Based in Copenhagen and founded in 2011, Bownty currently operates across nine European countries with more than three million members. The company collects the best daily deals within different categories like shopping or food in more than 1000 cities, guaranteeing its community the experiences a city has to offer for the most attractive price.

Following the acquisition, North-East Venture which added Bownty to their portfolio of tech startups brought back co-founder Steffen W. Frølund as CEO of Bownty, to realize the company’s full potential. He left Bownty a year ago to become Managing Director at Rainmaking.

The post North-East Venture acquires Bownty appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

The 6th edition of Townhall had put the question of “how to” as theme for the evening. How do you reach success as a new startup? How do you get funding and what should you be prepared to sacrifice?

Three keynote speakers from different positions in the startup community stepped on stage to give answers to these questions.

WHAT PRICE ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY?

The first speaker was Ida Tin, the Co-founder and CEO of the startup Clue. Clue is based in Berlin and is the fastest growing period tracking and fertility app. While there are a lot of products for period tracking and fertility already on the marked, only a few of them are digital. With their app, Clue hopes to use the collected big data, to help people manage family planning and facilitate further conversation on the topic.

Starting as a project leader in Frontløberne in 1994, Ida Tin has spent more than 20 years in entrepreneurship. As an experienced startup founder, Ida Tin advised the aspiring entrepreneurs to ask themselves the question:

“What price are you willing to pay, because you can’t pay any price?”

She made it clear that leading a startup to success takes a tremendous amount of dedication. You have to be willing to make tough decisions and prioritize the things that mean the most.

“I prioritize my kids and my startup. Everything else must wait.” Says Ida Tin, CEO of Clue

As the evening went on, both Kenneth Auchenberg and Christoph Janz went on stage as keynote speakers. Auchenberg gave an engaging talk about the changing nature of the internet, while encouraging new web designers to take a step back and consider who their costumers actually are.

The event ended with a fire talk between tech Journalist Niel Murray and Christoph Janz from Point Nine Capital, The Angel VC. Doing the chat, Janz shed light on his experiences as an Angel investor for the commercial success Zendesk, while further explaining what traits you are looking for in a startup as a VC.

FROM ELECTRIC SKATEBOARDS TO DIVERSITY

In between the key speakers, the program was packed with exciting new startups and community initiatives. The startups consisted of Castle.io, Plane, OnePlay, Faraday Motion, Bownty and Soundboks. Doing the short presentations, the audiences were introduced to products ranging from website protection to a 3d printed electric skateboard.

The startup community was represented by Women in Tech, Startup Safary, StartupÖl and Django Cph. With only 3% women in Danish Tech startups, Cathrine Seidelin from Women in Tech advocated a much needed diversity in the community.

GATHERING OVER TECH AND KNOWLEDGE

At the end of the evening the mingling session kicked off. With over 800 people attending, Townhall #6 was bussing with people exchanging ideas and experiences. This time the bar was occupied by the staff of Bird & Bird, who handed out free beer to the many thirsty participants. The mingling session was a great place to get in contact with the new startups, and get hands on demonstrations of the products that were showcased throughout the show.

With a great event like #CPHFTW Townhall, you can’t help but feel the connected community of the Startups scene in Copenhagen. The evening was characterized by high energy and an inspiring program. By bringing together people with vision for the future and experience from the past, #CPHFTW has staged a celebration of the innovative spirit.

You can find more information on what happened over at Conferize event page.

The post #CPHFTW TOWNHALL #6 – BRINGING THE STARTUP COMMUNITY TOGETHER appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

The funds will primarily be used for marketing, so that Bownty can increase the number of customers. The plan is to use company’s current channels but such alternatives as acquisitions of smaller-scale competitors in Europe or expansion to new markets, such as the US, are certainly not excluded. The competition in both Europe and America is something to be explored, as similar to Bownty service in the domestic market Dagensbedste has recently failed for bankruptcy while the US market is dominated Groupon, known as one of the fastest growing companies in terms of valuation.

Current funding round includes Bownty’s current investors as well as Pia Vemmelund, managing director at Momondo, and Howzat Partners, a venture capital fund that among other things previously helped to build guide pages such as Trivago and Cheapflights.

Bownty’s previous funding came from venture fund SEED Capital in 2012 and acceleratorforløb in 2013. Since then Bownty has been growing steadily, and today the company has a count of nearly 40 employees of 15 different nationalities. Last summer Bownty acquired its main competitor Yunait. As of 2015 there are 2.2 million Bownty users, who can take advantage of offers from more than 100 dealer services in eight European countries. In terms of sales, the company itself claims to make about 135 million DKK annually, which is rather impressive for a company that was established in 2011.

