as very important.

What do we think about bootstrapping?

Our focus on investments does not mean that we think bootstrapping is in any way wrong. Indeed, my own company, Contentor, is bootstrapped. However, bootstrapping is in my opinion something that is great, especially in the first 1-5 years, but after that to grow truly international and make a difference, funding is almost always needed. Not just for the money and the people that can be hired because of the investment. It’s just as much for the connections and knowledge that the right investors bring. Connections such as inside-people at Google, Facebook or other important collaborators for the startup. Or connections to goverment and politicians that are relevant. Or for further investments and a future IPO. Having people onboard who have experience from earlier in very helpful in those cases.
So I believe bootstrapping is great to get going, try the product and build the first million euros in revenue. But to take it to the next level, to reach € 10M or more in revenue, funding often makes the crucial differences and speeds up the process.

Because of this, we care about funding here at Øresund startups.

Reporting on other stats as well

We will aim to try to get more numbers out in the future. Both Sweden and Denmark have core company numbers available for companies public. We will see what kind of report we can build form that – such as matching the startups in region to their revenues!

The post Updated: The year of 2013 – investments in startups in the region appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Among the 7 winners of the IVÆKSTprisen, we put a closer eye on two of the most promising Copenhagen based start-ups.

Firstly, the startup Billetto which has received the prize for the Best Growth Adventure. Øresund startup has already reported on it earlier this year when they announced a € 2.2M round of funding. Billetto aims at selling event tickets online, and it has expanded rapidly nationally and internationally. Currently, their biggest market is in London which offers tons of activities and events every day.

The second was the winner of the Born Global prize – the startup Zerved. The founders Michael Rude Moncur, Martin Tychsen and Anders Rasmussen have developed an app that optimizes the customer management in bars. This app enables customers to order and pay on their smartphone. Zerved is highly requested by the anglophone market having secured the first investments from an English angel.

The IVEAKST prize has many success stories and is inspiring future entrepreneurs and investors. We are all eager to see which start-up is next in line for the IVEAKST prize in 2014.

If you want to know more, Trendsonline has a complete list and write-up of the event.

The post Danish IVÆKST prize: awards to Billetto and Zerved appeared first on Øresund Startups.

It was held over lunch at CreativeLab, the creative event concept at the SHIP co-working space. Because we have a policy of livecasting whatever we do, you can watch the recording above (Our new Bambuser channel can be found here).

If you want to download the slides, I have made them available on slideshare but there are quite low resolution there, so can be found as pdf here as well.

I am probably describing some of the startups a little bit wrong (sorry for that), and I missed some things in the presentation (corrected in the downloadable versions). But I hope it creates some value for you as the viewer anyway.

Update 1: Some have asked why so many people are walking around and the background noice – the location where the presentation was held is the auditorium in the CreativeLab, called “trappan”, and is just that: the main stairs between the first and second floor. It is designed to be in the middle of the entire place, so that any presentations held there can have drop-in / drop-out flow. A somewhat special enviroment, but I love it, often with a lot of student from Lunds University sitting around in the open areas, and the business and entrepreneurs on the stairs themselves…

Update 2: I should of course list the top 50 startups mentioned as well! Here they are (in the order presented, i.e. in alphabetical order after category):

Series A + B

B2C

• Billetto
• Miinto
• Vivino
• WatAGame (GoSupermodel)
• Zmags

B2B

• Codesealers
• Falcon Social
• FlatFrog Laboratories
• iMotions
• Neo technology (Neo4J)
• Octoshape
• Opbeat
• Serstech
• SimpleSite (123hjemmeside)
• Tradeshift
• Trustpilot
• Unity
• Vopium

Seed level

B2C

• Bownty
• Click-A-Taxi
• Coolstuff
• Flattr
• Foap
• Tasspass
• Retevo (Roliga Prylar / Alphageek)

B2B

• Anyfi
• Atosho
• Conferize
• Crunchfish
• Deskwolf
• Dexplora (GetSalesDone and brisk.io)
• Firmafon
• GameAnalytics
• Graduateland
• InRiver
• Insurance Business Applications
• OneRecruit
• Sepior
• The Eye Tribe
• Wallmob
• Zaplox

Other prominent startups

• 23
• Echo.it
• Kvittar
• MovieStarPlanet
• Momondo
• Planeto
• Riidr
• Zendesk

The post Øresund Startups: Top50 and state of the region appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“From outside London may not seem like the obvious place to expand to due to high competition in the UK ticket market. But for us London was a clear choice since it has a variety of cultural offerings. Monday night in London might have as much happening as entire summer in Denmark,” say Henrik Teisbæk, Billetto’s CEO and co-founder.

