Start-up founded in a CBS entrepreneurial class sells for millions
What started as a business case in class - AI for solving GDPR issues - has turned into fulltime employment and a multi-million kroner deal for two former CBS students.
Independent University Newspaper
Copenhagen Business School
What started as a business case in class - AI for solving GDPR issues - has turned into fulltime employment and a multi-million kroner deal for two former CBS students.
The Demo Day event marked the end of the Go Grow programme 2022 featuring student start-ups pitching in front of 250 invited guests. A jury awarded the ‘best pitch’ prize of DKK 25,000 to poetry start-up Tolnø, run by a CBS student.
Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship is guiding and supporting its startups during the coronavirus crisis. For most advanced startups, it’s a game of survival, and lessons on crisis management are being learned as the days go by. But the coronavirus crisis is not bad for everyone, argue representatives from CSE.
Benjamin Busk began supplying his fellow HA Almen students with secondhand textbooks sold from moving boxes outside CBS. Now, his business, Uni Bazaar, has a fully automated storeroom with more than 4,000 books, and he has just received DKK 75,000 from CBS to expand the service to supply all CBS study programs.
A year ago, CBS graduate Rasmus Serup and his partner were handling all aspects of their company HairLust themselves. Now, they have 15 employees and more than 500 distributors. But the road to success has been a rollercoaster ride. In this interview, Rasmus shares some ups and downs of having a startup that sells vitamin wine gums and bamboo turban hair towels for better hair in a baffling market.
In March 2018, the founders of the CBS start-up, Chabber agreed that they would give it one more shot before throwing in the towel. At the end of May 2019, they set off for Silicon Valley to try and enter the American market. “I can’t recall experiencing anything this intense,” says co-founder Valdemar Gaarn Rasmussen.
Only 25 percent of Denmark’s entrepreneurs are women. The Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship wants to change this by encouraging women at CBS to take the leap and join their new entrepreneurial program, RISE. “It’s about time female entrepreneurs take the lead,” says the CEO of CSE.
In ten years’ time, the Danish universities should have created ten companies - each with a total turnover of DKK 1 billion. This is the ambition of the Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science, Tommy Ahlers. The Dean of Research at CBS, a professor, and the CEO of Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship approve of this ambition, otherwise this precious knowledge risks being filed away out of sight.
For the fourth time, CBS Entrepreneurial Day takes over Solbjerg Plads to inspire students to become entrepreneurs – even within fields they know nothing about. This year’s theme is 'Change the game' and the event continues to attract more guests from other universities, technical colleges, high schools and even students from neighboring countries.
Tobias Schelle, CBS alum and founder of 24Slides, has a dream to create a company with 1,000 employees in Indonesia. One where they can have fun in the workplace and be involved in the decisions that affect the company. To materialize this dream, he came up with a unique way to hire new employees and keep the existing ones engaged. This lead to a more epic vision. One that spans beyond the scope of his own company.
A GoMore trip turned out to be more valuable than just a car ride. Carl Kronika, CEO of the CSE-based start-up Copus, was looking for a new employee for his company. That employee happened to be Louise Salebjerg-Hansen, the driver of the Go-More ride.
CBS students, Silas Storgaard and Dylan Bastved, have found an eco-friendly and cheap way to remove the ubiquitous gum leftovers from highways and byways. However, people are hesitant to take up the solution. Jakob Fals Nygaard from Campus Services at CBS calls the gum-issue an “under prioritized problem.”
More students from CBS, University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University and Aalborg University will get the opportunity to fulfill their dreams of starting their own company, as the universities will receive DKK 9.6 million to incubate more entrepreneurs. According to Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship, the best possible time to start a business is during your studies.
Running a start-up while studying and working on the side can be a tough game to play. There is no way to make the day longer, but there is a way to get more time to work on your start-up. Marc Pascal Landgreen and Marie-Louise Reade Lomholt, both CBS students, are currently doing an internship in their own business. And apart from moving their business forward, they also get 15 ECTS for doing the internship.
