Arctic Startup

We’ve been quiet too long, but we’ve got something good for you coming up! Next week’s Thursday we’ll be organising an event together with Ville from Open Coffee Club Helsinki in Dubrovnik.

We will have 4 companies on stage giving you talks about entrepreneurship and how they came up with what they are doing. The companies, some of which have also been covered on Arctic Startup, are Vailoma.com, Floobs, Whatamap and Mysites.com.

Mysites.com is also sponsoring the event. Mysites.com is a new Finland based company which lets its users manage and put all their online content in a single place. They will launch in the very near future, but they wanted to give us a sneak peak behind the curtain next Thursday.

Here’s the event in more detail:
Date: Thursday, March 6, 2008
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Dubrovnik Lounge & Lobby
Address: Eerikinkatu 11 (downstairs), Helsinki

The event goes more or less as follows:
-Doors open at 6pm
-The presentations will start at 6.30pm
-Each company will talk about 10-15 minute
-And for the next hour and a half we can chat over a cup of coffee or a pint, meet new people and connect

If you want, you can join in on the event in Facebook. See you next thursday!

Alma Media, or more precisely Iltalehti has bought the Finnish online TV-guide Telkku.com.

Telkku.com gathers over 500 000 unique visitors each week and is growing. Our guesses are that Alma Media is growing Iltalehti to be the biggest online “portal” in Finland. Many of the media sites are still lacking in innovative revenue models apart from the traditional display advertising and thus the more unique visitors you gather the better media you are when the advertiser considers her options.

It remains to be seen, whether Telkku.com will remain independent under the Iltalehti brand or not.

(via HS)

The first ever Ignite Helsinki -event is being organised this Friday in Dubrovnik Lounge and Lobby.

Those who are unaware of the ignite format - it is a set of short 5 minute presentations given by speakers on various topics where the presentation slides change automatically every 15 seconds. Therefore you have 5 minutes and 20 slides to get your point and issue to the crowd. Ignite events have been held in many of the large tech cities of the world and now for the first time it will be organised in Helsinki.

I was asked to speak there about Finnish Startups and would have done so if I’d be in Finland. If you’re interested in giving a speech - send an e-mail to the organisers. I’m sure they’re interested in getting more submissions.

The doors will open 5.30pm and the event will start at 6pm, free entry. Update: A slight shift in schedules as Antti told us in the comments - the doors will open at 6pm and the event will start at 7pm. And it’s still free entry :)

Tekes announced yesterday the opening of Playfinland.fi presenting Finnish companies to the world. Target groups are international media, potential partners and investors abroad — and anyone else interested. The site is produced and funded by Verso - Vertical Software Solutions program of Tekes.

Tekes highlights that in 2007 the amount of financing allocated to the Finnish game industry was thirty times more than the amount of similar funding granted generally in the EU last year. The Finnish game industry is known for many original innovations, as well as high quality products, including both games and related products like 3D graphics technology.

There has been a lot of activity in the M&A sector in the last few years as well, some examples being ATI buying mobile graphics technology company Bitboys, Nvidia acquiring 3D graphics specialist Hybrid Graphics, and a bunch of mobile gaming companies sold to foreign companies. Unfortunately, for the most part the Finnish firms have been on the selling side of the table, mostly attributed to lack of capital available for expansion on their own.

Those interested can also join Play Finland Facebook group, which has been created to connect both Finnish and international players in the field.

More on Playfinland.fi in the press release.

First Line Angel Group FLAG.fi, a Finnish business angel community with a global reach, is launching on 25-26th of February 2008 at EU EASY Event in Milano, Italy. FLAG.fi is stated to be the the first and only global portal dedicated to investors, entrepreneurs, and business angels.

The founder Peter Bougdanos, a well-acclaimed business angel, hopes FLAG will be “a solution to the startup situation in Finland and all over Europe”. The problem statement manifests that many entrepreneurs and opportunities go unnoticed and/or unfunded in Finland - and also in Europe in general - because of a lack of a true angel community, consensus, support, and meaningful interaction among professionals in the field. This is something that was also identified recently in Growth Forum 08 as reported by Tomi. In addition many investors get caught up in long exit cycles, ending up tying up their valuable resources of time, money, and expertise.

The vision of FLAG is to become the first true Angel Group in Finland which mirrors the activities of angel groups in the USA. It’s mission is to make Finland, Finnish companies, Finnish business angels, and the Finnish venture capital industry a healthy, competitive, and interactive community. FLAG targets to create a currently missing dynamic forum with both a professional and social function for business angels to meet and discuss angel investments. Peter Bougdanos aims to promote Finnish startups and help them “get the commercialization and business concept traction that many fail to do”. Recent members of FLAG include online business traveller tool Dopplr and free news service forum ampparit.com.

The service will be Finland centric, but it’s claimed that already over 3000 pan-European interested members have been identified, and the majority of them have expressed keen interest to enroll. FLAG also looks to integrate Middle Eastern and Asian flare of active members. It is planned to be the melting pot for existing angel associations, stand-alone organizations, network clusters, and independent actors on local, regional, and international levels, operating both online and offline.

FLAG will offer a whole community universe for connecting investors, with a wide spectrum of tools and services, including facilitating selling of companies angel-to-angel, and providing company information and management bios. FLAG also believes in giving back to the community and 25 percent of profits will go to funding stipends for young students, lower income families’ teens, and budding entrepreneurs to gain international experience, overseas exposure and professional and academics skills.

