The Story of Dreamdata: Building the Future of B2B Revenue Attribution
Before Dreamdata became a pioneer in B2B revenue attribution, its story began at one of Copenhagen’s most successful tech companies. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, CEO Lars Grønnegaard shared how his journey from Trustpilot’s head of product, alongside his co-founders, shaped their vision for transforming B2B marketing.
From Pioneers to Product
The seeds of Dreamdata were planted in Copenhagen’s emerging tech scene, where Lars had already made his mark. “I spent a lot of time in user experience also before it was actually a discipline that existed. So we pioneered it in Copenhagen. Were like some of the first people doing UX consulting here,” he explains. This experience at the forefront of UX innovation would later influence Dreamdata’s data-centric approach to marketing analytics.
The founding team came together at Trustpilot, where Lars and one of his co-founders served as head of product and head of engineering. Their experience at one of Denmark’s tech success stories provided crucial insights into scaling B2B software globally.
A Different Kind of Marketing Company
What sets Dreamdata apart is their unique founding team composition. “With three co-founders, two came from product, one came from marketing,” Lars notes. “So no sales guy.” This product and marketing-heavy founding team shaped their approach to solving B2B marketing’s attribution challenge.
“Basically, I would say high level, we’re helping B2B marketers be revenue centric,” Lars explains. “When we founded the company, people have been trying to do that for five years. It wasn’t new, but we’re solving it in a very data centric way. I think that’s what’s unique about our approach.”
Learning Through Early Missteps
Like many startups, Dreamdata’s journey included early mistakes that shaped their future direction. Their first attempt at enterprise sales came too soon: “Initially, after like five customers or something, we actually landed two companies I define as enterprise. And I can say that wasn’t a good idea because at that stage, the product was not even a product, I would say it was more like a prototype and a ton of duct tape and lots of PowerPoints.”
This experience taught them the importance of timing and readiness in moving upmarket. Their second attempt came only after building proper foundations: “We had much more of a product. We also had a lot of what you would define as, like, enterprise readiness capabilities.”
The Copenhagen Advantage
Operating from Copenhagen has given Dreamdata a unique perspective on building global B2B software. The city has emerged as a significant tech hub, following in the footsteps of Stockholm. “Stockholm is a bit, I would say they’re kind of one generation ahead of us,” Lars reflects. “They had Spotify. Skype was sort of a part danish… those two ventures definitely also spun off a lot of new ventures after that.”
This ecosystem has fostered a new generation of companies. “Some of those companies that were successful during sort of the late, like 15 to 20 that has sparked off a nice trickle of new ventures,” Lars notes. Being part of this growing tech scene has helped Dreamdata build relationships and learn from other successful companies in the region.
The Future: Automating B2B Marketing
Looking ahead, Dreamdata’s vision extends beyond traditional attribution. “The big picture for us is this automation angle,” Lars shares. “You’ve seen automation in B2C go to market for the last 20 years, and you’re definitely seeing it now in the B2B space as well… We want to be a key platform for that. Something that enables B2B companies to run automated go to market at scale.”
This vision reflects a broader shift in B2B marketing, where companies are moving from manual optimization to automated, data-driven decision-making. Just as B2C marketing automation revolutionized consumer marketing over the past two decades, Dreamdata aims to lead a similar transformation in the B2B space, helping companies optimize their marketing investments through better data and automation.
The story of Dreamdata is more than just another B2B SaaS company – it’s a testament to how combining deep product expertise with marketing knowledge can create innovative solutions to long-standing problems. From their roots in Copenhagen’s tech scene to their vision of automated B2B marketing, they’re charting a course that challenges conventional wisdom about how B2B companies should approach revenue attribution and marketing optimization.