“With the history, of investors we’ve gotten, I see no obstacle that we can be at least as successful as Momondo and Trivago. And it is our overall objective,” says Steffen Frølund.

The post Bownty raises funding and thinks through growth strategies appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

“I didn’t plan to change workplace. It’s been really good being an investor where one can get inspired at conferences and on boards. But I was simply too tempted by the opportunity to dive into the issues – and not just sit on the sidelines” says Jakob Ekkelund.

Templafy provides a template management system for companies: all business documents in a company will be uniform. In 2014, Templafy received investments from both SEED Capital and Sundstone Capital. Ekkelund has invested in the company too. Last summer he invested € 1,7 millions and took place in the board. During this time, Ekkelund says he has been impressed by the professionalism of Templafy.

“They are experienced entrepreneurs who know the industry. Several of them have 10 years experience of skabelondesign.dk. They are very talented at what they do. Instead of throwing out aimlessly into something, they stop and think about it before. I’m sure Templafy can be a great success if implemented correctly – and I want to be a part of that” says Jakob Ekkelund.

Previously, Ekkelund worked for the phone company TDC. He has also been a board member of Bownty, Mofibo and Vivino and been a partner in the company Designfirmaet.

The post The former investment manager of SEED Capital proceeds to Templafy appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

Expanding to south Europe and south America

Yunait is regarded to be the leader in Southern Europe. It operates in Spain, Italy, Portugal and the UK. However, it also operates in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

Bownty aggregates deals from over 100 daily deal sites each day, including Groupon, Living Social, KGB Deals and Wowcher. In a similar fashion to other services, subscribers receive one daily email that matches their preferences, aiming to make the email as relevant as possible for each subscriber. Bownty also has for iOS and Android. TechCrunch reports that Bownty is regarding its ability to execute on mobile as one of the things it brings to the Yunait acquisition — noting that over 50 percent of its deals are sold via mobile.

“We are building the Kayak.com for deals on experiences. The experience economy and online2offline commerce is really beginning to gain traction. With the acquisition we expect an acceleration of our growth and we think that Yunait is the perfect match for Bownty in our effort to conquer this space.” says Bownty CEO Steffen W. Frølund

A way to exit for Yunait

Steffen W. Frølund reveals to Trendsonline that they have had contact and smaller collaborations with Yunait since they first met at a conference a few years ago. These collaborations have grown over time. When co-founder and CEO of Yunait, Pablo Elosua, began to dream of a new startup in New York, the Spanish team began to look for possible candidates for an acquisition, and Bownty was a clear possibility.

“Our shared knowledge will enable us to offer our almost 2 million users a better service. We will focus on being the leading resource for local deals. Especially Bownty’s successful mobile strategy will be an exciting addition to the Southern European markets.” said Yunait co-founder Pablo Elosua.

Behind the acquisition is a shared vision for the combination of the two companies Bownty’s brand and platform, but the acquisition also brings business synergies particularly in relation to the centralization of administration and development of the mobile page.

Yunait was previously backed by Spanish VC Inveready. In 2013 Bownty raised almost € 900 000 in new funding from Danish SEED Capital, and Accelerace Invest. Today’s acquisition was a mixture of cash and stock (plus earn-outs), with Yunait’s main backers and founder now holding shares in Bownty.

Trendsonline has a longer story on this as well.

The post Bownty Acquires Spanish Competitor Yunait appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

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 Startup News.

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 Startup News.

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 Startup News.

Since going live March 2011, the daily deal aggregation service has experienced great interest. Currently, around 225,000 users can find their favourite deals in a single email, with a selection of around 4000 deals on offer each day, from 100 different deal sites, brought together in one place with the Bownty platform.

The Danish entrepreneurs behind Bownty believe there is untapped potential to expand and enhance the popular service, and improve the customer experience,

“We are very pleased with the new investment, which will be used to exploit the great potential, we are convinced is in Bownty. Being able to offer an overview of the jungle of deals is a great help to European consumers. The investment will naturally come to mean even more and better opportunities for our users” says Steffen W. Frølund, Founder and CEO of Bownty.

Since exapnding rapidly from Denmark to England, France, Spain and Germany, Bownty will build operations further with the new funds, and aim to raise consumer awareness with the continuing trend.

“Bownty represents an important part of the future of online2offline commerce”, says David Venzel, Senior consultant at Accelerace

The post €885k capital injection for BOWNTY appeared first on Øresund Startup News.