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 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.

DTU Skylab

As an Innovation Partner with DTU Skylab, my main responsibility is to support innovation projects from researchers at DTU Compute and DTU Construct leading to commercialization of groundbreaking research. 

I help with commercial assessments, market research, soft funding applications and development of potential spinout cases together with my fellow Innovation Partners, the Tech Transfer Office and our vast network of industry mentors and other collaborators.

Innovation Partner

LEIA Health

As Venture Developer for LEIA Health I have acted as a secondment to People Ventures and  virtual 'Chief of Staff' to the founders of the company helping them execute on important strategic projects to move them forward towards their company objectives of supporting the next 2B parents and their parental health. 

Achievements:

· Assisted in closing a major and really important exclusive partnership deal in Sweden for them propelling their revenue traction forwards by an order of magnitude. 
· Helped develop B2B sales approach, structure, processes and a playbook that can be executed by a team with limited resources. 
· Supported in developing the fundraising story and narrative for the Seed round and driving the growth modelling for the coming funding period.

Venture Developer (Secondment)

Tiimo

As Venture Developer for Tiimo I have acted as a secondment to People Ventures and  virtual 'Chief of Staff' to the founders and CEO of the company helping them execute on important strategic projects to move them forward towards their company objectives of supporting neurodivergent people across the world. 

Achievements:

· Successfully project managed the development and launch of Tiimo Learn, a new business area for the company.
· Helped develop the partner programme strategy and get it out leading to quick signup and vetting of more then 50 partners WW using Tiimo in their coaching practice. 
· Provided commercial sparring on legal contracts with partners and providers. 
· Facilitated introductions with potential strategic partners. 
· Helped with ongoing sparring and support on especially commercial issues.

People Ventures

As the Health Lead & Venture Developer for People Ventures my main objectives have been to build a strong position for the fund in the ecosystem, help secure an interesting portfolio of digital health startups and work hands-on with the founders of those portfolio companies in growing them into the successes, we all aspire for them to become. 

Responsibilities: 

· Help founders in portfolio companies grow the value of their startups on the journey to next funding round(s) and - eventually - an exit. 
· Secure dealflow of interesting digital health startups from across the Nordic region with an emphasis on Denmark and Sweden. 
· Build a strong network and position in the ecosystem as a leading early stage VC. 

Achievements: 

· Successfully helped both Tiimo, LEIA Health and Cortrium on various strategically important projects paving the way for strong business growth. 
· Helped both Cortrium and LEIA Health close significant revenue deals from new strategic partnerships. 
· Assisted LEIA Health on their fundraising story, narrative, growth modelling and data room ahead of their Seed funding round. 
· Built strong position in the Danish digital health ecosystem for People Ventures as the #1 early stage VC fund defined by our peers and major players in the sector. 
· Recognized thought leader in HealthTech and Digital Health with thought leader and conference speaker engagements both domestically and abroad.

Venture Developer | HealthTech VC | Scaleup COO

Cortrium

As COO of Cortrium I was asked by the chairman of the board to step in and help the team in the transition between an outgoing CEO and the recruitment of a new one. The job description was broad and depending on what was needed to do in order to help the team push the company forward. Member of the management team. 

Responsibilities: 

· Drive sales, marketing and support for +1000 customers and distributors in 17 markets.
· Support revenue growth and a healthy business model.
· Manage the business, including outsourced finance and legal functions
· Manage key strategic partnerships.

Achievements: 

· Complete business review for the Board of Directors identifying key painpoints we needed to fix immidiately. 
· Successfully rewamped and relaunched the business model and implemented it with a 30% price increase and less than 1,5% customer churn in close collaboration with key partner Pfizer Germany.
· Negotiated and closed the first big strategic customer, a chain of +40 cardiology clinics in Germany, on a multi-year volume deal replacing legacy platforms with Cortrium in all of the clinics. 
· Repackaged and repositioned our core value proposition depending on customer segments (casual, medium and heavy users).
· Assisted in recruiting the new CEO and secured a smooth, fast and efficient onboarding of him to the company and the team and an efficient transition back to People Ventures for me.

COO (interim)

inQvation

As Head of Studio I was headhunted by a General Partner of inQvation to head up their startup studio building high potential startups from scratch. The initiative was brand new, so everything needed to be invented and implemented before seeing the hopefully positive effects.

Responsibilities: 

· Develop new startups based on in-house how-to-model to be developed over time. 
· Source startup talent within interesting verticals, either for new startups or deal sourcing.
· Build strong relationships in the ecosystem to pave the way for more efficient scouting. 

