Tradeshift just launched in the home market in Denmark, and Niels Hartvig of Umbraco was not impressed (link in danish). He is disappointed about the level of completion of the product and the “hype to reality” quotient, with the hype end being “an $80-$100 million valuation” as leaked to TechCrunch a while back.
But Hartvig goes on with a general bashing of the Copenhagen startup scene and his perception of the level of ambitions of startups in town.
As long as we launch badly, and pat each other’s backs we won’t get better. We’ll keep doing pathetic launches. While we’re complaining about the lack of risk taking by Danish investors (My translation)
Here at Wideantenna we’re firm believers in launching early, but of course if you do, you need to temper the hype about $100-million valuations. You can’t do “modest and early” and insane valuations. Pick one.
One of the reasons to start writing Wideantenna was to look for ambition. Maybe even seed a little attention, which begets ambition, so this is a topic that is close to our mission here.
Recently Martin von Haller had similar misgivings about Copenhagen in a series of posts on Danish VC. After some initial bashing of the Danish VC-scene, Martin did a follow up post with a more balanced approach, simply pointing out that there is no way we’re going to build global companies just by working, networking and investing locally. We need skills that are quite simply better elsewhere, so for any startup with global ambition, some kind of jump to Silicon Valley or London or some other major hub is a must on the path to success. People with a strong local base, but limited international base should focus on getting companies ready to make the jump, instead of trying to make it locally.
I have mixed feelings on the issue. At the time of writing the Danish national Ice Hockey Team is amusing the world of Ice Hockey with a series of upsets at the World Cup. This is the same national hockey team that in 1949 set the world record for greatest loss in a world cup hockey match, suffering a 0-47 loss to Canada. And Denmark, in case you don’t live here, is the non-cold, flat country in Scandinavia. There are 22 hockey rinks in Denmark, less than half of the number just in Stockholm. But still, some very dedicated people managed to cultivate a system of scouting for talent in this very limited pool of available players, and managed to hire some swedes to teach the danes how to win. A handful of players made it to the NHL and the national team has managed to establish itself as a stable in the top tier of nations at the World Cup.
If that’s possible, clearly Copenhagen can be a hub of innovation, it just takes realism, international ambition and hard work.
