Momondo – Øresund Startups

#cphftw Town Hall 4 – A Great Event!

Karsten Deppert — Sun, 23 Nov 2014 06:26:15 +0000

Yesterday it was time for #cphftw Town Hall meet-up #4. This was by far the best event in the series, and also the different – in a number of ways.

1000+ people in Christiania

The setting was something uniquely Copenhagenesque – the venue was inside the free town of Christiania, in ‘Den Grå Hall’. Having to describe the way there with a message like this below shows the idea of pushing the concept – this was probably as far from boring corporate events as it is possible to get.

Cphftw townhall t- 140 minutes. The Grey Hall (head towards pusher street and turn left) #cphftw

A photo posted by @mygdal on Nov 11, 2014 at 6:41am PST

The iconic sitzkartongs where there, altho the atmosphere was much more like a concert – with most people standing up. Which might have to do with it being the sitzkartongs fourth even – they might not be that stable anymore…

High action, high quality

This Town Hall felt a lot more condensed and intense then previous ones. On stage there where some of the highest achievers from the Copenhagen startup scene, giving insights and their view on what it is like to run a startup. The line-up included Thorvald Stigsen from Momondo, David Helgason from Unity, Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler from Autobutler, Theis Søndergaard from Vivino – and a many more.

The keynotes where Thorvald from Momondo and David from Unity, opening and closing the evening. Throvald focused on the startup journey and the harch reality that most fail, and why. David gave a lot of insights into how they build Unity as a company, and challenges along the way.

“During the transition phase, get some stamina, find your voice and build your audience.”

– was one of Thorvald’s advices.

“One wonderful thing of raising money: it lets you lift your eyes to the horizon.”

– was one of David’s insights.

In between the keynotes there where a lot of announcements, highlights from startups and their successes, and community events. This included short presentations by the Danish Crowdfunding Association, the Copenhagen Cocoa meet-ups, TechBBQs plans and also MINC from Malmö about their incubator. On the startup sector Planetos Morten Grauballe was talking about their success and new plans, as well as 23s new office and housewarming – The 23 House.

Wine and news from Vivino

As previously with the Town Hall meet-ups, one of the startups helps out with the bar. This time it was Vivinos staff who manned the bars, handling out not just beers, but of course also lots of wine.

Vivino also announced major news on stage – their new service to scan not just bottles of wine, but now also to scan complete wine lists at restaurants!

Good talks and sharing knowledge

One of the key highlights for many was not just the keynotes, but also the mingling session – which was divided into different roles where everyone could choose what fitted them the best. Represented by a key player in the region taking the lead in each group, the sessions included: Angel, CTO, COO, CMO, VC as well as many more. These small group sessions brought a lot of value as well introducing different people to each other. A great detail, and much better then normal mingling!

“It feels great that to see that #cphftw is helping to bring the startup scene together, and to see experienced serial entrepreneur give advice to those involved their first startup. Just as it makes me happy to see employees from startups connect more with like-minded people, talking about anything from marketing, tech to operation challenges.”

– was Jasenko Hadzic’s, main organiser, comment on it all.

A lot going on

Overall a great evening, that I think gave everyone a great feeling of the energy in the scene. If you missed it, then you can experience parts of it: 23 was there as well, filming and broadcasting it all. You can also see more of what happened over at Conferize event page.

We are already looking forward to the next Town Hall!

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Momondo Group receives € 100 million investment by Great Hill Partners

Karsten Deppert — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 13:23:22 +0000

Momondo Group has announced that Great Hill Partners invests € 100 million ($ 130 million) in the company, to help it continue expand and grow. The money is partly a takeover, as the valuation is said to be € 166 million, which means the U.S. private equity group will be the major shareholder in the company. It is reported that the existing senior management team will stay in place, with Hugo Burge remaining as CEO – and retaining a significant minority stake in Momondo Group.

“As a business, Momondo Group has expanded rapidly over the last two years and is well-positioned to capitalise on the growth in the meta travel sector.” says Hugo

“After a robust process we are pleased to be working closely with an investor who understands our culture and shares our vision – in a partnership which we believe represents the best outcome for our diverse range of stakeholders and investors.”

Momondo started in 2006 in Copenhagen, and has seen a rapid growth and initially its base was Scandinavia, as well as the Russian markets. It’s technology and marketshare made it attractive for other startups in the travelspace, and in 2011 Momondo was acquired by British Cheapflight. With the acquisition Cheapflight rebranded parts of it’s services to Momondo, as well as keeping the original operations and team from Momondo, still based in Copenhagen. Today Momondo has over 100 employees based in Copenhagen.

