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.

“We’re grateful for the fantastic start so far with thousands of assets being bought and sold between our users and publishers. We’ve been gathering feedback from our users and learned of a few things that we want to adjust and improve. We are currently working hard on exciting new features, adding new Featured Publishers and incorporating tons of new game ready animations.” the team announced.

One of the changes that will be made is how the subscription model works. But exactly how it all will be is not set yet, apparently:

“Until that update is ready, we have decided to do something that we hope will make all of our current users, and potential newcomers, very happy – granting everyone access the Motion Library subscrition-free.”

So check it out, if you are working on animations in any way.

The post Rokoko and Unity make motion library free appeared first on Øresund Startups.

An important milestone for the startup, which might give some interesting side effects:

“I feel that people in Denmark/Nordics/Europe are largely missing the point on Unity’s latest monster round. It’s not great that they raised $400M, it’s GREAT that around $200M of this was in secondary shares. This means that a lot of early employees and shareholders just became a whole lot more liquid. Hopefully we’ll see some of these people reinvest back into the ecosystem to help fuel the next generation”, says Neil Murray from the Nordic Web.

Read more at Bloomberg News and The New York Times.

The post Unity gets € 358 million investment appeared first on Øresund Startups.

David Helgason, founder of Unity, told an interested audience how the company was one of the first to fully benefit from the smartphone revolution, where you suddenly could access 2 billion consumers though an inexpensive and efficient channel.

Delivering a game engine used by a third of all mobile games publishers has made their software get onto more than 2 billion handsets.

A key factor in their success was the timing, but also that they moved to Silicon Valley and lived the “Silicon Valley Playbook” by going freemium at a time when that was not at all common.

Unity’s pricing model where they made it easier and cheaper to buy their software compared to the competition was also key to success.

Your business model determines your destiny!

Your business model is what makes you scalable, it’s the denominator of whether you are successful or not: If your business model is not good enough and you try to scale, you will fail. Lose money, implode.
If you have the right business model you can scale. Then it makes sense to fuel your growth with venture capital.
Listening to six founders who got it right was inspiring, when each of them took the stage at the Nordic Growth Hackers #7 on January 25th at Founders House in Copenhagen.

Siteimprove cracked onboarding

Waiting 12 years before taking in any external funding secured full control of the company, explained Siteimprove founder, Morten Ebbesen. And he stresses that full control is essential to early growth.
But some things cannot be controlled – and sometimes love overrules your business plan:
A Danish VP of Siteimprove fell in love with a Minneapolis resident. Now they have two kids and he’s managing 150 people – in Minneapolis. This proved to be less expensive than the two typically preferred cities for startups going to the US – San Francisco and New York .

SiteImprove has added more than 100 salespeople over the past year. The only way to do that is by onboarding in an extremely structured way. Hiring an external recruiter to take care of the full process of hiring and onboarding has proven very successful, reducing churn and improving sales performance.

Know your customers

Penneo’s greatest growth hack was to change from a free-signup-and-pay-per-use model to a prepaid subscription. That took the two year-old company from 0 to 10 million DKK in revenue.

If you’re planning to sell different kinds of soap products in the future, keep in mind that custom soap boxes are very creative and a great tool for marketing.

Along the same lines, Iconfinder found out that they had a wrong idea about how their customers paid for their service. Designers & developers rarely have a company credit card, so the model of paying separately per icon download really held their users back. Switching to a monthly subscription with (almost) unlimited downloads made their revenue skyrocket.

No more awkward board meetings looking at 0-growth. Or at least not that awkward, Martin LeBlanc Eigtved of Iconfinder added. The board didn’t allow him to rest on his laurels but asked for even more growth: True growth hacking mindset!

Tradeshift is about democratizing business. Kind of a bold vision, but constantly repeating this big, hairy, audacious goal was what propelled the six year-old company into many Fortune 500 companies and made it sensible for them to host their own events at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos.
Control your key revenue drivers

Tactile Entertainment is a game studio delivering very visually appealing mobile games, primarily in the categories “endless runner” and “casual puzzles”.

