[Applause] hi everyone I'm Jeff Gucci a founder CEO startup genome and we're here to talk about the amazing emerging and really also powerful clusters startup clusters in Denmark so I'm gonna ask each participant to introduce themselves but really to introduce your startup clusters what are the key technologies that you're working on and key verticals but also I'd love to you to give us one or maybe even two ideas two examples practical examples of what are the dissolution the products and services that your companies are developing your startups are developing yeah cool so i'm thomas nataas a director for it was a robotics which is a robot cluster and the robots are got a very fine introduction from the minister and one of the last sessions so but what the companies and the startups we're working with actually trying to do is if you talk about production or a child manufacturing the trying to take away the jobs which is dull or dangerous or dirty in production and replacing those jobs with robotics and so that's really mature market for for startups and for robot companies and it's a market which is growing all over the world right now the other half modest of the startups they are working in the new application areas it could be in construction it could be in farming in the food check area a very good example of that is actually startup we're working with which is called farm boys so from Troy it is developing a small solar driven robot which can seed and wheat farms in in organic farming where you cannot use pesticides instead of reading as a manual process but this small robot which can go around really slow but sitting up to 20 acres for pharma so there's a very good example of how you can use robots for for new applications so the cluster has been growing for more than 30 years and it's a very good example of how can music palaces public authorities how can our heroes like the East End local Institute University of Southern Denmark and of course all the companies work together to create an ecosystem so it's a very interesting place to be so the ecosystem has formed some very big successes during the last years and two major exits and mother well-known companies of course is mobile industrial robots we're doing of course robots who can as a collapse robot but it's also a mobile robot and and they have a tremendous peak of proof and fastest time to market and they got acquired in 18 by Tara line in the US for 1.7 billion things corners which is sort of equivalent to 34 times last year's turnover can you give us an idea of what is their most popular robot what does it do so the most well-known area of Robotics that the companies are working on is a collaborative robots it's a product category which is invented in one sir it's invented by the people behind the founders of Universal robots it's a product category which is really good for HR manufacturing in small and medium-sized companies it's fairly cheap to buy it's safe for humans to work together with and it's very easy to give it you tasks which is needed in their child production so what I did what did it do just described me one robot what what would its own typical application of collaborative robots is handling of objects so picking up an object in the pallet placing it in a cincy machine waiting 20 seconds taking it out and placing it in another pallet which is a job a lot of people actually do and 99 percent of all production companies in the world are small and medium-sized companies producing for order and in these kind of situations saws traditional robots existent really will suit it because it's made for automotive sector or four really big volume production so but the smaller order producing companies has much more flix much more needs for for a child manufacturing thank you well it reminds me of my student jobs I was a it gives me memories of what I used to do for for for making some money during the summer months what about you yeah student job or yeah I'm Thomas and I'm CEO of Copenhagen FinTech which is a cluster organisation or an innovation organization that works within FinTech of course but FinTech is like broadly defined because that's also moving into many you know other different industries we we were established three years ago by the Bankers Association the financial services Union which i think is quite extraordinary on a kind of a global scale that the Union actually goes in and takes responsibility for some of some of the innovation going on in the industry also and then municipality of Copenhagen and recently joined also by the Confederation of the industry so we also have a close relationship with a more traditional industries also so pretty exciting stuff we do everything from incubation to acceleration and everything in between we have 50 companies sitting with us and and during the past three years we've had around 100 companies going through us so we we see a lot of different startup ideas and a lot of different companies and founders who give me two examples of like yeah yeah Solutions so one of the very early companies that was actually one of the first residents in the lab was chain alysus I don't know how many of you knows I know them but they're working with within crypto so they're working with with the blockchain technology and they are so to speak the investigators in in crypto and helping actually law enforce and then intelligence agencies with doing investigation within the crypto space so when someone hacks your computer and demand some ransom for for unlocking it you know these are the guys that can can look at it if there's terrorist financing or whatever you have government's calling these guys and then help them investigate so they're creating transparency into into the in the crypto world so that could be one company and then recently we had move away with