Antler

Antler is the most active early-stage venture fund globally. As part of the Nordic partner group, I invest in early-stage tech startups. We have one of the largest communities of early-stage founders in the world—and a growing portfolio of game-changing companies that are creating jobs, contributing to GDP, and improving lives. 
- 1000+ Portfolio startups
- 5,600+ founders 
- 30% of our startups have a female founder
- 30 locations spanning across the world

Associate Partner

The Aventures

Partner

The Aventures is a venture capital firm. We invest in big ideas, innovation and technological breakthroughs - but with broad diversification, spread over many different markets, innovation-oriented themes and diverse teams. 

Some of our portfolio startups include American and European tech startups such as: MoonPay, Republic, Alt, Firi, GamerPay, Avata, WeCare, Capsule, Northstake etc..

Got an awesome startup we should know about? Don't hesitate to reach out.

Advisory Board

Paaske Advisory

Supporting founders and executives (from venture backed scaleups, to unicorns, to public companies) on branding and marketing related matters..

Advisor & Executive Consultant 

Tjommi

Tjommi is a VC backed consumer FinTech, backed by Petter Stordalen and several Scandinavian VCs. Tjommi has developed an innovative financial app, which will help you get your money back, if your purchase from any ecommerce store drops in price after your purchase. Tjommi claims the difference for you - automatically and 100% hassle free!

BeautyVision

BeautyVision is the leading Augmented Reality app for consumers considering cosmetic treatments.
At the core of our business, we are creating more transparency, quality insurance and expectation alignment between consumers and cosmetic clinics/private hospitals. 
By providing a 3D “try before you buy" experience in Augmented Reality, we’re offering a whole new user journey for cosmetic treatments - a journey where consumers are empowered to make smarter decisions. 

Responsibilities:
• P&L budget and performance management
• Establishing strong paid digital customer acquisition strategy
• Establishing organic marketing driven customer acquisition strategy
• Establishing partnerships with influencers, agencies, and relevant vendors
• Establishing strategic partnerships with financial institutions and cosmetic clinics/private hospitals 
• Management of product development and highlevel roadmap
• Responsible for fundraising, investor relations and PR
• Ongoing reporting to investors and board

Founder & CEO

Børsen

Published thought leader at Denmark's biggest business media, Børsen, within subjects of tech, entrepreneurship & diversity. All opinions and thoughts expressed are my own.

Debater

Plecto

Plecto is a VC backed Business Performance Platform, which displays your KPIs in real-time across any screen or device. Plecto has more than 75.000 business customers, across 50 countries World wide.

Plecto operates from offices in Denmark (Aarhus), United Kingdom (London) and Poland (Warsaw), where we help some of the World's biggest brands (IBM, Nestlé, Nets, Pipedrive, Just Eat, Santander etc.) motivate thousands of employees to perform better. We do that by visualizing key performance indicators (KPI's) in an open and engaging way.

• Part of the Executive Management Team
• Cost, budget and performance management
• Establishing the overall global marketing strategy
• Launching 360 go-to-market strategies in new countries 
• Establishing succesfull B2B strategic partnerships (consultants, re-sellers etc.)
• Establishing global brand, communication and PR strategy
• Establishing cross-channel advertising strategy and ongoing optimization
• Content marketing strategy for SoMe channels 
• Management, coaching and hirings for marketing team (together with HR)
• Performance, data analysis and interpretation
• Ongoing reporting to CEO and to the Board of Directors

Lunar

Lunar is a unicorn Neobank. I joined the company just a couple of months after it was founded and was a part of the journey for the first 3 years. What. A. Ride. Along the way I held several different roles. You know, early days you need to get from A to B with only very few ressources and you get to wear many different hats, later on you get to work with some exciting budgets and people, you learn how to scale, implement processes and teach others. I spearheaded Marketing and Business Development along the road.

• Responsible for Product Development & Commercial Strategy
• Responsible for Business Cases and Product Revenue Streams
• Project Management across departments and teams 
• SPOC to partner banks and third party institutions
• Responsible for Product Development (Credit, Investments, NemKonto)
• Responsible for Product Launches and GTM Strategies 
• Responsible for KYC, AML and all around user experience
• Responsible for Revenue and Performance of products
• Ongoing 360 optimization of products (marketing, customers 
success, data and tech teams)
Etc...

