Karsten Madsen’s Post

Investment diary no. 1 I am doing something new. I give you an insight into how it's like to raise capital for Morningscore I have been at it for about a month now. We are raising 1 million USD for our growth explosion. Of course I can't share any concrete details, but I can give you the overview and I can take you with me on the journey. First stop of my journey is that I have been told by 10+ people that it's near impossible to get an investor for that kind of amount right now (we are not going for VC) And I started in Summer. Life on hard mode. But doors have been closed all my life. It's just another day at work 😎 The basic funding material is ready: Pitch, plan, budget and terms. Next diary coming soon.

Nope, this is also not the Summer where I manage to make this reading list smaller For every 1 book I read I get recommended 2 My reading velocity: 1 book per quarter. So I have enough books for the next 8 years 😅 (or potentially infinite, if 1:2 trend continues)

I am efficiency cursed There is a voice in my head that always strives for max efficiency. It also has a built in guilt feature. And it never breaks 💯 Example 1: If I go to a conference it will tell me "what could you have done at your desk with this time instead? How much revenue could you have generated?" And then it proceeds to make a ROI calculation 😅 Example 2 (picture): Sewing new logo on my work suit outside work hours - so I won't feel inefficient mid day. To be fair, I believe this voice is also one of my strengths. I am good at seeing optimal outcomes. Intuitively I distritbute my time efficiently. I spent years training this. But yeah, I am trying to get rid of the curse. Quiet it. I even took up meditation as part of that goal. And for a farmer son like me, that's a big step into hippie land. But it's working! And if it doesnt work, and I am stuck with this curse, then so be it for now. Tips welcome 😊

July is hot hot hot at Morningscore Lots of leads and customers found their way so far Hope we can keep it going 😎🧑🚀

A paradox I have been thinking a bit about lately: We all say change is happening faster than ever "Change is the only constant" is proclaimed by IT consultants Change management is the fancy corporate buzz word And everyone seems so obsessed about the impacts of change Yet Actually it is known that technological change has slowed down in many industries. Here I citate the briliant Jason Crawford: "transportation, and energy have seen no new general-purpose technologies since the 1960s—contrast with the period 1880–1940, which saw the invention of electrical power, synthetic plastics, the assembly line, the automobile and the airplane. Nuclear power was once on track to be the dominant source of world electricity; instead, it plateaued at about 10%. The Concorde was grounded, and the planes we fly today actually go a bit slower than the jets of the 1960s." Isn't that a paradox? What's going on here? What Am I missing? My own best guess is that the kind of change we experience now is more "stressful" since it's digital and hard to grasp. And in some ways impact our routines more directly if you work in IT or browse away on your devices But to say that change is accelerating is actually misleading It's camouflaging the fact that we are in a time of slow change in most industries outside of IT

Mette Fruensgaard fra Signup Academy har spurgt ind til min iværksætterrejse som startede på Tønder gymnasium og nu med base på planet Amsterdam. Det er der kommet en lille artikel ud af som kan ses her: https://lnkd.in/euSH4SVz (Det gør lidt ondt i min jantelov at dele, men here goes 😅)

our CCO Eric Johnson always talks about energy. One of the first things I remember him tell me was "Money is boring. It's all about energy" I thought it was cool but didn't quite get it Slowly the importance grew on me. And I have adopted the mindset. Example: I had a rough day today. at 5PM we were casually talking about our challenges. And at that point all obstacles seemed massive and solutions blurry Now it's 10 PM. I just came home from sport (Pickleball) and had a shower Now everything is possible again. All my obstacles seem insignificant. It’s the classic half full vs half empty cup As a CEO of a growing company, my cup should always be half full. But you take some serious beatings in this growth game. I guess that’s why it’s so important to have high and positive energy. It is literally the teams life saver in all these tough situations. The alternative is to give into synicism and get a bit too realistic about things. And that’s maybe good if you run a big finance department. But it’s game over in scaleup land. Because we are not here to face reality. We are here to change reality. (sorry for the cheesy Hollywood one-liner, but you get my point 😅)

A revolution in office work has arrived It's half the price of a traditional phone booth or mute box. And it can do so much more! Order your workbox 2000 before we're out of stuck You thought we only make cool software at Morningscore? Well the tractor business is close to our heart too.

We have a great partnership with e-mærket - we launched our SEO academy 2.0 together recently. Since they are now trusted by our spaceship, they have been awarded a suit (our company uniform) Thanks for a great partnership and for being awesome Martin Hjorth 🚀🚀

I am at the beginning of my 3rd investor funding round. A veteran now 😃 I reflected a bit on my investor journey and what I learned. Maybe useful for some of you: funding round 2018: My virgin journey into funding started. To get the company going and be able to hire the first small team we needed capital. I Approached lots of options and had a rough reality check. Most approaches were cold. A few were introduced to me. Several pepople wanted to invest, but many wanted to steer the direction of the company, while others were so brutal that I could not see myself working with/for them. The cold land of capital is not always that kind - but luckily I also found passionate, honest and warm people. One of those people were Helge Munk which became our seed investor, and I and the team is very grateful for that. Funding round 2022 After years +100% year over year of growth we convinced ourselves that we were ready for venture capital. The market was also totally crazy at this time. I was told that if I asked for less than 20x our annual revenue, I was stupid. So I pursued that tactic of pumping up the company. But it never felt right. We got close to a funding closure in April 2022, but then the markets completely crashed within just a week or two. What a wild time. I am standing in London one day and everyone wants to talk, and then it all just crashes a few days later and silence follows. It was lucky we decided to stop trying to fund and go for cash positive instead. I feel for everyone who got funded at the crazy high and now have to declare bankruptcy in these low times because the business was pumped too hard. Really tough stories. Could have been me. Funding round 2024 It's not been easy to go from well funded to "bootstrapped". We had to lay off a lot of team members in 2022. That sucks. % growth also slowed down because we went from 6 to 2 people on the growth team. But then in 2023 came the phoenix rising moment where we found back to our core with a go to market model that worked wonders. We are still not back at 100% growth, but we are picking up speed in 2024! And now we are looking at big opportunities that we can only grab with more funding (our tech can't handle growth). It’s weird to be back in the funding race, but for now at least it feels way nicer. I (almost) don’t struggle with the no’s from investors anymore. I know landing an investment is about finding that perfect match, and it takes time and simply requires a lot of no’s. Also since this is not a do or die moment (we will be fine without an investment) I can be more real and honest in the proces, which potential investors have told me is refreshing. So yeah, this time I keep it cool. The only sad part is that funding takes so much time, and I feel guilty for not being able to work on the product and the business. Luckily the team is running in the highest gear ever 😎