“For us, it is a quite important deal, not just because of the amount, but also because the competence of our company that attracted them“, says Daniel Melkersson, co-founder of PinMeTo.

The company helps other companies to have the right location data in place at grand platforms online. The half of totally SEK 5M has been funded by H&M Co Labs, a subsidiary of H&M.

“Our idea is to go side by side with H&M and to learn how they are working, so that we can optimize dealing with such a big company”, Daniel Melkersson added.

The rest of the amount shall be funded by other private investors. Among the company incubators of similar category is Minc with its executive manager Mårten Öbrink, who embarked a position as technical manager at Orbital Systems.

Another investor in PinMeTo is Anders Berglund, the previous co-founder of the software developer Algotrim, which was sold to Apple four years ago.

Source: 8till5 

Photo: Kajsa-Stina Kalin (8till5)

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“A big part (of the investment) will also go to marketing and product development to broaden our offer,” says Daniel Melkersson, CEO and co-founder of PinMeTo to 8till5.

PinMeTo is a tool that allows businesses, retailers and franchises to have up-to-date and consistent data across all social media platforms, such as Google and Facebook. In other words, it lets them be on the digital map for their customers. Since they released their service in late 2015, the Malmö-based company has continued to grow their customer base, which stands today at 32 companies and 4 500 stores all over the world.

“This year, the goal is to get over 100 customers and 16 000 stores” says Daniel Melkersson.

With the planned investment round, PinMeTo also aims increase their number of employees, which had already tripled in the last year, and grow globally. They established an office in Stockholm during the year and this investment round is intended to set up another office in London, according to Melkersson.

This investment would add up to the 8.5 million SEK (€ 0.9M) in external capital that they previously raised through entrepreneur Lars Wingefors and D-ax. In 2016, PinMeTo expects their sales to reach over € 0.8M.

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“Our ambition is to be one of the top players in our industry,” – says Daniel Melkersson, CEO and co-founder Pinmeto to 8till5.

Pinmeto was founded in 2013 by Daniel Melkersson, Petter Palander, Michael Nilsson och Marcus Olsson. The platform helps chain and franchise businesses to create local digital presence, if you will like to start a new franchise where you live we recommend to check imageonefranchise.com/the-investment and then look for our help. The aim is to better reach customers and achieve better results with their digital marketing on social platforms and search.

Among Pinmeto’s current clients are Q8, Barista and K-rauta with about 2 new companies joining the platform every week. And one of the biggest clients who has contributed to Pinmeto’s expanssion and growth is Fitness24seven. During the collaboration over the past 8 months Fitness24seven has really strengthen its online presence and increased its social media follower count.

Among other things Pinmeto is also planning to take in 20 million SEK (about 2 million euro) this year, a part of which has already been taken up in convertibles from existing owners in December.

“It’s about being able to grow faster. Most of our competitors are in the US so there is a window to fill, but we must accelerate right now,” – says Daniel Melkersson.

In May Pinmeto is moving into its own office at Panoras’ old premises at St Getrudsgatan in Malmo with ambition to recruit about 10 more people during the year.

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PinMeTo is an online service that helps chain businesses gain control over their brands presence on social media. The startup has recently seen a big growth in the team and the goal for the platform has been set higher. PinMeTo now aspires to become the number one location marketing platform for chain businesses.

“PinMeTo is focused on online marketing at a local level. We build audiences around physical locations and in that way, the relationship is far more intimate and engaging than hearing from some far off HQ. Our clients are seeing huge increases in activity at the local level as their customers build stronger relationships with single locations while simultaneously acting as brand ambassadors. But this is just the beginning. Our aim is to build tools to allow for even better engagement, better local marketing, and in the end, more customers walking through our client’s doors.” says Andre Tiwari, COO, PinMeTo

NEW SPACE AND TECH

PinMeTo has recently opened a new office in Stockholm, which means that they now have two locations in Sweden. This expansion is due to the growth that the team has seen recently. The new office in Stockholm might only be the beginning of PinMeTo’s expansion and the startup states that there might be more office news in the future.

Aside from the new office, the preview also points towards new tech in the future. PinMeTo has recently gained access to Google’s API. The company is therefore now able to interact with Google My Business via their own platform. This poses new possibilities for the startup and PinMeTo states that this might lead to new tech from the startup.

With the growth in both office space and the team, PinMeTo’s outlook on 2016 is a positive one. The goals of the company have broadened and PinMeTo will continue to report on their progress.

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”Much of the information on Google and Facebook are generated through users, which means that sometimes addresses and opening hours are not right. Therefor there will be problems with customers who don’t find the right location” CEO and Co-founder Daniel Melkersson explains.

