Mofibo was founded in 2013 by Morten Strunge, who previously in 2011 sold his company Onfone to Danish mobile operator TDC, and also just was in the news for investing in Rubberduck. In Denmark Mofibo the leading book streaming service with over 40 000 paying subscribers. Mofibo also has partnerships with mobile operators TDC, 3 and Plenti, and the service is also available in Sweden and Holland. With the acquisition Morten Strunge will become part of Storytels management team and responsible for Storytels operations in Denmark and Holland.

“I am proud of what Mofibo has achieved in a short time – it’s great to see an idea you have had becoming a business with 30 dedicated employees, playing an important role in shaping the future of the book market, and being read or listened to more than 100 000 books every month.” says Morten Strunge, CEO and founder of Mofibo.

Storytel, also founded in this region in 2005 in Lund, back then known as Bokilur, is since 2015 listed on Aktietorget, and has had an impressive growth.

“The last few years have Storytel taken the lead on the Swedish market for book streaming in a similar way like Spotify has done in music and Netflix has done in the TV series. Through the acquisition of Mofibo Storytels will now also take the leader’s jersey in Denmark, which gives us even better possibilities to accelerate Storytels international expansion.” says Storytel CEO Jonas Tellander

In Sweden and Denmark Storytels and Mofibos customers will be able to continue use each service until further notice. In Holland however Mofibos service will be closed down and customers are offered a subscription to Storytel instead.

The acquisition is financed mainly by bank loans and to some extent Storytels own cash. It is also financed by issuing new shares to Morten Strunge equivalent to 20 million SEK. The course is set to 22.75 SEK, based on the average price during the negotiation period. Among Mofibos shareholders are in addition to the main owner Morten Strunge also Seed Capital, Sunstone and 15 other investors.

In an outlook for the combined revenue from both Storytel and Mofibo, the service is nearing a quarterly revenue of 100 million SEK (over € 10 million).

The post Mofibo acquired by Storytel for € 13.5 million appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“I didn’t plan to change workplace. It’s been really good being an investor where one can get inspired at conferences and on boards. But I was simply too tempted by the opportunity to dive into the issues – and not just sit on the sidelines” says Jakob Ekkelund.

Templafy provides a template management system for companies: all business documents in a company will be uniform. In 2014, Templafy received investments from both SEED Capital and Sundstone Capital. Ekkelund has invested in the company too. Last summer he invested € 1,7 millions and took place in the board. During this time, Ekkelund says he has been impressed by the professionalism of Templafy.

“They are experienced entrepreneurs who know the industry. Several of them have 10 years experience of skabelondesign.dk. They are very talented at what they do. Instead of throwing out aimlessly into something, they stop and think about it before. I’m sure Templafy can be a great success if implemented correctly – and I want to be a part of that” says Jakob Ekkelund.

Previously, Ekkelund worked for the phone company TDC. He has also been a board member of Bownty, Mofibo and Vivino and been a partner in the company Designfirmaet.

The post The former investment manager of SEED Capital proceeds to Templafy appeared first on Øresund Startups.

€ 32 million profit

The venture industry has been through some trials and tribulations, and the development of SEED Capital’s funds are not to be underappreciated. The accounts for Fund 2 has a bonus of € 32 millions (237 million DKK) on the bottom line in 2014, making this the third consecutive year of positive results. The portfolio includes startups like of Vivino, Reapplix, Trustpilot and, the latest addition, Mofibo. There are several exits in sight and many of the companies are making good progress, with Galecto Biotech having entered into an agreement with Brystol-Myers Squibb, which has a potential value of € 335 million. If followed through, we will likely see the effect of this agreement on the 2015 reports.

So what is the secret behind SEED Capital’s seemingly consistent choice of winners? According to managing partner, Ulla Brockenhuus-Schack, it involves strategic thinking and some amount of risk-taking.

“Venture is hard, takes time and patient investors. Portfolio-focused thinking is essential in this game and it is important to understand that you have to launch many ships as it is not easy to predict which ones will end up being a success, “she says.

With numbers like these, what big plans does SEED Capital have in store for 2015?

“The whole venture capital industry has gone through a long learning curve over the last 10 years… We have become better at spotting winning companies and today our investments are made somewhat closer to the market than in 2005. I have great expectations for our second fund and believe that it will deliver excellent returns for our investors.” says Brockenhuus-Schack.

Public and private money

SEED Capital is not without some controversy. It’s mixture of public and private money, say some are giving it incentives not aligned with the rest of the VC community. However, the fund has shown good progress over the years.

