The role of the foundation is to advocate an increased focus on entrepreneurship in the Danish educational system. In addition to funding teaching that focuses on innovation, the foundation also develops and publishes its own educational material while advising on implementation.

The man to take Clausens place is Tommy Ahlers. Ahlers is well renowned for his own entrepreneurial ventures and his two successful exits with the companies ZYB and Podio. Ahlers stepped in as chairman last Thursday. He will now use his experience to get more young people into the field of entrepreneurship.

Around 15 pct. of Danish entrepreneurial businesses are currently started by young people under the age of 25. Through an increased focus on innovation in the Danish educational system, the Danish Foundation of Entrepreneurship seeks to raise the number in the following years. Today only a fifth of Danish pupils and students receive entrepreneurial education. According to the foundations press release, this is far from enough.

The post Tommy Ahlers Becomes Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship’s New Board Chairman 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.

A goal and more structure

The first half of the event was focused on giving the participants a chance to speak out and an update on the structure of the initiative.
It was presented that Jasenko Hadzic and Lærke Ullerup will form the operational team, with Jasenko being the official Managing Director. Jasenko is, as previsouly stated, known in the community, and Lærke has a past at TEDxCPH and has been involved in the #cphftw initiative since its initial phase.

Also, it’s goals of #cphftw were presented. These are:

• To make Denmark the most attractive startup hub in Europe
• To increase relations amongst community leaders and entrepreneurs in the ecosystem
• To to increase international exposure, benefiting the Denmark and the Danish economy

How to do it

But it is not just about what the goals are, even more important are how to do it. Here some concrete actions were announced:

Connecting the ecosystem

A couple of initiatives were presented about how to move things forward. Amongst other through dedicated meet ups for C-level employees at startups. People who often have a huge experience and can share information with others. But also with founders dinners and a mailing list for entrepreneurs.

Making the ecosystem visible

This mainly through an online platform, over at cphftw.dk, which should make it easy to get an overview of what happens, and also highlight interesting stories. Also, making the eco-system visible to media to a larger extend.

Connecting Copenhagen to the world

8 exclusive investors dinners with all major Nothern European VCs. Also, actively working with other hubs such as Stockholm, Helsinki and Berlin to drive learning across borders.

Also, all founding startups were announced as well, having pledged over 500 000 DKK to the initiative so far – it should be noted that at the event it was mentioned that the number was 400.000 DKK, but the sign-ups have been flying in ever since the evening.

It was also mentioned that the all startups have the chance of becoming founding members of #cphftw, were the goal is to get 80+ on board until end the week. If you want your startup to join in and forever be known as one of the founding members, reach out to Jasenko directly.

What is happening in Copenhagen

Besides those great news about the initiative itself, the second part was all about startups and events happening in Copenhagen.

It was set up as quick series of mini-presentations. A chance for all assembled to know about some impress startups or happenings. here were a lot of quick presentations and announcement. 6 startups were presented, as well as over 10 different initiatives from the community.

For outsiders, one of the most interesting parts were all the different initiatives that are going on.

Community initiatives and events

Here multiple places, initiatives and events were presented. All very interesting in their own, but too much to cover in depth. Amongst them were:

• Jacob Bøtter told the story about Prototype, and it’s strange mixture of co-working and coffeeshop
• Michael Tiberg talked about Foo Café, how he managed to host over 300 tech events last year in Malmö, and about opening a Foo Café in Copenhagen.
• CIID, the Copenhagen Institute of Interactive Design – Alie Rose, talked about bringing together people from all over the world to work on interaction and development projects. A great pool for talent.
• Lars Buch from StartupBootcamp came and brought a lot of energy – enforcing that we need to celebrate the people who are doing this.
• Lean Startup Circle was presented, and that they will host multiple events in the fall, using their 950+ strong meet-up group to bring great minds together, and above all focus on actual learnings and testing.
• Michael Reibel Boesen presented Elevate, which is kind of a job fair for getting students exposed to startups. A great initiative.
• Camilla Ley Valentin from Queue-it talked about her involvement with the danish goverment in the enklereregler.dk initiative – making regulations easier. She highlighted that everyone should send in their growth barriers before the October 3rd, and she would present them to the government.
• Henrik Føhns from Harddisken, the program from Danish Public Radio 1, was on stage and talked about his job of distributing the future more evenly – using one hour of public radio a week for interviews and the tech scene.
• Morten Elk from SimpleSite presented his initiative: Nordic Growth Hackers meet-ups. The events will focus in real learnings – 6 cases with growth hacking will be presented. The first meet-up is in october at Founders House.

