Petteri Koponen (see video below), co-founder of Jaiku and First Hop, joins Aito Technologies board. Koponen, who currently works at Google after Jaiku’s acquisition by Google in October 2007 has a long experience from media and telecom from his years. Aito Technologies is a Finnish Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution provider for mobile operators and digital service providers.
Along with Koponen’s nomination Aito Technologies announced also the nomination of Antti Viitanen to its board of directors.
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We first wrote about Senseg, a Finnish company developing a haptic interface for all kinds of screen, when it had just been chosen to be part of a Finnish delegation of seven companies to pitch their offering to Israeli VCs about a year ago. Senseg told us earlier on they are looking into getting the first products in the market during the 2009 and it seems they are more or less in schedule by telling CrunchGear’s John Biggs that the company “expects to have some working devices in production in a year”.
Biggs is currently visiting Finland and met Senseg to get a better understanding of their technology (read the full story at CrunchGear here). It’s hard not to think of iPhone when you watch the video, but do try, since I’m sure there are plenty of interested customers beyond Cupertino (video below by CrunchGear).
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Toggl.com is an online time tracking tool created by an Estonian software development service firm Apprise. The service popped up on our screen via ArcticIndex registration.
The UI of Toggl is clear, and pleasant and fast to navigate. To start recording time for a new task is dead simple, just type in a client and a task name, and toggle the icon to start tracking. Tasks can be set to be billable. Different projects and clients can also be set up to organize the work. In addition to web site and iGoogle widgets, there is also a desktop client available, with just recently launched offline support. Reports are available with a variety of different filters.
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Severa is a Finnish “startup” that focuses on creating one SaaS-solution to managing company’s billing, project management and sales. They have just released a new version of the service – Severa3. I have to admit, looking at their website and statistics – they are doing very well. Severa was founded in 2004 and has grown a staggering 1304% over the last four years.
According to Inoa, their 2007 revenue was around 790k euros with a 121k operating profit. Other stats on their site are also pretty impressive – they help manage 130 000 projects, around 42 000 invoices and 10 million hours of work. Their business model is also relatively inexpensive – 30 euros per user per month and the first person to sign up gets the service for free. I have to disclose, that this is not a paid blog post by Severa, but I seldom am this fascinated by management tools!
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The Finnish book renting service targeted at students, BookaBooka, has been sent a cease and desist letter (in Finnish only) by the Finnish copyright agencies claiming that the company is breaking the law. The service has quietly received a lot of attention among students as a place to put your books into use – rent them for a monthly fee.
I first heard of BookaBooka about half a year ago and thought the concept was interesting, but it did not quite amaze me too much. The service has become successful among the most needy – the students who do not want to spend their few earned euros for expensive books. Very understandable – I didn’t either when I was in university.
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Update: The deadline is extended until May 13th.
The conference agenda can now be downloaded from the event home page (or use this PDF direct link).
ArcticStartup is proud to present an opportunity for all Baltic and Nordic startups to connect with and pitch to venture capitalists and compete for great prizes.
In alignment with the Second Annual Tallinn Conference organized by The International Technology Law Association in collaboration with Enterprise Estonia, ArcticStartup is cooperating to organize an Elevator Pitch Business Plan Contest with support from Connect Estonia. The contest is held in Tallinn, Estonia on May 26, 2009.
Prizes:
- One full day of law consulting with Fish & Richardson P.C., Silicon Valley, worth $6000. The prize can be used as the winner wishes, e.g., to incorporate a subsidiary to establish operations in Silicon Valley. The consultation can be done in person or by Skype or Polycom video. Consultation with the Munich office of Fish & Richardson P.C. may also be included, subject to availability and requirements of the contest winner.
- One full day of law consulting with Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear, LLP, worth $3000, to be used as the winner wishes. The consultation can be done in person (location negotiable) or by Skype or Polycom video.
The jury:
- Martin Hauge, Managing Director, Creandum, Stockholm
- Allan Martinson, Managing Director, MTVP, Tallinn
- Artturi Tarjanne, Managing Director, Nexit Ventures, Helsinki
- Rick Marshall, Managing Director, Intelligent Capital, San Francisco
- Sten Tamkivi , Chief Evangelist, Skype, Tallinn
- Ott Parna, Managing Director, Estonian Development Fund, Tallinn
- Richard Allan Horning, Principal, Fish & Richardson P.C., Silicon Valley
Growth-oriented technology startups from all Nordic and Baltic countries are welcomed to apply. Five firms will be selected to present a 5-minute pitch at the event. The judging criteria include the expected success of the firm, growth potential, differentiation and competitive advantage, risk and financial viability, and the management team.
Please note the contest rules and other information in the Invitation. Any questions about the contest can be sent to miikka(at)arcticstartup(dot)com.
The applications must be based using this form.
Please send your application to events(at)arcticstartup(dot)com latest by May 13th 6:00 PM EET. Finalists will be announced on May 14th.