the Nordic neo pack so they got they got funding but they also got their first the first banking license in many years given in Denmark so now there it is it's a full fully fledged bank and creating another banking experience and it's very targeted a very special signal million eel segment right so so that's another example of that thank you my name is Qian hein and I'm the managing director of public democ and we are into car tech sector that the panel before the break spoke about so really really into technologies that help the government performing better than then else and it could be in fact all kinds of verticals it could be robotics handling case management better it could be fin tech helping the tax system it could be a green tech health tech better care of the elderly in fact all the sectors and all the tasks that the public sector delivered to to the citizens we don't have a physics pace as of yet but we would like to be one for examples of who it could it could be it could be we came we had a company who were measuring water pollution in water pipes and they had developed a small device that put into the water system and that monitored whether the water was polluted or not and whether the the system was wasting water and the new thing about this one was that it could transmit data from the water pipes and also it could reenact ice itself by the the current in the water so that is quite a new technology making it easier for government to measure what is the condition of the water system amazing and what what are the assets what are the advantages of Denmark foreign gothic white gothic why got sick because the public sector of Denmark is very digital the union said we OSS that we are number one the world in in that space and that means that as a political system we are used to deter core digital services and there is also and expects expectation from citizens and companies alike that the service that they get from from government is quite digital and is quite effective the other thing is that we look into some very heavy burdens on the public sector in the in the future more elderly people to be taken care of and and alike so we need to look to technologies to help lifting that those those problems so you're really building on the strength on the local strings yes yeah yeah robotic is also a strengths can you tell us like what's the performance really and give us a good image of you know what are you creating how big is it how how much how many scale ups are big are they so the all figures for the cluster is at 130 companies working within robotics and automation and the whole place in Noren the senior ones on the island of food in Denmark so it's been growing rapidly since 2010 we've seen more than 80 startups coming into the ecosystem the other way around more than 80 of the companies we have in the ecosystem today I found it after 2010 so there has been much more startups but some of them are not yeah yes there are still so it's a highly global cluster so more than 65% of the turnover and the companies are coming from export and if we talk about the companies doing not solutions but products it's actually more than 75% of the tuna or which is global so the startups are actually oriented towards a global markets from day one and they know they have so bill to find a niche where they can generate a turnover companies and then take this out to to a global audience very fast so it's the s4 has been going up more than 50 percent in two years so it's it's picking up well what are the size of the two largest companies are the two largest companies today is the most Universal robots which is today several hundred people and the same classes companies is one of our food or summation integrators which will be around 400 people arm sizeable great what about FinTech what are your success stories was the performance of the other cluster so I think we I think actually the the cluster and the performance builds on some of the great success stories of like the Saxo Bank and which is actually maybe even one of the first fin tech companies and then Mike back in the early 90s right so so that's definitely one success story that that pretty much every one of us know and and like Simcoe and also dates and and many of the bigger banks also have like a huge investments into IT and out of that you could even say coms Copenhagen FinTech or the FinTech with the startups and and right now we see the scene we have around 250 companies working within that what we define as field sake and that grew from three years back from around 70 what we counted I think what we see now is and they just they are headquartered out of Silicon Valley but trade shift just became a unicorn last year when they got a huge investment from Goldman Sachs but we also like analysis that I just mentioned now they started in the lab three years ago and and I think they're approaching a couple of hundred people now to you know within the blockchain crypto space and then then we have a tons of other upcoming Opilio that just raised one of the biggest rounds B rounds in in the Nordics so so there's a lot of stuff happening it's it's clear that when you grow so fast from 70 to 250 a lot of it is still early stage so they're still looking for a product market fit in in the Nordics the American in the Nordics so I think some of the food was also going forward walls would be to kind of take it through the funnel and and and globalize it and make it scale thank you so key under these these two clusters are really you know several years ahead of you but yes imagine you have big objectives as well and yeah action plan front of you tell us more about that yeah we believe that the the global market for gov tech is about four hundred billion dollars so it's it's quite large because obviously the government is a big spender