It’s February, it’s monday and it’s 2009. In so many respects a fresh place of departure that it’s sickening to mention it. To make analogies worse it’s time to start looking forward to this year’s New Media Days in October! And what better way to kick off than with a start-up?

This post will be the first in a weekly series that takes a look at Scandinavian start-ups in the field of new media; i.e. fresh players on the field or new remarkable products to influence the market. The concept is respectfully inspired by The Next Web’s “Five Questions for Start-Ups”, which it seems they have sadly stopped doing. By focusing our start-up research on Scandinavia only, we hope to gain some perspective on the innovation culture in the northernmost regions of Europe. The weather up here is cool and we’re counting on fixing the same adjective to the local entrepreneurs.

First start-up at a glance is Pagegangster; “A Danish IT developing company that provides cutting edge technology for the printing, publishing and advertising industry.” More specifically, they are black belt Flash-masters and have succesfully channeled their abilities into a PDF conversion service that turns your designs into a 3D interactive online magazine within a few clicks.

Alright, they’ve been around for a little while already and yes, they’ve become one of the leading services within their field, but we just love dynamic PDFs and the Pagegangster roughness and think they’re a great example of how far a start-up can go in two years if the product is grade A.

Which reminds me: “Dear readers. When is a start-up no longer a start-up?”

Now let them speak for themselves:

How did you come up with the idea of Pagegangster?
Ideas began taking form in december 2006 when we basically wanted to save ressources instead of printing magazines to check if everything looked good. Nicolai came up with the idea of simulating the magazines in flash and thereby save time, money and paper in the process of creating a magazine.

What has been the biggest challenge during the development process?
Seeing that everybody worked pro bono the first year, time was a big challenge. We spent a lot of energy on planning and it was hard to keep the focus on Pagegangster when everybody involved had to do other projects to make ends meet. We managed to shake hands and agree that we would get this company flying, so we worked our butts off and became better at jumping between different projects.

What has been your experience with the Danish start-up culture?
Danish start-up culture is actually not very danish. Business regulations are very liberal, and Denmark is actually a very easy country to be a start-up in. Having said that, 97% of all start-ups close within three years, so it could be a lot better! But if we are talking about the vibe, it is very positive. People are risk takers and natural leaders. They run with their own ideas, and they’re fun to bearound. Fortunately the Danish start-up culture is spared from criminals or immoral a**holes. Guess it’s because there are no money in start-ups… sigh.

What will be the influence of your start-up on the future web?
Pagegangster IS the future web! We try to keep in front on all parameters and design and functionality are our two main focuses. With the development in flash, we are constantly facing new challenges which gives us the opportunity to try out our wildest ideas… Better to be crazy than boring.

Where will Pageganster be in 2 years?
Hopefully in the middle of Copenhagen. Since we started we’ve grown from 3 to 12 people and ideally we’ll be around 15 in development and 5 in administration. We don’t have any plans about taking over the world – as long as we take over our competitors 🙂 If we open offices in other places, it will probably be in very sunny countries – or maybe a small office in the French Alps.

Thanks guys and Godspeed to you. Btw, what is a pagegangster?