Article about Nordic startup initiatives
This article http://tinyurl.com/ybugw4c covers two important initiatives on the Nordic startup scene: Seedcamp and Startupbootcamp.
Startupbootcamp is the initiative, which I am running (via Rainmaking) together with Alex Farcet.
Season greetings to everyone. Looking forward to lot of entrepreneurial activities in 2010.
International expansion for Cyclepods
We are now 5 months into our engagement with Cyclepods. Currently we have interesting discussion with new business partners in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Malaysia and South Korea. Germany has come the furthest and our German partner will launch our products in February in Germany, Switzerland and Austria as well as in a number of central European countries. In North America we have an interesting discussion with an US premium bike brand, who wants to use the Cyclepod to expose their bikes in show rooms.
During fall ’09 the Streetpod design has been finalized. Check www.cyclepods.com shortly for pictures and details. The Streetpod is a welcome contribution to our product portfolio, focusing the on-street parking market.
In our home market – UK & Ireland - we just finalized the installation of 200 Spacepod units at KPMG’s new office in Canary Wharf (London). We’ve also added more Minipods sales resources, to further meet the great demand for this product.
Teaming up with startupweekend
Met with Clint Nelsen of www.startupweekend.org yesterday. Impressive what they have created in 2½ years. More than 10,000 participants have been through their program and around 30% of the startups created during those weekends are still running.
We found out that there are great synergies between startupweekend and www.startupbootcamp.dk, since many participants from the startupweekends are looking for something more after finishing the intense weekend program. And the next logical step could be to join startupbootcamp, which offers a 3 months program allowing the startup teams to really get in depth with their ideas, attract the first customers and by the end of the program picth their startup to dozens of investors.
For startupbootcamp it is interesting to team up with startupweekend since this can prove to be a very promising source of potential candidates for the program.
We have therefore decided to run 4 startupweekends in parallel in the weekend commencing the 9th of April 2010 in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki and Oslo. Startupbootcamp will be co-hosts and the winning teams will have a preferred route into the startupbootcamp program.
What an exciting weekend waiting in the Nordics!
/Carsten
Meeting a legend
Rainmaking partner Martin Bjergegaard today had the honor to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The talk was about our new fundraising portal, that we are about to launch April 2010 together with leading NGOs. 78 years old Mr. Tutu is full of enthusiasm, energy and jokes! He laughed a lot during the short conversation, and is clearly a very warm and friendly person. It was a true pleasure to meet him, and we hope to be able to establish a collaboration with his organization; Desmond Tutu Peace Center.
Launching Startupbootcamp
Today is the start of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009 (http://www.unleashingideas.org/?_c=1), during which "for one week, millions of young people around the world will join a growing movement of entrepreneurial people, to generate new ideas and to seek better ways of doing things."
This is a fitting time for the Rainmaking partnership to launch its latest initiative: Startupbootcamp (link to www.startupbootcamp.dk).
Startupbootcamp is for entrepreneurs with great ideas and great teams who are looking to convert their idea into a live company in 3 months. Following a rigorous selection, up to 10 teams will come to Copenhagen in summer 2010 to be part of the first generation of Startupbootcamp companies. We will host the teams in an incubator environment in the heart of Copenhagen, we will inject some cool cash and lots of top notch mentorship, and we will close with Investor Day - a unique opportunity for the 10 to pitch to the most active Danish, Nordic and international investors. See how to apply here. (http://startupbootcamp.dk/apply)
Feeding the underforrest
Small plants have trouble getting sunlight and growing in the shadow of big trees. The recent financial crisis has reduced business angels' and venture capitalists' appetite for risk and a natural reaction has been to invest in more mature startups with proven business models and existing customer bases.
Startupbootcamp feeds the budding underforrest of young entrepreneurs by giving a highly selected group the ideal conditions to reach up to the big trees. Rainmaking calls itself a "startup factory" because this is exactly what it's good at: converting an idea on a napkin into a live company by injecting the needed energy, creativity, and business acumen. The key for entrepreneurs joining Startupbootcamp is that they not only get the support they need but experienced co-founders who have 'skin in the game'.
Born global in Copenhagen
Startupbootcamp's roots are Danish but our ambitions are global. We aim to attract the very best teams and ideas from the Nordic region (in our broad definition that not only includes the Baltic countries but also Poland and northern Germany). but we're not concerned with the candidates' age or nationality. Our ambition is to have several Startupbootcamp companies expand on several continents. We already have an international team and we are not limited by our location.
Come meet us
We are celebrating the launch of Startupbootcamp by inviting David Cohen, founder of Techstars, to Copenhagen this Wednesday Nov. 18th. David has a long track record with his own tech startups and he runs Techstars which is recognised as a leading program for tech entrepreneurs.
We will be using the occasion to officially launch Startupbootcamp and we'd love to meet you. Sign up here. (http://startupbootcamp.dk/apply-cohen).
