We track over 500 startups in this region, and of these over 100 have women founders or co-founders that we know about. So on this day, we wanted to highlight 25 interesting startups, co-founded by women, to watch out for in 2025.

This list consists of us and external advisors who highlighted different startups. It is not an objective list, but rather based on personal insights and who we believe will have an interesting 2025.

The list is of both younger startups and more established scale-ups, and in different fields – from AI startups to those focusing on food or nutrition, to e-commerce. One thing is clear – there are definitely a lot of interesting startups building great products in this region.

25 startups of interest

CanopyLab: A research-based social elearning platform designed to enable the development of competencies. With adaptive quizzes and the built-in social network structure enhance social and collaborative learning, emphasizing personalizing the learning experience to meet the learner’s individual needs. Co-founded by Sahra-Josephine Hjorth. (Edtech, SaaS, AI)

Coolstuff: Curating unique and trendy items that resonate with a diverse range of consumers. Co-founded by Kajsa Knapp. (E-commerce, Consumer goods)

Cross Reality: A unique multiplayer VR gaming turn-key solutions for arcades and entertainment venues. Their CRES platform turns any 100m² space into a virtual gaming arena with up to ten players simultaneously. Co-founded by Marie Möller. (Gaming, Hardware)

Della8: Crafting fashion-forward and functional products tailored to modern lifestyles. Co-founded by Emelie Nilsson Sträng. (Marketplace)

EasySize: Helping online shoppers find the perfect fit, reducing returns, and elevating the shopping experience. Founded by Gulnaz Khusainova. (E-commerce, SaaS)

Emission Twin: Developing technologies to monitor and reduce emissions, contributing to a greener future. Their software unites the ecosystem to help companies reach their climate goals. Co-founded by Tove Nilstun. (Climate, SaaS)

Edda Knowledge: Creating VR learning environments that engage students and assist in teaching. Empowering individuals and organizations with knowledge-driven solutions that foster growth and innovation. Co-founded by Sonja Holmer. (Edtech, SaaS)

Gents & Gents Go: Providing stylish and sustainable fashion options for the modern gentleman. Founder Jenny Rydhstrom. (E-commerce, Cosmetics, Consumer App)

Go Cirkular: Beauty brand specializing in upcycling raw materials to reduce environmental impact. Focused on vegan skincare and other products. Founder Irene Atance. (Cosmetics, Climate)

Inimini: Transforming the second-hand market for children’s clothing with a convenient online platform. Their goal is to increase the use of second-hand children’s clothing by making it easy for customers to find what they are looking for. Founded by Josefin Runquist and Maja Vallinder. (E-commerce, Clothing)

Matr Foods: Uses the art of traditional fungi fermentation on a mix of Nordic organic vegetables, legumes and grains to create a new healthy plant ingredient rich with deep umami flavour and a juicy tender bite. Co-founded by Randi Wahlsten. (Food, Climate)

Miniferrum: Creating innovative iron supplements for children and women, based entirely on heme iron. Co-founded by Marlén Melander. (Food)

Najell: Designing innovative baby products that combine functionality with stylish design. Co-founded by Freja Najafi Kristensen. (E-commerce, Clothing)

NitroVolt: Offers a clean, green, and local ammonia production system that gives power to the individual farmer over their own nitrogen-based fertilizer needs. The technology relies on lithium-mediated ammonia synthesis reactor, called Nitrolyzer. Co-founded by Suzanne Zamany Andersen. (Climate)

Oxide AI: Leveraging artificial intelligence to make smarter high-stakes decisions and accurate, discovery-driven experiences with AI Agents. Co-founded by Kateryna Wikström. (AI)

PayZlip: Simplifying payroll management with cutting-edge technology that ensures accuracy and efficiency. Co-founded by Jasmi Thrikediswarenaden. (SaaS, HRtech)

Proplab: Innovating in the proptech sector, a platform that simplifies a real estate developer’s everyday life, accelerates business development, promotes creative idea discussion and enables compelling presentations to potential tenants. Co-founded by Naomi Hamilton. (SaaS, Proptech, AI)

Raffle.ai: Search solution using super secure AI powered assistants. Co-founded by Suzanne Lauritzen. (AI)

Robot Minds: Empowering organisations to navigate and thrive in the rapidly evolving landscape of robotics. Founder Elena Sjödin. (Robotics)

Soothla: Kidswear and bedding for Sensitive Skin and eczema. Their lyocell products are designed to be soothing for the skin. Allergy-friendly, toxin-free, and a seamless inside feel for extra comfort. Founder Sylvia Heuvelman. (E-commerce, Clothing)

Tiimo: Award-winning app and web planner designed for neurodivergent brains. Co-founded by Helene Lassen Nørlem. (Consumer App)

Visibuilt: Developing a fermentation-based binder called visiBIT derived from one of nature’s own binders, mycelium. Founder Line Kloster Pedersen. (Proptech, Climate)

Wellbefy: Revolutionizing occupational health care with innovative solution and methodology. Co-founders Sandra Jönsson and Rebecca Arfwedson. (SaaS, HRtech)

4dogs. Pet care online store with solutions that prioritize the well-being and happiness of our furry companions. Co-founders Margareta Borg and Cina Bössfall. (E-commerce, Animals)

Why These Startups Matter

These startups are not just businesses; they represent the resilience, creativity, vision – and a drive to make an impact in the world. For instance, Inimini’s founders, Josefin Runquist and Maja Vallinder, have built a sustainable platform for second-hand clothing, oOr Emelie Nilsson Sträng who wants to enable a better sharing economy so that we can use resources smarter with Della8. Each one on this list are inspiring people that want to create a better world.

