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Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship gave speaking time to the startups that have been through an intensive accelerator programme.
For many startups, Entrepreneurial Day at CBS is one of the highlights of the year. Students and graduates from the country’s universities meet and present the projects they have worked on during their studies. Shoulder to shoulder on small stands, they stand in long, buzzing rows on a Wednesday in November and happily present to interested eyes the projects they each believe the world needs.
The participants are affiliated with the Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship (CSE) in Porcelænshaven in Frederiksberg. Here, 120 startups are currently affiliated with the Proof Programme and are free to come and work on their projects, get sparring and access to workshops. One floor up, there are permanent spaces for the selected startups that are part of the Go Grow accelerator programme. This is a nine-month programme where students are prepared for the big world in a more intensive and individually tailored skills programme. This is done through a network of mentors and advisors, targeted workshops, sparring and personal development.
For many of the Entrepreneurial Day participants, the last part of the programme, the Go Grow Accelerator Demo Day, is the most important. This is where the 17 Go Grow projects get the opportunity to present themselves in front of a large audience of investors and companies. It’s the finale of what started as an idea and after almost a year of refinement in the Go Grow framework will really prove its worth.
“We hope we can win”
“We finish 17th in the series today and hope we can win,” says Sofus Amby Jørgensen, referring to the cash prizes that will be awarded to the jury’s chosen darlings after all 17 presentations.
He and Mikkel Thomassen come from Aalborg University, where they studied industrial design, and they have been working on their Lifeboard for three years alongside their studies. “The Lifeboard is a much safer and more useful alternative to the 100-year-old lifebuoy on Danish beaches,” they explain.
They have already sold Lifeboard to a number of Danish coastal municipalities and, via Go Grow, have found a mentor in Australia, which is an interesting market for them. But now they need to stand on their own two feet.
It’s about moving knowledge and people
Kenneth Salomonsen is Funding and Partnership Manager at CSE. He spends most of his time raising external funding for the projects and programmes that CSE offers and that Lifeboard, among others, benefits from. This year, he also managed to sponsor the entire Entrepreneurial Day event and the cash prizes, which the Otto Mønsted Foundation has also contributed to several times.
He is relatively new to his job at CSE and is surprised at how many product start-ups he meets in his daily work, he says.
“People make chewing gum, sell shoes and flowers. I expected it to be apps and software solutions, and it is , but there are so many products. I don’t know if it’s something of the times, that people want to go back to the tangible or if it’s just always been like that, but I’ve just noticed that there are a lot of physical things going on. And we have a lot of female entrepreneurs compared to the rest of the startup world. I think it’s 50/50 among founders in Go Grow, and it’s great that we’re doing well on that parameter,” he says.
It is not known how the startups that have visited CSE for shorter or longer periods since 2007 are doing. Perhaps it’s not such important knowledge, Kenneth Salomonsen points out.
“Our success criterion is not necessarily that they, at least those in the Proff Programme, grow into large multinational companies. For us, it’s just as much about taking on the role of an educational institution and being able to move people and qualify their learning through the experiences they gain as a startup. It’s also adding value to society that people get this type of experience here. Regardless of how their startup journeyunfolds , they get some tools that can help promote Danish competitiveness in one way or another,” he says.
The facts:
The winners of CBS Startup 2021: ARIS Robotics, Dansk Rejsehjælp and Mixtery. They each received a cash prize of DKK 75,000.
The audience awards Best Pitch and Audience Award of DKK 20,000 and DKK 5,000 respectively went to Flowering and Wair.