From KEEPR, which raised less then € 1 million (6.5 million DKK) in small rounds while prioritizing stability over explosive growth to Landfolk, which tripled revenue in 2024 and secured over € 10 million (77.5 million DKK) Series A after proving its scalability, the guide uncovers the high-stakes choices founders face.

“We are not a 100x case. Our strength lies in lower risk and more stable growth — and that requires investors who understand that,”.

shares Emma Lindroth CEO and co-founder at KEEPR

Other insights are from startup such as Labster, started with EIFO loans instead of equity to maintain control before later raising over € 90 million (700 million DKK) in venture capital. Others, like Worksome, the initial decision was to decline venture capital, and CEO and shares how this choice could otherwise have been fatal for the company.

“We were offered valuations of 50-60 times our revenue. But we would be dead today because those valuations were so astronomically high. (…) The type of investors we brought on board did not have the same eager urge as venture funds to scale quickly and ultimately push for an exit.”

shares Worksome co-founder Morten Petersen.

Different ways to Exit

The guide also talks about how different strategies apply for making an exit. For someone like Michael Stadi, CEO and founder of FOM Technologies, an IPO was the only right choice.

“For us, as a small Scandinavian tech company with a global customer base, being listed on Nasdaq became a mark of quality. It removed several obstacles for us and was one of the main purposes of going public.”

shares Michael Stadi

Another route is an acquisition strategy. In the case of Cookie Information, this involved Kirk Kapital, which had the patience and confidence in the project.

“The acquisition of Piwik Pro was made possible partly because we sold 40% in a secondary transaction to Kirk Kapital, and partly because we secured a loan from EIFO for the acquisition of Piwik PRO — a company that was more than twice our size,”

shares CEO and founder Karsten Rendemann.

This isn’t about one-size-fits-all advices. It’s about timing, strategy, and the bold or cautious moves that define a company’s journey. Which path would you take? Check out the Funding Guide for Founders over at Bootstrapping.dk to see how different founders navigated the journey.

The post Funding Guide: Real Stories from Startups That Chose Different Paths appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

Labster has created an educational tool which allows students to interact with virtual laboratories. Labster enables students to do research and perform experiments in realistic settings. By including Labster in their educational program, institutions avoiding the dangers and costs of actual research facilities. The company was founded in 2012 by Mads Tvillinggaard Bonde and Michael Bodekær Jensen.

“In recent years, we have spent a lot of money on insurance and development but we are no ready to bring the tool to the people. The money will, therefore, primarily be invested in sales and marketing,” Says Mads Bonde in an interview with Computerworld.

Mads Bonde has a background in research and holds a Ph.D. in Biotechnology. It was after arriving at Harvard University in the USA and experiencing the same educational challenges that Danish universities are dealing with that Mads realized that there was room for improvement.

Picking the right investors

Labster has received wide acclaim for their virtual laboratories and when looking for funding they found themselves able to pick between different prospects.

“The interest was quite simply enormous and we were able to pick between five different proposals from renowned investors. We chose the investors with whom we saw the best conditions for collaboration and the investors best suited to help us reach the next stage,” says Mads.

One of the investors, David Helgason, has acted as an advisor for Labster through close to two years.

David Helgason has vast experience from Unity, which he helped develop into an enormous company of over 1.000 employees. This is, of cause, something that we would like to learn from,” says Mad

Today, Labster is in collaboration with some of the most renowned universities in the world to improve the educational level in natural science. The tool is sold to educational institutions all over the world who pays through yearly subscriptions.

The post Labster receives A-round investment of $10 million appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

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 Startup News.

Guest post by Line Svenstrup Berger in our support for Founders House.

What started as a small student project has now evolved into a successful tech startup. Labster has developed a virtual laboratory to use in teaching at both colleges and universities globally. The business reimagines the traditional non-innovative ways of performing laboratory experiments and brings creativity and science experiments together. The latest development is that they have expanded their concept into Virtual Reality (VR). Labster has already won several international awards and has high ambitions for the future.

