Last night entrepreneurs and investors piled into Copenhagen’s third oldest church repurposed into an event space to see what’s come out of Startupbootcamp Copenhagen’s latest batch. Host Lars Buch started off the program by saying this was the most mature group they’ve had so far, and by the looks of the companies Startupbootcamp has managed to gather some good talent from as far as Russia and Paraguay and bring them to Copenhagen for three months of hard work and mentoring.
That hard work has been counted up; to get to the demo day the 11 companies worked 50,000 man hours, wrote 450,000 lines of code, and went through 700 rolls of toilet paper according to the official statistics.
Startupbootcamp has been shooting up to be one of the bigger players in the startup world, hinting at expanding from nine to twelve programs, including a new San Francisco program. “It’s becoming really global, says Buch. “I like to say that we’re becoming the next entrepreneurial superpower.”
One positive trend was how many women were in the batch with five founders and 12 total women working for the companies. Despite working hard for three months you could see teams all had good energy, and SBC has picked out a cool space for itself in downtown Copenhagen, which you can see in the video below.
Here are the graduating companies, which are all somewhat tied to the mobile theme.
Musicsense: A music discovery app with an advanced behavioral algorithm developed over two years to help serve you better music. Rather than keeping future tracks hidden, I like that you can remove songs in the playlist before you get to it.
Noisli – a background noise app that lets you slide toggles of whitenoise to get your own personal mix. As a writer that gets distracted by lyrics, I get it, but there’s bigger demand than I expected. Their product is live with over 200,000 downloads including 30,000 downloads on their paid IOS apps.
Sharingear – an intersting company building up a marketplace of all the parts needed for a touring band, like amplifiers, instruments, and all the way up to roadies and touring vans so it’s easier to get your show on the road or to pop up in a new city. The company could potentially change how bands tour, and right now they’re focused on Scandinavia and are working with suppliers.
Mr. Patch – does eye-tracking on tablets for eye rehabilitation and exercises, targeting people with eye issues that need a more-fun solution for training and testing than what the medical field currently offers. The company’s founder, Gabriela Galilea started working on the project after suffering though eye training at doctors offices, and decided there must be a more mobile and more fun way to keep up with exercises.
TrulySocial – released their first gamified dating app “Flirtual Planet” and claims 100,000 users and retention rates above the industry standard. The idea with their apps is to get users to interact and give potential matches something to talk about rather than a blank text box. Next up they’re releasing “Flirt Battle”
Woomio – sort of like an affiliate marketing platform for bloggers or anyone – so if you post about your new shirt on Facebook you could then make some money off of your friends buying it. “Brand ambassadors” is a hot word today, and perpaps Woomio will strike the balance between you advertising to your friends without it feeling like you’re selling out.
Copymethat – A MIT graduate building an algorithm that allows you to scrape recipes off any website and have them nicely presented and sharable. Food and recipes are a huge category on Pinterest, but there’s really not a good way to save the recipe or change it if you want. I like it, but I think they need to really focus on design and marketing.
Gemma – a platform that allows the easy creation and sharing of instruments for music apps through the open source “Pure Data” platform. More and more people are creating music on their tablets, but there’s no good way to move good sounds around.
xFocus: a bi-directional iBeacon solution enabling trade fairs and conventions to provide their visitors with a better visitor experience and clear insights in their leads.
Spacemingler – basically an “AirBNB for storage space”. So if you’ve got some room in the basement or up in your attic, you could potentially make some money off of it. The company is beta testing in Copenhagen at the moment, and I’m curious how people will pick it up.
Weadeo – the company connects video creatives with people starting a crowdfunding campaign, allowing for upfront payment for crowdfunding videos, or a slice of the total funds raised if the campaign is successful. It’s true you need a good video for Kickstarter, but it also seems these days you need a good marketing budget to be successful.
More information about SBC Copenhagen can be found on their website.