Coaching and training for preparing the pitches are available to all chosen finalists prior to the contest, provided by Connect Estonia and members of the International Technology Law Association Luiga Mody Hääl Borenius and Raidla Lejins & Norcous, either online, in Tallinn, or in the participants’ home country, depending on possibilities.
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Relex is a Finnish success story that not too many people know about. The most obvious reason for this is that Relex is not one of the sexy social media services that don’t have a business model, but a company providing software for more efficient and automated demand forecasting and inventory managment. The company didn’t get any external risk capital from Angels or VCs except some goverment funding and have gottten a flying start with that.
This yet again comes to show that Finland seems to be very strong in software. Historically this is very obvious by looking at the exit market. Out of all the exits between 2000 and 2006 in Finland over 50% has been in Software, whereas Sweden has been the strongest Nordic market in Internet Services, even though that was mostly due to Skype’s €2200 million exit. After taking Skype out of the equation, software exits in Sweden count for about 35% of all the exits in the country during the time given time frame (Exit-study by Creandum, 2008).
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When we last time wrote about Floobs, a video streaming service, had just shifted its focus to niche audiences. Now they have build a business model to match that.
The company has made deals with the Spanish footbal teams of the highest order. For example Almeria Deportivo along with Real Betisin and Racing Santanderin are using Floobs to stream practice sessions and press announcemets. The rights for the games have of course sold for big bucks to major television channels, but everything that happens outside of those covered by the licenses are free game that Floobs wants to tap into. This means that content will be YouTube like clips that for example a football team can capture for their fans to see. Next markets Floobs is eyeing for football are Italy, Germany and France. Along with the international reach, Floobs serves also many other sports associations and teams in Finland.
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JayCut, the Swedish startup offering online video editing technology, can add another achievement on it’s list. They were recently selected as one of this years Red Herring 100 Europe winners. Congrats!
Since we last talked to JayCut, they have been busy developing a new editor. Last weekend I attended a blogger and tech geek event in Sweden’s first nuclear reactor R1, and got a demo by Jonas Hombert, the CEO of JayCut.
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I had a chat with Ramine of Mysites over the easter holidays and took our video guru Teppo with me. We shot a small video interview of where MySites is now headed and what they’ve been up to in the last months. There’s quite a bit of interesting stuff that Ramine goes through in the videos, but I’ll also sum them up here. Ramine also told us that they have secured another financing round from Germany, which he talks more about in the video.
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SoundCloud, a music and audio sharing service for artists, has been gaining momentum and rapidly growing their user base since the launch of the service last October. They have gone from 20,000 users to 100,000 users in a matter of six months.
Not only have they grown fast, they also just raised €2.5 million (roughly $3.3 million) in about 4 months. When we met SoundCloud at Le Web last December they were just starting to talk to VCs. Just last Thursday they signed the papers for the €2.5 million, which should give them a run way of roughly two years.
It also seems that SoundCloud is all the rage at The Next Web Conference and one of the hottest startups present based on the number of interviews co-founder Alex Ljung is doing. I talked to Alex at the venue about SoundCloud and the experience so far. He told me about the process of raising venture capital in the current economy, what they want to do with the money and how it all got started with SoundCloud sometime in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden. Continue reading »
I’m writing this from The Next Web Conference at the lovely Westergasfabrik in the heart of Amsterderdam. It’s sunny and the there’s amazing people full of energy all around. This is exactly how events should be: providing an inspirational setting to bring the busy and smart individuals into the same place to bounce ideas from each other and lay those seeds for future projects. I’ve been here for a couple days now and still don’t know nor care much about the program or the content on stage. What matters to me is the people off stage. The content needs to be there to get people curious enough to come in mass, but once you hit the venue, the smartest of us ignore the talks and focus on the conversations in the halls. To mis-use the analogy for events that Adam Greenfield uses for cities: The Events Are Here For You To Use.
That’s how we at ArcticStartup see events, that’s why we take time to travel to events all around Europe and that’s why we go lengths to organize and make sure ArcticEvenings work for the people who take the time to spent the evenings with us.
Here’s some events just around corner what are likely to be worth your time and effort.
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I had the pleasure of meeting with Janne Känkänen from the Finnish Ministry of Employment and Economy, the operational primus motor behind the Vigo startup accelerator programme that the Finnish government has been putting together in the recent months. I for one am very suspicious of where the government wants to take the growth entrepreneurship as an ecosystem, but was very glad to find out that there has been plenty of productive progress happening behind the scenes.
The Vigo, startup accelerator, that we wrote about earlier (but did not know the name back then) is only one concrete realisation of this new programme and its results. Mr Känkänen also told us that growth entrepreneurship ecosystem has been understood to require special methods of assistance and the current economic climate has further sped up those requirements.
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TradeShift
MoVoLo
Incentive Live