Virtual labs as an e-learning tool

The virtual laboratory is a computer program, that gives students the opportunity to conduct virtual experiments, that in reality would either take months, be very costly or would be too dangerous for students to carry out in real life.

Our primary product is an easily scalable online platform for teaching life science, which has been demonstrated to improve learning significantly compared to standard teaching methods as well as substantially reduce costs, CEO and founder Mads Tvillinggard Bonde says.

Labster is a platform for performing chemistry and biology experiments. In addition you can add elements from real life such as molecular 3D animations, quiz questions and background theory that can make teaching more interesting, exciting and relevant.

It provides an increased learning effect. The students simply get more out of it – both at secondary school and at university level, Mads Tvillinggaard Bonde says.

Virtual Reality

So far the universities and schools have been able to buy a virtual laboratory that appears on a regular computer screen, but now Labster is ready to transfer their concept to VR. According to Mads Tvillinggaard Bonde the argument consists in recognisability:

It’s time to take VR seriously because it is easily recognizable. The closer the user experience is to the reality, the easier it will be for the user to empathise with the virtual environment, use it and take advantage of the many facets in it, he explains.

In the context, VR will be an additional layer on top of the existing program. It is still in the development process, but is a possibility of how one can use simulators with a usable interface. According to Mads Tvillinggard Bonde we are going to see much more of this in the future.

We can already see that simulations can be used to produce results that would be difficult to recreate in real life. Take for example crash tests of cars. You can not run the 1,000 luxury cars into each other again and again to test all small variations, he says adding:

But you can with simulations. This way, all parameters and variations can be taken into account. It can make big differences in experiments – even in science. Therefore, the results are sometimes more exact than it is in reality. 

Science is enormously creative

Entrepreneurship is perhaps not the first thing to connect with science, but the distance is according to Mads Tvillinggard Bonde not as big as one might think:

Science is enormously creative and there are many elements involved in establishing a business that can be compared with scientific experiments, he says.

Since childhood he has had a special interest in science and has experienced the difficult conditions science has in the Danish educational system. Of the very few laboratory experiments that are taught, most are generally boring and leave no room for spontaneous or innovative thinking.

Most of the teaching experiment is designed as a simple cookbook recipe that deals with a particular phenomenon as fermentation or DNA analysis. Students often follow the protocol blindly without understanding the underlying theory and mechanisms behind. It is inefficient, demoralising and very far from how real research is done, Mads Tvillinggard Bonde says.

The former Harvard student was inspired by today’s use of flight simulators. They are helping to solve some of the same problems, which one can have in a laboratory such as expensive equipment and reduced access for students.

So why not make a simulator to educate science students and thereby raise the level of education and motivation?

In that way his passion has been to innovate the conditions and increase the number of laboratory experiments in education – making laboratory experiments in chemistry and biology more exciting and creative and drive individual creativity along with increased motivation levels.

Successful young entrepreneurs

At 27-years old, Mads Tvillinggard Bonde developed the first version of the program during his training as a civil engineer in biotechnology at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The idea started as a small project in the student organisation Biotech Academy and resulted in the founding of Labster by Mads Tvillinggard Bonde in 2011 with partner Michael Bodekær.

In 2012, the first virtual lab was ready, and the customers began to sign up. Since then Labster has had great success with partners such as Novo Nordisk, Novozymes, The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Stanford University, The University of Hong Kong and the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Globally they have more than 10,000 students – a number that is increasing rapidly. In addition Labster has won several awards including a two-time Venture Cup win and funding from the Danish Market Development Fund and the Danish Ministry of Science.

A case story is Aarhus University (AU) in Denmark, where 250 medical students used Labster Medical Genetics lab to teach their students about breast cancer and tumor suppression. The students completed a survey after the lecture, and 88 percent said Labster was very exciting and 98 percent said the real-life interactive cases helped them relate to and retain all the theoretical learning.