The company also has a strong product pipeline. Its flight search app is already one of the most popular travel apps for iOS and Android.

Momondo Group is reported to have generated revenues of almost € 55 million last year, with even stronger numbers reported so far this year. The business also reported € 4 million of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation last year. The company has over 19 millions visits from holidaymakers to its websites from 30 countries.

Great Hill Partners is a Boston-based venture company foundation medium-sized enterprises operating in high growth industries such as media / communications, internet, business services, user services, financial technology, healthcare technology, software and operations.

You can read more at The Telegraph and TrendsOnline or the official press-release.

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Øresund Startups: Top50 and state of the region

Karsten Deppert — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 21:59:17 +0000

Today I held a short lunch seminar on the subject of the most prominent startups in the region. The seminar was held because I was asked to do it, and when I thought about it I realized would be interesting to do. So I did, even if it was with a limited amount of preparations (which I can be accused of, but my main philosophy is: better to do then to don’t). So I did it.

It was held over lunch at CreativeLab, the creative event concept at the SHIP co-working space. Because we have a policy of livecasting whatever we do, you can watch the recording above (Our new Bambuser channel can be found here).

If you want to download the slides, I have made them available on slideshare but there are quite low resolution there, so can be found as pdf here as well.

I am probably describing some of the startups a little bit wrong (sorry for that), and I missed some things in the presentation (corrected in the downloadable versions). But I hope it creates some value for you as the viewer anyway.

Update 1: Some have asked why so many people are walking around and the background noice – the location where the presentation was held is the auditorium in the CreativeLab, called “trappan”, and is just that: the main stairs between the first and second floor. It is designed to be in the middle of the entire place, so that any presentations held there can have drop-in / drop-out flow. A somewhat special enviroment, but I love it, often with a lot of student from Lunds University sitting around in the open areas, and the business and entrepreneurs on the stairs themselves…

Update 2: I should of course list the top 50 startups mentioned as well! Here they are (in the order presented, i.e. in alphabetical order after category):

Series A + B

B2C

Billetto
Miinto
Vivino
WatAGame (GoSupermodel)
Zmags

B2B

Seed level

B2C

B2B

Other prominent startups

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Tech BBQ – a great day for the startup scene

Karsten Deppert — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:51:04 +0000

Yesterday TechBBQ 2013 was held. Despite the name, the focus was not so much on BBQ, but rather on tech – a whole day in the historical halls of Børsen, with some of Denmarks most successfull entrepreneurs. The lineup was extensive – with a great mixture of both new startups and successfull startups. The day was divided into three parts, with alot of different companies taking the stage.

The event was marked by a great spirit and community feeling, and will probably be looked at as an important day for the Copenhagen and Denmarks startup community.

The day was filled with great advice and stories. Here is a summary of some of the things that where said and wisdom that was shared.

Opening and part 1: new startups

Opening keynote by Morten Lund, the famous investor. Morten opened with a personal and charismatic keynote. His biggest advice – “find profiten” – focus on where the money is found!

After the opening Lars Buch from Startupbootcamp MobilityXL presented 8 different up-and-coming startups: Click-a-taxi, Iconfinder, Vivino, Rushfiles, Atosho, Graduateland, Queue-it and Autouncle.
They all got 10 minutes to talk about their business, their funding and their challenges. Very interesting and fast-paced. There could be done individual blogposts for each of the presentations, but suffice to say – all of these startups are definitly worth keeping an eye on!

Part 2: startups

This part was opened by minister Morten Østergaard, who talked about the innovationstrategy. He emphasised that we have among the highest money spent on R&D in Denmark, but are mediocre at creating jobs from it. He realized the need for this to change.

After this was a long but inspiring session with alot of established startups on stage, most of whom where in an internationallization phase. Alot of great advice where given and stories told. I is not possible to get everything in one post, but here are some highlights:

Peter Mühlmann from Trustpilot talked about his rating-startup, it’s ambitions and struggles, as well as the experience of opening an New York office. Best quote:

“Starting a startup is like playing WoW – you kill monsters and collect gold”

Jens Karstoft from zmags, who also talked about their US expansion, and that moving the HQ to the US when you already had 25 employess in your HQ in Denmark was something he would not recommend others to do. Either move it when you are still alot smaller, or set up an regional office in the US instead of HQ, was his lessons to the crowd. He also talked their tougher period 2011-2012, when they hired and american CEO and raised alot of money, but i did not have the desired effect on the revenue or growth. The CEO had to go after 9 month – an expensive lesson he said.
Key points from Jens:

– “get it right” vs “grow it fast”
– don’t take chances if hiring a CEO
– the right team is everything. Focus on values!
– it’s never easy – remember to have fun

Henrik Lottrup from LanguageWire talked about their grows since they started in 2000 to todays turnover of 142 Mdkk (€19M), and their expansion to worldwide costumers and offices all over Europe.