Alexander Morabbi Wulsch, CBS student and founder of URU Design, grew up in a household where the laundry machine was always buzzing and pairing socks became a daunting task. That's why the family came up with the idea of SOLOSOCKS. Since then, the idea has turned into a business with several employees, a successful crowdfunding campaign, and a new office in Germany. The CBS student shares his thoughts on what he learns in school and how it is woven into the sock start-up.
Selling machetes wasn’t enough for CBS alums Martin, Frederik, and Joachim. They wanted to do something good for the world. This led to the founding of the Green Tech Challenge, a 5-day challenge which aims to help green start-ups get out of the “valley of death”. They recently held one of their challenges at CBS.
Henrik Zillmer, CBS alum and founder of AirHelp, didn’t think he had the confidence to start up a company. However, he ended up quitting his job and going for it. Now, AirHelp is spanning over 30 countries. The CBS alum shares his thoughts on tapping into your ambitions and using them as a driving force.
The social start-up from CBS, Novaheim, has become part of a research project at the University of Copenhagen that is aiming to empower female asylum seekers through design. An Associate Professor on the project is “delighted” about having Novaheim onboard, and describes it as “an enormous coincidence.”
What do drinks with insects in them, microbiomes in your guts, and cloud-based intelligence have in common? We spent the day looking at and trying out the different products and services that student start-ups presented during CBS Entrepreneurial Day 2017. Among other things, there were investors with deep pockets, entrepreneurial cupcakes, and various types of drones.
Pillow by pillow, Novaheim wants to get female asylum seekers more in tune with the Danish job market, give them a better understanding of Danish culture in general, and change the discourse revolving around asylum seekers. All through the use of yarn and crocheting needles.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but can a new name make a university department better? Mitchell Dean believes so. As his department changes name, he is aiming for new research collaborations and a stronger focus on the problems that businesses and society are facing. “We are giving students capacities to make a difference through their professional lives. And I think that’s what the current generation of students want: they want to contribute to positive social transformation.”
17 Feb 2023
University management, students and experts from across Denmark are coming together in a new alliance that aims to make students feel better. “It’s a conversation we need to be having,” says deputy president Inger Askehave, who represents CBS in the alliance.
14 Feb 2023
Sebastian Zenker is sometimes wondering why the government has not called. He has first-hand experience of changing a master’s programme from two years to one, which is exactly what the Danish government plans to do with its education reform plans. But so far, nobody has asked for his input.
10 Feb 2023
Sometimes you don’t have to create a brand-new concept to win awards. You can just tweak an existing industry formula to increase flexibility and reach more customers. That was exactly what university students Hasan El Youssef and Elmar J. Johannsson did when they started TopTutors in 2021. A concept that secured them the CBS Startup Award in November 2022, which comes with a grant of DKK 75,000 to help them scale up their business.
03 Feb 2023
Monday evening, CBS Students elected David Johannes Treschow Ellebye, who formerly represented CBS Conservative & Liberal Students (CLS), as its new president. He promises to work to bring back Nexus Thursdays and fight the political reforms.
07 Feb 2023
The newly elected president of CBS Students, Tomas Vemola, has resigned from his post for personal reasons. CBS Students has called for an Extraordinary General Assembly to elect a new president.
01 Feb 2023
Is it a cure for writer’s block, or a tool for cheating? Will it bring the end of education as we know it? The latest developments in AI text generators, most famously ChatGPT, are forcing us to rethink writing, teaching and learning.
31 Jan 2023
If you believe that going on exchange is difficult, you might be surprised to learn that there is a space for everyone. Grades and points from extra-curricular activities do matter to some extent, but even with grades at the lower end of the spectrum, an exchange trip is within reach.
18 Nov 2022
Algorithms have a hold on the stock markets that has fuelled the need for regulation. But how do we regulate what we don’t understand? The second generation of trading algorithms are designing their own investment strategies – and they are so complicated that we are unable to understand them.
12 Sep 2022
BOOK REVIEW: Read about new methods for managing stress in working life.
22 Oct 2021
Two researchers tell the story of how the pandemic completely altered their research topic and how they dealt with it.
23 Sep 2021
BOOK REVIEW: Scapegoating the finance sector has become a national sport. Imagine, banks are daring to charge negative interest. But much of the criticism is based on prejudice, claim two professors.
17 May 2021