The report comes at a time when Denmark has seen a decline in public listings, with the last major IPO being Gubra in March 2023. Despite this, the analysis reveals that the potential for new listings is stronger than often assumed. The 54 candidates collectively represent nearly a third of the current Danish stock market, highlighting the untapped opportunities for growth and investment in the country.

Traditionally, Danish startups have followed a path of venture capital funding followed by a trade sale or private equity buyout, with IPOs often seen as a distant or even unrealistic goal. However, the FBV analysis suggests that this mindset may be shifting.

The report has however also had many commenting on the realism of it, and if all these companies truly are ready for an future IPO. But many agree that the debate is important and that the Danish IPO scene needs more success to become more important.

“It’s not just Pleo and Veo, where Jeppe Rindom and Henrik Theisbæk have publicly toyed with IPO ideas, but also Lunar, Flatpay, Podimo, Corti, Monta, Too Good To Go, and others are also potential candidates. In the U.S., no one would bat an eye, but here, the usual path is venture capital until a private equity firm or industrial buyer takes over from the founders,”

notes Jesper Højberg Christensen of Bootstrapping.dk.

Three Key Steps to Revitalize the Market

To unlock Denmark’s IPO potential, the FBV report outlines three critical steps. First, encouraging pension funds to invest more in Danish equities could boost liquidity and demand in the market. Second, improving incentives for retail investors, such as lowering capital gains tax or enhancing stock savings accounts, could stimulate greater participation. Finally, simplifying the listing process and reducing associated costs would make IPOs a more attractive and accessible option for companies.

The release of the report coincides with Biomar’s announcement of its expected IPO in the first half of 2026 and the upcoming FBV Stock Market Conference on May 19. This highlight the growing momentum and interest in revitalizing Denmark’s capital markets, ensuring that more homegrown companies can scale and thrive while remaining anchored in the country.

The post Denmark’s Hidden IPO Pipeline: 54 Companies, Including Pleo and Lunar, Could Go Public by 2030 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.

The event quickly became a success and has now become a global phenomenon. Today, the Nordic Startup Awards are a part of the Global Startup Awards (also founded in Denmark) and its winners compete with representatives from other regions of the world (over 60 countries).

“There aren’t really any connections between those who are dealing with tech. And this is true all over the world. There are a number of regions where it really makes sense to do some cross-country collaboration”, Kim continues.

The winners of this year’s Nordic Startup Awards have been announced in early December out of the total 3 000+ nominations, and will now compete on a global scale.

The winners from the Öresund region include:

• Best Newcomer: Good Monday – an easily scalable workplace management platform;
• Best Fintech Startup: Brickshare – a revolutionary online investment platform;
• Best Hardware Startup: SOUNDBOKS – innovative battery-driven speakers;
• Startup of the Year: Pleo – a payment card solution with features such as automated expense reports and company budgeting;
• Investor of the Year: byFounders – a collective of founders that support other founders in the Nordic and Baltic regions;
• Best Coworking Space: Mindpark – a creative coworking space that is available in Helsingborg, Lund and Malmö Hyllie.

Other winners are from Sweden are:

• Best Health Tech Startup: Nuvoair – an integrated platform that improves the lives of those suffering from respiratory problems and helps make faster medical decisions;
• Ecosystem Hero of the Year: Malin Frithiofsson – Head of Community Management at Chalmers Ventures.

From Norway:

• Best AI/Machine Learning Startup: Spacemaker AI – using AI to optimise the maximum potential of construction sites;
• Best Accelerator or Incubator Program: TheFactory – helps early stage entrepreneurs who have a business idea, early product or scalable concept.

From Finland:

• Best Creative Industry Startup: Grib3D – a user-friendly app that brings 3D designs into real life using augumented reality;
• Best Social Impact Startup: Intellectural Farms (iFarm) – an innovative technology for growing natural salads, berries and vegetables year-round in fully controlled automated environment.

From Iceland:

• Founder of the Year: Kari Thor Runarsson – one of Europe’s top tech innovators.

Congratulations to the winners and good luck in the next stage!

Source: Bootstrapping.