Business Development Manager

In 2018, while being Marketing Responsible at Lunar, we were recognized as the leading FinTech company in the Nordics and won the award for FinTech of the Year, as well as 3 additional awards at Danish Digital Awards 2018 in the categories: best design/brand, innovation, startup/mobile for our campaign Make Money Matter.

• Developing marketing and sales strategies for customer acquisition
• Overall responsible for yearly, monthly and weekly campaign plans
• Overseeing and hiring of marketing specialists
• Responsible for outdoor, print, PR, tv-campaigns, digital advertising etc.
• Participating and speaking at events etc. representing Lunar
• Responsible for overall Marketing & Sales Performance
• Responsible for Budget Management and Optimization
• Responsible for Campaigns and cross-channel advertising 
• Responsible for Concept and Brand Development
• SPOC towards; production agencies, brand agencies and PR
• Development and optimization of influencer marketing strategy
• Development of SoMe Content Strategy across platforms 
• Reporting to CEO and the Board of Directors

Marketing Manager (Marketing Responsible)

Our SoMe effort has been recognized by some of the biggest media such as Snapchat and Facebook, where I've been invited as a key note speaker several times - sharing our learnings from establishing and executing Lunar Way's digital strategy. 

• Responsible for building Lunar Way's online strategy and presence from scratch. Involving crossplatform strategy, content creation and analytics.
• Responsible for strategy, content creation, communication and building a solid following on Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as well. 
• Responsible for the entire digital advertising strategy; involving everything within SEO, SEM, PPC, as well as on-going data driven optimization and split testing different audiences, graphics and communicative approaches. 
Responsible for budgets, CAC, MOM growth and targets.
• Responsible for the mapping of relevant influencers and establishing succesfull colabs with influencers who can be said to match Lunar Ways identity and brand. Involving both mikro and makro-influencer collabs. 
• Responsible for copywriting and creative storytelling

Social Media Manager

Vuuh Group ApS

I worked as a student worker, while studying, at the fashion/tech-startup Vuuh Group, where I worked with:

- Developing communication for website and newsletters (DK/EN)
- Ensuring the right tone of voice and brand throughout copywriting
- Developing product descriptions and ongoing SEO optimization

Copywriter and Content Producer

So, here we are. You made it to my profile - maybe in your search for more information about me or some of the companies I’m involved with. Anyways, here’s a short intro.
 
I’m a former motorsports athlete, but nowadays I get my adrenaline kick from working with talented people and high growth international tech scaleups from around the world and I enjoy every minute of it.
 
I’m creative, driven and always curious to learn new things - never afraid to take a risk. Throughout the years, I’ve managed to create award winning and measurable growth results for other people’s tech scaleups (within different industries and stages) as well as my own.
 
Besides having been passionately involved on the startup side for years (as an operator and founder), I’m now active on the other side of the table in Venture Capital. Yup - I get the best of both worlds - and I do feel super fortunate to be surrounded by so many awesome people every day, and getting to back lots of founders' inspiring visions.
 
You’ll find me posting content on this platform about topics I’m passionate about such as: Entrepreneurship, technology, marketing and branding within tech. And last but not least, connecting with new interesting people is also part of why I’m on this platform, so please feel free :) 

Acknowledgements:
🏅 Linkedin Top Voice 2024
🏅 Berlingske Talent 100, 2021
🏅 EY Entrepreneur of the Year Nominee 2020 
🏅 Nordic Women in Tech Award 2020 
🏅 Danish Digital Awards 2018 - winner in 3 categories

📚 Contributor for the book: 'How to get more women into management' by Jørgen Høegh
📚 Published debater and contributer at Børsen, Denmark's biggest business media
📚 Part of Dansk Erhverv's publication: '25 Female Entrepreneurs You Should Know'

Maiken Paaske

A historic moment: Flatpay is Denmark's newest unicorn 🦄  But they're not just the newest, they're the FASTEST ever to reach that milestone here.

They're building fintech infrastructure.
The "boring" way.
No AI gimmicks.

Just:
→ 60,000+ customers
→ Real revenue
→ Real hyper growth
→ Real product-market fit

While everyone chases AI hype, Flatpay focused on fintech infrastructure.
Which is still essential and holds massive potential.

🦄 $1.7B valuation
💰 $170M raised from Hedosophia, AVP, Smash Capital (and more)
📈 400% YoY growth
💵 $140M ARR (from $35M last year)
🎯 $500M ARR by end of next year

Flatpay isn't just Denmark's fastest unicorn ever.
They're another data point that European tech is accelerating fast 📈 

You didn't just break records.
You showed others what's possible 👊 

Sander Janca-Jensen,  Rasmus Hellmund Carlsen, Kiki Hoffmann Andersen & co.

