Join TechBBQ in celebrating the Danish startup environment

One of Denmark’s most spectacular scenes provide the framework for TechBBQ 2015 – a festival for the country’s startup environment.

By Torben Kloster

The event frames investors, the national Nordic Startup Awards final, barbeque, big business, entrepreneurs and a lot of brave speakers on stage. Wednesday May 20 the Opera House in Copenhagen hosts TechBBQ 2015.

With more than 30 speakers and up to 1000 participants, the day offers virtually everything within the technological startup scene. From the youngest companies to those that have a value of more than one billion US dollars.

Speaking of highly rated companies, you can experience, among others, founder of Unity Technologies David Helgason. He will tell about the struggle before success where Unity Technolgies went from being close to bankruptcy to be the world’s most used game development software today.

“Everyone on stage is willing to address some of the issues that they have not talked about before. The important thing for us was that those on the scene wanted to be brutally honest, whether they tell stories related to the company or their private lifes. It is a bold line-up,” says Pia Ella Elmegård, co-organizer of TechBBQ and co-founder of the media house Beta Bits.

Meet also Mik Thobo-Carlsen, co-founder of the tattoo site Tattoodo.com who in less two years has reached 10 million visitors a month. On stage, he is also joined by Esben Østergaard, co-founder and CTO of Universal Robots. Universal Robots is leading within cooperating robots, and has just been bought by American Teradyne for just under 1.9 billion Danish kroner.

Money Men and awards
But no great business come into being without capital. Investors often have equal share in the successes as the founders themselves. Therefore, there is of course also a wide range of investors present at the opera on 20 May. You can meet Klaus Nyengaard, former CEO of Just Eat and investor in, among other Church Desk and Sekoia; Morten Lund, who has financed e.g. Skype and the not so successful Nyhedsavisen and Stefan Glanzer, who has founded the London-based private equity fund Passion Capital.

“The Danish technological startup scene now has a caliber that makes it able to attract some of the best international investors,” says Klaus Nyengaard, business angel and co-founder of TechBBQ.

TechBBQ also hosts the Danish part of the Nordic Startup Awards, which awards prizes that celebrates the entire Nordic startup scene.

The day ends with barbecue, music and drinks at Rainmaking Loft, located just behind the Opera House. The music will be provided by Trailerpark Festival, and as if it was not enough to celebrate on the day itself, there is an additional afterparty in Founders House at Islands Brygge the following Friday.

Tickets are still available, get yours at TechBBQ.dk