A new adventure

Tine announced that she will be joining the Colego team, as their new CMO. The startup just raised € 2 million, and are heading into a strong expansion period.

Colego is a market place for local services, where people can easily be connected with the best fit for professional assistance, whether it is for a gardener, getting their roof fixed, a new cleaner or many other form of professional assistance. Colego has shown strong growth, and has over 44 verticals for different services.

“My job [as CMO] at Colego is essentially to create a recognized brand and use that to bring in sufficient traffic, convert this to tasks submitted and fuel the business engine. It’s a rare luxury for me to be able to focus on only one side of the business and being able to delve into commercialisation with all its facets.”

Now the next big step for Colego is expansion outside Denmark, with Germany as the first market.

“Going into the German market is a challenging task I never underestimate. The hardest is to cut through the noise on such a big market, especially as a non-German company of small size.”

Everplaces and Founders House

Tine has been a strong spokesperson for the startup community in the region over the years. As the CEO of Everplaces she traveled the world to different startup events. She is also a key player in Founders House, and the subsequent Startup Village that has formed around Njalsgade.

“I will remain involved a shareholder in Everplaces, but am no longer involved with the running of the company. I will also remain on the board of Founders House, which also takes care of the coordination of Startup Village”

We wish Tine the best on her continued journey!

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Getting better by focusing

Everplaces will remain the name of the B2C app, that already has a great userbase. The B2B part, which is about building travel apps for companies or regions, will become a separate entity, she explains.

“This strategic move enables us to focus our efforts inside the company on one product, rather than two. This is good news for all our clients, such as German National Tourism Board, Urban Adventures, Epoque Hotels, etc., whose amazing travel apps are built on the platform. It will enable us to create travel related apps with even more advanced features, faster, easier and cheaper than ever before.”

The two companies will be headed by one of the co-founders each. Angelica Vargas will head Everplaces:

“After much discussion, we decided to move [Everplaces] with cofounder and designer Angelica Vargas, who loves this product. Angelica is among the most talented mobile designers in Europe and will set up a design business helping brands and startups, so this is a great home for the app.”

And Christoffer Kaalund will head the new B2B entity:

“Our B2B product, the new focus, will be rethought from scratch. It’s almost like a new startup, except it comes with revenue, reputation and clients.”

“The product will now get its own name, brand and resources. In this process, cofounder Christoffer Kaalund is stepping up as CEO.”

Everplaces has been one of the most known startups in the region, and has received a lot of awards and recognition, both nationally as well as international. The startup has had a seed investment so far, and has revenue from the B2B arm, which Tine reports to be $ 400 000.

Time to move on

Besides Everplaces being one of the more visible startups in the region, Tine herself is also one of the more famous entrepreneurs, being often in the spotlight. Besides Everplaces she is co-founder of Founders House, that has recently both become one of the central parts of Startup Village, as well expanded to become even bigger.

About deciding to move on, she writes:

“To me, this became the right time to move on. I believe fully in the potential of the app-platform, and will remain a shareholder. But for me, there are products more closer aligned to my personal interests. So I’ve chosen to leave, and because I have full faith in Chris’ ability to take the company to new heights, it feels like a really good decision.”

What Tine will do next she has not yet announced, but she hints that there are several options that is interesting for her to choose from. We hope she will find a good spot with a great team, were she can use her gained experience to make the most use.

Read her entire blogpost for the full story.

The post Everplaces restructures – Tine Thygesen leaves as CEO appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Deep insights with 4 cases

If you ever have thought about raising money then this event sounds like a must. With four very different startups having promised to tell every detail of how they raised money, as well as Hampus Jakobsson talking about his view on investments as a business angel. We have been told the event will really dig into the subject in a very meaningfull and transparent way.

“Creating a company has many challenges that you can’t study to learn but usually need to figure out the hard way. Things like how to raise money, find co-founders, come up with a good idea for your startup… Some of these are irreversible and might lead you down a path of doom. Building Blocks is a series that give overview of a topic and then companies telling their honest and transparent stories.” says Joel Larsson, one of the organisers.

The event will have four speakers telling about funding from angels, VCs and crowdfunding. The cases will be Userbin, Mapillary, Everplaces, and Form (the guys behind the recent Point Kickstarter).

