“Peakon is on the cutting edge of helping organizations turn employee insights into more connected teams and stronger organizations. Bringing Peakon into the Workday family will be very compelling to our customers – especially following an extraordinary past year that has magnified the importance of having a constant pulse on employee sentiment in order to keep people engaged and productive.”said Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and co-CEO, Workday.

Peakon, which we have followed since the start in 2015, was started by two experienced entrepreneurs who had previously been part of Podio, Phil Chambers and Kasper Hulthin. They started Peakon together with Christian Holm and Dan Rogers who had a past with Songkick. The startup has had a rapid growth and reached in 2019 over 120 DKK million (€ 16 million) in sales, the latest official figures.

“We share Workday’s passion for putting people at the center of technology, and together, we’ll be able to provide customers with the employee insights they need to support rapid change and growth.” commented Phil Chambers from Peakon.

There are multiple startups in the region focusing on employee wellbeing, such as Wellbefy.

“We are impressed by Peakon’s journey. They have truly contributed to the development of the modern employee survey. The Nordic countries have always been ahead of the curve in the development of people analytics technologies, and, therefore, it is not surprising that there are several active nordic companies within this segment. The correlation between organisational success and human capital is recognised here.” says Rebecca Arfwedson, CCO at Wellbefy

She also points out that the Nordics have many governmental regulations in order to help organisations create a healthy work environment, often leading the field, such as SAM– AFS:2001:1 in Sweden.

(Transperancy, we share owners with Wellbefy)

The post Peakon acquired by Workday for €580 million appeared first on Øresund Startups.

• Symphogen
• Trustpilot
• Pleo
• Vivino
• Peakon
• Planday
• SNIPR Biome
• Simple Feast
• Blackwood Seven

These startup have together raised over € 1 billion in funding since being started, and are emerging as the most important tech companies in Denmark.

We have talked a bit extra with one of them, Planday. Besides being listed on this list, Planday has an impressive list of being selected as one of the 100 best Copenhagen start-ups to watch and work for in 2019, and top 100 SaaS companies from Europe – amongst many other shortlists.

We talked with Anders Frederiksen, co-founder of Planday, about them being selected one of the most important startups in Denmark

“It is an exciting acknowledgement of our progress,. This recognition is thanks to the hard work and dedication of our people in Copenhagen and in our offices throughout Europe and North America who are always looking for new ways to optimise the work we do.”

Planday was originally founded as a way to save time for managers with scheduling staff, but has since grown international.

“When we started in a Danish bar 16 years ago we set out to save people time and money and work smarter, not harder. Now, we have thousands of businesses around the world which use Planday. Last year we celebrated passing more than 100 million shifts created in the Planday platform.”

Being in Copenhagen and part of the thriving tech scene, has definitely helped the startup succeed.

“We are really proud to still call Copenhagen home and want to continue to bring the best of Scandinavian innovation and design together to enable shift-workers and the businesses which employ them around the world to work smarter. While we continue to scale and follow our ambitions to power even more people and businesses to work smarter, it is great to be part of an awesome tech community that also helps support that vision.”

You can read more about the shortlist here.

The post 9 Copenhagen startups to look out for! appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“From 2016 to 2019, it rose from $2 billion to $5 billion, growing much faster than in the US, which grew from $15 billion to $20 billion. It now represents one quarter of the US. European companies have been able to raise rounds as large as their US counterparts, and UiPath and Veeam top the list with $568 million and $500 million in total investment respectively.” the report says

This region has been known for being strong in B2B focused startups, of which many are SaaS companies. Even so, for some, such as Planday, this is a sought-after listing. Planday raised an historic € 35 million funding round by leading European investors last year.

“Planday’s roots are Danish but our mindset and know-how is global. By bringing the best of Danish design and a commitment to the empowerment of working people, we have developed a market-leading product and have been backed by the market to grow and pioneer new solutions even more,” says Christian Brøndum CEO at Planday.

Having four startups from the region on the European lists shows the strength we have here. But as with any larger startup, they are not just based here – but taking the strength from this region global.

