“Komfo’s social media advertising and analytics offering is world-class, and we can’t wait to bring it to our customers around the world. By the same token, we’re thrilled to provide an even broader and stronger offering to the Komfo customers.” says CEO Ulrik Bo Larsen

He emphasises that Komfo’s social advertising and analytics capabilities will greatly augment the Falcon platform – as will the employyees from Komfo that will join the Falcon.io team.

“The acquisition of Komfo consolidates Falcon.io’s position as the European market leader. The majority of Komfo staff will join Falcon.io’s Copenhagen, New York, Berlin and Budapest offices, as well as remain at Komfo’s former office in Sofia, Bulgaria, which will become a Falcon.io location.”

Falcon.io also reports on their continued growth, with their fiscal year ending with 40% revenue growth. It has also grown outside of Europe, as it reported a 45% year-over-year client growth rate in the US. It has also added many international brands and corporates to it’s client list, including Goodyear Dunlop and Time Inc, joining those it already has such as Carlsberg, Toyota, Momondo, Panasonic and Coca-Cola.

In a TechCrunch interview, Ulrik goes into further details and talks about the trend in their segment in general, as well as their position:

“When we compare ourselves to others in the space, and consider the avenues of how you can grow, everyone is talking about consolidation right now, private equity funds looking in, and so on. There is no doubt that we have the strongest metrics and more momentum than some of the others.” Ulrik says to TechCrunch.

The post Falcon.io announces growth numbers and it’s acquisition of Komfo appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

A goal and more structure

The first half of the event was focused on giving the participants a chance to speak out and an update on the structure of the initiative.
It was presented that Jasenko Hadzic and Lærke Ullerup will form the operational team, with Jasenko being the official Managing Director. Jasenko is, as previsouly stated, known in the community, and Lærke has a past at TEDxCPH and has been involved in the #cphftw initiative since its initial phase.

Also, it’s goals of #cphftw were presented. These are:

• To make Denmark the most attractive startup hub in Europe
• To increase relations amongst community leaders and entrepreneurs in the ecosystem
• To to increase international exposure, benefiting the Denmark and the Danish economy

How to do it

But it is not just about what the goals are, even more important are how to do it. Here some concrete actions were announced:

Connecting the ecosystem

A couple of initiatives were presented about how to move things forward. Amongst other through dedicated meet ups for C-level employees at startups. People who often have a huge experience and can share information with others. But also with founders dinners and a mailing list for entrepreneurs.

Making the ecosystem visible

This mainly through an online platform, over at cphftw.dk, which should make it easy to get an overview of what happens, and also highlight interesting stories. Also, making the eco-system visible to media to a larger extend.

Connecting Copenhagen to the world

8 exclusive investors dinners with all major Nothern European VCs. Also, actively working with other hubs such as Stockholm, Helsinki and Berlin to drive learning across borders.

Also, all founding startups were announced as well, having pledged over 500 000 DKK to the initiative so far – it should be noted that at the event it was mentioned that the number was 400.000 DKK, but the sign-ups have been flying in ever since the evening.

It was also mentioned that the all startups have the chance of becoming founding members of #cphftw, were the goal is to get 80+ on board until end the week. If you want your startup to join in and forever be known as one of the founding members, reach out to Jasenko directly.

What is happening in Copenhagen

Besides those great news about the initiative itself, the second part was all about startups and events happening in Copenhagen.

It was set up as quick series of mini-presentations. A chance for all assembled to know about some impress startups or happenings. here were a lot of quick presentations and announcement. 6 startups were presented, as well as over 10 different initiatives from the community.

For outsiders, one of the most interesting parts were all the different initiatives that are going on.

Community initiatives and events

Here multiple places, initiatives and events were presented. All very interesting in their own, but too much to cover in depth. Amongst them were:

• Jacob Bøtter told the story about Prototype, and it’s strange mixture of co-working and coffeeshop
• Michael Tiberg talked about Foo Café, how he managed to host over 300 tech events last year in Malmö, and about opening a Foo Café in Copenhagen.
• CIID, the Copenhagen Institute of Interactive Design – Alie Rose, talked about bringing together people from all over the world to work on interaction and development projects. A great pool for talent.
• Lars Buch from StartupBootcamp came and brought a lot of energy – enforcing that we need to celebrate the people who are doing this.
• Lean Startup Circle was presented, and that they will host multiple events in the fall, using their 950+ strong meet-up group to bring great minds together, and above all focus on actual learnings and testing.
• Michael Reibel Boesen presented Elevate, which is kind of a job fair for getting students exposed to startups. A great initiative.
• Camilla Ley Valentin from Queue-it talked about her involvement with the danish goverment in the enklereregler.dk initiative – making regulations easier. She highlighted that everyone should send in their growth barriers before the October 3rd, and she would present them to the government.
• Henrik Føhns from Harddisken, the program from Danish Public Radio 1, was on stage and talked about his job of distributing the future more evenly – using one hour of public radio a week for interviews and the tech scene.
• Morten Elk from SimpleSite presented his initiative: Nordic Growth Hackers meet-ups. The events will focus in real learnings – 6 cases with growth hacking will be presented. The first meet-up is in october at Founders House.

Startup presentations

6 startups got 3 minutes each. The startups were from different levels – from really successful ones to smaller ones that recently have had successes.

Sitecore

“Before Sitecore I started multiple non-profits. Although I never intended them to be non-profit…”

Was one of the quotes from Lars Fløe Nielsen who presented his company. A company that might be the ‘biggest unknown startup’ in Copenhagen. Having had organic growth to over 800 employees and hundreds of millions in revenue, it surely is a very impressive company he has build.