The company lives in entrepreneurial collective Founders House in Copenhagen, but also have employees in Bali, Indonesia. In total they are approx. 20 employees.

About Labster:

• Founded in 2011
• Founders: Mads Tvillinggard Bonde, founder and CEO and Michael Bodekær, co-founder.
• Awards: DTU-prisen Grøn Dyst 2010, Venture Cup 2011 (Service category), Venture Cup 2012 (People & Society category), Elance startup competiton 2013 (New York) og Sanoma Startup Challenge 2014 (Amsterdam)
• Sponsors: Novo Nordisk, Novozymes, The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Fornyelsesfonden
• Partners: DTU, Stanford, Berkeley and Hong Kong University.
• Lives in Founders House – a co-working space for ambitious tech startups and entrepreneurs, in Copenhagen and also has employees in Bali.
• Web: http://labster.com/

The post Virtual lab for teaching life science appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

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 Startup News.

The day consisted of many short keynotes, raging from the more historical perspective on where education is heading, to the down to earth technical and business challenges.

In general, it was about MOOCs (Massiv Open Online Courses), technology and traditional education, all with the focus on what the future might bring.

Startups present: Labster

One of the startups presenting was Labster, who are replacing expensive lab equipment with virtual tools. Co-founder Mads Bonde gave a keynote.

He highlighted how he sees Labsters approach different to a lot of others on the EdTech sector.

“A lot of business are only incremental innovation – we have taken books, and made them ebooks. And we have taken lectures, made them videos, and put them online. However, we need active learning methodologies. “

“We did not want to do just a virtual laboratory. We wanted really make it a good tool for science education”.

He also talked about scaling. Currently selling their service at $50 per semester per student – which allows the universities to save a lot of money. They have currently most of the Danish universities as costumers, as well as Harvard and some other prominent international universities.

The startup has since the start of 2011 grown to 25 employees. He also mentioned their newest development, developing Labster for the Oculus Rift.

Savivo / Mingoville

Edtech Startup Savivo, famous for the Mingoville apps, was another one of the startups giving a keynote, with Stephan Stephensen talking about hands-on practical challenges from creating a service that is used around the globe.

“Things like that when we developed funclock: an app that teaches kids the time. Should be very simple to translate you would thing. Until you realise you do not say 8:30 in the same way in all languages. Or that spanish has a special word for 2 minutes past.”

Many more small details like these where mentioned – highlighting that education is not just language-sensitive, but also culturally very sensitive and requires deep knowledge to scale globally with quality.

Another lesson he shared was from their first product: A service for mobile phones to help kids study, made for free in collaboration with some big corporates. Even if it was free, only a fraction of the audience used it. Lesson: marketing is important.

“It costs just as much telling people you have done it, as it costs doing the project.”

Also, he shared insights from having become the #1 app in the app-store in multiple countries in the education section – including China. Lesson:

“You don’t make money on the educational apps list in the app store.”

Startup Weekend Education had 3 teams presenting

Three of the teams from Startup Weekend Education CPH, including the winning team ADDDIT, also held short pitches. These where:

• Kevin from Viocebitz: about creating a storytelling experience for kids, focusing on kids with speech or language problems.
• Jon Werk Nielsen from All Music Lesson – a site that creates an overview of what both private and public music classes are available. Creating a matchmaking and aiming to create a community around it.
• The team behind ADDDIT – making students addicted to learning. A gamification platform with user generated questions

Some of the biggest danish EdTech startups…

Some of the other prominent startups where Clio Online, where CEO Janus Benn Sørensen gave a keynote. He talked amongst other about their scaling. Since 2007 they have reached over € 6 M in CAGR, and covering more and more subjects: going from history, religion, chemistry, biology to almost all subjects taught in school now.

