The fund is, as the name suggest, focused on being backed by founders. This is an impressive list, with founders behind local successes like Zendesk, Unity, Tradeshift, Sitecore and Vivino being a part of it. But also founders from across the nordics, with successes such as Skype and Kahoot. And the idea is to leverage those founders as well for the startups that will be invested in:

“byFounders provides early-stage founders with unrivalled access to knowledge, expertise and insight from some of the most successful Nordic entrepreneurs. The support and operational guidance available from such a broad group is unique, and has the potential to play a major factor in the success of the next generation of startups from the region.” says Morten Primdahl, Co-Founder of Zendesk, about the process

The idea is to help out with what is needed for further growth. That can be scaling, introductions, referrals, recruiting, global expansion or raising further funding rounds. Portfolio startups are supposed to always find the advice they need in the 50-strong and growing ‘Collective’.

“byFounders Collective allows me to take part in shaping the founders of the future and highlighting the innovative and un-traditional companies that dare to think different and proves that the way to success doesn’t have to include a basement or a White Party.” says Frederikke Schmidt, founder of Roccamore

The fund will invest in a different range of startups. The strategy for investing has so far been a “7 T:s” approach: Team, TAM, Traction, Tech, Transformation, Timing, 10x.

However, raising a lot of money for investing in startups is not the easiest process.

“Having been through a challenging, exciting, at times gruelling and at the end very successful fundraising period, we can now proudly announce that we have managed to reach our goal of raising a € 100 million fund. For a first-time fund, this is exceptional.” Ida Åsle says about the process.

byFounders will be very important for our region, being a major VC player located here, that can compete with the other big Nordic funds such as Creandum and Northzone, based in Stockholm. An important player in the Greater Copenhagen eco-system for sure, but also strengthening the Nordics in total.

“It’s natural for every tech ecosystem to compare itself to Silicon Valley but the Nordics have established itself as a true birthplace for unicorns. The region can and will compete with any other place in the world when it comes to fostering and growing companies, and I believe the opportunity for large exits will only increase over time.” says Tommy Andersen who together with Eric Lagier started the fund.

byFounders has already invested in 11 startups: Corti, Peergrade, Simple Feast, Cobalt, Spiio, SafetyWing, Drugstars, Omnio, Qurasense, Tame, and Uizard.

You can read more about the process from byFounders directly, or at TechCrunch and Tech.eu as well.

The post A new VC is in town! appeared first on Øresund Startups.

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.

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