Wish There Was A 99designs For Tattoos? Check out Tattoodo
The internet has done an awesome job of allowing us to share pictures of bad tattoos, but it hasn't necessarily helped people get better tattoos. At least these days it's easier to shop around online to find what style and quality local artists have, but it's still tough to ensure you get the exact design you have in mind before you go to a tattoo shop. That's all changing with the launch of a new Copenhagen-based startup, called Tattoodo, that is doing for the tattoo industry what 99designs did for graphic design.
Influads Aims To Disrupt Online Ads Industry By Creating A "Free Ad Network"
Let’s talk about online ads for a second. They are absolutely everywhere but most visitors don’t click on them because they are annoying, irrelevant and intrusive. While most publishers without millions of visitors get no more than a couple of bucks for perhaps a coffee. Overall, the only real winners are the companies in between, dealing the traffic and getting most of the advertisement revenue.
Influads, a Copenhagen based company is aiming to change all that by creating the worlds first completely free ad network. They have launched in 2011, got pre-seed funding from Kima Ventures and built a profitable company with over 700 publishers worldwide.
Copenhagen's Startups Now Mapped. Is There One For Your City?
In this week's Copenhagen StartupDigest, Nick Hawtin writes that a couple guys from Podio put together a website plotting Copenhagen's startups on a map. CPHstartups has a pretty cool take on the mapping concept, breaking down startups by coworking spaces, who is bootstrapping, who is funded, and (because the Podio guys put it together) who has exited.
Below is a dumb screenshot for a quick peek, but run over to cphstartups.com to dig into it yourself.
CanvasDropr Team Releases Presentation.io For Audience-Synced Presentations
Have you ever considered it strange that despite the fact that most of us have a screen in their pocket, it's still sometimes hard to see the slides on the screen during presentations? I never put the two together, but the Copenhagen-based team behind Canvasdropr has released Presentation.io to synch up the stage with your phone, tablet, or your pocket. The end product is immediately useful, and visibility aside, having the presentations synched adds a new layer of functionality.
This new product has its roots in CanvasDropr. Last year they added a presentation mode to the whiteboarding tool, which synced the presentation across all devices connected to the whiteboard project. Catherine Andersen of Presentation.io tells us that a number of their customers started reaching out and asking if it was a separate product because they liked the functionality, and they wanted to use it with their PowerPoints, PDF files, and so on.
Copenhagen-Based Click A Taxi Now Covers 50 Countries
Every now and then a startup pops out of the woodwork that we should have covered by now. Copenhagen-based Click A Taxi now covers 50 countries, a steep jump from the nine countries it previously covered. The service is still labeled as beta, but it should be noted that the company is working with over 2,000 taxi companies. Scaling up to 50 countries is obviously a challenge, but the company says they've been working hard over the last nine months to meticulously map cities in 50 countries.
Startupbootcamp Open Pitch Comes To Helsinki
Is past performance and indicator of future success? Startupbootcamp, the biggest seed accelerator network in Europe, is on a roll at the moment. August's batch of 10 teams in Amsterdam is now funded. Berlin's 10 teams are all in negotiations. And Startupbootcamp teams were nominated in 10 different categories in the Europas. Now Startupbootcamp's Open Pitch is coming to Helsinki with VentureScout as part of its Nordic tour to meet the community and find promising startups for the Startupbootcamp Copenhagen re-launch.
Lars Buch, the Copenhagen lead and speaker at the last Arctic15, tells us that the vision is to build the Copenhagen branch as the main 'bootcamp hub of Scandinavia. The event will take place January 21st from 2-5pm at Café Dubrovnik in Helsinki, downstairs from Corona. Around 10-12 companies will pitch in the afternoon, followed by casual networking.
Danish Review Portal Trustpilot Raises €10 Million
As Trustpilot nears 7 million reviews, this morning they picked up a €10 million funding round led by Index Ventures and joined by existing investors SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone. The company was founded in 2007 and we last covered them a little over a year ago when they raised €3.3 million from SEED Capital and Northzone. At that time they had 5.4 million reviews for 81,000 businesses, compared to their 6.9 million from 100,000 merchants today.
