It’s true, something is indeed cooking in the Copenhagen startup kitchen!

We launch our Startupbootcamp rotating blog series with Thomas Jam Pedersen (Startupbootcamp team 3DJam)

It’s true, Something is indeed cooking in the Copenhagen startup kitchen!

I have been engaged in the start-up scene in Copenhagen for more than 10 years through two previous start-ups and a number of local networks which are here to help create more growth-oriented companies in the region (such as CONNECT Danmark, VentureCup, Vækstfonden, StartVækst, DVCA, Business Angels networks, Nordic Venture Forum). During all this time there has been a lot of talk about how we can best work together to make the start-ups more successful here in the Copenhagen region. Basically everyone agrees that the team is more important than the idea. For example I remember a talk by Nikolaj Nyholm at a big event five years ago at CONNECT Denmark about this topic and another big discussion hosted by Christian Motzfeldt at CONNECT Denmark’s 5th anniversary dinner with the topic: We need to focus on the few with high potential, but who shall select them?

The truth is that most investors in Denmark are generally highly risk averse and this has certainly worsened since the beginning of the financial crisis. There are many people in the region who want to help the start-ups get off the ground, which in itself is great. However, until now this help has not been well organized to make it easy for the entrepreneurs to tap in to. In my opinion we did not move very fast down the road towards the goal of creating more successful start-ups in Copenhagen; until this summer.

I found the words: “Something is cooking in the Copenhagen startup kitchen”, and I had to go explore it further. It turned out to be about all of the recent initiatives in Denmark, among which was Startupbootcamp (a start-up accelerator inspired by and affiliated with Techstars). Basically, TechStars has had a 70% success rate of the companies they pull through their program, which is an incredibly high number compared to what any other program in the Copenhagen region has been able to show in the past.

Roozz technology:
As it so happens, I had my own product, which we had been working on for almost 2 years. All along I knew it had great potential of reaching a huge global market but, being a software engineer, I needed help to find the right business model as well as team to scale the product into a mega growth start-up. The outlook:

The distribution channel for software can be divided into 4 channels:

• CD’s sold in shops (does not support pay-per-use)
• CD’s sold in webshops like Amazon and shipped to you (does not support pay-per-use)
• Downloads sold from webshops (does not support pay-per-use)
• Software sold in appstores and able to run “online” following your login

Today the majority of software sold globally is sold via the first two channels, but there seems to be agreement within the industry that it will eventually move towards the last the online platform.

However, some also say this will happen slowly as most of today´s applications and games have to be reprogrammed to move to new platforms, which usually takes from 3-6 month. However our Roozz technology solves this problem very elegantly. In less than one hour, it transforms an existing PC game into an online game that run in the web browser and uses pay-per-use – and we don’t need access to the source code. When Google opens their Webstore later this year we forecast that it will be the beginning of a rush to move software from the old distribution channels to the new and we think that the Google webstore could very well become the biggest channel for software sales in the world. What do you think?  Please leave your comment below.

The plan our team is to get the business model for Roozz technology right and get ready to scale the start-up through Startupbootcamp 3 month program. During the program we will meet more than 60 very talented mentors who can give us feedback on our thoughts, plans and approach. Every day we meet with a new mentor who asks critical questions and helps us find solutions to the problems we face. But what is probably most important is that the mentors are highly connected and are happy to help us find other people in their network who can give us expert knowledge and feedback on almost any special topic. You will not get this type of help anywhere else, it is simply phenomenal.


We need your support, Copenhagen!
I meet Alex Farcet for the first time 1 month ago and my positive impression of him has only been growing ever since. In short I think Startupbootcamp is the best that has happened to the Copenhagen startup scene in a very long time I urge everyone who can help to support this program in making sure it happens again next year so please spread the word the and the hype.

-Thomas Jam Pedersen