The fund is, as the name suggest, focused on being backed by founders. This is an impressive list, with founders behind local successes like Zendesk, Unity, Tradeshift, Sitecore and Vivino being a part of it. But also founders from across the nordics, with successes such as Skype and Kahoot. And the idea is to leverage those founders as well for the startups that will be invested in:

“byFounders provides early-stage founders with unrivalled access to knowledge, expertise and insight from some of the most successful Nordic entrepreneurs. The support and operational guidance available from such a broad group is unique, and has the potential to play a major factor in the success of the next generation of startups from the region.” says Morten Primdahl, Co-Founder of Zendesk, about the process

The idea is to help out with what is needed for further growth. That can be scaling, introductions, referrals, recruiting, global expansion or raising further funding rounds. Portfolio startups are supposed to always find the advice they need in the 50-strong and growing ‘Collective’.

“byFounders Collective allows me to take part in shaping the founders of the future and highlighting the innovative and un-traditional companies that dare to think different and proves that the way to success doesn’t have to include a basement or a White Party.” says Frederikke Schmidt, founder of Roccamore

The fund will invest in a different range of startups. The strategy for investing has so far been a “7 T:s” approach: Team, TAM, Traction, Tech, Transformation, Timing, 10x.

However, raising a lot of money for investing in startups is not the easiest process.

“Having been through a challenging, exciting, at times gruelling and at the end very successful fundraising period, we can now proudly announce that we have managed to reach our goal of raising a € 100 million fund. For a first-time fund, this is exceptional.” Ida Åsle says about the process.

byFounders will be very important for our region, being a major VC player located here, that can compete with the other big Nordic funds such as Creandum and Northzone, based in Stockholm. An important player in the Greater Copenhagen eco-system for sure, but also strengthening the Nordics in total.

“It’s natural for every tech ecosystem to compare itself to Silicon Valley but the Nordics have established itself as a true birthplace for unicorns. The region can and will compete with any other place in the world when it comes to fostering and growing companies, and I believe the opportunity for large exits will only increase over time.” says Tommy Andersen who together with Eric Lagier started the fund.

byFounders has already invested in 11 startups: Corti, Peergrade, Simple Feast, Cobalt, Spiio, SafetyWing, Drugstars, Omnio, Qurasense, Tame, and Uizard.

You can read more about the process from byFounders directly, or at TechCrunch and Tech.eu as well.

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“In just the few days since the competition we have been in contact with a number of both Danish and international VCs and angels. They really like the vision of what Omnio will mean as an infrastructure component for the industrial Internet of Things and they see that we have traction,” says Mikkel Sørensen, CEO of Omnio.

Omnio has developed a SaaS product which gives you plug’n’play device integration for industrial devices. Their platform connects with all devices and IoT platforms and works as a universal translator for industrial device communication.

The event was arranged by SEED Capital and took place at DTU Skylab. Each finalist had to do a 5-minute pitch afterward answering a string of critical and complex questions from the jury. The jury was comprised of several prominent figures such as Jesper Buch, Ulla Brockenhuus-Schack, Tine Thygesen, and Henrik Teisbæk.

Standing out from the crowd

As part of their preparation, Omnio has participated in the pitch training day which was held one week prior to the final competition. At the training day, each startup got the chance to get feedback and improve their pitches.

“It was a great experience for us to participate in the Discovery Day. We especially found the pitch preparation with Tine Thygesen from Founder’s House valuable. She really helped us fine tune our message,” says Mikkel Thøgersen, CFO of Omnio.

In the final, Omnio faced off against Pre.do, Sawy, HiveOnline, JustBring, Penstable, FestivALL, TheCode, OBI+, and BuzzMe. The team came well prepared, presenting a convincing pitch and able to answer even the most challenging questions from the jury. 

Read SEED Capital’s full report and learn more about the competition.

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