Founder @ Abeam - A home for outliers | Former VC | ex-Antler | ex-Lunar | Advisor

I've been lying to you for months. I've been posting about startups, investments, and what I'm seeing in the market, but I haven't told you that..

..I'm back to being a founder again. Which is a fancy way of saying I woke up one day with an idea and willingly chose chaos 😅😂  

Can't say what just yet. But I can tell you this: It involves Unicorn founders. Billionaires. Top-tier investors and some of the most iconic people from around the world. Oh, yeah, and a problem that's been increasingly frustrating people..

So how’s the past months in beta been? Well, when your early users include some of the most successful people you know - and they keep asking: "When can I invite others?"

You know you're onto something.

More soon. 👀

No alternative text description for this image

I've watched VCs and first-time CEOs make this same expensive mistake over and over, when it comes to hiring for startups.

The setup: Early-stage startup. 20 people. Hiring their first Head of Product.
Two final candidates:

Candidate A:
→ 8 years at Google
 → "Senior Product Manager"
 → Impressive resume
 → Polished interview

Candidate B:
→ 3 years at unknown startup (acquired)
 → "Employee #5"
 → Scrappy resume
 → Raw but energetic

The CEO's and investor's immediate reaction: "Candidate A is obviously more qualified. Google! That's incredible."

But reality is:

Candidate A at Google:
→ Joined as employee ~2,000
→ Specialised role and responsibility
 → Managed existing product line
 → Had 3 PMs reporting to him
 → Executed roadmap set by leadership
 → Clear processes, established playbook
Never built anything from zero.

Candidate B at startup:
→ Employee #5 
 → Built product from scratch
 → No playbook, figured it out
 → Used to extreme ambiguity & chaos
 → Wore PM, designer, and analyst hats
 → Startup acquired for $50M
Built everything from nothing.

Employee #5 and Employee #2,000 are completely different people - with totally different skillsets.

After investing in +50 tech startups, working with multiple unicorn founders and top investors around the world, I kept hearing the same thing: "Can Europe compete with Silicon Valley?" 🤔 

But it’s the wrong question to ask.

The right question is: "What does Europe need to compete?"

The answer is: Infrastructure for better connectivity and collaboration. 

That's why I’m beyond excited to launch my venture, Abeam ⚫

We're living in a time where the world feels more fragmented than ever. Borders. Politics. Polarization. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Abeam is the new social sphere for unicorn founders, exited founders, top investors and leaders from the world’s greatest brands. It’s a home for the outliers.

It’s direct access to the brightest minds - in real time - near you, no matter where you’re at in the world. 🌎 

I've said "don't build a social media, it’s too hard" to founders for years.. And look at me now, doing exactly that. Because some problems are worth the difficulty. 

Like Kennedy once said: "We choose to go to the moon, not because it's easy, but because it's hard."

And gathering the world's leaders, across continents and borders, in one place, to foster real relationships and alliances?

That's definitely worth it.

Europe's strength isn't homogeneity. It's our diversity. I genuinely believe that together we will succeed, not despite our differences. But because of them. 🤝 

Abeam is available in App Store. Tell your favourite boss, a unicorn founder or investor about it. (link in the comments below 👇 )

How do you spot a unicorn founder before they build a billion dollar business? Look for hypomania 👀 

I just finished the book: 'The Hypomanic Edge - The link between a little craziness and a lot of success in America.' And it was truly eye-opening.

Top 1% of founders, investors and high performers:
→ Need few hours sleep, wake up energized
 → Brain never stops racing with thoughts
 → Actually believe they can do the impossible
 → Take risks others call insane
 → Work at an exhausting pace

Turns out, there's a clinical term for this: Hypomania. It’s not just a relentless drive. It's a mild manic state.

We try to define it as:
"Founder mode"
"ADHD"
"10x mindset"
"Visionary"
"Outlier"

But these people aren't just driven. They're wired differently at a clinical level.

If someone manages to channel it productively = billion-dollar companies.
Unchecked = burnout and chaos.

Most founders, investors and top performers don't know what it is.
They just know they're wired differently.

It's not a bug. It's the feature. 🦄

Some of the best business gets done outside the boardroom. It's built over conversations where people actually show up as themselves. 

