In a post earlier this week, it was announced that they will be closing the service. They will also wipe-out all data to protect users privacy.

“Tunaspot was the best thing I have done. I think I speak for the whole team that we have learned a lot, and become a totally different set of people.”

– said Alex Esser, co-founder and CEO. Their service, enabling users to find playlists or songs depending on location, got some great initial traction. The startup landed an early investment of€ 200.000 in 2013, and have won multiple awards, amongst them the Danish Music Innovation award, and was also selected as one of the firsts Spotify app of the week, which yielded them many users.

“We have gotten a very good insight into the digital music business. It is certainly possible to be profitable but you have to reach large volumes. Our 100.000 users felt very good but you need users in the millions for it to really work.”

Reaching a big enough audience is important.

“For Tunaspot to be interesting for companies such as Spotify or Deezer, we would have had to find agreements with all the worlds Starbucks, H&M and McDonalds together. Only with a base like that we would have been able to get any sensible margins from record labels revenues.”

“Be the plattform, not the app on top of the plattform.”

Alex commented that it has been exciting and insightsful, and he sees that Tunaspot could not have grown much more under their conditions.

The team will now split up. Alex himself has since a couple of weeks been working as Country Manager for French music startup Deezer.

“It has been very rewarding and a real journey to establish a startup in the music industry. They say over 400 new music startups are started in Europe every year, with the success rate of 1/400…”

Alex and the team have always been working in a professional, sharing and witty way, so their departure will be missed. However, we think that this will probably not the last we see from them.

Read the official statement here:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Big Fish is moving on to deeper waters! It has been a beautiful ride these last years going from a simple idea to a full-fledged service. We have gotten to know awesome people along the way, we have developed fun technology and sure enough we have discovered some great new music. With that its time to say “goodbye and thanks for all the fish”!

Tuna out…”

The post Tunaspot closing down appeared first on Øresund Startups.

The startups that successfully finished in this batch where:

• Tunaspot – Tunaspot is a music application that enables the sharing and discovering new music linked to different physical locations. Tunaspot has established partnerships with Spotify, Soundcloud, Foursquare and Deezer.
• Stiff – Stiff wants to reintroduce plastic as a versatile, luxurious and qualitative material. Stiff makes innovative plastic products and accessories. Every year we are launching a new plastic product that highlights the material’s understated beauty and recyclable opportunities.
• Orbital Systems – Orbital Systems has developed a revolutionary water recycling technology that allows large water and electricity savings. The first product is a shower that recycles water in real time and has attracted worldwide attention.
• Mailendar – Mailendar offers an intuitive and easy to use collection services for organizing mail, calendars, to-do lists and business in one place. For both individuals and businesses.
• MIND-IT – MIND-IT offers psychological treatment through the internet and apps with the same results as in traditional treatment.
• Think Train – Think Train has developed an open platform that emphasizes sustainable travel options from various providers. We want to create opportunities for cleaner air, healthier life and better streets.
• Emerging Cooking Solution – Emerging Cooking Solutions is a social enterprise with the goal of saving lives, climate change and Africa’s forests. A simple and profitable model based on a combination of clean burning stoves and locally made pellets.
• SIC Designer – SIC Designer is an interactive meeting place for everyone who loves clothes, fashion, textiles and creativity. SIC Designer develops practical online courses in sewing, fashion illustration and design.
• Shore – Shore has developed an app that helps landlubbers and sjöbusar to socially navigate the seven seas.

For further details, see Mincs information.

The post MINC incubator batch of spring 2014 appeared first on Øresund Startups.

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.

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.

The post Music Hack Weekend highlights and pitches appeared first on Øresund Startups.

For musicians, developers, artists, designers, composers, hardware tinkerers, and anyone else interested (in participating or observing), in projects exploring music.

There’s also a grand prize on offer – 5000 sek!

More info and sign up. There’s space for 130 hackers, so register now.

When: Friday 1 November 18:00 to Sunday 3 November 14:00

Where: Minc, Anckargripsgatan 3, 211 19 Malmö

The event is co-hosted by Tunaspot, and looks to be a very different weekend hackathon!

The post Malmö Music Hack Weekend 1-3 November @ Minc 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.

The two angels investors from Germany remain anonymous, but Sydsvenskan mentions that they are IT-entrepreneurs with strong ties in the electronic music scene in Berlin. Recently the value of the company got an estimation of 2M Euro. Today five people work at Tunaspot, and the company has plans to recruit a developer. The investment also means that Tunaspot will open an office in Berlin.

“We will have our office in the Betahaus, which is a bit like Media Evolution City in Malmö. Two people will be in the place all the time. However, Berlin is becoming more and more a European Silicon Valley. We found our investors there, and we think that we’ll find interesting partners there. We will continue to be a Malmö-based startup, but we also want to have a place in Berlin” Says Erik Stenberg (source: Sydsvenskan)

The post Tunaspot receives 200.000 Euro from German investors appeared first on Øresund Startups.

”To tell you the truth, I was happy just that we made the final, there were a lot of other good contributions in the competition. I might have made a funny noice of surprise when they announced Tunaspot as the winner. We take it as proof that we are on the right track and that we will conquer the world with our soon to be released mobile app.” – Says Erik Stenberg, co-founder at Tunaspot.

“In a sense this is an Öresund prize, even though the prize cermony was in Aarhus. I mean that we are a Swedish startup from Malmö that wins a Danish prize. Most of the music industry in Scandinavia is located in the capitals, but at the same time, most of the international companies have the same branch for Scandinavia. It makes much more sense for us to talk to the Danish office a lot of the time.”

Tunaspot is a music discovery platform, specializing in location based music – filtering music by location. This way they want to enable users to discover music that works best for a particular location or activity. Since they’re launch in December 2012 they have gotten a good amount of attention.

“Beside the honour of being Denmarks most innovative music startup 2013, we won 50.000 DKK. We have not had the time to talk about what to do with the money. Maybe through a release party for our mobile app. But then again, there are always holes to put money in, it is the life of a startup.” – Erik continues

The other finalists were Audiomatter and Music Geek.

Audiomatter is working with interactive music publications. There are trying to find a format for artists to publish their work which allows me as a consumer to not only consume the music passively, but actually to cocreate with the artist.

Music Geek is a new type of music quiz that you can play with your friends.

Read more here (in Danish only)

The post Tunaspot won the Danish Music Innovation Award 2013 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.

The team behind Tunaspot is looking strong – with experience from different start-ups as well as experience from the music industry. Alex Esser, co-founder and “Captain”, is also well-known for his involvement in WMWL (We Manage With Love).

Read more about Tunaspots product here, or connect it with Spotify and try it out!

The post Tunaspot already spotify app of the week appeared first on Øresund Startups.