To differentiate from competitors Billetto focuses on small scale events. The strategy to ensure high performance is to hire young talents from subcultures. Their passion, network and constant finger on the pulse is essential to help smaller event organizers to reach the right audience. At the moment Billetto has 20 employees in Denmark and 10 in London with user base of over 300,000 people.

“We are seeing an emerging movement among young creative people who in the absence of traditional jobs choose to create their own livelihood. Pop-up culture grows therefore extremely. Every day there is a wide range of large and small, secret and exclusive cultural events. Belletto Live Guide takes up the challenge of helping people to find the right event in their locality and connect them with culture. Our unique approach to leading business has strengthened our relationships in East London, which is now our largest new business segment,” says Peter Brüning-Hansen, an anchor man in the office in London.

Further internationalization plans are focused on Nordic countries, Sweden being next on the agenda. Holland, Turkey and Germany are also on the list.

“Our ultimate ambition is to build bridges between the countries, so you can see upcoming events in other states as well. It would be tremendously interesting to start connecting culture across the countries perhaps along with traveling industry,” shares Henrik Teisbæks in Børsen.

High growth brings up the question of quick sale. However, Henrik Teisbæks rejects this option at the moment. Current mission for Billetto is to revolutionize the culture and draw people away from TVs and social media so they would get inspired and engaged into the world around. So good luck with this noble goal!

The post Billetto: fast growth and internationalization to revolutionize the culture appeared first on Øresund Startups.

One of the things we want to focus on with Øresund Startups is tracking funding in startups in the region. The reason is simple: funding is an external validation that proves that somebody believes in a startup, and that it is not just a great idea, but also an idea that can be executed. We also believe that it is of interest for others seeking funding to know what funding deals have been made, and who possible investors are.

Therefor we have put together the data that we have been notified about the last 6 month, january – june 2013. We have done that in an simple spreadsheet, and listed a couple of data points:

• Date (approximatly)
• Invested amount (when disclosed)
• What startup
• Which investors
• Business sector of the startups (if B2B or B2C)
• What cluster in the region the startup belongs to

Some interesting investment highlights from the first 6 month of 2013:

Update: after publishing this we got some feedback with more investments we had missed. The numbers below are updated with the newest stats!

Of the investments we have registered:

• A total of 28 investments have been tracked. The total is not officially known, but our estimations and words from unofficial sources put the total to between 18-21 million euros.
• 14 of the 28 investments are Copenhagen based
• The biggest investment was in Crunchfish, but it was only slightly larger then others
• More or less equal B2B then B2C startups have received funding (14 B2B and 13 B2C and 1 that is both)
• SEED Capital was the most active investment fund
• SEED Capital was also the fund which has invested the most money in the period (according to released numbers)
• Half of the investments (14 of the 28) where from private investors, either a known angel / VC or a multitude of angels.
• Private investments also account for roughly half of the total value invested, around 8-10 million euros of the total 18-21 million euros (estimated in cases where not publicly known)

Note that the list above is only with data from 1 january – 30 june 2013. The recent big investments in Vivino as well as Opbeat are not part of it, they will be part of the next report.

As a bonus we also put together the numbers for our first month of operations, september – december 2012. However, as that is not a complete 6 month period we did not want to make a full report of that. The numbers can be found in the spreadsheet, in the second tab. These numbers may also be quite incomplete, as during that period we just started tracking startups and might have missed a lot.

Also – if you know about investments which we have missed, let us know! Either in an email or in the community group.

The stats are embeded at the top of the posts, but if you have trouble viewing them you can find them here as a Google Drive spreadsheet.

If you want to download the numbers as .csv you can find them here.

The post Updated! Report: investments in web and tech startups in the region – spring 2013 appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“We get more and more organizers and hence more and more tickets are being sold through the system. Everything from small concert venues and festivals for lecturers and sporting use our platform,” said Henrik Teisbæk back in 2011 to Version2.

There has been a lot happening since 2011 and Billetto has given birth to a lot of side projects like Downtown, Meyou and Blogger Delight. However this new investment should mean that Billetto is ready to take up even more market share in the future with their ticket selling platform.

The post Billetto receives a new 2.2M Euro investment appeared first on Øresund Startups.