Danish Startup Podio Makes A Splashy Entrance

Posted by Tom Foremski - March 25, 2011

Danish startup Podio made a splashy entrance this week into the US market and I'm not referring to the torrential rains soaking San Francisco.

In a week dominated by the news of the launch of $41m startup Color Labs, it was an impressive feat. Podio, which offers apps for small businesses launched an App store and opened a pop-up store in San Francisco-- and managed to attract many of the top digerati of San Francisco.

I met many of the Podio team, in town from Copenhagen, Denmark, led by the impressive Tommy Ahlers, a serial entrepreneur -- a rarity in European tech circles. Successful European entrepreneurs tend to go off and enjoy their money rather than get back into the trenches and build new companies. This is a key difference between Silicon Valley and other "innovation" centers -- it's a hub for serial entrepreneurs.

"European entrepreneurs don't want to risk failing," Mr Ahlers explains. "That's why we have so few serial entrepreneurs, but things are changing."

Podio is interesting because it offers a "roll your own" approach to business applications. It boasts that anyone can create an app in minutes.

I haven't had a chance to test that claim but it's a great position to take because it shows that the technology is not what's important, it's what you do with it that matters. Silicon Valley tends to be focused on the technology and misses the larger story.

(Whenever I look at Techmeme, the news is often dominated by mundane product stories rather than how the technologies are being used and changing the world. I'm so bored with endless product news -- hardly anyone seems to be looking at the bigger picture.)

I'm looking forward to finding out more about Podio and maybe creating an app or two myself.

Here is Podio's App store: Welcome - Podio

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