And these are just some of all the startups in the region. If you want to find more, check out or startup list. If you want to know which ones of these are women founded or co-founded, reach out to us.

Update: the orignal article included Too Good To Go. This was a mistake however from our side, and has been corrected now.

The post 25 Startups to Watch Out for in 2025 – With Women Founders appeared first on Øresund Startups.

”We are facing great and exciting projects in terms of international expansion and marketing optimization. We need to make sure that our system is on the forefront and sharpen our competitive edge as well as customer experience! We firmly believe that Robin and Laszlo are the right people to assist us in these areas and we are very happy to have them on board” says Christian Omander, Co-founder and CEO of CoolStuff.

As co-founder of the e-commerce and software company Avensia in 2001, Robin Gustafson will bring substantial experience to the table. Robin is impressed by the progress Coolstuff has made so far.

“I look forward to being a part of CoolStuff as it gears up for the international market, spreading the joy that the company stands for,” says Robin Gustafsson, CEO Avensia.

Laszlo Varga was recently appointed as a CEO for Euroflorist, having previously been head of e-commerce for the company that is currently active in twelve countries.

”Coolstuff is an awesome company with an exciting business plan, it is thrilling to become a part of their progress. I have a lot of experience within international e-commerce and digital marketing, which will be useful when CoolStuff is taken it to the next level.” says Laszlo Varga.

The post CoolStuff recruits two new board members to prepare for international expansion appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“We have for some time been looking for a partner who can take over the operation and responsibility for AlphaGeek. With Sortiment.se we get a committed partner, who not only has previous experience of AlphaGeek’s products, but who also knows how to run the business effectively” says Anders Andersen, CEO of Net Departo.

Sortiment.se has a long-term strategy to build a broad portfolio of e-commerce stores, which will provide a broad product catalogue for the Scandinavian consumers. The acquisition of AlphaGeek is an important one; the size of it helps Sortiment.se to build their infrastructure for e-commerce.

”We are happy and excited about the acquisition of AlphaGeek. The company is not only an icon in the Swedish e-commerce, but also a store with a niche and product range that suits us as individuals really good” says Anton Troedson, founder of Sortiment.se and new CEO of AlphaGeek.

Sortiment.se, is also based in the region, being in Eslöv, and is a smaller company than RoligaPrylar, so in that way the company is taking the entire business to a new level. This merger of Sortiment.se and AlphaGeek will make them to one of the larger e-commerce store in Scandinavia for toys, presents and gadgets with an approximate turnover in 2015 of 4 million €. The main competitor is also in this region – with Malmö-based Coolstuff, which reported a turnover of just below € 11 million last year.

Roliga Prylar got a lot of attention when the site was started for being run by Dan Nilsson, who became famous for his open and transparent blogging about it and other ventures (you can read the old blogposts here). Dan sold the majority of the company to Net Departo in 2013, and now the company has changed hands completely. Dan has since moved on to new projects in the e-commerce sector, being one of the co-founders of Fyndiq, as well as behind the largest Scandinavian e-commerce community ehandel.se and co-founder of the translation service Contentor (transparency: Karsten Deppert, who is the initiator of this site, is also a co-founder at Contentor). He also just recently making news with two new ambitious projects: e-handelsindex and the E-commerce Park of Sweden.

The post A new owner for RoligaPrylar appeared first on Øresund Startups.

On the 19th of February the second meetup will take place, this time hosted at CoolStuffs HQ. As on the previous one the agenda is to talk about both big and small challenges in the e-commerce business, be it online-marketing, management, logistics or legal troubles.

When: 19th February 2014, 17:30
Where: Coolstuff HQ, Donaugatan 3, 21120 Malmö, Sweden
More information and registration: at the event site.

The post E-commerce meetup #2 appeared first on Øresund Startups.

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.

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.

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.

Partnering with Spiltan will give the e-retailer more opportunity to grow, especially following CoolStuffs recent investment in a large warehouse and purchases ahead of the Christmas season.

‘Spiltan gives us access to expertise and capital for our continued international expansion. Meanwhile, we can now more rapidly expand our range,’ said Kajsa Knapp, one of CoolStuffs founders.

Spiltan is an active investment company with total capital of about 27.5 million Euro (240 million SEK). What they had to pay to get the 30 percent share of Sweden’s gadget mecca Coolstuff is not clear.

‘Our model is to buy minority stakes in profitable Swedish companies in growth industries, giving founders a long term partner while being able to retain a majority shareholding in the company’, says Håkan Sjunnesson investment manager at Spiltan.

Founders Kajsa Knapp and Christian Omander retain the 70 percent stake in Coolstuff.

The post Coolstuff gets external capital for the first time appeared first on Øresund Startups.