of IT and our focus is on startups and our new technologies and what they can bring to to government both at the state level and at the local level but in fact we see very much as a bigger ecosystem so it's not only about startups it's not only about the smallest Indies is also about the larger companies so you could you could argue that also a company like a net company which is a huge I'd see provider for the government is is a cough tech company so for summer jobs it would be right to apply smaller companies and new technologies and for other jobs it will be more right to apply larger systems and to have a larger vendor but what we do see is that there there is a need to shift the culture both among startups to see interest in doing business with the government and also from the government side to do business with startups and to reach out for them so that is really the area that we look into and how do you plan to change that culture are you trying to affect it we are currently we are running the Cossack program for the Danish government and and of course we would like that to see growing also two more ministries and also to the municipality level and we would also like to see experiments or new models to come for the for the interplay or for the cooperation between the public and the private sector and to see and you see growing out out of that so that is really what we are pursuing and likewise we would like there to be a physical place for Gothic in in Copenhagen like the place that Thomas has and the place that you have where civil servants a university people investors startups more mature companies can come and inspire each other so that is a part of our plan as well and finally there is of course the funding issue and if you talk of tech many traditional venture capitalists they come companies they will not they will not go with that because they they would like to see a possible ice hockey stick or a more fast traction and that's not the way that it normally is in gov tech so we need some money that is store risk willing but that they can can do with a longer run how our procurement law is changing to help you and in this building this cluster you see do you need some changes in regulations for the cities to be able to purchase from yes small companies with no capital or or is already there what is there no no it is I mean there is a strict regulation of the procurement of the government and it's um regulated but so it's it's our experience that it might be strictly enforced in in Denmark and in other places and and at least there is some models that that could be put in place and also the so that means that there is a cultural element into this that you could go down a list that's not been tried before okay thank you so I wanted to talk about like the goals maybe make big statements about where you're going where's your cluster how's it going to look in three years and five years what are your your big stretch goals maybe you can tell us what's exciting for you huh where do you want to be what do you bring what do you want to be where do you want to bring Denmark in robotics and in three to five years so I'm still sitting I'm sitting here trying to getting used to being the most mature cluster in the I'm always used to being a youngest cluster we talk about the ecosystems so but in this company we suddenly become the most mature company I think they are totally new experience for me so but we have so many objections that we're working on its together with the companies and together with your forces were helping us so one of the abyssion is to keep attracting the best startups from all over Europe to expand the position that we have today as being the best place develop your robot startup in Europe and we're also looking so how can we actually bring some of this out to startups in from other places in Denmark so we think it's really stupid Informer society's perspective if you have a start-up incoming or in other parts of Jutland that you don't have the same acceleration as the startups with the geography and Odinson so that's something we're looking into we're also working on and I think that's key to to keep keeping a right balance in this ecosystem is we're working on can we attract more funding for for research can we help get more PhDs at universities because we can see that the most interesting status we're working on are based on knowledge coming out of PhD studies or made from people who have done species at university level so we definitely to sort of increase research in order to keep balancing this ecosystem in the growth as we're looking in so now and then we're looking into also how can we do how can we expand being global so we have companies who are very good at exporting and were born Global's but we also look into how can we set up a more a stronger infrastructure to support the smaller companies to do this as easy as possible and as fast as possible okay how many startups do you think are gonna be in three to five years are you ready to make some forecasts and give us big numbers that's a tricky question so I I think that will I hope you can maybe double the number of startups that we're working on right now and if you but you feel like you're already number one in Europe in robotics it's already I think there's a lot of things I said you're gonna to develop an idea for robot coming out of research or development work but it has become really difficult to actually commercialize that knowledge and that idea yeah so if you if there's a good mix in the ecosystem of people who are actually doing new knowledge but also with people who are have the business maths smart money and know how to actually commercialize this and I think that's what's needed it's both both is needed so that's your key challenges a stylet that's our likes and also