They currently are 83 employees, and have 75% of the danish schools as costumers, with over 750 000 users. However, the aim is now to expand, and both the European as well as the Chinese markets are in focus.

…but also newcomers to the scene

An somewhat different startup present was Appellante, where Nikolaj Holck, Fredrik Filip Stæger, Rune Højland talked about how they coded an app, aimed at math education for students, when they themselves still went their last years at high school.

“We where not the only one missing this app. It became the top in the danish app store directly when it was released”

Recently they released a similar app for the physics market, and not only maths. Both are currently the top paid apps in the danish app store. However, when asked if they had a business modell the team said no – not yet at least.

The trio also symbolised the mixture at the event very well – having just finished high school themselves, having done an app within the educational space – but also how they learned to code and thought themselves how to do it.

More EdTech startup present

Also present where a handfull of startups showcasing their products or service. Amongst other the following startups where present:

• Novloc – Tailor made education.
• Komsim (kommunikationsimulator) – Training for people with speech injuries, aimed at public health sector.
• Dansk simulator – Language game using a 3D world, including culture norms such as handshaking vs hugs and stuff Iike that. Originally developed for training military in engaging with other cultures and languages, but now aimed at teaching languages.
• Langcorr.com – Making tests and essays scoring easy
• Studyspot.co – Video material for university classes. Aimed at students. 
  Started as note-sharing but has since pivoted to doing short but efficient videos for university courses.
• Raspberry pod – Make the Raspberry Pi minicomputer accessible to schools with a build hardware. 
• Devloping stories – Teaching photo and journalism. Started out as a normal freelance course, but has now turned into a online video education program, complimented with courses in far away places such as Cape Town or Bangkok.
• Mathinary – Interactive math tools and test, developed by a veteran from the IT sector. Started out as a free to use project, with over 400 000 downloads in Denmark alone.

If you want a longer insight into EdTech startups present in Denmark, this list of EdTech startups in Denmark was compiled by the organisers.

Overall a different and good day, that brought a lot of important players in the EdTech scene together in Copenhagen.

The post What happens in the EdTech scene – EDUdisrupt appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

Trendsonline.dk has reported on the five finalist from Denmark that ran in the national competition: Labster, Ateo, M-PAYG, Discue and Roadrunner. They were pitching their ideas and innovations and presented how they have used the USD 2,500 in the last months. Not only qualified Labster for the international competition but also received a gift certificate from Billy’s Billing.

Labster is a startup business that provides schools and universities with virtual Labs to teach Life Science. The virtual lab makes it easier to understand scientific experiments. Mads Bonde and Maris Magdalenoks have started this projected and it has now already been tested in Danish as well as foreign universities.

We congratulate the winner and wish them good luck for the international Elance BIG IDEA Competition.

The post Labster qualified for the international Elance BIG IDEA Competition appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

Øresunds Startups got some insights into Labster late last year, in an interview with with COO, Tobias Aabye Dam.

The Copenhagen startup founded back in 2011 by Mads Tvillinggaard Bonde and Michael Bodekaer is coming out of stealth mode to give students in biotech and molecular biology access to what would be, expensive lab equipment and conduct potentially hazardous experiments, in the real world.

‘[It’s] basically a science video game that teaches you how to do anything like Sequencing DNA and become a Bio-Engineer or even a CSI agent…. hands on. You for instance get to solve a CSI murder case as a real forensics analyst.’ says Labster co-founder and CTO Michael Bodekaer.

Labster says the advantages of using simulated lab experiments vs the real deal, for example, it allows more of the molecular processes to be made visible via interactive molecular 3D animations, quiz questions have been built into software, and interactive feedback is given enhance the education experience.

‘Where students and bio-curious folk could never get access to the hundred-thousand dollar NGS machines, Electron-Microscopes or even HPLCs, they now have 24/7 access to a virtual 3D laboratory full of all these awesome machines… and you get a knowledgeable virtual assistant to show you how to use all their the cool new toys.’ continues Bodekaer.