Startup presentations

6 startups got 3 minutes each. The startups were from different levels – from really successful ones to smaller ones that recently have had successes.

Sitecore

“Before Sitecore I started multiple non-profits. Although I never intended them to be non-profit…”

Was one of the quotes from Lars Fløe Nielsen who presented his company. A company that might be the ‘biggest unknown startup’ in Copenhagen. Having had organic growth to over 800 employees and hundreds of millions in revenue, it surely is a very impressive company he has build.

Shipbeat

“A startup is about a team”

Was one of the widsoms Kenneth Svenningsen from Shipbeat shared. The logistics as a service startup has recently closed an impressive seed-round.

“I didn’t want to do this. But my past experience from Rocket Internet in Sydney and Miinto I realisted there was no good solution for this”

Kenneth said about his startup idea.

Crowdcurity

Jacob Hansen from Crowdcurity talked about how they are solving security problems for companies.

“We are Backed by 1000 of security researchers world wide. “

Apart from their journey so far with boost.vc and 500 startups, he also mentioned current progress:

“The bitcoin marked is currently one of our focus areas, we get a lot of interest from companies active there.”

Komfo

Michael talked about Komfo and how they are now competing against Adobe social, Meltwater and a lot of the same competitors as Lars from Sitecore mentioned previously. Komfo and Sitecore also have a long relationship already.

“We wanted an organic growth, and took Sitecore as a strategic investor instead of venture capital.”

Realm (former tightDB)

Brian Munkholm presented his startup. They are currently 16 employees, half of them in Silicon Valley.
Their service: a very fast database tool. He mentioned that they are proud that it was released one month ago, already 1700 stars on GitHub.

Conferize

Jesper Vestergaard introduced the startup, and their ambition to make conferences more digital and forming a community around them. They have just released their new product.

“We 12 people working at conferize right now. Looking for more”

Jesper he hinted. He also made a pledge: If you have a free event in Copenhagen you can use the Conferize without any costs.

Podio

The last one is not a startup anymore, since their exit to Citrix in 2012. However, Kasper Hulthin talked about their journey 2009-2012. But also talked about how they have worked to get Citrix to make the Podio office a hub for their development, and getting the company to make it’s presence in the region stronger. An effort that was applauded to!

The presentations were all quick, and gave a sense of some of the interesting startups in Copenhagen. They also showed a clear trend – it’s the b2b sector startups that this region rocks at building.

Conclusions

Apart from all this there were even more short presentations and speeches. It was, in total, a really packed event with a lot of information shared. After all the presentations the bar, staffed by employees from the startup 23, was open and a lot of new connections made. A lot of suggestions and ideas also spread thru twitter on the #cphftw hashtag, were already new plans for sharing more knowledge were taking shape.

The post #Cphftw Town Hall #3 – packed with people and announcements appeared first on Øresund Startups.

The entrepreneurs participating in Geist consist of nine respected and successful startups:

• Kasper Hulthin, Podio
• Mette Lykke, Endomondo
• Michael A. Hansen, Komfo
• Martin Falslev, Trendsales
• Ken Villum Klausen, Wallmob
• Søren Halskov Nissen, drivr
• Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler, AutoButler
• Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen, Userreport
• Christian Steffensen, Kirkeweb

Together they come up with 10 recommendations to the government officials to enable a growing success of the Danish National IT and tech startups, and the result is also indirectly an evaluation of public actions aimed at entrepreneurs.

The 10 recommendations are both harsh as well as open-minded. It contains some solid tips such as #1 “remove the brand”, which emphasises that public run initiatives are looked down upon in the community, and it might be better to ‘hide’ that they are government run, and put entrepreneurs in the front. Other advices are such as #5 “Join us!”, that the public officials need to be present at meet ups and co-working spaces, and should not expect entrepreneurs to come to them if they want help. They need to build a relationship with them.

It also contains some more controversial, such as #3 “spoil the elite”, which argues that by helping the ones with the largest ambitions thru special services will enable better business development, instead of treating a freelancer in the same way as a ‘born global’ startup.

You can find all 10 advices here.

Update: Due to popular demand we have translated the rules to English. They can be found here.

“Geist is public run, and there a lot of public projects launched, and Geist is a kind of evaluation of them. It is a good idea, it is thought-thru. Instead of putting officials in an office this gets a dialogue with entrepreneurs.” says Christian Steffensen from Kirkeweb to Trendsonline.

Trendsonline has a longer article with both Christian Steffensen and Søren Halskov Nissen and their thoughts.

The post Geist: Experienced entrepreneurs give 10 rules to the government appeared first on Øresund Startups.

