This is how the companies in INCUBA fared in 2021

Most significant was the Danish-founded blockchain company Chainalysis, which despite the Corona pandemic continued its skyward flight and secured three funding rounds and a series D and E in 2021 of DKK 100 million. dollars each:

"We are interested as an investment case because there has been increasing interest in cryptocurrency since 2019. At the same time, we have been involved in several cases such as the so-called TwitterHack, where several celebrities, including Donald Trump, had their Twitter accounts hacked and allegedly promised to pay out bitcoin to their followers," says Emil Andersen, People Manager at Chainalysis, adding: "Our position in the market is good. Cryptocurrency is still a bit phy-phy, but there are more and more people using it, so our main job is to help figure out how to move forward, create more transparency and make it easier for everyone to understand and get access to this new technology.”

Chainalysis has had a foothold in Aarhus from the beginning, as one of the Danish co-founders had his base there, and for the blockchain company it is of great importance to place its development department in an environment like INCUBA: "We have had our development department in INCUBA since 2019, where we started with 3-4 software developers. It has turned out that the access to talent and the many small companies that work crosswise have helped us to find the right colleagues for our team. We now have approximately 20 employees in the development department at INCUBA, and the ambition is for us to be more," says Emil Andersen.

More than 400 million kroner flowed to the remaining startups and companies in the Aarhusian research park INCUBA in 2021. However, founders and CEOs across the companies experience that they are challenged by the recruitment of key employees.

Recruitment - a barrier to growth

For the first time in many years, it is no longer sales and marketing that are companies' biggest challenges. Challenges with recruitment are the high jumper of the year. In 2020, 26% of companies cited recruitment as the biggest challenge, while in 2021 a whopping 44% of companies indicated that they expected recruitment challenges to continue in 2022.

The IMPACT analysis, which took place at the end of 2021 among the approximately 200 companies in the Aarhus research park INCUBA a/s, shows that the founders and CEOs surveyed have positive expectations for growth in 2022. However, 48% of the founders and CEOs point to recruitment as a barrier to growth:

"The companies' expectations for 2022 are absolutely positive, not least for growth and sales, but this requires attracting highly specialized talent, which is currently extremely difficult to get hold of," says CEO of INCUBA a/s, Mai Louise Agerskov. One of them is the technology company Reshopper, which launched an app for buying and selling second-hand children's clothes in 2012:

"We find that it is enormously challenging to recruit key employees within IT. We particularly need senior developers with .NET/C# experience who will be responsible for further development and operation of our app as well as new projects. But the profiles we need often sit in permanent positions and get their inboxes bombarded with job offers from both the right and the left," says co-founder and director, Nicolai Danmark Johannesen.

Reshopper, which has been part of INCUBA a/s since 2016, therefore welcomes INCUBA's activities and opportunities for networking specifically within recruitment. "It's a big puzzle, and when you're a smaller team like we are, the lack of skills is more obvious, and we're not growing the company at the speed we want," concludes Nicolai Johannesen.

91% recommend INCUBA

This year's Impact analysis shows that living in INCUBA a/s makes a positive difference to the company's development. It is especially the research park's contribution to efficient business operations, facilities and flexible tenancies that the companies value very highly. The opportunities for internal collaboration across companies are also of crucial importance for their growth and development.

In fact, the analysis shows that as many as 91% of the companies would recommend INCUBA a/s to other companies, e.g. because of the network and the supporting facilities. Interest in becoming part of the development environment in INCUBA a/s close to other startups remains high. An example is the company Go Go Garden, which mid-2020 launched an online ordering service for physical gardening:

"We placed great emphasis on finding an environment that could provide us with the invaluable knowledge and sparring that is centred around INCUBA here in Aarhus. The activities of INCUBA are favourable for a newly started startup like us, which needs to settle down as a company. We have taken an active part in the network and the many events, which have given us great benefits. We have e.g. participated in INCUBA's pitch event "Gin & Tech", where we pitched our company and the challenges we faced in the start-up phase, which gave us invaluable advice along the way," says Emil Rais, CEO of the start-up Go Go Garden.