if we talk about can I get global ii-if we talk about key chances we have to talk about the recruit so the companies are desperate for work for Intel these people and they're desperately needing people all the time to continue the growth so some of the big companies in the class are onboarding hundred and fifty people a year and they need also the smaller companies needs that kind of talent to keep growing and actually these are technical people engineers and it's technical people its engineers its software people it's people who have been working in sales and marketing may be working globally before but it's also actually stem educated people so 42 percent of the people working in the cluster I actually electricians or blacksmiths with further training or actually doing the implementations around the world so it's many kind of talent but it's when we ask the companies about the challenges 78 percent of them are talking about recruitment that's number one so that's key challenge yeah Thomas yeah your big objectives I know you have big ambitions forget all of the cluster conquer the world take over world domination mmm liking style yeah so I think it there there's a lot of things but I think we would we would like to work even more and we already do that with some of the bigger global financial institutions and also the the Nordic ones but you know work with them and their capabilities to actually do the partnerships because that's one thing we see with that we we can be kind of the facilitator and the intermediary in that in that kind of game and be the translator between your something that is very agile and constantly changing and and then the other thing that been used to really the opposite of that for a long time right so the it's a Morgan working you know between those two like the incumbent players and and the startups so that's one thing we want to develop I think you've already mentioned the tenant side that's of course something we see so so a huge huge part of our politicizing foreign startups so even outside of Europe to actually say you guys if you want to scale into Europe if you want to be a global startup and you want to scale into Europe too do it this with Denmark as a starting point and when not the biggest not the biggest market but that makes us a really good testament and test market and then from there on you can basically scale through the rest of Europe and we begin to see some traction in that we we have an orally fast-track program where we get foreign startups in and we help them connect with the necessary partners in the Nordics and then from there on to Europe bring back two goals appetite so I know you have one unicorn mouse are you gonna go unicorns in the next three years yeah I think your vision yeah we still want to work on under numbers side but I think it's less important going forward so so this from now on it's gonna be like working with with the ego system and maturing and bringing more competences and preparing them for that hopefully scaling journey and and globalization right so it's about bringing in competences from the outside because that I think frankly that's that's what Denmark also needs a lot more people that's actually been doing that journey before and and can sit down and help some of these founders with their scaling strategy and and they're not the funding side because that's very closely connected to to scaling of course and and we're building our network in that and and even also considering you know what what kind of can we play a more active role in in that that we do now so so if we have a lot of a lot of ambition of course we want to see we want to see more unicorns and I see you in Alice's or the Nordica Kai gateways or some of these keys guys the lunar ways that I think they're on a very good traction and some of these will definitely be unicorns within the next I don't know two or three years and what's the situation here in terms of you know having a sandbox word where the startups can can work and not be subject to the same laws as a big financial institution so you know we're working in different places and Kazakhstan they given himself a you know financial setbacks for for FinTech start a Buddha be in Sydney so what what is the situation here did you get that kind of help from yeah so first thing I think because there was a lot of talk somebody are about sandbox and finances are not the only place that you know these sandbox is is 610 and it's a great way of of testing your solution and ideas and and maybe at some point also get some regulatory relief but I think what the first step is try to understand what is a sandbox or just like what do we mean by that and I think in Denmark we took a very proactive approach so the regulatory authorities you were very happy with the collaboration with them and they actually did what they call the defense Hitler or the FinTech yeah lab where they they kind of work with both a sandbox where they you can apply and you can accept it and and they work with them very closely but also just the way we interact with the with the regulatory authorities it's it's really good so I think that's definitely one of the strong points coming from outside of Denmark and especially also when looking at the other Nordic countries I think we what we see in both Norway Sweden and and also partly Finland we have pretty progressive regulators and that is also looking and there will be in Singapore later this year together with us with a big delegation of both incumbent players and startups and looking towards learning from the UK because you know obviously UK is also in front here yeah so what I'm hearing is the government is very proactive in this problem and the World Bank or World Economic Forum's were drinking you number one and in government right yeah I also ik one of the