Labster creates a new learning environment through scenarios, using an ‘inquiry-based’ approach and showing what’s happening in experiments down to the nano-level. It lets you make mistakes (safely) and learn from them. Their research suggests this method of inquiry more effective that traditional methods, which is like ‘following a cookbook recipe’. Where other tools are typically based on older lab equipment and built in Flash, Labster is targeting the iPad market, and using the Unity3D gaming engine, which works cross platform.

Labster is selling licenses for its software to universities, schools, and corporates for training, with customers include Stanford, Hong Kong and Copenhagen Universities. The startup’s current funding is $1 million in grants and non-equity support, and is in early dialogues with several investors for a potential Series-A funding.

The post Gaming in the Lab – Spotlight on Labster appeared first on Øresund Startup News.

What is your grand vision on developments in the online education sector?
Virtual experiments are just a small thing in the online education market. Upcoming start-ups in the US try to disrupt the conventional way students are taught any kind of subject. Within the next five to ten years both primary, high school and higher education will have a major part of their curriculum taught on the computer. Teaching will increasingly be more online, and not a person standing in front of a blackboard. The online education does not just consist of online readings, surveys etc, there are more possibilities to explore and we can actually move the real world online and simulate it. By having those virtual experiments online we make things accessible. Many universities give the opportunity to practice lab experiments to students only late in their studies. This causes students to drop out. Virtual experiments will make experiments accessible at a lower cost in an online setting in an earlier stage of the study programme.

Can you tell me about any failures you had in your company, and how you have learned from them?
I rather not speak of any failures, because what I define as a failure is something you evaluate badly afterward, which we haven’t done. There have been situations we’ve learned from though. For example, in the beginning of 2012 we approached the American market by cold calling universities in the US and asking them if they wanted to buy our product. We didn’t have a connection and therefore we didn’t get the results we wanted. So, when we realized that this didn’t work we actually went to the US and visited the universities, showed the product and built up the relationship with the customer. This was a much more effective strategy. By starting up a company there is lots of discovering involved and you should ask yourself what kind of sector you’re in, what product are you selling?

So presumably you got the first round of financing because you won the Venture Cup, but how did you receive that important second round of financing?
Yes, the first round of financing we got from the Venture Cup. With that money we were working on developing a prototype for the project, we didn’t pay salaries to ourselves. Later on we raised another 400.000 from Novo Nordisk, we got that as a grant. I think we got this money because we could show that we were able to get 8000 users from the beginning with little financing. 25% of the Danish High Schools implemented our product. Because we achieved this with a previous round of financing, we had a track record which showed that we were able to do it. Due to this strategy we ended up raising 4.2 million DKK. without giving out any equity.

The best way to raise capital is to start out with a small amount, show that you’re good at it, and then increase that amount with 300%. Do that over and over again, minimize your risk and communicate your vision.

You seem to be growing quickly, what challenges did this growth bring along?
We have lots of partnerships with universities but so far only a few paying customers. We have to make the transition from having partnerships to actually selling the product. It is important for us to speak with potential customers and to ask them questions. Will you pay? What kind of problems do you have? How would they be able to pay?

“Not always go to a meeting and think: I want to sell this product. Go into a meeting and think what the customer and you can learn from each other and what the customer needs. That is much easier and more beneficial for both. Try to have fun with meeting your customers.”

Do you have any advice for other entrepreneurs?
There is one danger you should be aware of: some people keep participating in competitions. Once you get a round of financing you have to get started and do the real thing. As soon as possible you should start developing your product and ask yourself if you have the passion to do this. From my own experience, having a virtual office has been a game-changer. Not only does it offer complete privacy, but it also provides an impressive sounding postal address. This is particularly beneficial for those of us who run our businesses from home. Using services like Birmingham Virtual Office for a virtual postal address and complete privacy is a wise decision.

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