To Copenhagen and back
Last Thursday, I once again had the pleasure of attending E-handelsprisen 2026 (the Danish E-commerce Awards), so I decided to make a trip of it and spent 24 hours in Copenhagen.
The event started at 4.30 in the afternoon, so I had the whole day to meet with people.
But I had a great start to the day even before that.
I love the train ride from Aarhus (where I live) to Copenhagen. 2 hours and 45 minutes of uninterrupted focus time.
Somehow, I've managed to send both Sara and Jakob on vacation at the same time, so this time, my focus time was primarily spent answering support tickets. But hey - it was actually a great exercise, because I also got to fix a few small bugs here and there + got closer to the customers.
A few weeks back, we had the Danish serial entrepreneur, Werner Valeur, as a guest on our SaaSkøbmænd podcast. So, afterwards, I called him and asked if he had time to meet up when I was in Copenhagen, and we agreed to a quick lunch.
I arrived at his Madhouse HQ in Nordhavnen around 11.30 am, just in time for lunch, only to find Werner running around the open office space shirtless, as he was shooting commercials for 5 of his companies back-to-back and had to change clothes to match the different brands. So, while he finished the videos, I got a cup of coffee and spent the time coding.
And it seemed like the most normal thing in the world. And for a guy owning, what, 17 businesses and being the face of most of them, I understand why he's busy and must be super efficient. Check out Madhousehq to see the list.
But as he also told in the podcast, he's not operational in any of the businesses. He's CEO of some, but in most, he finds a great CEO to run it, and Werner is the brand/marketing strategist and face of the business. He jumps in when he's needed, but otherwise lets the CEO's run them.
I wouldn't be able to run businesses like that, myself. I like being operational and "in the middle of it". But I admire his approach, and his track record speaks for itself.
At lunch, he said something really interesting. He's a branding/marketing expert, remember, and looking at Herodesk, he said: Why aren't you leaning much more into your entrepreneurial history? You're not just a new helpdesk system. You're a proven entrepreneur with multiple successes behind you. Use that as leverage and as an active part of the story! You are Herodesk and Herodesk is you. There's no separating the two, so play it to your advantage.
Well said – changes coming up!
Next, I took the Metro to Enghave Plads in Vesterbro to meet up with another of my favourite entrepreneurs. Whereas Werner is a branding and marketing expert, Hans-Kristian Bjerregaard is a tech genius! We've known each other for a couple of years now and we often bounce ideas or thoughts on each other. Whenever I'm in Copenhagen, I try to meet him, too.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather. The sun was shining and it was +20 degrees, so we sat on one of the benches and got a drink.
Enghave Plads is a huge square filled with benches, trees, green areas and no car traffic at all. A small oasis in the city. And there's this tiny, tiny bar called "Enghave Plads 8", which had the most brilliant idea. Instead of trying to get a lot of people in their bar, they have an open bar facing the square. That way, the whole square becomes their restaurant. You gotta love the initiative and ingenuity in that!
Besides personal stuff, we talked a lot about AI. HK (as everyone who knows him calls him) is back as CEO of Clerk.io, and they're doing so many fascinating things with AI right now, basically re-building the entire product with an AI-first approach. And interestingly enough, we're both looking into ditching OpenAI and doing self-hosted open-source models instead.
If you're interested in that, you should definitely follow him on LinkedIn.
The time was flying, and before I knew it, it was time to head to my hotel, get changed and ready for the party! In the lobby, I ran into one of my favourite customers: Ken Primby, CEO at Pluspige.dk. Ken is already featured in one of our success stories, so it was great to catch up.
Later that night, Ken and Pluspige won the award for Best community! HUGE congratulations!!
And Ken wasn't the only one of our customers that won or was in the top 5 in their category.
Vetnordic.dk - Best B2B with a revenue of less than 500M DKK - 2nd place
Maya-freya.com - Best B2C with a revenue of less than 100M DKK - 2nd place
Basicandally.com - Best B2C with a revenue of less than 100M DKK - 2nd place
Pluspige.dk - Best community, 1st place
Geekd.dk - Best community, 1st place
Huge congrats to all of you, well done!
As you might remember, I posted about us being in the top 20 of the "best e-commerce tool" category. We didn't make it to the top 5 and get featured at the award show, although I've heard rumours that we were so freaking close! We'll win it next year!
And then: Dinner and party!
Besides having a good time, the purpose of me going to these events is to network and meet our customers and other people in the industry. I probably talked with 50 people, got one deal, which I thought was actually lost, back on track and got two sales meetings booked. I'd say: Mission accomplished.
After a good night's sleep, I was on the train heading back home to Aarhus at 10 am the next day. Right now, it's 9 pm, and I'm back on my porch writing this and wrapping up the week, before enjoying the extended Pentecost weekend with my family.
And as for E-handelsprisen: Once again, thank you to Carsten, Pernille, Niels and the team at Dansk Erhverv for another great party! I'm already looking forward to coming back again next year!