key enablers we see is really having local corporations and so here you know financial institutions but also insurance companies working with startups yeah I heard you earlier before saying that was that was an issue that was difficult to activate the local large financial institutions to work I think how's it going what are the challenges and I think if you look at the different you know within the areas of FinTech you know you can take I think banks just they felt the heat for your time so they're starting to come around and and now it's more it's not so much about you know do we believe that we have to partner or collaborate it's not so much about that it's more about how do we actually make it work it's not because we don't want to but it's more like we need to practice you know we it doesn't come naturally to us so so that's one thing I think I think when it comes to to the insurance there's a lot on a global scale especially also in Europe and in Germany where I know you've just been there happening in the insurer tech space I think if you look at our ecosystem and you look at and we have this pie right so that's insurer attack it's definitely the smallest and they're having a hard time because there's not that much interaction so that's one thing we would like to accelerate and and try to facilitate some more some more discussions but but also to be honest like expose it to to the insurance companies outside of Denmark because they're very eager to play yeah thank you and Keon well you know we talked about activating that local customers for you is government's yeah yeah we talked a little bit about procurement laws that where you need help in changing some of that but also what we find helps a lot is when you have great examples of success yeah that helps you attract more startups to say okay I'm gonna go and target government as customers cities and national governments regions yeah what are you a key the key successor can point to of startups in the last few years here that have been able to create a big business with governments I mean I don't think there is that many smaller companies as of yet that have have gotten that but there are of course bigger companies and who've got a lot of business with with government but there was not a traction great traction us as of yet of tech companies or startups doing that but part of our ambition is those who to put their mark on the world map as their top tech hop and meaning that we would like to attract the talent and to attract capital going to Copenhagen and also seeing that there are great opportunities here to work closely with the government that had all levels and to to make test bets it could even be a collaboration across the Nordic country countries about this because we in many respects when we look at the political system we we are alike and I think also the the expectations of the of the citizens are like that we our welfare systems and so we provide a lot of services for them for the citizens and so that would be our ambition for the for going forwards one exciting project I've heard you know I think since a couple of years ago is this data open data project right we do government yeah I think that's that's very exciting to tell us more about that what does that mean for for the startups or the importunate ease it's I mean it means that especially on the health sector that we are trying to have data of being open to everybody to to work with but it's it's and there's been done a great work at various players in this field even to make it visible where agitator and who can excel and and and then who can who can do what with it and the government is is trying to to make this happen and not only with hofstader but data across every sector where it's possible so so it can can be provided to everybody to use and this is also a product as is running at a knowledge level where the viewpoints are the same that we would like to put the data up for everybody to to grow their business or to do other things so it can really be a competitive advantage for for Denmark oh yes it's your good good yes that means like AI startups and our tech startups Big Data startups can really come in and really create new new new value using that data and export it but because they've developed model and they can apply it elsewhere yes yes they could and and what is also strong and we were also heard today here is that the data FX side is very strong in Denmark I mean in the Nordics so that so it's it's it's data that is I mean the regulation around the data is is what you would like to see so we're talking about challenges and one of them is of course to you know export and really be borne global and we're talking about that already but like how a lot of your companies are born global but then still there's the challenge of really creating global growth right sales marketing really experience talent that has done it before so what are your plans to really improve this and change the mindset and you know develop those skills so I don't think actually we have to work on chasing the mindset I think I think the right mindset is really there already and very driven by some of the very strong role models we have had in the ecosystem who have created really big successes and share on how to do this and actually have in my career previously before I've worked in robotics have worked in the software industry and other industries and what I've learned there so always said every customer say ok we are completely different from the other customers which never all of these municipalities are mollys alike even though they say we were very different from the other ones but it's not like that in robotics so it's a totally new experience for me so when the role models have done something which actually works then the other companies say ok let's