Asbjørn Søndergaard, Founder & CEO told that initially they left the marketing and monetization via in-app ads to a third party, but things never really took off. When they developed their own marketing platform instead and took back the whole process, revenue started to grow exponentially.
Lesson: Make sure you control your key revenue drivers.

NGH#8 in March or April

The next Nordic Growth Hackers will be in March or April, according to the organizers and initiators behind the Nordic Growth Hackers community, SimpleSite.

Follow the NGH community here: nordicgrowthhackers.com
Twitter: @nordicgrowth

The post Nordic Growth Hackers #7: Your business model is constantly evolving appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Besides that, the timing was very good as well – with Unity being the technology behind the tremendouslty popular Pokemon Go game, a lot of articles have focused on that as well.

(BTW – if you want see a cool demo of Unitys capabilities, watch this short film demo and be amazed!)

One unicorn, one big exit

But Unity is not the only gaming event this week. GameAnalytics, another startups developing tools in the game sector, has been acquired by Mobvista. The amount has not been made public, but it is rumoured to be atleast double digit million euros – a great exit, for the only 5 year old company! It has in that short time already achieved over 25 000 registered developers and more than 1 billion unique players tracked. Currently, the platform reports that it maintains over 350 million monthly active users and 22 000 active games.

A big deal

Both of these deals are huge, for this region. Just the aqcuisition by GameAnalytics is one of the biggest deals in a while. And both deals amplify the strength that there is already in gaming here. Besides the tech, there is a strong scene for gaming startups – and not just casual mobile games, just as well blockbusters (most recent, Tom Clancy’s The Division), and highly artistic games like Limbo, Monument Valley, and most recent hit, Inside.

The post A game-changing week for the region appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Having become one of the strongest technologies within mobile, Unity’s usage says a lot. The company reports that in the first quarter, there existed 219,693 games made with Unity including the best solitaire app around, generating 4,167,678,801 installs (4.2 B), reaching 1,655,093,544 unique devices (1.7 B). On average, this number of installs represents over 18 million new devices and over 45 million installs every day, according to Venture Beat.

Key highlights from the report

Strong first quarter: Unity has seen a 30% increase in mobile gaming in Q1 2016 compared with Q4 2015. One country in particular, China, represented 31% of the total installs of games made with Unity.

Android still ahead: Android retained its status as the global leader in Q1 2016 representing 81% of mobile game installs while iOS maintained 17%.

Leading Android platforms: Kitkat (4.4) and Lollipop (5.0 and 5.1) account for 73% of all Android game installs.

iOS shows more consolidation: 72% of installs are on devices running iOS 9.0 (released September 2015) or later, and 90% on devices running 8.0 (released at September 2014) or later.

You can download the report here.

The post Unity reports 4.2 billion installs, on 1.7 billion devices appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Realm was founded by Alexander Stigsen and Bjarne Christiansen, under the name of ThightDB. Alexander and Bjarne are childhood friends who were developers at Nokia in Copenhagen, where they worked on optimizing data storage for the plastic bar phones we all spent too much time playing snake on. They discovered that if you applied similar storage optimization techniques to modern smart phones, you could make data fit into much less memory, making data access much faster, and forever removing the need for users to ever see a loading spinner indicator. This core innovation is the foundation of their database technology, and it has helped Realm build a successful company serving the needs of mobile developers.

Speedy Mobile Database

Realm’s product is a database, similar to Oracle, MySQL or MongoDB, but it runs directly inside your phone, tablet or smartwatch. It uses a brand-new storage architecture, not SQLite, and an easier API designed for needs of modern mobile apps and smartphones. It is already used by tens of thousands of app makers around the world, including Groupon, Buzzfeed, Intuit, Rite Aid, Zynga, Coinbase, Expensify, Wahoo Fitness, as well as Fortune 500 corporations, banks, healthcare providers and many more.