Last week, at Marienlyst Strandhotel, Louise Herping Ellegaard and Estelle Christensen reminded me of this, by hosting an amazing event 🙏 

Awesome people. Real conversations. Champagne tasting with Champagne Stories - hosted it brilliant surroundings at Marienlyst Strandhotel.

Louise knows how to bring the right people together - and when you do that, magic happens 🙌 

Highlight of the trip?

Session with Female Invest and Anna Hartvigsen about investments.

Nothing I love more than brilliant women creating space for smarter investing and bigger ambitions 🙏 

#invited

My LinkedIn content has reached +6 million people this past year. I'm from Denmark. Population: 6 million people, so I've actually reached more people on this platform than exist in my entire country. That’s a bit wild 😅 

I don’t even feel it. That’s the weird part. 

If I’m speaking in front of an audience of 1,000 people I still get nervous. But here, on Linkedin, it’s 6 million people and it's just an everyday thing for me that I'm totally comfortable with. Strange..

I think it’s because I’ve found my tribe here.

I've always shown up here direct. Sharing my opinions and thoughts on tech, marketing and investments. Candid. Sometimes controversial. Always honest - and always sprinkled with a bit of humor. Just like I would in real life 😉 

And that acts like a filter:
👉 Attracts the people I want to connect with
👉 Repels the ones I wouldn’t get along with anyways
👉 Creates real relationships, not just connections

So here’s to another year on Linkedin. Thank you all for making it inspiring and exciting to be here 🙏

Headed to Slush? Unicorn founders, top VCs and billionaires are flying in for the event 🇫🇮 But there’s 0.1% chance you’ll run into them, unless you're on Abeam 😉 

15,000 people. Hundreds of sessions. ZERO guarantee you'll run into the right people within those intense days.

But if you're on Abeam? You'll know exactly who's there. And they'll know you're there too.

The best conversations don't happen on the main stage. They happen when outliers connect with each other.

If you're hoping to be approved on Abeam in time for Slush, then deadline for applying is: TUESDAY. (Download the app in App Store). OR get a referral from an existing member.

"Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." - Startup advice 101. But Sam Altman said something very different: "The good founders are the people who have ideas all the time"

Not one brilliant idea. Thousands. 💡 

That's a contrast to a lot of conventional wisdom in the startup world.

What Altman means is:

Great founders have ideas on:
→ Product improvements
 → Marketing approaches
 → Sales tactics
 → Positioning
 → Pricing
 → Partnerships
 → Culture
 → Everything

Every. Single. Day.

And this hit me: We always obsess over "the idea."

"Protect your idea!"

"Someone will steal your idea!"

But that's not how billion-dollar companies are built.

They're never built on ONE idea. They're built on THOUSANDS of ideas, executed over the years.

Morningscore

The biggest journey of my (relatively short) lifetime is unfolding.
Morningscore is an online tool that helps you grow your website's SEO. Like a computer game you are given "missions" to complete. And you get rewards for growing your website traffic. SEO is now fun.

Morningtrain

Today I am partner at Morningtrain. I try to help out with visionary ideas. I have to admit this fast morning train is running just fine (if not perfect) without it's old loco pilot ;)

I love the team and the culture. Proud of what we built together.

Morningtrain is a digital agency in Odense, Denmark. We give our customers 1st class journeys

We work passionately with 3 things: Design, Programming and Online Marketing

Technology Denmark

Technology Denmark aims to attract, develop, and retain talent within the field of technology for companies. We are a non-profit association and a strong triple-helix partnership between trade and industry, local authorities, and institutions of research and education

Co-Chairmen of the Board

I was responsible for the operations in the early days of Morningtrain.

Toender IT

The first company i co-founded out of high school. Small IT solutions for local businesses.

Some of the brightest people I know started in that company, and are now working in what became the successor, Morningtrain.

Cofounder

My startup journey started with the Agency Morningtrain in 2010. A great company and work place that stands strong today. Things took a bad turn in 2014 when a bitcoin mining operation literally blew up in a  priest house basement. But damn it was fun. Now since 2018 I am part of Morningscore, the easiest all-in-one SEO tool. We have big dreams. And our many happy customers makes us believe they are achievable.

I love to create things and help them grow. Interaction with (all sorts of) people gives me energy and feeds my curiosity greatly.

Steady wins the race.

Karsten Madsen

The last couple of months have been stressful. The SEO industry is changing and every week I meet into something new.