SEED Capital has a strong partnership with the government funded innovation incubator Pre-Seed Innovation and they are able to invest € 250 000 – 750 000 at the early stages of a startups development, allowing a startup an opportunity to prove their technology and business. Depending on capital need, SEED Capital can then later invest up to € 9 million in the upcoming rounds – preferably in syndication with international investors.

The post SEED Capital Makes Record-Breaking Profits appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“Growth hacking is a very large and very interesting tool box, that you can apply to your online business” says Morten Elk, Founder of SimpleSite, presenter of the event

For this event, six speakers were invited to tell the audience about their companies marketing; tools that worked well and the obstacles they had to overcome. The speakers of the evening were:

• Matias Møl Dalsgaard, GoMore
• Kaare Danielsen, Jobindex
• Peter Schlegel, Admazely
• Tomas Gorrissen, Responsive
• Ture Dahl, Endomondo
• Martin Bjergegaard, Pine Tribe

About the event

The speakers had about 15 minutes each to tell the audience about their experiences. They all spoke about various considerations and choices they’ve made in hope to make the company grow. Some choose to talk broadly about their experiences, while others went into detail. Common feature of most of them was to point out the importance to find a niche in order to make the company grow.

“You need to find a niche and do it differently from everybody else. It doesn’t really have to be better, but just differently” says Ture Dahl, Endomondo

For those looking for inspiration for their own business or are generally interested in different approaches in marketing an online business, the events organized by Nordic Growth Hackers is strongly recommended. Also, on their homepage you can find a collection of resources that are regarded as interesting and instructive for online businesses.

Did you miss the event? The event was filmed, so in the near future you will luckily be able to find it online on the YouTube channel, where also the previous videos can be found. And take the opportunity to book the next event even now; on April the 23^rd the doors will open to a new and exciting event organized by Nordic Growth Hackers!

The post A great follow up for Nordic Growth Hackers appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Above is a spreadsheet from my investment newsletter club with all the investments that we have gotten to our attention during 2013.
Disclaimer: There are, most likely, many more investments that we do not know about (yet), and we will try to update the document when we get to know about more.

Some interesting stats from investments in the region 2013

Updated 2014-01-02: got more information from Hampus Jakobsson. If you have any further info we should add, let us know.

• Total sum of investments: 55 million euros (roughly, with qualified estimates in those cases where the sum is unknown)
• Total number of investments: 52
• Most number of investments: SEED Capital (7)
• Largest investments: Sol Voltaics and Vivino

As can be seen from the numbers, none of them is big single investment (such as last years € 45M investment in Zendesk). So this year it has been mostly seed, series A and series B investments in the region.

Other interesting things from 2013

A very noteworthy happening from 2013 was Unitys rumored ‘no thanks’ to a € 575 million deal. Very interesting for them and the whole startup and gaming scene in the region!

There where also some interesting crowdfunding projects, most notably the release of the game Forced which got a lot of attention for its story, but also gadgets such as Leikr and NSA defeating services such as Heml.is. Also two very high profile ones, that however are still ongoing – Airtame and No More Woof. These are not in the list (even though they are already 100% financed) because they will first close in the beginning of 2014.

Why a focus on investments and funding?

We look at investment and funding for a couple of reasons:

1. It is relatively easy to get the information.
2. A startup that receives investment is ‘validated’ – it is not just a cool idea, somebody believes in it enough to put money into it.
3. Especially the later stage investment rounds (series A and above) are crucial for a startup to make it big. Therefor we deem those as very important.

What do we think about bootstrapping?

Our focus on investments does not mean that we think bootstrapping is in any way wrong. Indeed, my own company, Contentor, is bootstrapped. However, bootstrapping is in my opinion something that is great, especially in the first 1-5 years, but after that to grow truly international and make a difference, funding is almost always needed. Not just for the money and the people that can be hired because of the investment. It’s just as much for the connections and knowledge that the right investors bring. Connections such as inside-people at Google, Facebook or other important collaborators for the startup. Or connections to goverment and politicians that are relevant. Or for further investments and a future IPO. Having people onboard who have experience from earlier in very helpful in those cases.
So I believe bootstrapping is great to get going, try the product and build the first million euros in revenue. But to take it to the next level, to reach € 10M or more in revenue, funding often makes the crucial differences and speeds up the process.

Because of this, we care about funding here at Øresund startups.

