PSV

"Miracles don’t always happen." ✨ Recently, Sifted featured stories of founders, Zoltan Patai, Jenny Holmström, Triin Kask and Rasmus Bruus Larsen, who’ve dared to speak about the big emotions of closing down their companies 💔 In a world where we constantly celebrate the big funding stories, the big exits, and the founders who come out on top, we can’t think of anything more brave than to share the story of not making it. Luckily it seems Sifteds article are part of a broader trend among European founders: a growing willingness to openly discuss their failures. This not only demystifies the obstacles of the startup journey but also fosters resilience—today’s loss might be tomorrow’s win 🏆 https://lnkd.in/dnBBfcXH For founders, the decision to pull the plug on their ventures can feel like more than just a setback but a real turning point in their personal and professional journeys 📈📉 As Hellström told sifted: “Entrepreneurs really identify themselves with their company, but I really think that what helped me was knowing I am not Coupleness; I am so much more.” says Holmström. “I’m a mum, a friend, a daughter, a sister and I have a purpose to keep building things.” To cope with this she explains she started to focus on her mental health through oing breathwork, therapy, exercising, eating and sleeping well, and looking positively to the future and its limitless possibilities. We think this is essential for every founder and investor to focus on, not only at the point of closing down a company but throughout the startup journey. In our article "Blueprint for Balance", we delve into strategies for founders to bolster their mental resilience on the startup journey. If you haven’t peeked yet, check it out here: https://lnkd.in/dVMcjNzB And way back we also shared our thoughts on how we as VCs can work to support the mental health of founders. https://lnkd.in/dD95b8d9 Building bigger, better companies involves recognizing that setbacks are not endpoints but chapters in the quest for learning and growing 💪💪 Thank you for sharing your stories Zoltan, Jenny, Rasmus, Triin and not least you Kristoffer Fløjstrup Degn for your recent linkedin post about shutting down Custimy, one of our portfolio companies in #PSVTech

Product/market fit — it's like finding the perfect dance partner. Tricky to define, hard to measure, but oh-so-rewarding when you get it right 💃🕺 The journey towards product/market-fit might feel like an impossible summit when you're standing at the mountain's base, and the railroad has plenty of twists, turns, and "aha!" moments. But with determination and a bit of ingenuity, you'll place your flag at the top 🧗♀️ At a previous #PSVAcademy session we asked several founders to spill the beans on their journey and share their crucial insights, learnings, and major blunders. Their collective wisdom forms a valuable playbook for achieving product/market-fit. Mathias Hermansen, the founder of GamerPay, highlighted some key lessons learned along the way: 🔥 If you're going to spend every hour of 10 years on something, it’s crucial that it catches the area of your interest. 🌟 A cliché, but actions speak louder than words. Dive in headfirst—take action, then figure out bigger and better moves, and finally calculate how to scale. 💪 Initially, have a narrow focus—start small before going big. Skip early market sizing and get your hands dirty first. 🙏 Get close to your customers. Gather their feedback to truly understand and meet their needs. Be ready to pivot based on feedback, adapting, and redesigning swiftly to maintain momentum. 🚀 Launch your product early, even if it's not perfect. Learn from real-world feedback and iterate quickly.   Product market fit might look different for every business, but universally, it means customers are buying as fast as you can produce, or usage is growing as fast as you can scale. The collective insights from founders Mathias Hermansen, Søren Halskov Nissen, and Jakob Knutzen 🧈 serve as a practical playbook—a "to-do and not-to-do" 📝  Read more in this article: https://lnkd.in/dQHqaJ3d

We all know failure is a force of nature in venture backed startups 📉 …more surprisingly to some people, a big chunk of founders doesn’t fail for business reasons. Actually 65% fail because of conflicts within the founding team 💔 Failure can be shameful, but only when we speak openly about it, we can prepare for it and learn how to tackle it. That’s why we’re so happy to see Sifted giving founder conflict some much needed attention in their recent article 👀 The article rightly points out how conflicts can derail a startup's journey, potentially leading to its demise. But when things go south, knowing how to bounce back stronger is key 🗝️   Here at PSV, we help founding teams tackle these challenges head-on by arming them with essential skills to navigate the rollercoaster. We believe in proactive communication and turning disagreements into opportunities for growth 📈 It’s not all ✨glitz and glam✨ building resilience and learning from failures are crucial for long-term success, much like nurturing a relationship. By drawing on insights and real-world examples, and with an inside out understanding of the startup grind, we empower founders with the tools they need to scale their ventures sustainably 🌱 Take a deep dive into our approaches at PSV with our Marriage Counseling: https://lnkd.in/d9rsrtrP Read more in Sifteds article: https://lnkd.in/gDeMHnuG