We have actually had a great year growth wise so far. But there is for sure some uncertainty about the future. And right now the market is acting strange.

It was kinda expected. 

We are going live with our "solution" in december:

Morningscore 4

It will turn Morningscore into the future winner (I am biased of course 👨‍🚀)

But yeah all the work, all the deadlines all the changes here and there needed to pull it off does cause stress.

My brain doesn't worry about anything, since I have logically concluded and calculated our way forward is solid. If not plan A, there is also plan B.

But still my stomach worries. I have told it to shut up and listen. And I use the full toolkit I learned to manage stress. But it's still a fight.

A thing that happened yesterday brough the stress noticeably down.

Totally unexpected.

I watched a 100 minute long documentary about Playstation vs SEGA vs Nintendo.

And oh boy must that have been a wild ride to be part of.

What I learned:

1.
SEGA had a marketing budget in the UK of 2M USD. Playstation had 100M. Lesson: SONY used their full power to win. Nothing SEGA could do. You don't choose your cards, only how you play them.

2
Technology was racing very fast in the 90's. They more or less all had to take a leap of faith on the technology they chose to partner with. Nintendo 64 chose one which turned out to be really hard for developers to work with and they lost A LOT of 3rd party support. MANY similar events unfolded that you could not have foreseen. Lesson: The winners were not smarter. Simply in a more favourable position.

3. 
No one cares much about who won or lost the 90's console wars today. But people remember the best games who went into history as pure works of art with huge honors given to the creators. Deservedly so. Lesson: Maybe you lose in the market. But creating something unique and fantastic that customers love, that is the true honor of building a business.

Lots more micro learnings. But these stood out to me. 

Of course I am playing to win. And I think we will. 

But at the same time I see that when you enter the business arena, you can't just decide to succeed, work hard and cash in. 

Some of the most talented people ever worked at SEGA, and they didn't win. 

Meanwhile you could be mediocre but have joined SONY at the right time. 

Mainly the documentary made me see how random it all was and how winners and losers shifted constantly.

And my stomach seems to relax a bit more now.

CEO @ Morningscore - turning SEO into a game

Cmon Cloudflare!!

Maybe instead of building one more fancy feature fix your basics...

This has happened way too many times last 2 years. It used to be rock solid...

I live in Amsterdam but this week in Odense, Denmark with the team, grinding away on Morningscore 4 - our epic new version that puts us in the big leagues.

We set a release date. We have a clear "final final" to-do list now.  

A few hardcore weeks ahead.

Our tractor RANK is looking forward to Christmas and the release 🎅🔥

Can someone tell me who copied who here? 😄😄😄

love how even the comma got in there

It's a funny world we live in.

As part of "growing up" with Morningscore 4 launch in December, we are also double checking our compliance to GDPR and marketing laws.

No more emails you did not ask for for example.

But here comes the (not so) fun part:

Our $450 million revenue a year top competitor and all the other multi million dollar competitors are not compliant to the best of my knowledge.

I signed up to a few last week and received lots of emails I did not ask for.

We are talking huge companies who have entire legal departments, and still decide to operate in a grey zone.

Next time you are after a small company for not being complient, please consider what pushed them in that direction - you really want to moralize the underdogs for not playing fair while the big players laugh in all our faces?

Confession:

I have campaigned for this slogan for a while now:

"GEO = SEO" 

I realise it was wrong. I am sorry to have misled you.

Corrected statement:

GEO = 80% SEO

Nerd alert.

I saw a lot of claims on LinkedIn that ChatGPT performs 20+ searches to Bing when you ask it questions and it performs web search.

The famous query-fan-out

An annoyingly fancy word to say "ChatGPT Googles for you"
 
However, when I check the logs to see search_model_queries I only find 2-3 every time.

So now I wonder: Is it that they only give us the top 1-3 or are the claims of these wildly many searches false?

I never understood why an AI would make that many searches for most questions asked, and honestly I think it's another attempt at pretending LLM's and the infrastructure around them are alien level intelligence.

Reality check: It might just be very very simple?

Or the alien level intelligence is not to be found in the logs and I am wrong?

taplio

The Battle

Maiken Paaske

Karsten Madsen

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMaiken Paaske's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreKarsten Madsen's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Maiken Paaske

Karsten Madsen

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Maiken Paaske's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreKarsten Madsen's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMaiken Paaske's LinkedIn Performance