The post Quick look into 2019 Nordic Startup Award winners appeared first on Øresund Startups.

All of these are now competing in the big Nordic finale, more info can be found on: nordicstartupawards.com

Danish startup awards

In the Danish regional competition Copenhagen has taken home the most winners by far. Almost all of the Danish awards have been claimed by a startup or initiative based in Copenhagen.

The following are winners from Copenhagen or surrounding region.

• Pleo – Startup of the Year
• byFounders – Investor of the Year
• Pia Ella Elmegaard – Ecosystem Hero of the Year
• Tiimo – Best Social Impact Startup
• Good Monday – Best Newcomer
• Soundboks – Best Hardware Startup
• Brickshare – Best Fintech Startup
• Artland – Best Creative Industry Startup
• Talent Garden Rainmaking – Best Coworking Space
• Radiobotics – Best AI/Machine Learning Startup
• Accelerace – Best Accelerator or Incubator Program

Swedish Startup Awards

On the Swedish side the Skåne region has not been as strong winner as Copenhagen in Denmark. Unsurprisingly most awards in Sweden went to Stockholm based startups and initiatives. The only winner from Skåne that was amongst this years awards was.

• Mindpark – Best Coworking Space

Mindpark has recently expanded in the region, and has now three coworking and event spaces, in Malmö, Lund and Helsingborg.

The post The winners from the Nordic Startup Awards 2019 in Denmark and Sweden appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“We are thrilled to partner with Jeppe and the rest of the Pleo team on their mission to reshape business spending across all verticals and geographies, and to help fuel their ambitious growth journey,” added
Ken Fox, Founder and Partner of Stripes.

Founded in 2015 by Jeppe Rindom and Niccolo Perra, Pleo combines payment cards, that can be easily distributed to all company employees, with software and mobile apps to automatically match receipts and track all company spending in real-time with detailed analytics. The service is currently available in the UK, Denmark, Sweden and Germany, more han 3500 companies across all verticals and all sizes have chosen Pleo, with hundreds joining every month.

“By putting our primary focus on the employee experience from day one, we have been able to achieve outstanding growth, receive raving reviews and enjoy extremely strong customer satisfaction and loyalty.” says Jeppe Rindom, co-founder at Pleo.

The company is planning to rapidly expand its headcount from 120 to 400 employees by the end of next year, as it also aims to own the entire purchase experience within businesses, including adding credit, invoices, mobile payments, a vendor marketplace, VAT reclaim and much more.

“We are building a solution that is changing not just how companies spend money, but also how they operate and can enable the staff to be more efficient. Making work-related purchases has traditionally been a centralised and micro-managed process. We’ve built Pleo to allow modern leaders to empower and trust all the employees to buy stuff for work, whilst making it more transparent and safe,” says Jeppe

The round had the existing investors participating as well. Kinnevik, the Swedish investment giant that has been both in telecom and the biggest backer of Rocket Internet, including Zalando. Creandum, one of Swedens biggest tech VCs which have backed startups including Spotify, iZettle, and Vivino. And Founders, a Copenhagen based startups studio, backed by both Kirkbi (majority owner of Lego) and Oticon Foundation (majority owner of the hearing aid company William Demant).

The post Pleo Raises €50M Series B appeared first on Øresund Startups.

But as foreigners are of huge importance for building successful startups, there has been formed a new initiative by Jessie Scheepers, head of people at Pleo, together with Morten Elk at SimpleSite, Camilla Ley Valentin at Queue-it and Christina Pansbo at Wunderman. They have taken the initiave to start a slack channel to make it easier for foreigners to feel more included in Copenhagen.

“….nothing says inclusivity these days as much as a Slack community, right? Welcome to #copenhagen. Join us in a place to mingle, connect with like-minded people, and try to start more sharing, more reach outs, and more connections with everyone else out there.” says Jessie in an annoucement.

The goal is to create a digital space where people can ask questions, find information and support, when moving to Copenhagen or thinking about moving here.

“We in Denmark actually rank in the bottom 5 of the hardest places for foreigners to settle – along with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. That, in itself, is a bit unsettling. We think we can do better.”