“The legacy standard for mobile databases, SQLite, was designed over 15 years ago for use on board the US Navy’s guided missile destroyers. The phrase ‘platform shift’ does not begin to adequately capture the difference between that environment and a modern cell phone.” says Andy Vitus, Partner at Scale VP

Andy Vitus will join the board with the investment, as well as David Helgason, founder of Unity.

“Launching a successful mobile platform requires solving the hard problems developers really care about, in a really awesome package. I’m excited to join the board a great company that is doing for databases what Unity did for game engines: bringing them head-first into the mobile century.” says Davíd Helgason

Realm was part of the YCombinator Summer 2011 batch. The startup has raised € 26 M of funding to date and has grown to 21 employees. Even if headquartered in the U.S., Realm has also a presence in the Copenhagen startup community. It is amongst one of the founding startups for the cphftw foundation and has it’s office in Founders House. With David Helgason on the board the connection to Copenhagen is also strengthened further.

Plans for the future

Realm will use this round to continue supporting iOS & Android developers, who have switched to its database en masse since it was first publicly released in July of last year. The funding will also help Realm to add support for more mobile platforms.

“This investment helps us fulfill our goals of modernizing the way we handle data on mobile, and making life easier for millions of mobile app developers. Khosla Ventures has been great partners in this journey and we look forward to expanding our relationship with them and introducing Scale Venture Partners to the mix.” says Alexander Stigsen

Alexander says Realm also has plans to double its team size around the globe in 2015, and especially ramp up the sales of its enterprise products and services.

The post Realm raises € 18 M Series B from Khosla Ventures & Scale VP to bring Databases to Mobile appeared first on Øresund Startups.

1000+ people in Christiania

The setting was something uniquely Copenhagenesque – the venue was inside the free town of Christiania, in ‘Den Grå Hall’. Having to describe the way there with a message like this below shows the idea of pushing the concept – this was probably as far from boring corporate events as it is possible to get.

Cphftw townhall t- 140 minutes. The Grey Hall (head towards pusher street and turn left) #cphftw

A photo posted by @mygdal on Nov 11, 2014 at 6:41am PST

The iconic sitzkartongs where there, altho the atmosphere was much more like a concert – with most people standing up. Which might have to do with it being the sitzkartongs fourth even – they might not be that stable anymore…

High action, high quality

This Town Hall felt a lot more condensed and intense then previous ones. On stage there where some of the highest achievers from the Copenhagen startup scene, giving insights and their view on what it is like to run a startup. The line-up included Thorvald Stigsen from Momondo, David Helgason from Unity, Peter Michael Oxholm Zigler from Autobutler, Theis Søndergaard from Vivino – and a many more.

The keynotes where Thorvald from Momondo and David from Unity, opening and closing the evening. Throvald focused on the startup journey and the harch reality that most fail, and why. David gave a lot of insights into how they build Unity as a company, and challenges along the way.

“During the transition phase, get some stamina, find your voice and build your audience.”

– was one of Thorvald’s advices.

“One wonderful thing of raising money: it lets you lift your eyes to the horizon.”

– was one of David’s insights.

In between the keynotes there where a lot of announcements, highlights from startups and their successes, and community events. This included short presentations by the Danish Crowdfunding Association, the Copenhagen Cocoa meet-ups, TechBBQs plans and also MINC from Malmö about their incubator. On the startup sector Planetos Morten Grauballe was talking about their success and new plans, as well as 23s new office and housewarming – The 23 House.

Wine and news from Vivino

As previously with the Town Hall meet-ups, one of the startups helps out with the bar. This time it was Vivinos staff who manned the bars, handling out not just beers, but of course also lots of wine.

Vivino also announced major news on stage – their new service to scan not just bottles of wine, but now also to scan complete wine lists at restaurants!