“We are very much a Scandinvian company — our headquarters are in Copenhagen and our offices are in Oslo, Hamburg, London and Los Angeles. In everything we do, we try to bring the best of Scandic design and efficiency to every touch-point in the Planday platform, experience and partner ecosystem.” Christian says

About the startups

GetAccept – Is a tool for rethinking how sales document work. With their eSigning workflow they help salespeople close more deals.

Peakon – Peakon works with increasing feedback within organisations. Its tool collects employee feedback, analyses it, and then delivers it back to the organisation.

Planday – Planday builds software that makes it easier for managers and hourly workers to communicate, collaborate, and get work done. The focus is to make the relationship between hourly workers and their managers more efficient and productive.

Templafy – Templafy helps users improve productivity, branding, and compliance across business documents, presentations, and emails. Templafy’s platform assists enterprise employees in each stage of the document creation workflow, delivering productive, compliant and enjoyable ways.

You can read the report by Accel Partners over at tech.eu.

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Tommy has been one of the most active tech angels in the region. With a past at Podio and ZYB, he has also been involved in GameAnalytics, Drivr, Astralis, Vivino, Peakon and many more. He has been a vocal angel, and one of the investors that is often in the spotlight. A spokesperson for tech opinions and entrepreneurship in Denmark.

He will take over the role as minister after Søren Pind.

“I wish we could have met under other circumstances. As a citizen and entrepreneur, I have always been wildly impressed with you. You are prepared to discuss ethics and morals and allow it to be ruler of policy. I have the deepest respect for that” said Tommy Ahlers to his predecessor.

Regarding his investments and future investements, he announced at the pressconference that he will step down as active investor, and become passive in the ones he has.

“The companies in which I have active investments I will change to passive ownership. The passive investments I have, will be administrated by an executive, so that there are no conflict of interest.”

The post Top angel investor becomes minister appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Peakon has been one of the most hyped startups from the region, having an experienced founder teams, and raising their first round before they where launched. Now, a little over 2 years later, the startup has had an impressive track record – and still great ambitions:

“We’ve taken huge steps forward across the whole business in the last twelve months – rounding out the team with senior hires, driving product satisfaction to record levels, increasing revenue by over 600%, and launching in several new markets – and felt like this was time to double down on our global expansion.” Phil Chambers, CEO of Peakon tells TechCrunch.

The team has grown a lot already, but with the investment in aims to double it’s number of employees. Bernard Liautaud from Balderton has also joined the board. His past experience as founder of Business Objects and being one of Europe’s most successful enterprise software entrepreneurs, will help the team grow as well.

“Looking forward, we can’t wait to start tackling the new challenges that lie ahead – namely expanding our presence across DACH, APAC and North America.” says Phil.

You can read more from Peakon itself or the TechCrunch article.

The post Peakon continues to raise ambitions and funding – closes a €18 M investment appeared first on Øresund Startups.

This is the second round of financing for the rising startup. 6,1 million euro investment (over 43 million DKK) now adds up to 10.92 million euros (81 million DKK) in total funding, thanks to previous funding rounds led by Idinvest Partners and Sunstone Capital. Through this latest round, Peakon plans to scale its staff to more than 100 employees and invest in machine learning and data development.

According to Lars Jörnow, a founding partner at EQT Ventures, artificial intelligence is set to become an attractive sector for technology investors this year.

“The Peakon team has had an impressive start with strong sales growth and the product has been well received,” he remarked. “The culture in the workplace and the ability to track, analyze and act on employee engagement is increasingly important for the world’s leading companies,” said Jörnow.

Peakon was founded in 2014 by Dan Rogers, former VP of Growth and Product Management at Songkick and Christian Holm, Kasper Hulthin, and Phillip Chambers, previously of Podio (acquired by Citrix). Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, the startup also has offices in the UK and the US.

The post Danish startup Peakon raises 6.1 million in new funding round appeared first on Øresund Startups.

As the last couple of times the Town Hall was held at KPH Volume – a rough and atmospheric venue. Even if very cold this particular day – the room was still packed and the audience listened vividly.