Investment by D-Ax

Now, the investment company D-Ax, with Axel Johnsson Group at the helm, has invested in the Malmö-based PinMeTo. The investment is at a multimillion-dollar range, but a closer sum has not been announced. D-Ax will also take place in the board of directors. The serial entrepreneur Niklas Eklund will take over as chairman of the board.

 ”D-Ax becomes operationally involved in the company, which was part of the deal. They have the experience to run international Internet companies, which we don’t. They know how PinMeTo can become a major global company” says Daniel Melkersson.

D-Ax has created great international successes such as match.com and Bookatable. The investment company consists in addition of Axel Johnson Group also Niklas Eklund, Johan Siwers and Christopher Persson.

So far, PinMeTo has focused on developing the underlying software in the product, but with this investment, the company can now focus on making the program more user-friendly and grow it’s user base. Now the work begins with a frontend solution; the first features will be released in a few weeks and the full release is expected in the summer.

Currently, PinMeTo sells its services directly to the businesses and organisations. In the future, the company aims selling to intermediaries, such as web- and PR-agencies.

”As soon as we are done with the frontend, this will be a software that anyone can use. We will focus those working with marketing for retailers to see it’s uses.” Daniel Melkersson says.

The investment by D-Ax is the second investment PinMeTo has raised since the launch in 2013. The first round was last year, when venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Lars Wingefors invested € 160,000 in the startup. This autumn, PinMeTo expects to expand the business by hiring additional staff for sales and marketing. Later on, CEO Daniel Melkersson says that more developers, service- and supportfunctions will be needed.
PinMeTo is indeed heading for an exciting future!

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PinMeTo has so far been bootstrapped, having had a clear revenue stream since the start. The investment will give besides money some interesting connections: Lars Wingefors has previously started or acquired a large number of other companies, both tech as well as traditional business. This is however his first investment in a Malmö-based startup.

“We are looking at other companies in the region as well, but we have no further plans in the upcoming weeks.” said Lars to Sydsvenskan

PinMeTo was recently representing Sweden at the Nordic Startup Conferences Battle of the Vikings, where CEO Daniel Melkersson presented the startup on stage.

Currently the service is mostly collecting and presenting data, but that will soon change:

“We are currently working with web-services and presenting their data in a good way. The next phase will be to add an analytical layer, making it possible to see how visitors interact with places as well as comparing different locations.” said Daniel.

With costumers being both regional organisations as well big brands in the retail or service industry, the outlook for PinMeTo is good.

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The conference, held for the first time, had set the ambition high – to gather leading investors and entrepreneurs in the Nordics, and have a day full with talks, panel discussions and, of course, pitches.

The high ambition were achieved. Keynotes included venture capitalist Max Niederhofer (DE/DK) from Sunstone Capital and serial entrepreneurs Carl Silbersky (SE). Besides that the panels and talks where filled with entrepreneurs from every Nordic country.

Highlights

Max Niederhofers opening keynote called for further confidence in the Nordic startup scene.

“Everything is amazing and nobody is happy”

– was one of Max statements, referring to his opinion that the Nordics are producing world class startups, but are still complaining that everything is missing. Something he argued is not the case – it is not capital, or entrepreneurs, or good ideas, or anything in particular that is truly missing. We are already doing it.

Besides the 3 main keynotes there where 6 panels, that went thru a wide variety of subjects – everything from venture capital in the Nordics, a panel on startups from the Nordics that are changing the world, and talks about failures and bankruptcies.

Pitches – battle of the Vikings

At the pitching contest there was a nice twist – every Nordic country was represented by one startup. The startups where chosen by one accelerator in each country, those being: Startup Sauna (FI), Startuplab (NO), Startup Reykjavik (IS), MINC (SE) and Accelerace (DK). This was an interesting way to choose startups for the pitches, and made for an interesting setting.

The startups where:

• Ambronite (FI) – Nutritional snack that aim to revolutionise food.
• Kahoot! (NO) – Enabling better tools for classrooms and making learning fun.
• GolfPro Assistent (IS) – E-learning for golf professionals.
• PinMeTo (SE) – Making data of every location in the world accessible.
• Templafy (DK) – Managing templates for large corporates on all devices.

All of these, except Ambronite, where B2B startups, which made for rather interesting pitches – because the market opportunity often might not be that clear for outsiders, but are often huge. Also, many of startups where run by serial entrepreneurs or experienced entrepreneurs – making the business models solid and the ambitions high in each of them. A great lineup, that also highlighted the huge variety in the Nordic startup scene – not just geographically, but also in fields of business.

