13 February 2012
The Kingdom of Denmark: the Southernmost of the Nordic countries, bordered by Germany, Sweden and Norway. Its governance comprises three countries: Denmark itself, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Original birthplace of the legendary Vikings, it also happens to home to a vibrant entrepreneur community. After working with startups in Denmark for many years, I can definitely say that despite economic challenges, we’re seeing a lot great business ideas developing here.
And, like those warriors of old, many of Denmark’s startups are setting their sights on global roll-out. This is hardly surprising – like lots of European countries, the size of the domestic market limits potential growth and so, pushing beyond national boundaries is imperative to long-term survival (as well as being good news for the local economy of course). Since many great ideas and technological solutions are already present in Europe, we need to work together and bring these ideas out of national borders and into the wider European market. The European Digital Single Market should enable these companies to expand their businesses. The European Heads of State have on several occasions stated that Europe must have a well-functioning Digital Single Market in place by 2015 in order to generate new economic growth.
Expanding across national borders is easier said than done, but here are a couple of examples from the BizSpark community where that Viking spirit is working.
MailTalk™ has created an ingenious platform for “digital dialogue”. This cloud-based solution addresses the growing trend towards engagement marketing, where organizations want to have rich, more tailored contact with audiences, but in a controlled and integrated way. It overcomes the challenge of having multiple data and communication tools or platforms (Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Content Management System, email, etc). Although this is a very young company (it only launched its platform in late 2011) it is already attracting a lot of interest from some big organizations.
Further down the track is Pixel Pandemic, whose ‘Zombie Pandemic’ game has been a huge hit. This is a classic start-up that spotted a gap in the market. It has tapped into the interest in browser-based games - particularly the explosion of game applications on Facebook - and has created a feature-rich gaming platform that appeals to more ‘serious’ players of massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG). Once again, by building their application on the cloud platform the company accelerated its growth: “the Azure model means we can build a global business without investing in our own IT infrastructure,” said CEO Thomas B. Krogh-Jacobsen.
Last but not least is Little Beacon, which has successfully launched mobile solutions aimed at productivity (for instance, Enterprise Rerource Planning). Once again, this is a company based on the Azure platform, which has made it easier for the company to scale, build and expand into other countries. Little Beacon is already doing very well in the US.
Of course, it’s hard to be successful without a helping hand, which is why Microsoft together with Network Partners are doing all we can to support them in tangible ways.Take startup City (also one of the first partners for our Windows Azure for BizSpark Special Offer), based in Århus, providing office space, mentoring and all kinds of support for local startups within the BizSpark community.
Another example is SCALEit, a Silicon Valley based organization promoting Danish entrepreneurship. It has big ambitions: to engage more than 1,000 entrepreneurs in Denmark, including bringing +75 startups from that country to Silicon Valley for a one-week SCALEit camp, put +30 companies through a 3 months accelerator program in Silicon Valley and ultimately help these companies explore their full growth potential. These companies are just the tip of the iceberg. Denmark is definitely a country to watch, especially those startups who have global ambitions. So watch out for the Vikings!
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