To believe or not to believe in green hydrogen 🤔 We believe in Dynelectro - Danish Ptx startup that the #PSVDeepTech fund welcomed to their portfolio in 2021. Søren Højgaard Jensen, Sune Lilbaek, and the rest of the team have continued to do impressive work developing the innovative 1-MW Dynamic Electrolyser Unit (DEU). 🚀 💸 So, it was a 'no brainer' to continue supporting in Dynelectro's new €11m funding round alongside Vsquared Ventures, Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, Yara Growth Ventures, The Footprint Firm and European Investment Bank (EIB). Additionally, the team have raised €9m in grants. What a great way to enter the holiday season with €20m in the bank. Stay tuned as Dynelectro begin to deploy their solution at European Energy' Danish renewable energy facility. Marianne Hyltoft, @Anders Kjær, Jakob Rybak-Andersen, Anne Lyck Smitshuysen, Samantha J. Phillips, Christian Winther, Christian Sparrevohn, Lise Rechsteiner, PhD, Björn Heinz Read more in EU-Startups' article (English): https://lnkd.in/dneHKaRN Read more in Finans' article (Danish): https://lnkd.in/dbZTseDq

Jab, hook, uppercut 🥊🥊🥊   Read the – almost – new feature on Jabbr or just get our quick sum up here.   We’ve said it a bunch of times lately: Together, we can punch above our weight 🥊 And speaking of punches, consider boxing - a sport as ancient as judges still filling out scores on a piece of paper, noting things like "clean punch" and "effective aggression." A bit subjective, wouldn’t you say? 🤔   Subjective and flawed judgments from judges, audience reactions, heated discussions, or other external factors: traditional boxing judging methods are subjective and prone to bias, which can lead to unfair results and a general mistrust of the sport. For ages, it’s been a manual click-a-thon, with two people diligently tracking every punch thrown. That’s where Allan Svejstrup Nielsen and Elias Obeid stepped into the ring with their game-changing company Jabbr 🥊   Jabbr provides the super-aware computer-vision AI model, Deepstrike. It not only counts punches but also reads the flow of the match, tracks movements of the boxers, and measures punch impact.  Three weeks ago, Deepstrike delivered a genuine knockout when it debuted in the Usyk vs. Fury fight. It was the first time the tool was used for live stats coverage. A big step towards democratizing professional-level analytics and accessible fight streaming for all in combat sports.    It's been thrilling to witness Jabbr’s growth since #PSVTech invested 10 months ago. We can’t wait for their next jab 💪💪   https://lnkd.in/dtcE9uT5  #PSVTech #combatsports #PSV #Venture #VC #DeepStrike #FuryvsUsyk

It’s time to trade pitch decks for poolside decks ☀️🏖️ As always, it’s been a sprint to close the last rounds and tie up loose ends before the summer. This year, our team has worked tirelessly on our ceremonial goodbye to PreSeed Ventures and “welcome party” for the PSV venture house - hopefully, you’ve followed along on our channel. That means our high-fives are extra high as we enter the second half of 2024, but also, our batteries are extra low. It’s time for a holiday😎🍹🏊♂️ But hold on a second – didn’t we forget to give you a tour of the last pillar in our venture house 🏘️ Ah, okay you probably didn’t notice as much as we did. Yet you should 🤭 We’ll have big news to share after the summer, so we won’t introduce you to our deep tech-focused fund just yet…stay tuned. We know, what a cliffhanger 🧗♀️   Until we’re back, we wish y’all a splendid summer. See you in August with fresh minds and bright ideas ☀️😄

We’re back for another house tour. We’ll show you #PSVLab ⚗️   Our lab is rooted in the belief that, sometimes investing in the future demands us to take part in creating it ourselves. The lab isn’t a physical space; think of it as a mindset 🧠 It’s a blank space that is run by everyone and no one 🚀   As a venture house, our hybrid setup sparks synergies across our individual disciplines, fund models, and investment strategies. It gives us the privilege to really leverage the fact that great minds don’t think alike; they think differently. This fuels a continuous stream of ideas for new ways to clear the path for more founders.   As with startups, a ton of our ideas and projects die in the development phase. But when an idea really catches fire, we dive head-first into the unknown. Over time, our lab and approach have nurtured initiatives, funds and tools like:   💫Academy: Most founders reaching out for the unicorn star end up failing. We wanted to help them beat the odds by activating the learnings of the +450 founders we had invested in. The constraint was that it couldn’t be an accelerator or incubator; it ended up being our academy. 💫Deeptech: Together with PSV Foundry’s founding partner, DTU, we identified a clear funding gap for scientific discoveries. That led us to bring in Marianne, Anders, and Jakob to scope and raise DK’s first deeptech-only venture fund. We got news on that after the summer. 💫Tech: Today, an established VC player, but #PSVTech grew out of an early belief that PSV could pioneer Denmark’s first institutional pre-seed fund. 💫 ESG Napkin: When ESG really started to bite into the startup ecosystem, only tools and frameworks were developed for big corporates. It didn't fit with the context of an early-stage startup. To help founders get started sooner rather than later, we decided to build a framework for them. 💫 LeaderSpace: Analysing insights from over 450 startup journeys, our People and Culture team identified that the founders' ability to scale themselves as leaders stood between success and failure. That insight led to the creation of a unique learning program, #PSVLeaderSpace. 💫Earthbound: Vital solutions to the climate crisis exist around university labs but never go further than research papers. We joined forces with several partners at DTU to find ways of hatching research with entrepreneurs. It turned into climate tech catalyst, DTU Earthbound. 💫Dual-use Growth: The world is calling for technologies within security and resilience, yet anything even remotely related to defence is on many investors' negative list. We’re in the early stages of discovering how we can responsibly invest in dual-use tech. Thank you to all our partners being part of it: DTU - Technical University of Denmark, Marianne Thellersen, Jes Broeng, DTU Entrepreneurship, DTU Science Park, Steen Donner, DTU Skylab, Mikkel Sørensen, DTU Earthbound, Simon Ulvund, Mikkel Marfelt, PhD, Nicolaj Højer Nielsen and many more