The speakers talk about:
• What was required for each funding (metrics, passion, fit…) sharing feedback, slides, metrics, etc when possible
• Share their opinions on dilution, equity to employees, good and bad money, any other common questions and pitfalls
• General tips, tricks, and recommendations for someone raising money

When: 1 dec, 13:00 – 16:00
Where: Media Evolution City
Registration: At eventbrite (the event is free)

Image credits: Bidgee

The post Startup Building Blocks: How to fund your startup appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Above you can see the some footage of the opening ceremony, where Zenia Francker from Founders House held the inauguration talk.

Founders house is a initiative where some of the most successful startups from Copenhagen have co-located in the same block. Startup Village is located at Islands Brygge on Njalsgade, in the old pakhusen. Some of the startups have had their offices there for a while already, but with the latest startups moving there the idea of branding it as Startup Village was born.

The houses are 4 old warehouses remodeled by a local floor marking contractor, with some startups having smaller spaces and some entire floors. It is a distinct historical area with great flavour and both indoor as well as outdoor locations.

Entrepreneurial initiative

Behind the initiative are the different startups, with Founders House moving there being one of the driving factors. It is a completly private initiative, with the aim of helping all startups located in the village. Somewhat ironically, the business department of the Copenhagen Municipallity actually had their offices just next door, until they moved to a new location, this summer.

Startups present

Some of the biggest startups present in the Startup Village are:

• Autobutler
• Bellmetric
• Churchweb
• Conferize
• Everplace
• Graduateland
• Labster
• Nabby
• Opbeat
• Planday
• Riidr
• Realm
• Shape
• Vivino

With the Founders House co-working space there are also a larger number of smaller and newer startups present.

Not just startups

The village also includes a café and a restaurant, as well as a Yoga center. Some ‘regular’ companies are present on the premises as well, such as White Arcitects office, as the this has rather been a gradual growing conglomeration of startups and not a top-down planned takeover, such as Berlin Factory. The idea is however to enable further startups to move there, with the assistance of a service like business moving services, as soon as floor-space becomes available.

The post Startup Village officially opened – #svlaunch appeared first on Øresund Startups.

The new location, at Islands Brygge, will thus form a new innovative tech hub – dubbed the Startup Village Copenhagen.

Old warehouses turned into startups heaven

Islands Brygge’s historic warehouses marked by experts you can aslo hire if you click here used to be the headquarters of FDB, who stored and transported products to all of Denmark via direct tracks to Copenhagen Harbor. In recent years, the area has increasingly become the home of tech startups, and now that is accelerated. As of this summer, the area in Njalsgade will be the frame around Copenhagen’s biggest concentration of fast-growing startups, including the estabished startups Vivino, Opbeat, Graduateland and Autobutler, as well as over 15 other both early and later stage startups!

A real hub for startups

Having all these ambitious startups with offices side by side increase knowledge-sharing and in turn speeds up growth of the individual companies. All serious tech startups are welcome, both to take up offices at Njalsgade, now called Startup Village, and to join the many tech events and social stuff arranged so people can network, do business and have fun. Founders House will with it’s move also expand, so talk to them if you are a smaller startup and want to be part of their co-working area.

A grass-roots initiative

The entire idea behind the Startup Village comes from the community itself. In contrast to many other projects, this is not a government sponsored place or initiative, but rater it is the different startups realizing that they could create an area that they would love themselves. This is a similar trend seen elsewhere, with Berlins Factory (also to be opened this summer) being a similar initiative.

With both the established startups being there, and Founders House with its often earlier stage startups as well as smaller startups in their own offices, the Village will be a space for both startups that are just getting going, as well as later stage ones that have raised a successful series A or even a series B investment. The Village will also be a natural place for international startups establishing a Scandinavian presence to be located – something that already is apperent on the list of the initial startups forming the Startup Village!

All in all, a great step for the community to have that much knowledge in one place!

Startups present

The spaces are being put in shape now, and the inaugurations is set for the 29th of August. The following startups have said will be part of the Startup Village CPH when it starts:

• Shape
• Vivino
• Conferize
• Opbeat
• Graduateland
• Birdback
• Nabby
• TightDB
• Boligsurf
• Anker Studio
• Everplaces
• Kirkeweb
• Codeable.io
• HelloWorldMobile
• Labster
• BodyBarista
• MeeWee
• Riidr
• Pinstriped
• Pocket Risk
• SNIPS
• 8pen
• Bellmetric
• Autobutler
• Planday
• Hello Monday
• Driversnote

The post Copenhagen Startup Village revealed! appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Founder and CEO at drivr Soren Halskov Nissen called for starting with iPhone (iOS) platform. In his experience it was a mistake to launch on all the platforms simultaneously. Last year’s winner of Allers Innovationspris Mathias Grube with Block Struggle urged to make a business plan before starting. According to him, doing so would have helped him to better understand how to get people into using the app.

