In November 2003, Jakob de Lemos kicked off the iMotions Project, combining transparent multimodal interfaces with the latest research in neuroscience and digital media to explore various applications to measuring emotion.
In June 2004 Jakob met Peter Hartzbech, the national competition manager of Venture Cup, while attending the National Business Plan Competition.
While attending an internship in US for upcoming Global leaders, Peter assessed and foresaw the potential and opportunities of Jakob’s technology and application, and then the 2 young entrepreneurs joined forces and started the iMotions Team.
Jakob and Peter formally founded iMotions – Emotion Technology ApS in February 2005, successfully raising DKK 1.5 Million ($US 250,000) in Seed Funding. Proof of concept of Science and Technology was completed in August 2005 and several patents for the core technology and initial products were filed in the United States in the following month.
In the end of December 2005 the company successfully raised $ US 1.6 Million in round A funding from a Danish Early stage VC and 7 business angels. In the same deal the company bought out the early stage investors and the money was primarily used to finish Emotion Tool™ 1.0.
Emotion Tool™ 1.0 was successfully released as planned five months later at iMotions’ headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, and being sold to the first two clients. In June 2006, the extended proof of concept was passed.
In June 2006 iMotions reached its milestone in the extended proof of concept and in the same month the company exercised an option to bring in 2 Additional Business Angels with Industry Experience.
In October 2006 iMotions reached and passed 3 important milestones:
1) The release of Emotion Tool™ 1.1,
2) Signed the first big US client and also additional clients around Europe
3) Completed a Bridge Funding round of $US 1.8 Million, which will be used to build iMotions global sales activities.
In January 2007 iMotions opened 2 new offices one in USA and one in India. And in February iMotions celebrated its 2 year anniversary with more exciting news and goals to be reached by the end of the year 2007.
During the summer of 2007 iMotions raised $ 2,8 Million in additional funding and continued to build its customer base.
In May 2008 Emotion Tool™ 2.0 was released and ready for the global market place and in addition iMotions second software application Spotmeter was released.
In July 2008, iMotions raised bridge funding of $ US 2 million and hired a COO for the European Operations.
