Canute and SoftwareOne partner to support scale-ups with international ambitions

Exporting expertise: How Thursday Consulting guides startups to global markets

The majority of Canute by Thursday’s clients are in the tech sector. “What matters most to us is that they have a scalable business model,” Nielsen explains. “This means we also help startups that are a pure hardware play, although in nine out of 10 cases there’s some type of tech component. If it's hardware, for example, it’s often interlocked with Internet of Things.”

Canute by Thursday guides businesses toward the right decisions for their plans for scaling internationally – the choice of market first and foremost. The main markets for Canute and its clients are Germany, the UK, and the US.

“A lot of clients have a preconceived idea of what market they should go for,” says Nielsen.  “I often hear things like, ‘I speak good English, so let’s go to the UK’, or ‘I have a cousin working out of Berlin, so Germany could be a great market for us.’ This tells you nothing about the revenue potential of a market, its competitive landscape, or a regulatory environment that may require you to adjust your product. When our analysis of these factors contradicts the gut feeling we of course inform the client. ‘No, you shouldn’t go into Germany, you should go to the UK instead and this is why’.”

The next decision for businesses that scale abroad is the commercial model in the foreign market. Clients could run a team locally in their head office, set up a commercial presence in the export market, hire freelancers to sell through a channel, or work with local partners.

“There are hybrid options too,” says Nielsen. “We recently set up a commercial model for a Danish business going into the UK. They’re not setting up a commercial team in the UK but are going through a lead agency. A lead agency locally in the UK is delivering leads to the head office in Denmark and they can convert the leads into customers themselves.”

The next step is to raise the capital necessary for the export strategy. One option is to apply for public funding through schemes such as Eurostars, and in other cases Canute by Thursday talks to investors such as business angels, family offices, and venture capitalists. The public funding route does not dilute a client’s stake in the business; funding from investors involves surrendering part of the equity.

“Right now we’re raising equity capital for nine different companies,” says Nielsen. “The smallest one is €1 million, and the biggest one is €20 million. But I would say our sweet spot for a capital raise is between €2 and €3 million. That’s where most of our clients are.”

Before he took up his role at Thursday Consulting, Nielsen worked as a financial journalist and entrepreneur. “I use both strands of experience,” he comments. “As a former entrepreneur, I have an intimate, first-hand understanding of the problems my clients face. I can relate to them and I can talk their language. My career as a journalist has taught me the importance of narrative, which is a crucial factor for investors. They want the figures, naturally. But they also want to be convinced by the story.”

The relationship with SoftwareOne started in January 2025 when Canute did a three-month pilot to demonstrate it could attract promising, ambitious young businesses and create value for them through their cloud spend.

“Not through additional cloud spend,” adds Nielsen, “and that is the crucial point. Your cloud spend does not go up, and what you get from Canute by Thursday at no cost to you is 20 hours and two to three workshops a year. We have different service packages but it’s typically as I describe it.”

The one condition for companies is that they switch from a Microsoft pay-as-you-go model to a CSP contract. The switch and any optimizations of the Microsoft portfolio are done by SoftwareOne which also acts as a distribution partner of the licenses.

“Thursday Consulting gets 15% of the client’s cloud spend, and 5% of that goes to SoftwareOne,” Nielsen explains. “The only difference to the client is that they’re on a CSP contract. The monthly spend is the same, but they get our services as an add-on.”