Danish design and development are world-famous. It’s also home to the world’s most liveable city – Copenhagen – and home to some of the happiest people. In many ways, innovation and fresh thinking are part of the Danish DNA and the nation is made up of a blend of creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and an educated talent pool that is generating exciting ideas and companies.
It is one of the world’s most digital and agile societies, and with the national goal to be powered 100% by renewables by 2050, innovation in tech is soaring.
Denmark is setting itself apart when it comes to innovation and tech development. In fact, it was the 3rd most innovative EU member state according to the European Commission and placed 10th in the Global Innovation Index 2022, a study ranking the innovation performance of 132 economies.
It’s a special place that benefits from an embrace of digital tech, a willingness to try new things, an international talent pool, and an easy place to do business in. For these reasons, it’s given us European titans like Zendesk, Trustpilot, and Pleo.
Looking to 2023, we are excited to see what Denmark is going to produce. So, we decided to take a comprehensive look a the country’s startup ecosystem and think these 10 super-promising startups will have a jet-setting year ahead. These startups have all been founded since 2020 and are making disruptive impact in their sectors.
Monta: Transforming mobility is one of the key parts of Europe’s transition to a greener society. Copenhagen-based Monta wants to help make that happen and is building an all-in-one EV charging platform to help fuel a new generation of mobility. The platform simplifies and streamlines the deployment, use, and management of EV charging infrastructure. Via the Monta platform, charge point owners have full visibility into charge point use, pricing, access, and transactions. For EV drivers, Monta provides reservation, virtual queuing, and payment features under one platform as well as access to public charge points. Founded in XX, Monta has already secured strategic partnerships with hardware manufacturers to launch its Powered by Monta (PBM) program in multiple markets, and, it scooped up €30 million in September last year and its been growing positively since.
All Gravy: Founded in 2020, All Gravy is on a mission to help the hospitality industry to reduce staff turnover, incentive new employees, and, support their employees. All Gravy’s people operating system includes an integrated financial wellness app on iOS and Android which helps increase employee motivation, flexibility and retention. It helps hourly paid employees understand their earnings, plan their savings and even gets paid as soon as the shift ends, free of charge. The fintech firm has signed deals with some of the largest hospitality chains in Denmark, including McDonald’s, and has signed up over 150 restaurants as customers. It raised a seed round of €3.2 million in 2022 and is continuing to grow as hospitality companies continue to look for ways to address staffing issues.
ZeroNorth: Founded in 2020, this Copenhagen-born startup is on a mission to bring about greener global trade through technology. ZeroNorth’s platform provides a range of software solutions that help the shipping industry cut emissions and reduce its impact on the climate whilst still maintaining commercial performance. The innovative company has developed three offerings to bring about a transition in shipping – weather advisors, a voyage optimisation service, and, vessel optimisation. Last summer the startup secured an impressive €49.6 million. GreenTech is one of Europe’s big markets this year, and we can expect that solutions like this one, capable of achieving real impact, will soar.
Growblocks: Founded in 2021, Growblocks aims to help companies unlock their revenue potential. Its platform puts a company’s real-time data funnel to work to create a robust bottom-up revenue plan – taking a completely new approach to the existing top-down approach. The platform can be used by commercial teams to create predictable revenue plans, conduct quarterly business reviews, and track performance against targets and initiatives. It shows the baseline of what a business will achieve which means revenue teams can then create and compare different scenarios in order to reach desired growth numbers using accurate go-to-market data. The startup began 2023 with a €6 million raise and we can expect big things are to come – especially as economic uncertainty hits and teams look to streamline and become more efficient in the long run.
Cogo: Launched in 2020, Cogo is one of the world’s most comprehensive price comparison tools for shared mobility. Through the platform, users can check price, availability and travel times from multiple operators in just one simple search. The Copenhagen-based startup has been growing from strength to strength as the European mobility sector has exploded – currently with 280 mobility operators in 700 cities worldwide. The Copenhagen-based team has raised a total funding amount of €1.8 million, and, has been making key acquisitions to scale – notably eScoot (a mobility aggregator) in 2022.
Medusa: Taking on the e-commerce space, Medusa brings a fresh approach to e-commerce platforms that takes a developer-first open-source approach. Founded in 2021, its platform provides similar core functionality as Shopify out-of-the-box, while its open abstraction-based architecture makes customizations and maintenance much easier to handle for developers as businesses’ needs evolve. The platform gives merchants control of their stack by easily connecting to APIs of payment providers, logistics tools, CMSs, and other systems while enabling a native omnichannel setup through its headless architecture. As a result, it provides the best of both worlds- functionality and personalisation. The team secured €7.98 million in July 2022 and has been growing positively since.
Go Autonomous: Founded in 2021, Go Autonomous aspires to help businesses grow digitally and autonomously through the power of email communications. For B2B companies, email still makes up the largest portion of revenue and it’s still the most efficient and convenient channel for customers. For many suppliers though, email does entail more manual work. Go Autonomous simplifies transactional communications making email more efficient for all. The AI-powered solution identifies the customer’s intent when an email arrives in the inbox. Knowing the intent, the solution extracts and structures the needed information so it can be injected into an ERP in real time. The solution has proven to free up approximately 30% more time for the individual customer service representative or salesperson. The startup secured €3.1 million last year and counts clients such as Grundfos and Hans Buch.
Weld: Founded in Copenhagen, Weld’s platform allows companies to build powerful data models and metrics, enabling greater insights and expedited decision-making capabilities, as well as streamlining data workflows. Founded in 2021, the aim is to drive business impact by empowering customers to get more value from their data. The platform is built on top of the companies’ own data warehouse and can integrate with the most popular SaaS tools and databases, including the likes of Hubspot, Salesforce and Redshift. The startup has now raised a total of about €4.6 million and has teams spread across the world, including Denmark, Germany, England and Canada.
Responsibly: Founded in 2021, Responsbily provides a one-stop shop for supplier data across a wide variety of data providers. It was launched with the mission to make every purchase in the world responsible, believing that there’s a global force for change locked inside the world’s procurement departments. The fast-growing company has built the data infrastructure to help all players in procurement connect – giving buyers the transparency they need to make decisions, suppliers only have to update one product, and data providers can easily find users for their data. Procurement software doesn’t need to build hundreds of integrations, and that’s what Responsibly is offering – a movement to sync up and collaborate.
Landfolk: Founded in Aarhus by ex-Airbnb employees, Landfolk is putting a Danish spin on Airbnb’s business model, bringing nature back to city dwellers. The young startup offers a platform and community for holiday home enthusiasts who want to rent or book a unique vacation immersed in nature. Landfolk sets itself apart by allowing only handpicked summer houses that fulfil five specific criteria to be listed on its platform. Founded in 2021, it raised an undisclosed funding amount at the beginning of 2022, and, as adventurous, community-led travel continues to grow in popularity, so has this startup.
By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!