Shipbeat

“A startup is about a team”

Was one of the widsoms Kenneth Svenningsen from Shipbeat shared. The logistics as a service startup has recently closed an impressive seed-round.

“I didn’t want to do this. But my past experience from Rocket Internet in Sydney and Miinto I realisted there was no good solution for this”

Kenneth said about his startup idea.

Crowdcurity

Jacob Hansen from Crowdcurity talked about how they are solving security problems for companies.

“We are Backed by 1000 of security researchers world wide. “

Apart from their journey so far with boost.vc and 500 startups, he also mentioned current progress:

“The bitcoin marked is currently one of our focus areas, we get a lot of interest from companies active there.”

Komfo

Michael talked about Komfo and how they are now competing against Adobe social, Meltwater and a lot of the same competitors as Lars from Sitecore mentioned previously. Komfo and Sitecore also have a long relationship already.

“We wanted an organic growth, and took Sitecore as a strategic investor instead of venture capital.”

Realm (former tightDB)

Brian Munkholm presented his startup. They are currently 16 employees, half of them in Silicon Valley.
Their service: a very fast database tool. He mentioned that they are proud that it was released one month ago, already 1700 stars on GitHub.

Conferize

Jesper Vestergaard introduced the startup, and their ambition to make conferences more digital and forming a community around them. They have just released their new product.

“We 12 people working at conferize right now. Looking for more”

Jesper he hinted. He also made a pledge: If you have a free event in Copenhagen you can use the Conferize without any costs.

Podio

The last one is not a startup anymore, since their exit to Citrix in 2012. However, Kasper Hulthin talked about their journey 2009-2012. But also talked about how they have worked to get Citrix to make the Podio office a hub for their development, and getting the company to make it’s presence in the region stronger. An effort that was applauded to!

The presentations were all quick, and gave a sense of some of the interesting startups in Copenhagen. They also showed a clear trend – it’s the b2b sector startups that this region rocks at building.

Conclusions

Apart from all this there were even more short presentations and speeches. It was, in total, a really packed event with a lot of information shared. After all the presentations the bar, staffed by employees from the startup 23, was open and a lot of new connections made. A lot of suggestions and ideas also spread thru twitter on the #cphftw hashtag, were already new plans for sharing more knowledge were taking shape.

The post #Cphftw Town Hall #3 – packed with people and announcements appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

The entrepreneurs participating in Geist consist of nine respected and successful startups:

• Kasper Hulthin, Podio
• Mette Lykke, Endomondo
• Michael A. Hansen, Komfo
• Martin Falslev, Trendsales
• Ken Villum Klausen, Wallmob
• Søren Halskov Nissen, drivr
• Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler, AutoButler
• Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen, Userreport
• Christian Steffensen, Kirkeweb

Together they come up with 10 recommendations to the government officials to enable a growing success of the Danish National IT and tech startups, and the result is also indirectly an evaluation of public actions aimed at entrepreneurs.

The 10 recommendations are both harsh as well as open-minded. It contains some solid tips such as #1 “remove the brand”, which emphasises that public run initiatives are looked down upon in the community, and it might be better to ‘hide’ that they are government run, and put entrepreneurs in the front. Other advices are such as #5 “Join us!”, that the public officials need to be present at meet ups and co-working spaces, and should not expect entrepreneurs to come to them if they want help. They need to build a relationship with them.

It also contains some more controversial, such as #3 “spoil the elite”, which argues that by helping the ones with the largest ambitions thru special services will enable better business development, instead of treating a freelancer in the same way as a ‘born global’ startup.

You can find all 10 advices here.

Update: Due to popular demand we have translated the rules to English. They can be found here.

“Geist is public run, and there a lot of public projects launched, and Geist is a kind of evaluation of them. It is a good idea, it is thought-thru. Instead of putting officials in an office this gets a dialogue with entrepreneurs.” says Christian Steffensen from Kirkeweb to Trendsonline.

Trendsonline has a longer article with both Christian Steffensen and Søren Halskov Nissen and their thoughts.

The post Geist: Experienced entrepreneurs give 10 rules to the government appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

The Top 3 nominees in each category have been announced, including Copenhagen startups we’ve been following. Here’s a summary of those nominees to look out for in their respective categories, for the full list check the e-handelsprisen list.

Category 3 – Best new e-commerce company Nominee eBogholderen works in paperless, digital accounting and bookkeeping services. EasyTranslate is a growing professional global network of translators and services.

Category 8 – Growth Prize features Trustpilot, the consumer-review community again appearing as prize nominees, along with their nomination to the Red Herring Europe Top 100 in March.

Category 7 – Best marketing campaign features Miinto, also nominated for Category 10 Best Tool for E-Commerce. We’ve been watching closely these fashion retailers from Denmark who are now hosting sales of over 15,000 brands, and increasing presence and reporting continuous positive results.

Category 10 – Best Tool for E-Commerce nominees along with Miinto, are Komfo and Usertribe. Komfo is an IT and consultancy company, developing websites and services for people to share knowledge and information with each other, mainly helping with customers work with Facebook. Komfo was founded in Copenhagen in 2007, and in early 2010 were accredited as Facebook Preferred Developers. Usertribe provides a service to deliver insights that is used to optimize online stores, websites, mobile websites, mobile apps, designs and campaigns. The Danish crowd based user testing tool came about in 2010 when Thore Fogh Johansen needed an ‘easy to use’ tool to complete his online business optimization tool box.

The ceremony on 23 May 2013, in Falkonérsalen in Frederiksberg to award the best of these will be one of the major events in the industry, celebrating the year’s most successful contemporary e-retailers.

The post E-Commerce 2013 Prize Nominees appeared first on Øresund Startup News.