Arctic Startup

Whatamap.com Ltd published Thursday a new mobile map service allowing users to create, find, and share maps on the web, and download those directly to the their cell phones as Java applications anywhere in the world. The target of Whatamap.com is nothing less than to be the world’s best consumer map service.

CEO Matti Saarinen explains Whatamap.com takes you from where you’re left with Google Maps mobile. He stated one can use Google or Nokia maps to get somewhere by car, but when you get on foot, you’ll need something more detailed than just road maps showing buildings or park areas. Pedestrian maps should look nice and show information related to the specific usage context, like store locations, restaurants, and meeting places in parks. This is backed up by also Nokia stating interest in pedestrian maps.

Whatamap.com’s offering includes fully-customizable maps, which can be either created by private users, or offered to visitors by different public and commercial property owners. Whatamap.com is currently building up its customer network in Finland, while developing partnering deals in Middle-Europe. The business model is built to scale - partners abroad can handle sales, implementation, and deployment by themselves with the web tools.

In the press conference were Risto Räikkönen, Managing Director of the Children’s Day Foundation (operating Linnanmäki amusement park in Helsinki) and Atte Köykkä, Shopping Center Manager of Shopping mall Itäkeskus (biggest in the Nordic countries) explaining their organization’s reasoning on getting aboard. Both are pioneering with the solution, and Itäkeskus already offers its visitors the possibility to download the map of the mall to their mobile just by sending a normal SMS to a shortcode number presented on the info signs.

Partners can also add context-related information and places on the map along with advertisements. Similarly consumers can create and share their maps on the web automatically, and add points of interest (e.g. interesting places, bars, shops) and - GPS points. Adding the GPS points makes all the difference, since by doing that you can locate yourself even on a totally custom-made and shaped map with your GPS phone.

An impressive example is the map of Himos (a smallish skiing center in Southern Finland) - it presents a panoranic map of all skiing routes, but also the services from rentals to restaurants and first aid. (Most of the services you can also call to with just a couple of clicks.) With Whatamap.com’s proprietory technology, GPS positioning will work on this panoramic map also - and on any other type of map, as long as you’ll place a few GPS fixed points on the map, done by using Google Maps interface on the Whatamap.com’s web page.

This born-global company has been founded in the beginning of 2007, and it currently employes 11 people, out of which most are owners. There are former Nokia and TeliaSonera managers aboard to bring business and user focus to the company. The map technology is based on several patents, with more coming. Whatamap.com has been operating with TEKES funding so far, but the first VC funding round will most likely take place early next year. The firm is looking for international venture capitalists to speed up access to global markets.

It’s great to see a new Finnish startup with real drive to grow and conquer. Having tested their service on both web and mobile, it seems Whatamap.com might very well be onto something here. We’ll be following up closely on this one.

A related hint on the topic:
If you know Finnish, you might want to see recording of last Wednesday’s A-plus talk show, with Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki (Executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia) and Google’s Petri Kokko (Country Manager, Finland) in studio discussing the convergence of mobile and internet. Maps are an essential part of the conversation, and Vanjoki e.g. states the mobile map in the always-on mobile internet age is a whole new platform with huge amount of possibilies, while Kokko also concords mobile maps will offer lots of services in addition to just routes.

Growth business training, funded by the City of Helsinki and implemented by Forum Virium Helsinki and Digibusiness competence center, is closing for 2007 and invites everyone interested to follow the finals at Nokia House, Espoo on December 17th. The event is hosted by Nokia and starts at 2pm (language is Finnish only I would guess).

Agenda includes a presentation by Jari Pasanen, Vice President, Strategy and Technology, Nokia Multimedia, as well as greeting from the City of Helsinki by Jussi Pajunen, Lord Mayor of Helsinki, along, of course, introductions of the 5-6 firms who participated in the training.

Enrollment is free for all, but required beforehand by Dec 13th.

Is game development considered as a “real job” if it’s about developing serious games? Or has the growing game sector in Finland already proven to be business enough to be taken seriously? Either way, HappyWise, based in Oulu, Finland, is all out developing games to corporate training markets and public sector.

The objectives of the games range from introducing new products to education and process training. HappyWise claims games with educational content can be used to motivate learning in wide variety of fields, and in any any group. In essence games show the immediate causality of player’s actions, thus triggering learning. HappyWise is founded in 2006, and announces it’s current headcount to be 10 people. One of their newest games is Growwwings.net, a cross-curricular internet-based educational game teaching sustainable development.

The development of serious games in general is expected to boost in Finland. The horrors of “edutainment” are fading, and the new rise of games with objectives beyond entertaining is expected to break through in a few years. The major reason for this is that serious games development is finally being driven by gaming rather than teaching professionals. The game development gathers still together very versatile teams; for example HappyWise’s team includes computer scientists, game designers, content providers, graphic designers and business expertise, along with specific experts depending on the target field of different projects.