Startup world meet Vita 👋 – our not-so-new edition to the PSV team anymore.   A little while ago, Vita Helena Vig Nielsen joined us as our new brand and communication assistant.    🕺 Vita is all about moving people – From telling stories through her dancing since she was a kid to running through film sets to make great movies come alive 🎬   We’ve been lucky enough to win her over to the startup side, where she’s exchanged her best moves with her best words. Vita is truly piecing together PSV stories that can stir up a crowd – or an ecosystem, for that matter 🔥 👏   Crowds are definitely Vita’s thing. As long as she feels part of something bigger, she will go out of her way to make life easier for the rest, whether it’s a coworker or founder 🏃♀️ 👟   That also shines through in her choice of studies. She’s doing a BSc in Business Administration and Project Management at Copenhagen Business School, because she wants to build up a toolbox for helping people turn their visions into reality.   Structure and creativity all in one – Vita we're lucky to have you 🙏

🏠 Your PSV tour guides are back for another round – it’s time to step inside and meet our venture fund #PSVTech 👋👋   PSV Tech is dedicated to backing founders pre-product/market fit. Does that sound like something you’ve heard before? We’re not gonna lie; it might be just another early-stage VC.   We don’t think founders need our model to be rocket science. They need our team to be rock solid 💎 After living and breathing the earliest stages of the journey for two decades, PSV Tech knows by heart how to help founders navigate every twist and turn of getting a software-focused company from first proof to a repeatable model 🌀 We get behind their vision before others do and help them tackle whatever is around the next bend. So yes, it might be just another VC, but we understand the startup journey in a way that goes beyond metrics and facts 🚀   Leading PSV Tech are partners Richard Breiter, Helle Uth, Alexander Viterbo-Horten, Christel Piron, alongside Sebastian von Wildenrath Wegmann & Christian Dalsgaard on the investment team. They're supported by the strong fund value creation team at #PSFoundry, 👬 People and culture: Heidi Linderod, Mathias Bargholt & Freja Hejlskov, 🎙 Brand and communications, Tora Houe, Alice Bo Killemose & Vita Helena Vig Nielsen, ♻ ESG and Impact, Emma Kjellander, 💰Finance, Martin Kaas Haislund, 📜 Legal, Rasmus Saaby Jensen https://psv.xyz/tech

It's time to give you a tour inside the PSV Venture House and meet the people in it 🏠 First up is #PSVFoundry 🔥 Like any good foundry, this part of the venture house is where we cast, forge, and mould the blueprint for new funds, investment vehicles, initiatives, and programs that can help clear the path for more founders in the ecosystem 🛣 . PSV Foundry was originally spun out of the DTU - Technical University of Denmark in the early 2000s and still operates as an affiliated company of the university. Rooted in this legacy, we take an evergreen investment approach by circulating purpose-driven and risk-willing 🧗♀️ capital into emerging verticals or underserved markets to close gaps in the ecosystem 🌉 . To do this, the PSV Foundry team brings two decades of specialized experience in VC fund building, investing, and portfolio management. Our founding purpose is to pioneer transformative waves through a mix of fund and direct investments, grants, fund value creation, and partnerships 🌊 . While PSV Foundry is where the two individual funds #PSVTech and #PSVDeepTech were originally built, it's also where we dedicate resources and experience to new thought-leading ideas, programs, and initiatives 💡 like DTU Earthbound, #PSVAcademy, or the new accelerator Dual-use Growth we've launched in partnership with DTU Science Park and The National Defence Technology Centre. 🏋♀️ Not only do we have an internationally leading university supporting us in this purpose, but also a strong Board of Directors with expertise intersecting scientific innovation and venture capital: Niels Korsholm, Marianne Thellersen, Jes Broeng, Susanne Kure, and Merete Lundbye Møller. PSV Foundry is headed up by management team: Christel Piron, Heidi Linderod, Martin Kaas Haislund, and Tora Houe. The team working magic every day is Rasmus Saaby Jensen, Mathias Bargholt, Ida Witzell Kløverholt, Alice Bo Killemose, Alberte Schmidt Koefoed, Jesper Hart-Hansen, Lasse Hansen, Freja Hejlskov, Vita Helena Vig Nielsen, Mogens Flodin, Emma Kjellander and Bettina Andersson Read more at www.psv.xyz/foundry #PSV #PSVventurehouse #Startup #VC #Venturecapital #Venturehouse #PSVFoundry #PSVLab #PSVTech #PSVDeepTech