Bengt Sundstrøm founder of Lauritz went on stage after that, talking about his journey and their marked segment. His main poits was – if you are online, focus on mobile! A whooping 42% of their bids where now placed from mobile devices!

Ditlev Bredahl from OnApp, who told his story of starting a hosting company, in times when Amazon Cloud Services grows at an anual rate of 70%. But he has managed an ambitious journey since the start of OnApp in 2011, already having 135 employees and recieved $20M in VC funding. He talked about his past at UK2group which he sold in 2011.
What we all will remember his talk for is however the unique touch of only using LEGO Star Wars pictures in the presentations – something that also made his main point quite clear: Amazon = the dark side

Thorvald Stigsen from Momondo was the last one in this session. He talked about how they have become a big player in a crowded field – travel recommendations and bookings. He talked about the start as founder in 2006 until he sold it in 2011. Main points where branding and how to position yourself as an underdog, with words of wisdom:

“Rebel is the new mainstream”

The final part: successful entrepreneurs

Mikkel Svane from Zendesk talked (via video) about their journey. He mentioned an important tip: It is difficult for US investors to do background check on foreign entrepreneurs (visit sites like https://www.sterlingcheck.co.uk/ for additional guidance). This is problematic, as investors want to make sure they know you before investing. His lesson was that is it important to build and show a good track record in order to get investments from the US.

Lars Nielsen from Sitecore presented, as the only one doing it in english, about their journey from a tool (CMS) to solving their costumers problems.
He also shared two of his greatest wisdoms:

1. people are key. When companies grow they tend to hire bosses who hire people they can control. Don’t do that. Higher people that are smarter then you, that themselves hire people who are smarter then them. Even if that turns you into the company fool
2. stick to core values (in their case – be cool, have fun )

Klaus Nyengaard from JustEat, shared amongst other things his thoughts on scaling – how to go from a small local startup to 1000+ employees and being the worlds largest direct food delivery company. A remarkable feat, especially considering that this marked segment is alot harder to scale then a software service. He also talked about his concept of entreprofessionals – the best kind of employees. As one of the main sponsors with the event he also pleased the crowd by announcing that their will be a Tech BBQ in 2014 as well!

The closing keynote was from Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, from Podio, who wrapped up by an inspiring speech about how we should get this regions startup community kick-started. A perfect ending for an inspiring day.

This was a great event, that really got some of the most important players together. Even if it was noticeble that it was the first time the event was held, the keynotes and presenters are what made the day great. Good work being done by Trendsonline and Daniel Laursen.

As a final note we would like to end with Navid Ostadian Binai‘s Tweet, which is the only real thing that we definitly would like to see improved for next years Tech BBQ:

Great start to #TechBBQ, but a shame it’s in Danish. Hope it’ll be in English next year so we can attract a much more international crowd.

— Navid Ostadian-Binai (@navidob) May 7, 2013

Something that was also echoed by both Lars Buch and Lars Nielsen on stage.

Full list of startups and entrepreneurs presenting where:

1. The first part was new startups

Click a Taxi, Søren Halskov Nissen
Iconfinder, Martin LeBlanc
Vivino, Heine Zachariassen
Rushfiles, Morten Klank
Atosho, Anders Ibsen
Graduateland – Patrick Lund
Queue-it – Camilla Ley Valentin
AutoUncle – Johan Frederik Schjødt

2. Startups that have gotten a good amount of investements and some traction internationally

TrustPilot – Peter Mühlmann
Zmags – Jens Karstoft
LanguageWire – Henrik Lottrup
Lauritz.com – Bengt Sundstrøm
OnApp – Ditlev Bredahl
Momondo – Thorvald Stigsen

3. Success stories and veteran entrepreneurs, who told their stories and their advice to the younger people in the crowd.

Sitecore – Lars Nielsen<
Just-Eat – Klaus Nyengaard
Podio – Thomas Madsen-Mygdal

If you want to read more, trendsonline has an extensive reporting on the event:

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