“Always be sober when talking to journalists”

Both keynotes held at the event contained a lot of stories and experiences. Especially Peter Holten Mühlmanns humorist but honest and insightful talk contained many gems, on everything from how Trustpilot got started, what value PR and being on the national front-page gives you, how to recruit smart and how to manage scaling a startup from 1 to 500+.

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen from Balderton Capital shared his past, how it came he worked at Dropbox and Uber, and his outlook of the European and especially Danish startup scene from his current position with Balderton.

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen talking on stage

Startups and community

As previously a part of the event was focused at highlighting startups that are of interest, as well as community events. The startups presenting on stage where:

• Linkfire – Ricki Mae Melchior
• Sponsta – Philip Bock
• Peakon – Kasper Hulthin (who also just announced a large early funding)
• Vivino – Theis Søndergaard

One the community side, the following initiatives / meetups / events got some time in the spotligt:

• Codher – A tech meetup aiming at getting more women to code
• Startup Weekend – was presented by Aleksander Bordvik
• Nordic Startup Award – Kim Balle talked about the upcoming awards
• Nordic Startup Conference – the conference is to return, and date and location announced
• Startup Europe Week – a lot of things happening the week of 1-5th february
• Singularity U Copenhagen & Danske Ideer – Henrik Føhns presented the upcoming session with Singularity University in Copenhagen

You can see further details on the videos below. Apart from these initiatives, there where also mini sessions afterwards where people could go to focus on certain topics. These were: AIESEC, Nordic Growth Hackers, Capital2Grow, LEO Ventures, CPH Coworking Council, Startup Weekend. This gave rise to a lot of discussions and people getting to know each other.

Overall a really great meetup. Great work by Christoffer and the dedicated team organising this high value event. Only drawback with the entire event was that it was kind of (very) cold – but as Nick Hawtin put it on twitter:

You gotta know your event rocks, if people are willing to sit wearing coats, hats, and mittens to hear your speakers #cphftw Town Hall.

— Nicholas Hawtin (@RiskContainment) January 21, 2016

Remaining videos

Startup session

Community session

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Founded by Phillip Chambers and Kasper Hulthin, previously of Podio, together with Christian Holm and Dan Rogers from Songkick, Peakon aspires to level up understanding of employee engagement with the help of data.

“We want to bring the same level of analytics, sophistication, and scientific rigour to managing people as is currently applied to managing finance and customers,” shared Peakon co-founder Dan Rogers in TechCrunch.

“To give a concrete example; in the same way that customer preferences vary wildly — some want cheaper prices, some want a cool brand, some want great customer service — employee preferences also vary wildly; some want career growth, some want status, some want interesting work, and some just want a pay rise.”

The post Peakon launches its analytics service and raises €4 million appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Peakon takes a step further from traditional serveys that evaluate work environment from the standpoint of employees and gives a more frequent data based on insights into employee engagement, which can be used to improve the company’s culture.

According to Kasper Hulthin, it is possible to measure customer satisfaction on daily basis. The same reasoning should be applied to company’s greatest assest – it’s employees. Instead of long yearly surveys, Peakon offers rapid automated tests, asking the right questions at the right time ensuring employee engagement. Based on decades of organisational research and a world-class application of statistics, Peakon then analyses the data and visualizes the key factors that drive engagement in the organization. Once the data is gathered and processed, managers receive actionable recommendations.

So far the new team has raised 1$ million in funding from a group of investors, among whom are Tommy Ahlers, who’s had a touch to Podio, co-founders of Zendesk Morten Primdahl and Alexander Aghassipour, co-founder of Adzuna, Doug Monro, and equity fund Sunstone Capital.

Peakon is currently in private beta, for which they have closed about 50 companies from Scandinavia, UK and US. The official launch is planned for later this year. So far Peakon has been targeting companies with up to 1,000 employees, or departments of larger companies. Their plan for the future includes integration from companies’ customer satisfaction data to understand the link between engaged employees and satisfied customers.

The post Peakon, a new startup by Danish entrepreneurs, is to be launched this fall appeared first on Øresund Startups.