Kompasbank, a Danish bank that provides loans and other banking services to SMEs, has topped the inaugural Sifted 75: Nordics & Benelux Leaderboard — a ranking of the fastest-growing companies in these two regions.
The leaderboard ranks 75 companies in order of highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenue over the period 2021 to 2023.
Kompasbank was founded by Michael Hurup Andersen in 2017 and today boasts a huge 1149.73% CAGR.
The second fastest-growing company on the Sifted list is Klimate, a Copenhagen-based carbon asset management platform (645.36% CAGR).
Third on the ranking is Stockholm’s Flower (497.61%), founded by John Diklev in 2020, which helps clients that run battery energy storage infrastructure — such as companies running electric car fleets, owners of home batteries, data centres and solar and battery parks — to feed their stored power into the grid when demand is high. The company closed a €45m Series A round led by VC firm Northzone in October.
Other names on the list include Danish corporate card issuer and unicorn Pleo, Stockholm enterprise software company Sana AI and Belgian e-bike manufacturer Cowboy.
Fintech, climate startups fare well
Stockholm is the top HQ for this ranking, with the capital notching 26 of the 75 spots; Amsterdam, home to nine companies on the ranking, is a distant second.
There are 26 business-focused software companies on the list, making it the main company category. Fintech and climate tech companies had the next best performances (17 apiece) followed by consumer-focused companies (10).
The 75 companies on the leaderboard have raised €32.9m on average and grown 153.52% over two years (again on average).
Danish digital banking service Lunar has raised the most money (€475m) followed by Pleo (€393m) and Stockholm-based digital marketing site Funnel (€124.5m).
The top investors are Innovation Norway, Antler, Industrifonden and Almi Invest, which have all backed five companies that appear on the ranking.
Nordics & Benelux’s 10 fastest-growing companies
- Kompasbank (Denmark) — Business banking for SMEs
- Klimate (Denmark) — Carbon asset management platform
- Flower (Sweden) — Helps companies feed excess energy to grid
- Done (Sweden) — Marketplace for handyman services
- Dynelectro (Denmark) — Green hydrogen technology
- Lassie (Sweden) — Digital pet insurance
- Folio (Norway) — Business banking for SMEs
- Formalize (Denmark) — Compliance software
- OpenUp (the Netherlands) — Video therapy sessions with psychologists
- Scaleup Finance (Denmark) — Financial management platform
Sifted’s research team used their proprietary data to identify and contact relevant high-growth startups. Applications were accepted from June to November 15.
To be eligible, companies had to meet the following criteria: headquartered in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway or Sweden; founded in or after 2014; maximum headcount of 999; private and independent; majority of revenue must be generated by proprietary technology; at least three years of revenue data; and revenue (annualised if necessary) of at least €50k in the base year (2020 or 2021) and at least €500k in the latest financial year (2022 or 2023).
Companies were required to submit signed documentation to support disclosed financial information not publicly available.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/danish-sme-bank-kompasbank-tops-sifteds-nordics-benelux-leaderboard/