Follow this link for the #copenhagen community slack.

Read more about Jessies announcement here.

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Tradeshift
The biggest recent one was of course Tradeshift. The first FinTech startup that has reached “unicorn” status, being valued at over $ 1 billion! Tradeshift is based in Copenhagen and it received over € 212 million from Goldman Sachs, as well as a number of other investors. You can read a lot more about that at TechCrunch and a host of other sources as well.

“We have always believed that the future of supply chains is 100 percent digital and that connecting trade is just the first step to a digitally connected economy. This investment will enable us to continue our rapid growth and consolidate our leadership position.”

– is one of co-founder Christian Lanng’s many comments on this. Impressive work building the company to this stage.

Ear Labs
Ear Labs, a Copenhagen / Malmö-based company that produces ear phones and ear plugs, has received over € 650.000. The Ear Labs’ team has created ear plugs that protect ears underwater. Now they are working on ear plugs that could be used in nightclubs and other noisy environments. The project was founded by Swedens Almi Invest and other investors in Denmark and China.

Ann-Sofie Hörlin, Investment Manager på Almi Invest, commented their recent investment:

“Ear Labs has developed a unique product with many uses in a scalable market. They work in a competitive area, but with their sharp team and a product in front edge, we see big potential for the company.”

Fieldly
Fieldly, has reported an investment of € 1.22 million. Fieldly provides digital project management systems for construction businesses. Their product makes communication between building companies and construction sites easier. Time reports, material usage and deliveries can be reported directly in the smartphone or tablet app. The biggest investment came from Roland Zeller, a Swiss business angel, as well as angels Christer Dahlén, Dan Nilsson and Mårten Öbrink.

Fieldly’s co-founder, Daniel Krusenstråhle, said:

“We have spent our first four years proving that we operate well with small and medium-sized companies. Now we have reached the point when we feel that our product is ready for bigger challenges and so is our organisation.”

With the investment the startup also announced they moved into bigger offices in Malmö.

Pleo
As we already reported, another fintech investment that happened in the region was Pleo, raising the biggest Series A investment so far in the region. The funding of € 13 million will be used to grow outside the startups initial focused cities, and bring it’s services and it’s special employee credit card to more markets.

Nikka Systems
A lesser known startup that recieved investments in May was Nikka Systems, a Malmö based statup focusing on education about IT security. The company received funds from Kjell & Company’s co-founder, Marcus Dahnelius.

“You can see that there is a big need for IT security in companies of all sizes. We are already getting request for our products, before they have been launched” says Marcus Dahnelius.

Tame
Another funding we have already covered, that was announced this month, was Tame. The event planning startup has been under the radar until now, but has a strong team and impressive angels backing it. The startup raised € 450.000 in it’s first round.

Undo
A Copenhagen-based startup Undo has received over € 3.3 million from Tryg. Undo has developed an app, which will let you get a custom-made insurance in just a few minutes. At the moment, their target audience is young people up to mid-30s, who do not know much about insurance whatsoever.

“To get an insurance is complicated and it takes a long time, and many are afraid of the process, because they cannot really understand what they buy and at the same time they get stuck with long binding time and huge cancellation fees. Almost all insurance services operate with a fixed package, but it can consist of many coverings you do not need, With us you choose only the necessary things, and you pay per month, no fees or binding time”, explains Sophie Bohr Grønbæk, co-founder of Undo.

Now Undo opens innovative insurance solutions for people in Copenhagen and Aarhus, planning to extend to other Scandinavian and European cities too.

Uizard
And finally, Uizard, a startup from Copenhagen raised € 670.000. The startup turns a wire-frame or mock-up into a source code, so the designer and developer workflow is improved and less time is spent on writing a code from scratch.

Read more over at these places: TechCrunch (about Tradeshift), Oresundstartup (about Pleo), TechCrunch (about Uizard) , TechSavvy, Breakit, Digital.