do the same thing so I don't think we'll have to really work on chasing their mindset polar have to work on setting up infrastructures which can support the growth of these companies also internationally a very good example is says we're actually together with the immutability affords has a yearly investor summit and this year I think there was 170 investors and more than 30 startups pitching there and the investors for global coming from all over the world and the startups were actually also coming to also to seek funding for developing tarah and also also a lot of local stores there so that's one of the things we'll have to keep increasing saying okay can we also attract more capital from outside from the companies then we also have to look into how can a group of smaller companies of SMEs work together to solve problems for very big companies who have automation issues or automation challenges so we have to look into a kid we sort of support consortium of small companies working together to address really big customers out there so that would be some of the things we'll have to begin soon okay so when you talk about infrastructure for going global give me a maybe a little bit more about what does that mean what what does that mean infrastructure for going low so actually that's there's different phases in the style of a robot startup the first critical phase is giving a minimal Viable Product you can actually sell to customers fast and I think we've sort of develop a very good system for supporting that the next phase is actually how do you support that and we together with a lot of partners in the ecosystem we're running this incubator where we're supporting a number of Rock startups but the ecosystem is also supporting startups which is not in our incubator so there's a willingness to support startups and to work together of the startups so-called multinationals working with with our smallest partners from the ecosystem or the robot companies a university-level their arty organizations but also with a pilot customers who are willing to sort of work with new companies so I think we have a very good infrastructure for this phase for the minimal Viable Product phase the next phase which is critical for these startups is actually to build a global sales channel fast and to bring in the right people who have done this before and we can do this very fast that's very difficult it is difficult and it's always time to markets which is important in robotics so we've seen very big companies forming who have had a good of runway of a long runway to build this global presence but for the companies we see today they need much to do it much faster in order to compete with the global competition and I think in this phase we'll have to look into how can we support the companies more yeah working developing Salesforce in other countries and continents bringing the right people in the right partnerships and the right solutions I mean VP sales that I've done it before and you were second Asia yeah that's really it's probably hard to find right now in this stage right over the ecosystem it's fairly hard but it also manages a succeeded for a lot of the companies soon yeah what about FinTech what is the challenge they're like so I think it's a little bit different because without me being an expert in robots I would say you know if a robot works in Germany at a car factory it probably also works at a car factory and so there's like the regulation and the financial services and the products and the kind of the systems in the different parts of the world are maybe a little bit more different than the problems worth solving in the Nordics is very different from the problems you have in the Philippines for instance your honor if just for as an example you have like 75 or 70 or 75% of the population in the Philippines has not banked so if you you know you don't have that problem in Denmark or even in the Nordics your people are pranked who doesn't have a bank account so I think it's it's it's a little bit of our understanding also so so how does you know the problem I'm solving here how can that actually help solving problems or other places around the world so that first puranam is kind of problem market fit yeah yeah and and understand the context that that you know you know because it big it can definitely help solving those problems but but maybe just in a bit another way but also understanding what the world's offers on scale that you know if you solve some of these very fundamental problems that that FinTech is set out to do whether it's Financial Inclusion transparency decent decentralization or what it is you know there's huge opportunities not only within finance but in many other sectors and and I think when it comes to for instance to sustainable agenda the SDGs it's a well-known fact that that FinTech in channel in in helping channelizing the investments and it into some of these in some of these projects that's a huge potential there and and we can see now I just read here before I came here that one of our companies is now doing a project in in Germany where you're paying with your crypto every time you're you fuel your tech you're at your car yeah and and if you drive don't speed or avoid potholes you've earned crypto and love Allah so there's a lot of different industries where there's a lot of opportunities here well thank you so much we always say startup genome that it's the first step is to build a broad four-day foundation for the ecosystem and increased startup quality in general and give them all kind of general programs but the next step is ability to focus on your strengths and develop specialized clusters and that's what you guys are building so I congratulate you and I wish you good luck for the future by just going well thank you thank you so much [Applause]