SCALEit is a growth initiative initiated by Innovation Center Denmark in Silicon Valley in spring 2011, executed in a partnership with Yggdrasil.me. With roots in Danish entrepreneurship, the goal is to expose Danish high technology to the world’s innovation capital: Silicon Valley. By creating a bridge to the unique entrepreneurial ecosystem in Silicon Valley, the program will accelerate young Danish companies with a focus on worldwide growth, to improve there international competitiveness - and create new jobs in Denmark.

SCALEit is designed to enable and support a wide selection of talent in the Danish entrepreneurial environments. In the first cycle we focus on IT - with options to head for Cleantech and Life sciences later on. Over three years SCALEit aims to involve more than 1,000 Danish entrepreneurs, while providing up to 100 Danish technology companies the option of either one week or a three month stay in Silicon Valley.

We focus on small Danish technology companies in the size of 5-20 employees - usually with a sales in a national/regional context. We want to work with companies who are product-oriented - not service oriented. For us, the difference in the definition, is that the revenues of the companies may not be (approximately) linear to the operating expenses (fx personnel). We seek product-oriented companies who sells 10 units a month - with the potential of selling 1,000 units - without a linear increase in expenses.

Growth rocket for Danish companies
The SCALEit program is a multistage scale rocket, that makes it possible for entrepreneurs at all stages to attend. The program follows four steps, where each step will refine and qualify the group of companies to those who have the best positioned to accelerate through Silicon Valley - and become global growth companies.

“The value added to my business because of the SCALEit programme is invaluable, not least in terms of business model, organizational setup, distribution channels and our place in the “funding value chain”.” SCALEit participant

“We learnt a lot in terms of scalability of our products and have changed our strategy after SCALEit.. now going after bigger markets!” SCALEit participant