It’s official! We’re launching a new accelerator program! #malmostartups #helsingborg http://t.co/wqCdFXJiPw

— THINK (@THINK_HBG) February 3, 2015

Because of global competition regarding technology, communication and new business models, one can see a trend moving from incubators to accelerators. Focus lies in speed, learning and mentorship. And THINK decided that having it’s old 2 year program was not needed in todays fast-moving envirment.

About the program

The idea of the accelerator program is to enhance digital startup’s competitiveness. This is done through a three months program, where the entrepreneur will be guided through the stages of ideation process and prototypes’ developing. The grand finale of the program is the day of pitching the idea to business angels and other investors. During the whole program one will have access to coaching by mentors and business coaches like those from small business coaching Edmonton.

“THINK is a lean startup accelerator based at Mindpark in Helsingborg. We help promising startups grow through coaching and mentoring, a great workspace and access to business angels and investors” says Johannes Ivarsson.

From incubator to accelerator

Since THINK started as an incubator in 2012 the program has been home to startups such as Fieldly, Swiftcourt, Bilprospekt, HOI and Digitalpost. These companies, and additional ones, will continue to be a part of the THINK network to share knowledge and experiences from their own startup journey. Overall very promising startups have been part of the previous THINK incubator program.

Good news for digital entrepreneurs interested in applying for the accelerator program; the application period is now open until March 20th.

Note: this THINK accelerator is not to be confused with the Thinkubator, which has recently been announced in the region as well!

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Helsingborg based startup Bilprospekt is gaining recognition. Developed by Viktor Silfverström, Andrée Heino, Jakob Werner and Niklas Silfverström, Bilprospekt aims to digitise car sales. The developers recognise the way s in which the current car sale industry is rather outdated; in terms of sale methods as well as communication with the customers.

The project began as the website ‘bilupphandling.se’, which allowed customers to receive offers for a great selection of new and used cars based on their requirements. It was consequently developed into Bilprospekt by expanding to include an analysis tool for the sellers to ensure a completely digital car transaction. It is directed towards retailers which sell to both private customers and businesses. The service allows them to find suitable buyers as well as analyse the car market. The idea is also to provide sellers with statistics about how sales do in particular regions, how specific competitors behave and who their customers are.

For the customers, Bilprospekt creates statistics and compares retailers and brands.

“We need a tool that understands the car consumers’ market. We can make statistics and compare between different retailers and brands. The retailers which use the procurement tool can be connected to leads and the analysis tool, and also get some of the offers from Bilupphandling.se . In this way, we combine the vendors who want to sell cars to people who really want to buy those cars.” says Niklas Silfverström, according to ComputerSweden.

Cheaper Prices To Be Found By Clients

The incentive for customers is being able to see a larger overview of the automotive market. Prices of cars can differ significantly in different towns and regions in Sweden. The ability to compare prices all over the country to find the cheapest (or best suited) car is lucrative to consumers.

“From a retailer’s perspective, a typical use of the service can be to go check in on the first of every month and maybe send an offer to the customers. Or maybe do a mailing to those who were customers 36 months ago, maybe it’s time for them to get something new. In addition, it is possible to follow up and see what happened with the customers after the transaction.” says Niklas Silfverström.

Today, Bilprospekt is only available in Sweden. They currently have around 80 retailers, three of which are general agents. The users are charged per month for the service. They are part of the THINK lean startup incubator and just recently left the co-working space Mindpark for their first own offices.

The post Startup Spotlight: Digital Car Selling in Sweden appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“For some years now lean startup has been a steadily rising movement, and it has been accepted that it is not just a new buzzword, but rather a systematic approach to building scalable companies. A lot of incubators and accelerators have adopted parts of the lean startup philosophy, but we think for it have real effect you need to take it all the way. That is why we have chosen to become an incubator devoted to lean startup principles.” says Johannes Ivarsson, business developer at THINK.

The incubator process is split into two steps, preTHINK and THINKinkubator. In preTHINK the startups are on a validation process, to test their ideas by building prototypes, doing experiments and finding early adopters interested in using the product. If the startup gains traction during the six months or is at a later stage already, they are able to apply to the THINKinkubator-programme that lasts for two years.