We look forward to reading your comments below and will answer your questions via email (info@startupbootcamp.dk) or phone (+45 24 29 4000).
Kind regards,
Alex Farcet
Rainmaking reaches a milestone with Godt Syn exit
So far, the Scandinavian market for laser surgery has navigated its way through the financial crisis. In 2009 Godt Syn experienced a surprisingly strong demand, which has in some periods exceeded our capacity.
Around the year change of 2008/2009, the positive market situation combined with Godt Syn’s strong market position attracted the interest from the largest Scandinavian player in the industry.
It soon became clear, that especially one actor would gain a significant strategic advantage by acquiring Godt Syn and in the early spring of 2009 negotiations intensified with that specific actor. Negotiations were long and nerve wrecking but on May 14 the last contract was signed, which marked an important day in the short history of Rainmaking.
The exit of Godt Syn has given Rainmaking a financial robustness, which we did not anticipate this early on. At the same time it was proven, that with two exits in less than one year, we are able to follow our strategy, which is to create companies with a 3-5 year exit plan.
Naturally we pride ourselves by this but at the same time we stay humble to the many exciting challenges that lies ahead.
In regards to Godt Syn, the exit means that we can now offer the customers three times as many clinics to choose from. At the same time the quality of surgeons and experts has taken a tiger leap forward from an existing high level. As part of the earn-out-model, Rainmaking continues to head the company until late 2010, thus luckily we will stay close to our great colleagues in a future we look forward to with much anticipation.
Rainmaking in the UK
In the light of the very positive progress in Rainmaking throughout the last 12 months, we have decided to expand to the UK. For this reason, we are now looking for a Business Developer in London - see the job description here:
http://www.rainmaking.dk/media/18597/business%20developer%20with%20partner%20potential.pdf
We are already active in the British market due to our engagement in CyclePods (www.cyclepods.co.uk) that sells eco-friendly, design bicycle racks to customers such as Sky, BBC, IKEA, Sainsbury, and The Guardian among others.
Furthermore, we have a number of interesting points of contacts and projects, which are to be looked more in to.
Our goal is to create a full-grown London-office within a few years with 3-5 local partners and 20-30 employees in order to launch new concepts to the large British market. However, to begin with, we are starting fairly slowly with a single Business Developer having his/her working space situated in an entrepreneurial office space. In this way, we can create a couple of start-ups with positive cash flows which will lay the ground for further expansion.
Do you have any good ideas or contacts in London, which we should know of?
Ready to invest
In Rainmaking, we are now ready to increase our investments in new projects.
Our business politic is that we want to spread the risk by investing smaller amounts in several projects. We have a margin of expenditure of 1 mill. Dkr. for projects that we start up from scratch ourselves; and a margin of 500.000 Dkr. when we engage in others’ projects.
We cultivate our network of investors, and feel that it is healthy to have to convince professional investors to see the sense in our project. Previously, we have raised 25 million. Dkr. to the development of our existing companies, and we will continue this line of fund-raising.
Now, we are furthermore considering creating a "scholarship"/pre seed arrangement, by which we invest e.g. 100.000 Dkr. in totally new and untested projects. In the States, a guy by the name, Paul Graham, has started a company called Y Combinator by which he makes these kinds of micro-investments; as of today, he has ownership-shares in 145 start ups. We are somewhat tempted to start a similar arrangement in Denmark. In addition to money, we will – just as Paul Graham does – contribute with sparring, networking and ad hoc assistance in regards to e.g. fund-raising, larger contracts, and exit plans.
Do you think that talented entrepreneurs in Denmark will be interested in such an arrangement?
Is the financial recession over and done with?
For the last three months, we have gradually experienced indications that the recession might be abating.Throughout the worst six months of the recession, Frokost.dk experienced a decrease going from 6.000 to 5.000 place-settings. This decrease was quite evident and required careful adjustments. For the past three months, we have had a steady number of approx. 5000 place settings. Now, we are speeding up in activities such as sales and marketing (which was totally useless to do at the time of the recession’s peak), and it will be exciting to see whether the next three months will offer progress yet again.
In GodtSyn, we are experiencing greater sales than ever in these weeks – even greater than the sales numbers from last year at this time.
Our investors are showing cautious signs of being favorably disposed towards new projects, and our dialogue with new investors is progressing very well.
What is your experience – is the financial recession coming to an end?
Welcoming Hampus Hellsvik
As of August 10th, Hampus Hellsvik has been appointed Senior Manager in Rainmaking. Hampus has for a number of years worked as Senior Manager in Accenture, where he has been working with supply chain and strategy for a vast number of business enterprises across Scandinavia and Britain.
We are very delighted – and proud – of the fact that Hampus has chosen Rainmaking as his next professional challenge, and we are looking forward to an exciting and fruitful collaboration.
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