The Danish review portal allows businesses to request reviews after a sale, engaging customers and ensuring quality service. Each review is connected to an order number, making sure reviewers are actual customers and helping businesses pinpoint customer satisfaction problems. Trustpilot has also shown that displaying reviews can increase conversion rates by more than 20%, providing additional value for businesses.
Check Out Splitter For Sending Potential Users To The Right App Store
As devices and platforms get more fragmented, it can get difficult to tell potential users where they can find you. Copenhagen-based Splitter has built an easy-to-use service that automatically detects information about who clicked your link and sends them off to the right direction. Their main product, AppSplit, is built for sending users to the correct App download locations. Instead of advertising three or four different download locations, his way you just need one URL or QR code to send Android users correctly to the Google Play store, and iPhone users to the App Store.
Conferize Updates Conferences And Events For The Digital Age
At ArcticStartup, a good chunk of our attention is focused on Arctic15, our yearly conference for the Nordic and Baltic startup scene. Getting the word out about our event, promoting good conversation and networking during the event, and providing lasting value are hot topics on our mind. Conferize, a new Copenhagen-based conference and event platform looks like a promising service for the whole event industry.
Conferize just officially launched its public alpha last Thursday, although it has been live in pre-alpha stage for some time. Put simply, it's one point of destination for all things related to conferences. The service helps you find conferences based on your interests, helps you find people who are attending which events, it helps you follow speakers and industry leaders so you can always stay in the loop.
Cupple's Private Sharing App Takes A Working Holiday In Copenhagen
Usually you hear about startups moving from Europe to Silicon Valley, New York, or London, but you rarely hear about a startup from Northern England moving to Copenhagen, even if temporarily. But after talking with Cupple co-founder Tim Allison, you're left wondering why more startups don't take more working holidays in other European cities.
We'll get more into Cupple later in the post, but a quick description of Cupple is that it's a private sharing app for iOS that allows people in a relationship to share thoughts and moments with each other when they're apart. The app allows couples to send messages, photos, check into places, and share stickers with each other.
ArcticEvening CPH In 2 Days! Few Tix Still Available!
ArcticEvening Copenhagen will be organised in exactly two days time! We're going to have an awesome event at the Nokia Campus. Tommy Ahlers from Podio will be present to talk how they got acquired by Citrix and how the agreement was reached behind closed doors. In addition to Tommy, we'll have Kristel Verhasselt of X.commerce share examples of how they have helped entrepreneurs capitalise e-commerce online.
We're going to have some free drinks and snacks available, courtesy of Nokia. All you need to do is sign-up through the form below and secure your free ticket to the event to network, but also learn new things. Doors will open 6pm on Thursday the 31st.
Vivino Scaling To Go Global Through Outsourcing
Editor's note: This post is part of a series of posts published in co-operation with Elance, the leading source of outsourcing talent in the world. Elance is also supporting our ArcticEvening Copenhagen on May 31st.
Vivino is Denmark-based startup that is looking to change the way people enjoy wine around the world. According to one of Vivino's investors, Niels Vejrup Carlsen of SEED Capital, the global wine market is four times that of the music industry and Vivino is aligned well to take on that market. The company raised a round earlier this year from SEED Capital in Denmark to go global with their new mobile app.
The new version of the mobile app allows users to get information and recommendations on almost any wine. The app already boasts a database of more than half a million bottles. The app is free and available for Android and iOS -based devices.
The Vivino app works so that once consuming a wine, you can take a photo of the bottle and then register it into your library, where you can rate it and remember it the next time. The website also has social extensions allowing you to follow the most savvy wine enthusiasts and see what they are enjoying. Each wine in the system is also ranked within the winery, region as well as globally.
Win A Free Ticket To Arctic15 At ArcticEvening Copenhagen
Just like in our Tallinn and Stockholm events, we want to reach out to our community again by giving a chance to win a free ticket to Arctic15, the awesome startup and growth entrepreneurship conference we're putting together for October.
We're giving out four lucky ArcticEvening Copenhagen attendees a free ticket to Arctic15. All you need to do is sign-up to the event held on the 31st of May (it's free by the way) and attend (we'll be in touch by e-mail a day before the event what you need to do to be eligible).
ArcticEvening Copenhagen Tix Now Available!