Achievements: 

· Successfully created the early foundation for 3 MedTech startups: HEI Therapeutics, Evido Health and M2Call contributing to early business cases and pitch decks, founder recruitment and early funding (first money in). 
· Developed the iQnite Case Competition format with the theme of climate change resulting in a case competition with +70 entrepreneurs participating and 2 startups - Legacy Group and kleen hub - formed on the back of the competition. 
· Build strong relationships with the Tech Transfer Offices of major Danish universities to negotiate and secure fair and appropriate IP rights for relevant spinouts.
· Sought after advisor to early stage startups.

Head of Startup Studio | Building Businesses & Teams

FURTHER

As a Partner at FURTHER Cph me and my partner Lars developed a boutique agency within the bigger agency dedicated towards a deep customer understanding as the best basis for developing efficient customer strategies, digital or offline. The agency was a spinout from Peytz & Co, so we had to start from scratch building a customer base, getting known in the ecosystem and securing clients. 

Responsibilities: 

· Develop a clear offering and value proposition to attract significant customers. 
· Do sales, build pipeline and win projects for the agency. 
· Deliver on customer projects ensuring top customer satisfaction.
· Secure our position in the market to drive awareness and new leads for projects. 

Achievements: 

· Successfully built a blue chip client portfolio in little time including Google, Salling Group, LINAK and Orsted. 
· Won a large 18 month tender to build and implement a new innovation model for the tourism industry in Ringkøbing-Skjern and Varde municipalities on the Danish West Cost and delivered on it exceeding the customers expectations in the process.  
· Sold and facilitated Innovation Sprints (12 weeks) and Design Sprints to customers, including Google. 
· Secured teaching and speaking engagements at various higher education institutions and industry events.

Peytz & Co

As a Client Service Director my main role was to help the agency customers develop their digital strategies and optimize their digital business opportunities. This provided me with the opportunity to meet a lot of different types of clients and get a real feel for some of the similarities but also important differences between industries, when it comes to digital transformation. 

Responsibilities: 

· Drive new client business for the agency.
· Develop effective digital strategies and optimization plans to optimize customer value and satisfaction. 
· Provide thought leadership to stay top of mind with existing as well as new potential customers. 
· Ad hoc project management. 

Achievements: 

· Successfully developed a complete digital transformation strategy and plan for large waste handling company spanning both a new website and online services for their customers. 
· Developed a comprehensive digital strategy for a major customer that ended up becoming the basis for my book "Den effektive digitale strategy", which Peytz & Co kindly published. 
· Built and implemented powerful business management frameworks for select customers based on best-in-class experience from my time at Microsoft. 
· Impactful speaking engagements both internally and at industry events on digital innovation and transformation.

Client Services Director

CluedIn ApS

As an early Advisor to CluedIn, I met the 3 founders when they were starting out in a loft on the outskirts of Østerbro in Copenhagen. I quickly fell in love with their idea and decided to help them getting started. 

Achievements: 

· Setting up the basic company structure and processes on a 'simple is beautiful' basis. 
· Helped get the bank and payroll systems up and running.
· Sparring on how to pitch to investors, including setting up a Springboard with Connect Denmark for them.
· Helped build the pitchdeck that secured their first funding and got them off the ground (and the rest is history, as they say).

Advisor

SAXO.com

As the CIO of Saxo.com I was originally headhunted as non-technical CTO to help drive the internationalization of one of Denmarks most popular e-commerce websites. People leader of the development team. 

However, due to a misalignment of expectations on both sides of the table my tenure was cut short by mutual agreement.

Health Lead & Venture Developer @ People Ventures | COO, HealthTech

My mission in life is to help others succeed and realize ambitious goals. It is the common denominator when I reflect on +25 years of hands-on experience building, managing and optimizing 'digital first' businesses and products. And it is also at the core of who I am as a person.

To the team I bring a 'low ego/high capability' profile, who thrives in the engine room and have extensive, successful experience in many aspects of building and operating a business built to scale quickly and efficiently. I consider myself very good at setting ambitious goals and building simple and efficient structures around achieving these goals in ways that are as fun as they are engaging for great people to be a part of. 

As a person I am deeply loyal and committed to my stakeholders, team members and the mission at hand. The only way I know is to be 'all in' on succeeding together. I am an open and easy going person, who likes to 'get my hands dirty', be where the action is and help the team be great any way I possibly can. I consider my work my passion, and my passion is to do my utmost in my work. Always.

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