The post Latest investments in the region (May 2018) appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Pleo is a simple business spending solution. It combines a special payment cards for employees with software and mobile apps to automatically match receipts and track all company spending. The aim is to make buying things for work easier without expense reports, and to automate bookkeeping tasks as it integrates directly with accounting software providers.

Currently available only in the UK and Denmark, and the startup reports that around 1500 companies have switched to Pleo just in the last year, with reportedly 10 new joining each day.

“It’s quite amazing what we have achieved in just a year in only two countries, since our launch from beta. We’ve seen tremendous growth and great reception, due to our very focused and localised approach. Our NPS score is around 80, we receive incredible reviews and have negative churn, all very clear indicators that we are on the right path. We are now ready to expand our services across other European countries. The backing from Kinnevik, one of the most reputable European investment funds, will help us achieve our ambitious goals,” said Jeppe Rindom, who co-founded Pleo

Jeppe co-founded Pleo with Niccolo Perra, both early employees at another Danish startup success, Tradeshift. And the ambitions for Pleo are just as big – Pleo is now planning to rapidly expand it’s headcount in Denmark, UK and other countries around Europe. The aim to grow from todays 50 to more than 200 employees by the end of 2019, to help scale and accelerate product development:

“We are expanding our product offerings to fit more complex needs of bigger organisations by adding more customized workflows, different integrations and premium offerings very soon. Our objective is to be become a default solution to handle all company spending for businesses of different sizes and needs, on each of the new markets that we will enter,” added Jeppe.

Having Kinnevik, one of Swedens largest investors which has for a long time focused on telecom and the last decade e-commerce, with Rocket Internet, Zalando, and Global Fashion Group in it’s portfolio, being the lead investor in a fintech startup is not that usual.

“They have shown strong growth and outstanding customer loyalty in a very short period of time. We are very excited to support their long-term journey and look forward to supporting their launch in new markets to become the European industry leader,” said Andreas Bernstrom at Kinnevik.

Andreas Bernstrom is Investment Director at Kinnevik, and will bejoining the company’s board as well.

The post Fintech startup Pleo raises €13M Series A round appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Fully automated ‘end-to-end’ expense reporting

The partnership makes it possible that purchases made on Pleo cards will automatically be matched with an electronic receipt when used. With over 5 000 merchants in the Storebox network, this partnership will be the first fully automated ‘end-to-end’ expense reporting solution at a larger scale.

The idea is simple. Most companies still spend a lot of time and money chasing paper receipts, filling, approving and reviewing expense reports and doing tedious bookkeeping tasks. Pleo is working to reduce this time significantly. And with partnerships like these, the aim is to automate as much as possible, making company spending completely frictionless.

“We are excited to announce that we are now making this step even easier by partnering with Storebox, saying goodbye to paper receipts once and for all.” says Jeppe Rindom, who co-founder.

The startup was started by Jeppe Rindom and Niccolo Perra in 2015, both early employees at the Danish startup success, Tradeshift. Pleo has raised € 4.5 million investment so far, led by Creandum, Founders, Seedcamp and several angel investors. And it has big plans for the future.

“This partnership enables us to build a new generation of company spending. We are excited to see that Denmark is paving the way for the future of payment technology by enabling companies not to go only cashless and adopt mobile payments but also go paperless with Storebox and Pleo. The world will follow soon and we are talking with several new companies in the UK that are exploring the digital receipts space,” adds Jeppe.

Currently available only in Denmark and the United Kingdom, where it has more than 1 000 companies using Pleo. The company is planning to expand the service to other Nordic countries and European countries later this year.

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Pleo is a Danish fintech startup which gives companies an easy way to manage expenses. With a company card solution that automatically captures receipts and categorizes the employees spending. Pleo reduces the administrative complexity, eliminates expense reports and simplifies bookkeeping.

The company has earlier this year raised €5.5 mln,  was 2016 featured as one of the Nordics hottest fintech startups by Business Insider and was awarded best startup at Pioneer Festival 2016.

In the LinkedIn post, Jeppe Rindom introduces Klaus Nyengaard, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, Louise Samet, Alastair Mitchell and Kim Gulstad. All very experienced startup and tech investors, which now enters Pleo as investors and advisors.

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