ArcticEvening Copenhagen is a go! We're organising an event in the capital of Denmark on the 31st of this month, meaning in exactly three weeks. The event will take place at the Nokia Campus, who are also our venue and drinks sponsors. As for content, we've signed up Podio's CEO Tommy Ahlers to come on stage to have a chat with us and share how Citrix's acquisition of the company went down.
Register your free ticket here and also take notice of the other information available there. You can also find the event through the events page.
#15 - Tine Thygesen of Everplaces
In our 15th episode we talk to Tine Thygesen of Everplaces, Copenhagen, Denmark based startup. We discuss location based services and how Tine got into entrepreneurship through her first startup in the e-commerce space in Australia. After selling that to an Australian company she came back to the Nordics to take on more entrepreneurial challenges first with Venture Cup Denmark and later with 23 Video before starting her own company Everplaces. She is also one of the founders of Founder's House, a co-working space in Copenhagen that now has 17 startups and some 70 people working there.
Admazely Creates DIY Retargeting Advertisement Platform, Raises €600K
Admazely, a new Copenhagen-based startup, seeks to help small and medium sized webshops to take advantage of advertisement retargeting to help drive unsuccessful sales back into a webshop where they saw the item. This practice has helped larger e-commerce retailers boost click-through rates by as much as 600% by tracking webshop visitors, identifying they did not complete a transaction, then showing them an ad on a third-party website for that particular shop of product.
This particular style of advertising is successful, but has huge barriers to entry for smaller players to get into. Perhaps due to this, Admazely was alble to grab €600k in seed financing in a round led by SEED capital with business angels Martin Bochineck and Christina Rind participating.
23 Video Offers New Video Analytics
Copenhagen-based 23 Video has been providing video sites with a simple service to host and manage everything, on a customer's own domain, for a simple $675 per month. Customers are allowed an unlimited number of videos and have complete control of the design of the player. The company has always offered analytics, but recently they stepped up their offering to provide greater insight for their customers to figure out exactly how their users are interacting with online videos.
Everplaces Is A Breath Of Fresh Air Into Location Based Services
Everplaces is a new way to curate and save the favorite places you visit (or want to visit). The service is launching globally today from Copenhagen, Denmark. We talked to Tine Thygesen, one of the co-founders of the company about the company's plans and where they want to take it. Needless to say, they're still far from the bigger vision they want to achieve, but after playing around a little and using the service - it does bring a nice breath of fresh air into the location based space of services. As of today, the service launches with an online service as well as a mobile extension to help save those places while on the go.
One aspect of the bigger vision the company is after is to make sense of the masses of location based information out there. "Quality over quantity" as Thygesen herself put it. The basic function of the service is to curate the best locations all over the world through social connections. In the end, you would end up with interesting places to visit, each tagged under a descriptive tag.
Graduateland's International Office Building 'The Career Market Of Tomorrow'
Editor's note: This is a sponsored post by Graduateland part of their prize for winning the public vote in the 2011 Arctic15 conference.
As Graduateland spreads to universities, students, graduates, and employers all across Europe, their office has picked up a wide variety of nationalities along the way. Graduateland's Copenhagen offices so far include 15 employees, who are Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, and Czech. The team is also currently having job interviews with two programmers from Greece and Poland, respectively, who would relocate to Copenhagen if qualified. This all fits into their beliefs of open and creative collaboration in order to innovate and set the standard for the "career market of tomorrow."
Copenhagen Startup Weekend Less Than 2 Weeks Away
The fourth edition of Startup Weekend Copenhagen is kicking off the 18th of this month, and is bringing along with it 54 hours of non-stop action, access to mentors, and Saturday night entertainment featuring Christmas Beer from Andrik Microbrewery. We've got a discount code for the ticket, and they have some great prizes for the first place winner:
Future Female + ArcticStartup Pre-Christmas Party December 1st
Mark it down in your calendar - December 1st. That's the day we will be throwing a little pre-Christmas party together with Future Female. The event will take place in Siltanen, Hämeentie 13B here in Helsinki, Finland. The event is expected to kick-off at around 6pm. Even though, the event is free we'd like you to sign-up with a form that will be provided at a later date. To learn more about signing up to the event, join the Future Female facebook page. This is also the first time Future Female events are open for men.