The Startup Grind concept is simple: have an “on stage” interview with a successful entrepreneur. For this first time event the interviewee was Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, known from amongst other Podio.

He was interviewed by Michel Riebel Boesen, who got to ask a large variety of questions, about things that you usually don’t hear on a normal stage.

The whole interview was filmed, which is part of the concept, and will be available for viewing later on the international Startup Grind website. But in the meanwhile, some tidbits from the interview:

It all started with a focus on the young Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, who told many interesting stories, such as how he ended up being DJ at hockey matches, and running a pirate radio station in his youth.

“Running pirate radio was fun – until it was sanctioned by the principal and was about delivering a tape every week to his office. Then it become institutional, too boring, and we quit.”

The talk focused for a short while on why he was in Copenhagen, and not in Silicon Valley or Berlin, given his long past and achievments.

“Copenhagen is an amazing city to live in.”

Was one of the answers there, met by an applause.

On why Copenhagen is missing from the top 10 lists of startup cities when Stockholm and Helsinki are there?

“The nordics rock! We are afraid of the germans but actually produce more interesting stuff and are only 25 millions. We beat Germany and Britain. We just need to get together.”

One of the most interesting questions was about the .com bubble, and his experiences and lessons from that time. He told some truly amazing stories, but concluded at the end:

“We came in naked, we came out naked. We just fucked the internet for two to three years.”

Of course Podio was a subject as well, where he started out by saying that

“It was about five co-founders building something bigger then themselves. It would not have been if it where not for these five people, and if it had not been for the first 30 employees we had.”

“Our vision was to change the way people work, make it more transparent.”

He also dropped some general advices and lessons, such as:

“You cannot both play and execute. Either you are in one mode or another.”

We look forward to the next Startup Grind Copenhagen, and getting to know another entrepreneur in depth.

The post Startup Grind CPH with Thomas Madsen-Mygdal appeared first on Øresund Startups.

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:

• Velkommen til Tech BBQ 2013
• Tech BBQ – del 2: Startups
• Tech BBQ – del 3: Keynote og vækstvirksomheder
• Tech BBQ: En god eksponering
• Tech BBQ: Minister vil i dialog med de danske iværksættere

The post Tech BBQ – a great day for the startup scene appeared first on Øresund Startups.

From the region the following companies made it to the shortlist:

Best Social, Mobile or Apps Startup – here two of the nominated startups are from the region:

• Everplaces
• Qubulus

Best European Startup Accelerator/Incubator

• Startupbootcamp

Best Gaming or Social Games Startup

• Big Bite Games

Best Exit of 2012

• Podio (sold to Citrix)

And also in the “Best Nordic Startup” category two of the nominated are from this region:

• The Eye Tribe
• Foap

If you want to know what other nordic startups are nominated then Arctic Startup has a very nice lists, where you also can see other nominated. Otherwise the complete shortlist can be found here.

The post Everplace, Startupbootcamp and 5 other on the Europas shortlist appeared first on Øresund Startups.

These include:

• Best Student Startup: Drinkster
• Best Newcomer: The Eye Tribe & Applika
• Bootstrapper: Brugertest.nu
• International: Zendesk
• Funded: Click a Taxi
• Startup of the year: PODIO

The Grand Finals will be held at the Bremen Theater in Copenhagen on the 7th of december.

The post 7 øresund startups in the finalists for the Nordic Grand Final appeared first on Øresund Startups.

In the best newcomer category (operating less than 12 months) we find the Swedish startup Applika, the Danish Admazely and The Eye Tribe

The Danish Click a Taxi, Riidr, IconFinder and the Swedish Flattr are nominated as best funded startup. This group represents firms which have received professional funding from a VC or professional angel.

In the international category (must have started operations in the Nordics) we find Endomondo, Zendesk and Tradeshift, Zaplox and Kvittar.

Only one startup from our region is nominated as bootstrapper of the year Splitter (received no professional funding), and also the peoples choice award is only represented by Tunaspot, a firm which plays into new developments in the music industry by providing a location based music platform.

Most honorably, Podio and Miinto were nominated for the prestigious Startup of the Year award!

Founders House, Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship and The Copenhagen Nokia Bridge Incubator are nominated as the best service provider, well deserving the recognition for their help and services to the startup industry. YEoS is also nominated, an organisation for young entrepreneurs which has a strong presence on the Swedish side.

Join the final event on December 7th in Copenhagen to hear the winner announcement, network and to see that the Nordic scene is a leading centre for innovation.

Update 4 nov 10:28 – We missed some companies! Updated with the new information!

The post Finalists Nordic startup awards! appeared first on Øresund Startups.