Milestone as a stand alone company

Canon has said they have an ambition to drive future growth through diversification, and have identified network video surveillance as a strategic new business area. Bringing Milestone into the Canon Group will significantly enhance Canon’s software capabilities in this sector. It is however also said that Milestone will continue to operate as a stand alone company, with no ties to Canons camera side.

“Canon respects how we built our business with our partners and supports our strategy of providing open platform solutions and therefore the need to remain a standalone company within the Canon Group. We feel this step is right for taking both our business and support for suppliers and partners to a new level.” says Lars Thinggaard, CEO at Milestone

Valuation of the deal

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. IPVM has some info that Canon will gain one seat on the board of directors at Milestone, replacing Index Ventures, Milestones VC, who will be paid out as part of the acquisition.

Given Milestone’s 2013 revenue of over € 50 million, they expect the price to be in the range of € 110 million to € 180 million, based solely on comparable valuations in the industry. They note however that rumors are the number is much higher.

Milestone is a leader in video management software, with strong consultancy and training services. With the acquisition they will be able to use Canon’s business and consumer channels to expand its global market presence even further.

“Together with Milestone, we can accelerate our growth by delivering new advanced products and solutions for new sectors, through new channels. We are very excited about working with such a talented and innovative company and we welcome Milestone into the Canon Group.” says Rokus van Iperen from Canon

Milestone’s successful Open Platform business model is deemed essential to its future success and Milestone will continue to provide open platform solutions, while operating as a standalone company within the Canon Group, Canon says. Canon fully supports Milestone’s open platform strategy and respects their strong partnerships.

Following the completion of the acquisition, Milestone’s management will remain in place and they are committed to making this transition a success.

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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!

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