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Counting from the top of my head, a couple of hundred people decided to show up at Nikolaj Kunsthal in central Copenhagen yesterday. Amongst the people were backers, creators, representatives of Kickstarter and of course members of the Danish Crowdfunding Association.
Crowdfunding is a new form of entrepreneurial finance where entrepreneurs or other project creators collect small contributions through a platform on the internet against a reward or equity. Kickstarter is the worlds leading platform and has collected more than USD 1.3 billion for 67,000 projects in five years.
As some news media were reporting yesterday, Kickstarter is opening in Denmark, Sweden and Norway from October. Stephanie Pereira from Kickstarter made it publicly known at the presentation. The Danish Kickstarter page can already be visited at kickstarter.com/denmark.
The opening eliminates some of the barriers that previously existed for Danish entrepreneurs who wants to crowdfund at Kickstarter, namely the need to register a company and bank account in a member country like the U.S. or U.K. It will also be possible to raise funds in Danish Kroner which eliminates the risk of currency fluctuations. However, some questions remain unanswered. One being how Danish project creators deal with taxation on their Kickstarter projects. According to people familiar with the matter it won´t be too long before SKAT (the Danish tax authority) is ready with some guidelines.
Pereira told that Kickstarter was very excited to open in Scandinavia. “Considering the country’s size, we have seen a substantial interest from Danish backers and project creators. We expect a lot from the Denmark opening and look forward to bring more creative projects to live”.
Pioneers such as Vavuud, Robocat and many more have shown the way for Danish entrepreneurs successfully raising capital through Kickstarter. Interested can learn more about Kickstarter on September 24th when the Copenhagen Crowdfunding Meetup focus on how to create a successful Kickstarter campaign with presentation from Robocat and a review of their Thermodo campaign. The event will take place at Dansk Erhverv Børsen and is open for registration here.