“The incubator consists of two parts: one 6 month program and one 2 year program. Both use build – measure – learn loops and continuous improvements as core values. Which program a startup enters depends on the circumstances – often the 6 month is a starting point.” Johannes says

“Our aim is to help startups to benefit and learn from the Lean Startup principles, to help them help each-other and to get out of the way as much as possible. It is important that we don’t hinder or put unnecessary burdens on the startups.” he adds

New – but growing

Since launching in mid-2012, THINK has been growing steadily, attracting more companies than first expected. Already at start it garnered a lot of attention for managing to hire Joakim Jardenberg as a business developer.

“Our first objectives have been met and we have created a growing cluster of entrepreneurial activity in the region. Today we host a total of 18 companies active in both preTHINK and THINKinkubator.” Johannes says.

“We’re planning at having a total of twenty companies in the process, but growth is not the main focus now. Our aim is on attracting big ideas and ambitious entrepreneurs with even more competitive edge and of even higher quality.” he continues

Current startups in the incubator are from a diverse background. They include amongst other:

• Bilprospekt / Bilupphandling – Online car sales tools and dealership.
• Hoi Förlag – A publishing house with a new way of thinking.
• Fieldly – Mobile-based tool for field workers.
• Contract Business Inteligence – A service for contract management.

With the future focus on lean startup, new companies will also not be limited to any special sectors. Rather it is the ambitions to build growing and learning companies that is the main requirement.

Open minded about office spaces

The incubator is located on the northern part of the Øresund region, but not limited to a single location.

“We are physically located in different places – both at Mindpark, Linc as well as some of the startups having their own offices. We believe a shared knowledge base, meetups and the lean startup principles are more important then requiring everyone to be in the same office. Those startups that have special needs or have grown a lot need to be able to have offices matching their needs.” Johannes concludes

If you are intrested in knowing more, you can find further information on the website.

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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.

Andrée, how did you come up with the idea of Bilprospekt.se and what is your experience in the field?

I used to work as a sales rep for a car dealership. Cars won’t sell themselves as some might think and if you work with car sales you have to spend 70-80% of your time chasing down potential customers. I and my co-founder and also a former colleague Jakob Werner quickly discovered that there were no tools that could help us generate these high quality prospects that could be turned into costumers. Neither did we have the tools to measure market activities nor spying on our competition. We teamed up with Niklas Silfverström who had the technical expertise to bring the idea to life. We quit what we were doing and started working on the most awesome sales and analytics tool for people working with automotive sales the world has ever seen, Bilprospekt.se!

Tell us more about the way Bilprospekt.se has come so far and what are you working on at the moment?

We are a team of four. Three co-founders and one employee. We also have two of the greatest investors a start-up can ask for – Hampus Jakobsson & Johan Lenander. We launched a BETA of Bilprospekt.se for people in the automotive industry in February 2013. In the middle of April we had our MVP and were able to ship Bilprospekt.se to our first paying customers. Before the summer holidays we had landed to over 20 paying dealerships. During the summer we caught up with some development and now we only focus on sales for the rest of the year on the Swedish market.

What are the challenges you are facing and how do you address them?

Bilprospekt.se is quite a complex system to some of our users. The trade-off between making it simple but not missing out on functionality is something we struggle with. To reduce time and money spent on educating users we’re focusing on integrating tutorials and introduction films into the most complex parts of Bilprospekt.se. This is something we built during the summer. It is being implemented at the moment and we look forward to seeing how this plays out during the fall.

What’s the future like for both Bilprospekt.se and the industry it operates in?

We are building a platform with Bilprospekt.se and in the near future we will add new features that will lead to better and more profitable car business for both buyers and sellers. As for the industry and the direction it’s moving in, I truly believe that within 10-20 years dealerships of new cars will be replaced by showrooms where costumers stop by to look at colors and upholstery and to test drive. The cars will be ordered online by the costumers themselves though.

With the Internet and mobile technology on the rise it is only logical for the companies to shift towards digital space. Bilprospekt.se definitely comes as innovator within such complex and conservative industry as automotive one. However, being a pioneer has its advantages especially when more and more customers focus on easy, effective and time saving services. Seems like there is more space for creativity and innovation in car dealerships such as that car dealership near me, so good luck to Bilprospekt.se with new endeavors!

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