Women in Tech: At the forefront of innovation - Key takeaways from Louise Lachmann, Ugly Duckling Ventures

We are delighted to continue our Women in Tech series with episode 10, featuring Louise Lachmann, General Partner at Ugly Duckling Ventures and Chair of the Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship.

Interviewed by Martin von Haller Grønbæk, Commercial Of Counsel in our Copenhagen office, Louise shares her journey from tech entrepreneur to investor, offering valuable insights into the evolution of Denmark's tech ecosystem, the challenges facing female founders, and the transformative potential of AI. 

Listen to the podcast here and read the key takeaways below. These themes explore the evolution of Denmark's tech scene, the importance of diversity in entrepreneurship, and the role of innovation in solving global challenges.

• From dot-com to cloud: The evolution of Danish tech: Louise traces her journey from the early days of the internet in the 1990s, when agencies had to explain what HTML meant, through the dot-com bubble, to founding Mono Solutions in 2006 - a B2B SaaS company before the term was widely recognised. Her experience highlights how Denmark's tech ecosystem has matured from enterprise-focused web development to cloud-based subscription services, despite initial scepticism from investors who did not understand the SaaS model.
• The funding gap for female founders: Despite never viewing herself as a "female founder" during her entrepreneurial journey, Louise became acutely aware of the stark statistics: only 1.7% of venture capital goes to female founders, despite women representing one in four founders. She argues this represents a massive waste of talent and economic potential, particularly as Europe seeks to maintain its competitive position in global innovation.
• Diversity drives better outcomes: Louise emphasises that her success at Mono Solutions came from building diverse teams - 20 different nationalities, balanced gender representation, and varied age groups - without consciously thinking about diversity as a goal. This natural approach to team-building, combined with Denmark's non-hierarchical culture that encourages challenging consensus, creates fertile ground for innovation.
• Entrepreneurship as a mindset, not just startups: Through her work as Chair of the Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Louise advocates for a broad interpretation of entrepreneurship that encompasses innovation across all sectors. The foundation's vision is to make entrepreneurship accessible to every child in Denmark, embedding innovative thinking into education from an early stage - not to create a nation of startup founders, but to cultivate problem-solvers and innovators in all fields.
• AI beyond the hype: Louise acknowledges that whilst the venture capital world is currently "bombed" with AI pitches - many of which are simple ChatGPT wrappers -there are genuinely transformative applications emerging. She highlights health tech as a particularly promising area, pointing to Denmark's investment in supercomputing infrastructure that will enable access to data capable of solving problems that have eluded solutions for decades.
• Freeing bright minds from manual work: Drawing on her legal background, Louise argues that automation and AI should be embraced as tools to free highly educated professionals from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on complex problem-solving that requires human insight. This philosophy underpins her investment in legal tech company Juraistic, which aims to elevate how legal professionals use their expertise.
• Creating opportunities rather than waiting for them: Louise's journey from law graduate to tech entrepreneur to venture capital investor demonstrates the importance of actively creating opportunities rather than following predetermined paths. Her advice to entrepreneurs is to stay adaptable, embrace flexibility, and challenge conventional rules - because innovation comes from doing something different.
• The long game on gender equality: Whilst Louise advocates for immediate action to deploy capital to female founders with scalable businesses (calling it "an easy win"), she recognises that achieving 50/50 gender representation amongst founders requires longer-term systemic change. The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship is undertaking a three-year project to identify why fewer girls choose entrepreneurial paths, understanding that solutions must be evidence-based.