Good talks and sharing knowledge

One of the key highlights for many was not just the keynotes, but also the mingling session – which was divided into different roles where everyone could choose what fitted them the best. Represented by a key player in the region taking the lead in each group, the sessions included: Angel, CTO, COO, CMO, VC as well as many more. These small group sessions brought a lot of value as well introducing different people to each other. A great detail, and much better then normal mingling!

“It feels great that to see that #cphftw is helping to bring the startup scene together, and to see experienced serial entrepreneur give advice to those involved their first startup. Just as it makes me happy to see employees from startups connect more with like-minded people, talking about anything from marketing, tech to operation challenges.”

– was Jasenko Hadzic’s, main organiser, comment on it all.

A lot going on

Overall a great evening, that I think gave everyone a great feeling of the energy in the scene. If you missed it, then you can experience parts of it: 23 was there as well, filming and broadcasting it all. You can also see more of what happened over at Conferize event page.

We are already looking forward to the next Town Hall!

The post #cphftw Town Hall 4 – A Great Event! appeared first on Øresund Startups.

Special guest is Oscar Raby from Melbourne, Australia, who recently released the immersive documentary “Assent” for the Oculus Rift. The focus will be on exploring both the storytelling concept as well as the technical possibilites, using Unity’s 3D engine.

“The focus is to work on how one can use virtual reality in storytelling to deepen the experience for the audience. The sessions finalise with the participants making a short narrative piece produced in teams for the Oculus Rift platform.” says Annika Gustafson, executive director at BoostHBG

BoostHBG has a history of supporting movies and documentaries, including The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard from Simon Klose, and Äta Sova Dö. The institute has during the recent year done smaller workshops for the Oculus Rift, but this weeks event shows it’s commitment to the platform, and about enabling creators to meet others and share knowledge.

The workshop – creating a story

Participants of the workshop will be asked to arrive with the seed of a story based on true events. They will be used as starting points and a context where they will find focus onto one particular detail of the story. Most likely this detail will have to do with witnessing, being present, being in someone’s shoes, being somewhere else, moments that concentrate a story through the simulated presence of the user.

With attention to each participant’s background, teams of up to four people will be assembled. Teams will include:

• A creative coder / programmer, literate in the expressive uses of the Unity technology.
• A visual / performance / theatre / dance or similar artist that manages and plays with objects and bodies in display.
• A film / documentary maker / writer / screenwriter, role that understands the scripting and timing of a story.

This team will pick one of the stories from their own collection.

The sessions are for transmedia creators and producers, as well as filmmakers, game designers, creative coders, writers, visual and sound artists, performance and spoken-word artists, as well as scholars and researchers interested in the expressive capacity of virtual reality.

You can find out more here.

The post Unity + Oculus = the future of storytelling? appeared first on Øresund Startups.

“We keep our eyes out for the best talent and help wherever we feel we can use it at every level. That’s why today, I’m pleased to welcome John Riccitiello onto the Unity team as our new CEO. Sure, that sounds odd, as it also means I’m stepping down from the role, but this is an amazing win for Unity and the community. He’s the right person to help guide the company to the mission that we set out for ourselves over a decade ago: democratize game development!”

David announced in a blogpost.

John has a past as both COO and later CEO at EA, one of the behemoths in the games industry. He is also one of the investors in Oculus, and in general one of the top names in the field. Having him as CEO will bring in a lot of further experience to Unity, and shows just how serious a player in the gaming sector they have become.

David says that Unity’s vision is shared by John, and that no big changes are expected in the company. Rather, this is talked about as a step to ensure further growth and create a more global company. About his own plans now, David writes:

“It means I get to get back to doing what I love the most about working at Unity: strategy, and connecting with developers. I will be heavily involved with the company’s direction, and will focus my efforts on finding the best ways to serve all of you amazing developers, all while working with some insanely talented people here at Unity.”

Read more about what others are thinking: Polygon, Venturebeat, Eurogamer.

The post New leadership at Unity – former EA CEO Riccitiello takes the lead appeared first on Øresund Startups.