This year winners in each category received gold, silver or bronze depending on how strong their field has been. Among many high quality products, Mobile Pay was recognized as the app of the year and as an app with the best functionality. In the other categories among other Copenhagen-based companies was Everplaces. They came out as the most innovative. Everplaces share in their blog:

“The competition for the awards, and for even making it to the final, has been incredibly tough. Denmark is on the forefront of mobile usage and development so the standard of innovation and programming is high. Therefore it was an enormous honor to find the jury had shortlisted us for every single one of the awards!”

Other winners from Copenhagen area include Haze by Robotcat, who received silver in category Tools and utility, and Minibar by Shape, who got gold in Leisure and lifestyle category.

More information on winners in other categories is available here. Congratulations!

The post Danish app awards has announced the best apps of 2013 appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“The deal is that insider tips are the hottest asset in the travel space, and we’re now making it possible for hotels etc. to access these and use them as a differentiating factor,” says Tine Thygesen CEO and co-founder of Everplaces according to ArcticStartup.

The data from Everplaces’ main competitor Foursquare has grown complex and messy. Migoa, a holiday apartment site in Barcelona, was one of the first ones who has chosen to switch to Everplace and launch first API trail.

“We felt adding restaurants and local info to our hotel maps would help customers select the right property. Initially we went for a Foursquare integration but found our maps had just too many locations, and that many were of low quality, being check-in data rather than actual recommendations” explains Oriol Blasco, CEO of Migoa.

Everplaces started off with letting users to bookmark their favorite places but evolved into a more social service. People seem to enjoy crowd sourced content so now they have a chance to create their own mini-guides. Everplaces employs careful filtering process based on the quality analysis of posts (availability of address and image) and users (contribution rate and popularity) to deliver the most interesting recommendations and them included in Explore feed.

Of course there is competition in the market, yet Everplaces has a potential to grow. Its high quality content and user-friendly apps and web-serivces are definetly a way to capture the market.

The post Everplaces opens API to share content with third parties appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Unfornutalty none of the nominations won in their respective category, but Everplaces managed to get “highly commended” (2nd place) in their category: Best Social, Mobile or Apps Startup. The winner in that category was ZeeBox, and Everplaces won over other renowed names such as EyeEm, Infogr.am and Jolicloud.

In total the Nordics didn’t fare very well at the awards, with Berlin Startups taking home alot of the prices. The lone, but shining, exception was Niklas Zennström. As co-founder of Skype he recieved the first ever “livetime achievement award” at the Europas and his Venture Fund, Atomico, won in the Best VC of the Year (Company) category.

Apart from that four other nordics took home the “highly commended” place in their category:
Memoto (SE) – in the Lightweight category (Less than 12 months and/or less than €100,000 in funding).
Supercell (FI) – in the Best Heavyweight Startup category (3+ years and/or more than €2m in funding).
Soundrop (NO) – in the Best Culture (Fashion, Art, Music, Media) Startup category
Eric Wahlforss & Alexander Ljung of Soundcloud (SE originally) – in the Best Startup Founder/Co-founders category.

Update: We forgot to mention that Instabridge, from Sweden, won the best Nordic Startup regional Award!

The post Everplaces finishes as “Highly Commended” on the Europas Tech Award appeared first on Øresund Startups.

From the region the following companies made it to the shortlist:

Best Social, Mobile or Apps Startup – here two of the nominated startups are from the region:

• Everplaces
• Qubulus

Best European Startup Accelerator/Incubator

• Startupbootcamp

Best Gaming or Social Games Startup

• Big Bite Games

Best Exit of 2012

• Podio (sold to Citrix)

And also in the “Best Nordic Startup” category two of the nominated are from this region:

• The Eye Tribe
• Foap

If you want to know what other nordic startups are nominated then Arctic Startup has a very nice lists, where you also can see other nominated. Otherwise the complete shortlist can be found here.

The post Everplace, Startupbootcamp and 5 other on the Europas shortlist appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Until 31th of december it is still possible to nominate. The awards are build on a community based winner selection, where apps nominated most often will be the runners for the final voting. Last year the awards counted more then 1.5M final votes, so get nominating in one of the categories if you have a great app or want to help Everplace get to the finals!

The post Everplaces nominated for Best App Ever Award appeared first on Øresund Startups.