Greek American Bougdanos has helped to foster nearly 50 startups in Finland, since moving from NYC after surviving 9/11/2001. His background includes investments in companies like Google, Skype, and Finnish Helmi Technologies, Nordic Koivu, FogScreen, Concilio Networks, and Trackway, among many others. Peter is also a founding partner of FirstRound Startup Center, which has a unique smart money approach to incubating fast track early stage companies.

It is great to see something of this scale being initiated in Finland, and hopefully FLAG will be able to give rise to new business angels activity and many new fast growing firms. If you’re interested in joining FLAG, be sure to check the web page. We can also put you in touch with Mr. Bougdanos, just drop a note at info [at] arcticstartup.com.

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Edit: I have heard there are some two-fold opinions on how Mr. Bougdanos works, so it’s advisable that you first discuss with people who have worked with him before jumping right in, to make sure there is a good match (as would be good with any new relationship in general).

Nexit Ventures, a venture capital firm stating to offer Nordic mobile companies a bridge to Silicon Valley markets, has announced an investment in Axel Technologies, a Finnish developer of mobile TV technologies. Other investor in the funding round led by Nexit is the company’s existing investor, a government-owned investment company Finnish Industry Investment Ltd. According to ITviikko the round was worth over one million euros.

Axel Technologies will use the financing to growth and internationalization, focus being on developing sales, marketing, and customer support.

The company provides mobile TV middleware and client solutions, and is targeting to get on the wave of first commercial digital mobile DVB-H standard TV services expected to be launched in Europe during 2008. So far there have been only 3G-based services available.

According to Pekka Salonoja, General Partner, Nexit Ventures, Axel Technologies is already one of top five developers of mobile TV middleware globally, customers including AMD and Thomson. Potential clients for the firm are mobile phone manufacturers, semiconductor suppliers, and mobile operators.

Nexit Ventures’ press release.

The next WebAnalytics Wednesday in Finland will take place in Helsinki 27th of February. The place is Sanoma House and the topic of the evening Measuring Social Media. Steve Jackson from Satama will speak about Measuring success of social media. Whitevector’s Tommi Lehtonen will continue on Measuring influential opinions on brands. See the invitation for details.

Finnish software cluster needs growth. That much was evident as the first seminar of Growth Forum 08 (in Finnish, Kasvufoorumi08) kicked off last week. The forum is an initiative lead by Microsoft Finland and Association of Software Entrepreneurs. The software industry has more than doubled its share of Finland’s GDP over the last ten years. Yet there are few Finnish software (or strongly software-related) companies that have grown beyond 100 M€ in annual revenues.

The organizing parties had been able to gather influential backers from governmental level as well. Matti Vanhanen, prime minister of Finland, delivered the keynote speech. He had recently been to United States and had met top executives from Cisco, Google and Microsoft. Mr. Vanhanen said that Finnish government is taking steps to create a fertile environment for software businesses. For example, we can expect possible tax benefits on VC investments to growth companies. In addition, the whole public funding sector needs simplifying. Many panelists agreed that public funding should be concentrated on growth companies, not on entrepreneurs who are reluctant or incapable to grow.

Key problems of the Finnish software industry are: lack of mid-sized internationally competitive software companies and growth difficulties of companies that employ 50 to 100 people. Those companies find themselves in a very competitive global landscape while the domestic market in Finland no longer supports their growth. In addition, according to panelists too many companies still believe that “our product sells itself”. When going international many companies would need a so-called “Finnsoftbroker”, which would basically be a bridge between the local markets and Finnish companies. According to general opinion no organization yet fills that role.

Ok, so the software industry grows, but not fast enough. What to do? Panelists strongly believed that off-shoring is a strong opportunity, not a threat, to Finland. Finnish economy can never compete with Asian countries on sheer production force. Rather all Finnish software companies planning to go global or international should practice off-shoring from the start. Finland also has relatively few business angels, but currently there are increasingly more people with strong international expertise. These experts should be much more active in aiding startups and other growth companies by investing not money, but sweat equity. Naturally entrepreneurs themselves must aggressively seek out this kind of help and form at least an advisory board shortly after establishing their companies.

Furthermore, forum participants emphasized the need for patents, especially in the US. Mergers and acquisitions is a difficult way to grow and few Finnish companies have yet mastered it. Perhaps too many Finnish software companies get acquired. To build “new F-Secures” they should rather grow organically or do acquisitions themselves.

The forum continues throughout the year 2008. The next seminar is scheduled on June. In the meantime three theme groups (internalization, growth paths and financing) gather and try to come up with recommendations for the future of Finnish software. I participate in the “growth” group and I will be reporting its progress later on.

What do think, where is Finnish software cluster heading to? What needs to be done? Please share your views.

The Annual Seminar of Forum Virium Helsinki and DIMES ry will be held on February 28th starting at 11am at Vanha Ylioppilastalo, Helsinki.

The topic for this year is “Odottava Oranssi - Waiting for User Generated Services”. There will be keynotes given by Jari Pasanen (Nokia), Luis M. Correia (Technical University of Lisbon), and a special guest media artist Marita Liulia. In addition the organisers Jarmo Eskelinen (Forum Virium Helsinki) and Kimmo Ojuva (Dimes ry) will give a joint presentation. Also a variety of social media experts will be on stage, including Taru From (Ego/Taivas). Naturally the event includes also a networking part.