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!

Read the entire post here: First #cphftw meetup!

DealCircle, a members-only investment platform, came together at Startupbootcamp in Copenhagen in October 2013, and launches worldwide today. The service allows private investors to present, validate and execute their investments and monitor their portfolio effectively. It also significantly reduces the end-to-end investment process, meaning it can take days or even hours instead of weeks, and at a fraction of the cost for the investor and the entrepreneur.

Heavy names involved

DealCircle has managed to attract heavy names to it’s organization. Alexander Aghassipour, co-founder of Zendesk is one of the investors, and Didier Rappaport, co-founder Dailymotion sits on the board of directors. The team has also garnered investment from SEED Capital, Klaus Nyengaard (former CEO of JustEat) and several lawyers, bolstering their law credentials. The new funding round will allow the team to focus solely on product development, working closely with customers on creating a superior user experience and to get deals done.

“The days of founders losing 10% of their funding as fees are over” says co-founder Lars Buch.

The team behind DealCircle has a lot of credentials – being Lars Buch and Bertrand Bisson. Both serial entrepreneurs and have a mix of legal and tech experience. Lars Buch was previously head of Nokia Smartphones in Denmark, and recently Startupbootcamp Mobility. Bertrand created the radically different legal model, validated through an international partnership with law firm Bird&Bird, by spending two years studying the 28 different legislations for investments across the EU.

“Investments still feed a greedy ancient legal system, but the world is ready for a serious overhaul” says Bertrand.

An EU alternative to angellist

A startup can be invited to DealCircle by a ‘lead angel’, who acts as an ambassador and promotes syndication. This meets the needs of business angels who requested that DealCircle remain an exclusive platform, favoring quality over quantity. There are also plans in the pipeline for a mobile version, so that angels can manage their investment portfolio on the go.

In contrast to Angellist Syndicates, DealCircle is not as much for business angels finding each-others or about following one famous investor. Rather it is a private and exclusive network where the lead business angel initiates the deal with actual peers that he knows and has invited to the deal. It is rather like a digital business angel club. Angels can also search in their circles for very specific skills needed to secure a success with startups they invest in – a way to also enable “smart money” for deals, and not just the investment itself.

But the main difference between DealCircle and Angellist is on the legal side. All the paper work is actually being executed at a fraction of the cost and adjusted to the 28 different existing regulations in EU.

“We have created the platform so the members are invited with each deal, thereby securing that its an exclusive network of active angels actually doing deals.” says Lars.

What do Business Angels and investors think?

Hampus Jakobsson, probably the most active business angel in the region:

“Since TAT was acquired, I have invested in over 25 companies and at my own company, Brisk.io, we took in 14 angels. There have been times when the process and attorney costs for making an investment have been so big or time-consuming that the investment did almost not happen. DealCircle will be fantastic for both angels and startups in Europe.”

Klaus Nyengaard:

“Angel and seed funding processes haven’t changed for decades. DealCircle is not only a good business idea, but something I hope can support the European tech startup ecosystem by making these processes run more smoothly”.

Niels Vejrup Carlsen, from SEED Capital:

“DealCircle has a unique business model that taps into a strong trend in the investment market, and it is essential for us at SEED to adapt to this. They have a kickass team and we have great expectations for them”.

You can request an invitation to join at dealcircle.co.

Read the entire post here: DealCircle raises $750k to slash legal fees for startups