Above is a spreadsheet from my investment newsletter club with all the investments that we have gotten to our attention during 2013.
Disclaimer: There are, most likely, many more investments that we do not know about (yet), and we will try to update the document when we get to know about more.

Some interesting stats from investments in the region 2013

Updated 2014-01-02: got more information from Hampus Jakobsson. If you have any further info we should add, let us know.

• Total sum of investments: 55 million euros (roughly, with qualified estimates in those cases where the sum is unknown)
• Total number of investments: 52
• Most number of investments: SEED Capital (7)
• Largest investments: Sol Voltaics and Vivino

As can be seen from the numbers, none of them is big single investment (such as last years € 45M investment in Zendesk). So this year it has been mostly seed, series A and series B investments in the region.

Other interesting things from 2013

A very noteworthy happening from 2013 was Unitys rumored ‘no thanks’ to a € 575 million deal. Very interesting for them and the whole startup and gaming scene in the region!

There where also some interesting crowdfunding projects, most notably the release of the game Forced which got a lot of attention for its story, but also gadgets such as Leikr and NSA defeating services such as Heml.is. Also two very high profile ones, that however are still ongoing – Airtame and No More Woof. These are not in the list (even though they are already 100% financed) because they will first close in the beginning of 2014.

Why a focus on investments and funding?

We look at investment and funding for a couple of reasons:

1. It is relatively easy to get the information.
2. A startup that receives investment is ‘validated’ – it is not just a cool idea, somebody believes in it enough to put money into it.
3. Especially the later stage investment rounds (series A and above) are crucial for a startup to make it big. Therefor we deem those as very important.

What do we think about bootstrapping?

Our focus on investments does not mean that we think bootstrapping is in any way wrong. Indeed, my own company, Contentor, is bootstrapped. However, bootstrapping is in my opinion something that is great, especially in the first 1-5 years, but after that to grow truly international and make a difference, funding is almost always needed. Not just for the money and the people that can be hired because of the investment. It’s just as much for the connections and knowledge that the right investors bring. Connections such as inside-people at Google, Facebook or other important collaborators for the startup. Or connections to goverment and politicians that are relevant. Or for further investments and a future IPO. Having people onboard who have experience from earlier in very helpful in those cases.
So I believe bootstrapping is great to get going, try the product and build the first million euros in revenue. But to take it to the next level, to reach € 10M or more in revenue, funding often makes the crucial differences and speeds up the process.

Because of this, we care about funding here at Øresund startups.

Reporting on other stats as well

We will aim to try to get more numbers out in the future. Both Sweden and Denmark have core company numbers available for companies public. We will see what kind of report we can build form that – such as matching the startups in region to their revenues!

The post Updated: The year of 2013 – investments in startups in the region appeared first on Øresund Startups.

It was held over lunch at CreativeLab, the creative event concept at the SHIP co-working space. Because we have a policy of livecasting whatever we do, you can watch the recording above (Our new Bambuser channel can be found here).

If you want to download the slides, I have made them available on slideshare but there are quite low resolution there, so can be found as pdf here as well.

I am probably describing some of the startups a little bit wrong (sorry for that), and I missed some things in the presentation (corrected in the downloadable versions). But I hope it creates some value for you as the viewer anyway.

Update 1: Some have asked why so many people are walking around and the background noice – the location where the presentation was held is the auditorium in the CreativeLab, called “trappan”, and is just that: the main stairs between the first and second floor. It is designed to be in the middle of the entire place, so that any presentations held there can have drop-in / drop-out flow. A somewhat special enviroment, but I love it, often with a lot of student from Lunds University sitting around in the open areas, and the business and entrepreneurs on the stairs themselves…

Update 2: I should of course list the top 50 startups mentioned as well! Here they are (in the order presented, i.e. in alphabetical order after category):

Series A + B

B2C

• Billetto
• Miinto
• Vivino
• WatAGame (GoSupermodel)
• Zmags

B2B

• Codesealers
• Falcon Social
• FlatFrog Laboratories
• iMotions
• Neo technology (Neo4J)
• Octoshape
• Opbeat
• Serstech
• SimpleSite (123hjemmeside)
• Tradeshift
• Trustpilot
• Unity
• Vopium

Seed level

B2C

• Bownty
• Click-A-Taxi
• Coolstuff
• Flattr
• Foap
• Tasspass
• Retevo (Roliga Prylar / Alphageek)

B2B

• Anyfi
• Atosho
• Conferize
• Crunchfish
• Deskwolf
• Dexplora (GetSalesDone and brisk.io)
• Firmafon
• GameAnalytics
• Graduateland
• InRiver
• Insurance Business Applications
• OneRecruit
• Sepior
• The Eye Tribe
• Wallmob
• Zaplox

Other prominent startups

• 23
• Echo.it
• Kvittar
• MovieStarPlanet
• Momondo
• Planeto
• Riidr
• Zendesk

The post Øresund Startups: Top50 and state of the region appeared first on Øresund Startups.

One of the things we want to focus on with Øresund Startups is tracking funding in startups in the region. The reason is simple: funding is an external validation that proves that somebody believes in a startup, and that it is not just a great idea, but also an idea that can be executed. We also believe that it is of interest for others seeking funding to know what funding deals have been made, and who possible investors are.

Therefor we have put together the data that we have been notified about the last 6 month, january – june 2013. We have done that in an simple spreadsheet, and listed a couple of data points:

• Date (approximatly)
• Invested amount (when disclosed)
• What startup
• Which investors
• Business sector of the startups (if B2B or B2C)
• What cluster in the region the startup belongs to

Some interesting investment highlights from the first 6 month of 2013:

Update: after publishing this we got some feedback with more investments we had missed. The numbers below are updated with the newest stats!

Of the investments we have registered:

• A total of 28 investments have been tracked. The total is not officially known, but our estimations and words from unofficial sources put the total to between 18-21 million euros.
• 14 of the 28 investments are Copenhagen based
• The biggest investment was in Crunchfish, but it was only slightly larger then others
• More or less equal B2B then B2C startups have received funding (14 B2B and 13 B2C and 1 that is both)
• SEED Capital was the most active investment fund
• SEED Capital was also the fund which has invested the most money in the period (according to released numbers)
• Half of the investments (14 of the 28) where from private investors, either a known angel / VC or a multitude of angels.
• Private investments also account for roughly half of the total value invested, around 8-10 million euros of the total 18-21 million euros (estimated in cases where not publicly known)

Note that the list above is only with data from 1 january – 30 june 2013. The recent big investments in Vivino as well as Opbeat are not part of it, they will be part of the next report.

As a bonus we also put together the numbers for our first month of operations, september – december 2012. However, as that is not a complete 6 month period we did not want to make a full report of that. The numbers can be found in the spreadsheet, in the second tab. These numbers may also be quite incomplete, as during that period we just started tracking startups and might have missed a lot.

Also – if you know about investments which we have missed, let us know! Either in an email or in the community group.

The stats are embeded at the top of the posts, but if you have trouble viewing them you can find them here as a Google Drive spreadsheet.

If you want to download the numbers as .csv you can find them here.

The post Updated! Report: investments in web and tech startups in the region – spring 2013 appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“Current solutions are impractical and expensive because of the size and handling. Our spectrometer can be used in many places and really revolutionize our customers’ decision-making”, explains Peter Höjerback, CEO of Serstech

The money will be used for mass production of its handheld spectrometer, which within seconds tells what kind of chemicals you touch. At the same time it gives the company the opportunity to build up its international network of system integrators and resellers. The company will soon be listed in a public IPO according to sources.

The post Serstech receives €1.4M in investments appeared first on Øresund Startups.