Just Eat Just Keeps On Growing
Just Eat is a Copenhagen based online service founded in 2000 that has created an online portal for food delivery. The company recently received another feather to its hat as GigaOM wrote about the company belonging to one of the 5 super star companies out from Europe (for record, other companies in that category were Rovio, Spotify, Vente Privée and Wonga, Northern Europe ftw!). Just Eat is now live in 14 countries and has 15 000 restaurants in its system. It's the world leader in online takeaway ordering.
Unity Technologies Closes $12M In Financing - Eyes Asia
Unity Technologies, a Copenhagen originated startup now based in Silicon Valley, has closed a $12 million in financing from WestSummit Capital in China and iGlobe Partners in Singapore, according to Techcrunch. The financing round is Unity's second and an investor from the first round, Sequoia Capital, also participated in the round.
Tradeshift Now In Finnish And Dutch
About a month after closing a $7M funding round, Tradeshift is doing better and better. Their platform is now available in Finnish and Dutch languages to attract even more local businesses use the network. 'Of all the European markets we are in, the Netherlands and Finland are among the most mature when it comes to online invoicing', comments Christian Lanng, CEO. 'The adoption of e-invoicing has been driven [there] by the Governments which has resulted in highly competitive e-invoicing markets'. Turns out that even before Tradeshift was translated into Finnish and Dutch, their free e-invoicing model was already being used by businesses of all sizes as an alternative to traditional online invoicing providers.
Win In Copenhagen And Get Tickets To Arctic15
Startup weekend is organising a mobile oriented event this weekend in Copenhagen. It's already been of immense popularity, but we thought we'd show some support to the event in the form of offering free tickets to Arctic15 conference for the winning team. So, if you'd like to have a chance at winning the event, but also winning Arctic15 conference tickets for the whole team - participate now.
Interested To Work At A Startup? Join One At CopenhagenStartups
There is nothing like being an entrepreneur. Of course that’s a bit challenging for many - especially to let go off the comfort of a monthly paycheck, but many aspire to be one. The problem is not everyone is bound to be one and even less are bound to be successful. However, there are many people searching for jobs each spring as they leave their schools behind, be it high school or university. CopenhagenStartups is a new initiative to help people find a job at a startup, something not many might have thought to be a viable start for a career path.
Tradeshift Announces $7M In Funding And Big Deals
Tradeshift has just announced $7 million in funding from Notion Capital. Tradeshift pitches itself as the social network for businesses. At this first stage, it allows companies to send electronic invoices to each other without costs. Previously, it has secured seed funding from PayPal, who is also a technology partner for the company. Notion Capital is a venture fund created by the team that founded and sold MessageLabs for $700 million. Tradeshift had many other investment partners to choose from, but they chose Notion Capital due to their own experience in growing a company from a startup to a global success story.
Endomondo, Among 25 Apps At The Google I/O, Announces Social Features
Endomondo, a sports community based on real time GPS tracking for trekking, cycling etc has registered another milestone. The Copenhagen based startup was among the 25 developers selected to showcase their talent at the ongoing Google I/O conference. Endomondo Sports Tracker, the mobile app that transforms the mobile device into your pocket trainer can also boast of being the one out of the 100,000 or so apps in the Android Market to be invited for the same.
Startupbootcamp Comes To Madrid, Next Stop London And Berlin!
When you succeed at first, you have every reason to expand and take up newer and bigger challenges. That’s exactly what Startupbootcamp is doing after the very successful first edition, which was launched as a quarter long program in Copenhagen between August and November, 2010. It brought 10 teams of 32 selected entrepreneurs from 12 different countries, face to face with 75 top mentors in the industry. All that came with thanks to Startupbootcamp’s co-founder, Alex Farcet who put a good number of months to find the right mentors to guide these entrepreneurs.
The Story Behind Ge.tt And Their Early Traction
I bumped into ge.tt a few weeks back and immediately fell in love with it. It's file sharing done right, simple, non-intrusive and extremely intuitive. Also, having ge.tt as a domain name does help people remember it. I had a chance to talk to Tobias Baunbæk, the CEO and co-founder behind this Danish based company. He shared the path they've taken and how ge.tt became to be what it is today, not to forget where it will go.
