Big Tech Blog Calls Denmark Hot Stuff

10 Oct 2011

TNW places its bets on Copenhagen to become a Silicon Valley of Europe.

Copenhagen has been ranked alongside London and Berlin as one of Europe’s ‘startup hotbeds’ by the influential technology blog The Next Web (TNW).

“... up in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, a scene is emerging that’s well worth paying attention to,” TNW wrote. “A rich vein of technical and design talent is building a new generation of companies with an ambitious international outlook.”

TNW is consistently rated as one of the fifteen most influential blogs on the internet and one of the world’s leading technology blogs, according to Wikipedia.

Breakaway tech startups like Podio, Zendesk and Rails came out of Copenhagen. A little tech company called Skype was also co-founded by a Dane. And TNW is now betting that some of the hottest tech companies of the future are working away right now in the roughly five square miles that are Copenhagen.

TNW cited the Danish Innovation Center, Startup Bootcamp, and SCALEit as driving forces behind the bubbling IT startup scene here. Founders House, an invitation-only workspace for IT entrepreneurs, is another incubator that is drawing new IT companies and talented programmers.

File sharing firm Ge.tt, travel networking site Planely, publishing platform Issuu, and invoicing company Tradeshift, are just a few of the young Copenhagen-based tech startups that are poised to break out, according to TNW.

Many of the Danish start-ups have Copenhagen headquarters and a satellite office in San Francisco – that being the best means to break into the US market and keep close to Silicon Valley, which is still the heart of the global tech industry.

One reason Copenhagen has emerged as a top European city for tech startups – besides the beautiful women – Podio co-founder John Frodo told TNW, is because Danes learn English from a very young age and most are so comfortable speaking it. That makes it easier for Copenhagen startups to attract top global talent, Frodo said.

Podio’s staff members come from eleven different countries, while Tradeshift’s come from eighteen.

On the other hand, high business taxes, high cost of living, and a dearth of venture capital have slowed Denmark’s development into the Silicon Valley of Europe a little, said the entrepreneurs.