denmark startup Archives - Serious Startups

AIRTAME Blows Past Crowdfunding Goal To Create Wireless HDMI

Recently, I a friend of mine was crowdfunding his next album on Kickstarter. The page debuted, and we all watched anxiously for a month as the funds trickled in. He was always relaxed and calm about it, but his wife would quietly tell me, “I’m so worried!”

The final day of the campaign, Seth still lacked almost half his goal. My husband and I were traveling at the time, but I kept the campaign site pulled up on my phone and hit refresh somewhat obsessively. We were out having drinks with friends when I interrupted the conversation, wildly bouncing in my seat and waving my phone in my husband’s face.

“They did it!!” I yelled, right there in the lobby of the fanciest hotel in town. “They reached their goal!!”

(Don’t worry. I ignored the stares.)

My friend’s story isn’t uncommon. Most crowdfunding campaigns fail, and I’ve personally witnessed several succeed, but come right down to the wire.

That’s not the story for these guys.

The Copenhagen-based startup is making a wireless HDMI dongle that will stream content from your computer to your TV. With 29 days left in their Indiegogo campaign, they’ve already almost doubled their goal.

AIRTAME looks a lot like Chromecast. Like the Google product, it plugs into the TV and uses Wifi to stream content. Chromecast can pull content from smartphones and tablets, but AIRTAME doesn’t have that capability. Yet, anyway.

However, AIRTAME does allow for wireless connections to projectors and to other PCs. Use cases for this include the ability to see a professor’s presentation right on your computer while you take notes or the ability to share presentations across screens during a meeting.

“We believe that everyone should be able to connect to the TV in the living room or the projector in the conference room–wirelessly,” co-founder Brian Kyed said in a statement announcing the Indiegogo campaign. “Therefore AIRTAME works with Mac, Windows, and Linux–so no one is left to use screen cables anymore.”

Considering the massive amount of support AIRTAME has received, it’s a safe bet there’s some demand for their product. Of course, reaching your goal does not a successful campaign make. Many hardware companies hit snags when it comes time to deliver, and we have yet to see if AIRTAME will fall in that camp.

There’s also the whole competing with Google and Apple thing. Not impossible, but very, very hard. My favorite in the TV streaming race is Apple TV because of the licensing deals they are working out with companies like Disney and ESPN. I also kind of love that it’s not dependent on my computer.

AIRTAME could really stand out, though, if they let the TV streaming thing go and focus on the business, classroom, and presentation uses of the product. None of the competition works quite the same way.

The Indiegogo campaign is still live, and last time I checked they still had a few openings in the beta test. That particular perk sold out so fast, they decided to open up another round of it.

Denmark Startup: MindTeacher Brings Daily Deals To Online Courses

Now that Groupon and LivingSocial have cornered the market for generalized, localized daily deals, we’re starting to see siloed startups across the globe create daily deals sites for other verticals. For example Paris startup LimeApp is a daily deals site specifically for online services.

A new Denmark startup, MindTeacher, is bringing the daily deals platform to online course offerings.

MindTeacher is connecting their users to classes for personal development. Whether you want to learn a language, a computer skill or even how to cook, you know you can find those classes online. However, there are 100s of websites to look towards for every different type of class. Also, there isn’t a site out there, yet, that’s offering classes at discounted rates. That’s what MindTeacher does.

MindTeacher is serving both the teachers and the students. For the teachers, MindTeacher is available to help them sell, or sell out online courses that need a little extra push. For students, it helps them find classes at more affordable rates. Using MindTeacher’s deal platform a student that could only afford one class may now be able to afford more.

We got a chance to talk with the people behind MindTeacher. Check out our interview below:

Denmark Startup: Story Planet Wants To Become A Global Story Telling Platform

At this day and age there are several different platforms to get your own content out to the internet. There are social media outlets like Twitter, that allow you to post short form content. There are places like Facebook which allow you to share longer, more intimate content. There are self blogging platforms like Tumblr. And, for those who like to write a lot on a specific topic there are full form blog platforms like Blogger and Word Press.

A new Denmark startup called Story Planet, is hoping to become a global platform for story tellers to mesh all of their media together and tell their story. From what we can tell Story Planet rests somewhere between Tumblr and Blogger/Word Press. It’s going to be the perfect place to have longer, more media rich blog or content offerings without the formality often associated with a Blogger or Word Press blog.

Story Planet is taking their idea to become a global story telling platform seriously, they already have a team presence in Copenhagen, Singapore, Brighton, and New York City. This gives them an accurate pulse of several startup areas and a way to push their product out on not just multiple countries, but multiple continents.

We got a chance to talk Bjarke Myrthu co-founder of Story Planet. Check out the interview below.

Interview With Danish Startup: Rating WorkPlace

Workplace ratings startups are starting to pop up all over the country and now apparently, around the world. Now, thanks to the internet, people who are interviewing for jobs get the opportunity to vet the employer as much as the employer can vet them.

Startups in the United States like California based startup Worker’s Count, allow employees to rate their workplace either by name or anonymously, in hopes that these ratings improve culture and quality of life at the work place. Some workplaces fare well on ratings sites, while others have their dirty laundry aired out amongst millions on the web.

Denmark startup Rating WorkPlace, functions similarly to Worker’s Count. Employees can rate their workplace for culture, benefits, job satisfaction and more. They can choose to do it anonymously or by name. Steven Moller, Rating WorkPlace founder, is hoping that by offering his service, people will no longer work in bad environmens.

We got a chance to interview Moller below. Please note that Moller is from Denmark and English is not his first language.

Copenhagen Startup: ClickATaxi Going Global Immediately, INTERVIEW

The transportation hailing app space is a hot one. In the United States the clear winner is Uber. They’ve expanded to many major cities across the country with plans for even more. Uber is being hit with a lot of challenges though because they are utilizing hired limousines and sedans rather than taxis themselves and they operate in a gray area when it comes to taxicab regulations. We actually use Uber quite a bit on the sneaker-strappend nationwide startup road trip.

In the UK, Skype backed HailO is the big taxicab hailing app. They recently received $17 million in funding to expand across the pond to the United States where they will go head to head with Uber.

A new Copenhagen startup is looking to shake up the whole space by launching globally all at one time. ClickATaxi is trying to build a network of worldwide cab drivers to make one all-inclusive app. ClickATaxi CEO and founder, Soren Halskov Nissen, thinks it’s ridiculous for travelers to have to have multiple taxi cab apps and then have to remember which countries or which cities each app works in. By taking on the entire world from the beginning they hope to quickly build scale with travelers.

We got a chance to talk with Nissen in the interview below.

Copenhagen Startup: Klusterr Social Ratings For The Workplace INTERVIEW

Copenhagen startup Klusterr is an entirely new kind of social platform that allows users to rate workplaces, bosses, co-workers and work environments. It started out as an idea for a site to gather references for jobs and keep them in one place but as co-founder Richard Blackham tells us in an interview, they pivoted to the workplace ratings model.

Klusterr allows employees to share information and ratings about their workplace across Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. This type of broad social sharing forces a new kind of transparency.

While this startup is similar to California startup Worker’s Count, Klusterr seems to be focusing on a broader more social picture. Employees can provide reviews, ratings and information about their employers and workplaces either by name or anonymously.

Check out our interview with Blackham after the break