Winner of the battles of the Vikings was, after a long and hard deliberation by the judges, Templafy – who had an extremely interesting pitch and business case, and could already prove impressive traction, matched by equal big ambitions. Their aim, to define a standard in a whole business section, is something they are already on track to do. We will definitely here more from them in the future!

Personal thoughts

Our opinion is not completely un-biased. We at Øresund Startups were a media partner (althou we have no financial ties to the conference), and I myself was involved as the moderator the Battle of the Vikings pitching contest. However, my expectations of the conference where met and exceeded. They managed to gather a lot of important people in one venue.
Also refreshing – that there actually weren’t keynotes by US or other foreign entrepreneurs, something a lot of conferences often seem to believe is a must. Instead, the wide variety and expertise from the Nordics got a chance to shine. A good move, and something that I think will help boost the confidence in the entire region.

We look forward to next years event. You can read up what others thought over at Trendsonline as well.

Want to know what more larger conference are held in the Øresund region this spring – check out the summary we made.

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This springs event will be a little special. David Klein, organizer of the conference, wants to open it up further for startups and high growth companies. Already at the last event some startups where invited, but now he wants to make it a more integrated part in the event. Therefor a special startups section has been announced, and 30 startups will be selected to have a monter on the conference. There will be special competition for the startups as well, with the winners being presented on the stage.

This is interesting for new startups or startups focusing on B2B costumers, as the participants in the audience will be mostly businessmen at small and medium companies. Here at Øresund Startups we have 5 special price tickets to the conference for startups, if interested send us an email.

The conference includes a large number of speakers, from all things digital:

• Micke Krona (Malmö högskola)
• Jennie Hahn Von Dorsche (Telenor)
• Anders Mildner (Anagram)
• Kristina Fredlund (Awapatent)
• Anders Printz (SVT)
• Daniel Melkersson & Petter Palander (PinMeTo)
• Jackie Kothbauer (Mediababe)
• Tereza Franzén (Matter)
• Charlotte Henriksson (Matter)
• Ulrika Mebius (Skånetrafiken)
• Sara Clifton & Per Pettersson (Search Integration)
• Teddy Landén (Moderator – Constrictor vision)

Topics will be everything from trends, online-services, design, social networking and online-marketing.

Read more here or register over at the eventsite.

When: 25th of march 2014
Where: Palladium, Malmö

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The hackathon, with it’s music focus, was an interesting twist and created some great ideas. The team got big names from the music + tech scene together, and both Spotify, SoundCloud, Neo4j and Sony Mobile participated – as well as Deezer from France and EchoNest all the way from the US.

“We are very happy to be able to put the Øresund’s tech and music scenes on the international map, with many major music and tech companies coming here for the weekend. The vision is to evolve this into a proper music conference during the next few years. Hopefully together with the local startups and the regional innovation organisations.” said an exhausted but happy Alex afterwards.

Crazy & playful hacks

In total 18 teams build hacks. Some where useful – such as webbased party playlists, some very creative, such as music visualisation with LEDs. And some just obscure – such as “dogstep”, which lets you turn music into dog barks….

The main prize winner was the Livecloud hack. A tool for live coding soundcloud app. The team had the best presentation, including live hacking (can be seen in the top video at 11:30). However, all the participants created very creative and interesting services.

You can watch the price ceremony here:

The pitches

All the demos can be found here.

If you want to see all the presentations, the live braodcasting can be seen here:

In this section LiveClouds presentation is at 11:30

Big thanks to Petter Palander from PinMeTo for livestreaming the pitches and making it possible to embed them here.

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The idea of widget appeared at the Meet’n’Hack event back in June. Daniel Melkersson, CEO of PinMeTo, explains:

“Many tourist organizations often have a lot of data from social media, but they do not know what to do with all the information. So we began to explore how we could help them. On the other side, travelers often want to know where “the locals” hang out to avoid all the tourist traps. And by using our service you can see where your friends have been to.”

One of the ways how the widget works is showing places that have the most check-ins on Facebook for instance.

“By combining website information with an opportunity to see where people are moving and what they visit to get the best of both worlds. We are building a new layer that gives life to the sites,” says Daniel Melkersson.

Product development took place in business incubator MINC. PinMeTo’s first client is Region Skåne but there is much more to anticipate in the future. The company has been commissioned by the Tourism Authority of Thailand and in late October PinMeTo is invited to Web Summit in Dublin to pitch their ideas.

Right now PinMeTo is working on redesigning the widget and integrating such services as Foursquare and Instagram. Daniel Melkersson believes that the service has a perfect timing and potential to quickly scale up internationally:

“We are probably very far because we have not seen anyone else doing it. We see that similar solutions are exploding around around us but none does it with our type of business model and mindset. We build solutions for those who already have a comprehensive list of information.”

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