In addition to HappyWise, there’s a healthy, developing gaming industry chapter in Oulu with a bunch of new firms. Also Turku is catching the wave, with Turku Games Organisation founded just recently to amass efforts. IGDA Finland on the other hand has been active in Helsinki area already for quite some time. Looking forward to cover other interesting gaming startups later on..

The Finnish Apaja Online Entertainment has closed a 1.75 million euro round A financing with Martinson Trigon Venture Partners. Apaja’s main product is the online gaming community known in Finland by Aapeli and the international brand of Playray.

Discussions on the round were started during early summer and continued to closer discussions with MTVP during the autumn. According to Inka Mero, the CEO of Apaja, negotions were continued with MTVP as they have a strong understanding of the Eastern-European markets as well as Central European markets.

The investment is used for growth and internationalisation of the brand.

Disclaimer: The writer of this post has previously worked at Apaja Online Entertainment.

I attended a pitching competition organized by Venture Cup Finland on last Thursday. I was hoping hear some excellent pitchs, of which to grab some good takeaways. But I have to say I was a bit disappointed.

Two things let me down, the pitches and the jury work. I’m not saying either ones were bad, but I didn’t really see much excelling there. Beforehand, it was claimed the jury will judge the pitches by the presentation skills and by the business idea. However, watching the competition, it felt like the jury was missing a common criteria for evaluating the pitches. They were each picking up different things in different pitches, be it the idea in general, presumed technical feasibility or financial outlook, subjective feeling, etc… Also, what came to the presentations as such, very few comments were made - I would’ve expected a lot more comments than just “your presentation was nice…” And, if a pitch clearly gets cut off due to time ending, while missing some information, it should not get three times 4 points (out of 5) from the five-member jury, in my opinion…

Regarding the pitches, they were slightly modest, and some even unstimulating. There were a couple of exceptions, including the winning Maija Itkonen’s Power Kiss (in Finnish), which was delivered nicely. Also the content of the pitches was quite varying. Again, there were a few clearly rehearsed ones, but the rest would’ve needed a lot more dry runs beforehand. From two I couldn’t even figure out what the opportunity or product was exactly, and in many the financial opportunity was completely left out.

I’m not claiming I’d be any expert on this subject, but the way I see it, you need to start with the customer’s pain, i.e. the problem statement: who’s got a problem, and why it’s important? After that you need to state a clear, compelling value proposition: why it’s you(r company) who can solve the problem, and how? Then you’ll proceed to the financial potential. Of course you can start with your strongest point, but each element should be there. Four key attributes in a pitch would be: the pitch should be be succinct, easy to understand, induce greed, and be irrefutable. It should not leave the investor with more questions than answers. And you’d better show some enthusiasm.

A lot of the pitches I witnessed were missing much of the above, unfortunately. The organizers had done a good job, though - the cocktail catering afterwards was great, and facilitated some good conversation among those of us remaining… Anyway, I’d recommend checking out MIT 100k Elevator Pitch Contest and some other guidelines if you’re interested.

PS. We were discussing with Antti Vilpponen it might be nice to organize some sort of a gettogether around pitching, providing an opportunity to practice, present your company, and to discuss with likeminded people. If you think that’d interest you, let us know: info (at) arcticstartup.com.

Iprbox Oy, founded in 2006, offers a variety of different intellectual property rights services to help companies better utilize IPR as part of their business and internationalization operations, as well as maximizing the value of IPR.
Potential customers include inventors, researchers, research institutes, business incubators, high-growth companies, and licensing partners.

According to the company it’s the first time a single company can offer all IPR services required for commercial success. It has introduced IPR360°® service concept for helping firms to integrate IPR with core business operations. Iprbox offering includes defining IPR strategies and processes, screening markets and competitors, helping with registering patents and trademarks, and controlling and liquidating licenses. The company also offers an IPR marketplace bringing together IP owners and potential purchasers, and offers help in different kinds of new venture spin-offs.

While Iprbox claims that IPRs are “the single most important investment for high-growth companies, as intellectual capital represents around 80 percent of their value”, it naturally depends greatly on the business whether intellectual capital should or could be protected. Furthermore, the management of the fastest growing Finnish companies consider the most valuable intellectual capital to be the people (quite precisely in my opinion). For perspective, though, one has to also notice 7 of those top 10 companies are in the business of software, as opposed to selling physical products where it’s possible to sometimes build virtual monopolies around the technology (while software patents of course don’t qualify ‘as such’). Nevertheless, IPR strategy is an important part of business as well, and the IPR landscape should be investigated and risks identified beforehand when entering new markets.