Reporting on other stats as well

We will aim to try to get more numbers out in the future. Both Sweden and Denmark have core company numbers available for companies public. We will see what kind of report we can build form that – such as matching the startups in region to their revenues!

The post Updated: The year of 2013 – investments in startups in the region appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“We’ve looked at our stats and see that only 5% who read more than 14 books a year. Therefore, we also come with this model that we believe matches much better a realistic reading needs.” says Anders Breinholst to
trendsonline.dk.

Riidr, who received an ivestment from Norwegian-based Schibsted Media Group is not alone on the market. Mofibo also offers a subscription service for e-books.

“With Mofibo on the market, we will put even more focus on the development of our own subscription service.” says Riidr to trendsonline.dk.

The post Riidr launches subscription called Riidr one appeared first on Øresund Startups.

One of the things we want to focus on with Øresund Startups is tracking funding in startups in the region. The reason is simple: funding is an external validation that proves that somebody believes in a startup, and that it is not just a great idea, but also an idea that can be executed. We also believe that it is of interest for others seeking funding to know what funding deals have been made, and who possible investors are.

Therefor we have put together the data that we have been notified about the last 6 month, january – june 2013. We have done that in an simple spreadsheet, and listed a couple of data points:

• Date (approximatly)
• Invested amount (when disclosed)
• What startup
• Which investors
• Business sector of the startups (if B2B or B2C)
• What cluster in the region the startup belongs to

Some interesting investment highlights from the first 6 month of 2013:

Update: after publishing this we got some feedback with more investments we had missed. The numbers below are updated with the newest stats!

Of the investments we have registered:

• A total of 28 investments have been tracked. The total is not officially known, but our estimations and words from unofficial sources put the total to between 18-21 million euros.
• 14 of the 28 investments are Copenhagen based
• The biggest investment was in Crunchfish, but it was only slightly larger then others
• More or less equal B2B then B2C startups have received funding (14 B2B and 13 B2C and 1 that is both)
• SEED Capital was the most active investment fund
• SEED Capital was also the fund which has invested the most money in the period (according to released numbers)
• Half of the investments (14 of the 28) where from private investors, either a known angel / VC or a multitude of angels.
• Private investments also account for roughly half of the total value invested, around 8-10 million euros of the total 18-21 million euros (estimated in cases where not publicly known)

Note that the list above is only with data from 1 january – 30 june 2013. The recent big investments in Vivino as well as Opbeat are not part of it, they will be part of the next report.

As a bonus we also put together the numbers for our first month of operations, september – december 2012. However, as that is not a complete 6 month period we did not want to make a full report of that. The numbers can be found in the spreadsheet, in the second tab. These numbers may also be quite incomplete, as during that period we just started tracking startups and might have missed a lot.

Also – if you know about investments which we have missed, let us know! Either in an email or in the community group.

The stats are embeded at the top of the posts, but if you have trouble viewing them you can find them here as a Google Drive spreadsheet.

If you want to download the numbers as .csv you can find them here.

The post Updated! Report: investments in web and tech startups in the region – spring 2013 appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Along with such services as Spotify and Netflix, Mofibo will offer a service of reading books wherever and whenever one wants for a fixed fee of 100 Danish kronor per month. The service will be available for online use or via Mofibo’s apps for Android, iPhone or iPad.

E-book market is rapidly growing. However, while in the US its market share has reached 30% in Denmark it amounts only to about 2%. Seed Capital sees a huge potential in Mofibo.

“Mofibo operates in a highly interesting and untapped market. There are no established players in the Danish e-book sector and we are confident that Mofibo will position itself as the leading e-book provider,” says Investment Manager at SEED Capital, Jakob Ekkelund

According to Morten Strunge, having SEED capital on board will help Mofibo to have a rapid take off.

“The money will secure both marketing and continued development of Mofibo’s platforms. At the same time SEED Capital a highly skilled investor who knows how to challenge management at the right areas,” shares Morten Strunge.

Another aspect of potential success is qualified professionals behind the project. Peter Lüth, IT specialist and Morten Meisner, director of communications agency Revolt, together form a strong innovative team that will help to revolutionize Danish e-book market.

“Mofibo is developed by experienced and innovative entrepreneurs in their fields and together they form a strong team. A constellation is characterized by successful business men in their respective territories,” says James Ekkelund.

Good luck and looking forward to Mofibo’s launch!

The post Success before launch: Mofibo receives a six digit euro investment from SEED Capital appeared first on Øresund Startups.