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Steen Donner is the Managing Director for Copenhagen Capacity, the official investment agency of Greater Copenhagen. As such, he's got a fantastic vantage point over what is attracting foreign investment to Copenhagen. Copenhagen Capacity, contrary to what you might expect, also helps Danish startups. Skype interview held in Oct. 2008.
"Copenhagen and Denmark have the potential of becoming one of the
strongest clean tech clusters in Europe."
- Steen Donner
Copenhagen Capacity's mission; supporting startups; the three kind of investments companies make in Copenhagen
Alex Farcet (Q): Why did you take the job as leader of Copenhagen Capacity?
Steen Donner (A): I have been working with Foreign Direct Investment for many years, but always from a Danish companies investing abroad point of view. When offered this job, I thought it was a good opportunity to work with the same things from the "other side".
(Q): Can you describe Copenhagen Capacity's mission in a few words?
(A): Our mission is to promote the capital region internationally and advise and support foreign investors who are contemplating investing in the region.
(Q): Can you describe your structure? And do you have a steering committee or a board and who sits on it?
(A): We are 28 employees and have offices in central Copenhagen. We have agents/consultants in a number of countries - England, Germany, US Netherlands, Japan and China and India. We focus on these countries as they account for more than 75% of all investments into Copenhagen.
Copenhagen Capacity is a fund and as such a self-governing institution. Our board of directors consists of 13 people - 6 politicians and 7 business people from the region. You can see the members of our Board on the website.
(Q): Do you work with only a certain size of investor or would you support a small startup as well?
(A): We have no limits to size at all. For a foreign company to invest abroad it does however often have a certain size. Most of the investments we attract to Copenhagen are initially relatively small - in average the start with approx. 10 people. Fortunately most of them grow to become larger after a number of years.
(Q): But in your experience, do individual or small team of foreign entrepreneurs turn to Copenhagen Capacity for help? And if so, what kind of help?
(A): Overall we work with three types of investments:
1. 'Market-driven'
2. 'Competence-driven'
3. 'Expansion'
The 'Market-driven' are companies motivated by accessing the Scandinavian market. The 'Competence-driven' are those where the foreign investor wants to utilise some of the competences that we have in the region. These investments are primarily concentrated around life sciences, ICT and clean tech. In relation to these business areas, we do support small startups - also Danish. If we are to attract foreign investors in relation to competence driven investments we need strong clusters. Copenhagen Capacity is therefore also, to a limited extent, engaged in strengthening the clusters.
Finally, 'Expansion' represents all the foreign companies that are already here - we call the teams working in this area Growth. What we do is try to help companies that have invested in Copenhagen to grow their business here.
(Q): Interesting! I receive your newsletter and frequently look at your site - so you have, for me at least, an information value. Concretely, what other services do your offer?
(A): We help foreign companies from initial contact, all the way to the actual investment and registration of a local company and even after that. We provide information, help them with benchmarking and feasibility studies, introduce them to local network of lawyers, accountants, recruitment consultants, business partners, etc. Furthermore, we take them around to help identify the right location within the region for their local company. Most of our services are quite practical and are intented to make the start-up in Copenhagen as easy as possible. When you enter a new market, there are always a lot of practical things which you are quite acustomed to.
(Q): Do companies compensate you for all these services?
(A): All services are provided free of charge and under full confidentiality.
(Q): How are you funded?
(A): We get our funds from various sources, but the majority of our funds are provided by the Capital Region and the Region of Sealand. Together these two regions provide almost 90% of our budget today. The Capital Region being by far the largest funder.