Nick Mueller

Nick Mueller does business development for consumer web startups of many colors and shapes, and has also been known to help established companies develop their digital communications and online strategies. Nick was a blogger for Gawker Media in the US until 2007 when he moved to Sweden and completed the MBA program at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Recent Posts

Event Report: Mobile Monday

by Nick Mueller, January 13, 2010 — 1 Comment

On Monday night Squace hosted the first of a new generation of Mobile Monday events in Stockholm. The evening featured pitches by 6 young companies in the mobile space, followed by commentary from an expert panel of tech. journalists, investors, and senior members of the tech. community. After the presentation, attendees were asked to vote on the most interesting company, with the winner getting a nomination for the Mobile Peer Award at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This nomination carries some weight, since last years nomination, PopCatcher, went on to win the special jury award.

The following is a quick rundown of the companies that presented last night, and who will be representing Stockholm in Barcelona next month. Continue reading »

Voddler Has 300K Users, Here’s How They Can Get 300M

by Nick Mueller, January 7, 2010 — 3 Comments

Streaming movie service Voddler announced today that they’ve reached the 300,000 user milestone. As a recent invite recipient, I’ve had a chance to watch a few movies and play around with the service. Here’s the top three things Voddler should be using their venture money for:

1. The installation process and the application itself needs to be much, much lighter. In the same way that other streaming media service in Sweden strives to provide a better user experience than piracy, the journey from invite email to opening credits should be less clicks than fingers on one hand. The goal experience should have a “wow” factor, as in, “Wow, that was fast.” This also applies to the way the application takes over the desktop, single-function iPhone style. We all need to be able to minimize when the boss walks by.

2. On the topic of user experience, you need to be able to click through menus. Nobody should have to use Tab, ever.

One of these is an easy developmental fix, the other will take some more serious code work. The last thing Voddler has to work on is on the business side, and is the most difficult. Continue reading »

Use Your Users: Driving Online Media In 2010

by Nick Mueller, January 5, 2010 — Leave a Comment

In the beginning was the pageview and it was good. However, The Awl is reporting today that Gawker Media has decided to change how they measure their sites from pageviews to monthly uniques. The metric will hopefully give them, “a new number that more accurately reflects the growth of our audience.” This change is relevant to all online media entrepreneurs and content creators for 2 reasons.

The first is that unique visitors as a statistic to sell advertisers represents something different than pageviews. In fact, it seems like a step backward. The original promise of online advertising was that for each ad impression, someone clicked to reach that page. One page, one impression, two eyeballs. However, as Nick “Pancake Man” Denton rightly points out, while the pageview might be the purest form of measuring eyes-on-page, focusing exclusively on pageviews incentives editors and content creators to squeeze increasing amounts of clicks from the existing user base. Using monthly uniques as the performance metric of choice allows you to represent the number of eyeballs your site has access to, a measurement more like TV’s share of audience or newspaper circulation numbers. An increasing number of monthly uniques demonstrates to advertisers that passed links and breakout stories travel easily from your core audience to the wider web. This is prime bait for mainstream brands, who will always have the largest ad budgets.

The other important change at Gawker announced today that has relevance to anyone managing online content: a change in the way variable pay is distributed and therefore how content creators are incentivized.  

Continue reading »

Week In Review: It Shall Be Released!

by Nick Mueller, December 19, 2009 — Leave a Comment

release-meThis week was all about the releases, new products, versions, and, er, some employees. Swedes-in-Berlin based startup SoundCloud launched their App Gallery, and we pronounced it good. Unfortunately, Sulake’s release was in the form of 28 of their employees. Hopefully, when their Facebook application starts to take off, they can hire everyone back.

There were releases coming from the financial and government worlds this week too. The Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish Ministries’ collaboration known as the Nordic Game Program awarded a total of 3,000,000DKK (400,000€, 4,200,000SEK, 3,300,000NOK, 73,000,000ISK) funding to 8 winners to develop innovative games. The Finnish Software Entrepreneurs Association released a manifesto demanding a tax exemption for startups that fund their operations from their own profits and are owned by the entrepreneurs themselves. Lastly, one of the very few investment banks left on the Earth, released a huge report on the future of the mobile internet, and we “filleted” it for you as best we could.

Finally, in a MUST SEE video for all European entrepreneurs, Mårten Mickos releases his hard won wisdom on challenges that are in the way of building world’s biggest anything

SoundCloud Launches App Gallery, Take Notes

by Nick Mueller, December 17, 2009 — 2 Comments

soundcloud_logoMusic and audio sharing service for artists, SoundCloud, today announced the launch of their App Gallery, “a nice home for all the apps using the SoundCloud API.” In the process they are demonstrating how startups can develop thriving application ecosystems without the “get rich quick” motivation that drives many developers to create for that other app store.

We’ve all heard it before, at events, camps, or pitching sessions – to be really successful in the consumer web you have to be a platform. But how do startups, even a funded startup with a rapidly growing user base convince a critical mass of developers to spend their precious time coding for them? In particular, why does a handful of Swedish guys who moved their company to Berlin just because the parties are better, think they can build a dynamic App Gallery?

Continue reading »

We Read The Morgan Stanley Mobile Internet Report So You Don’t Have To

by Nick Mueller, December 15, 2009 — 3 Comments

jponlineThe research unit of US Investment Bank Morgan Stanley today released a triple threat evaluation of the mobile internet industry, including a 422-page report, 692-page presentation, and a 92-page “summary” of the aforementioned. There’s just something about speculative research from financial institutions that seems so rational, pure, and free of the enthusiastic support that those in the industry like to give each other. The report starts by stating that we are in the early part of the fifth major technology cycle of the last fifty years, and that as each new cycle unfolds, “the number of devices and users rises by a factor of ten.” It continues by stating, “the winners in each new innovation cycle create more market capitalization than the winners of the last cycle.”

Given that positive outlook, lets take a look at how the rest of the report breaks down, and what it could mean for mobile internet entrepreneurs in Northern Europe.

Continue reading »

Week In Review: Wherever You Go, There You Are

by Nick Mueller, December 11, 2009 — 1 Comment

buddha-head-handIf you’re an entrepreneur in the Northern Europe (and if you’re reading this, you probably are) you should be feeling pretty good about now. For example, growth companies are now the largest employers in Finland, and it turns out working in Silicon Valley isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So much innovation gets started here, it’s not even funny. Companies like Stereoscape that push the frontiers of 3D movies, and Investors like Richard Youngman, who tells you where future developments are coming from (and why this big meeting in Copenhagen isn’t that important afterall). Just be sure to avoid the 10 most common mistakes entrepreneurs make, and you’ll be sitting pretty.

The Voxstone VoxTrac acoustic gas line measurement devices are selling like hotcakes!

Finland based AW-Energy harnesses energy from the motion of the ocean.

Even when it’s really cold in Finland, Beneq thinks the thinnest possible coatings are the best.

Steam Republic wants to help bands bring music directly to their fans.

Spotify wants to bring any music they can to fans in the US.

Netcycler -for all the free stuff you never knew you needed.

The upside to Upsido? You never have to use E*TRADE ever again.

Starting another company sound like too much work for you? Join a VC! They’re always looking for washed up entrepreneurs, just ask Nikolaj Nyholm.

Is Spotify Doomed? An Alternate Reality Analysis

by Nick Mueller, December 10, 2009 — 5 Comments

hindenburgAs the region’s reigning consumer web champion, there can never be enough stories about Spotify. And since today they’ve released a verison for Android and some new user & track figures, it’s a good time as any to wonder what the future might hold for them. Especially in light of Apple’s recent acquisition of US based La La Media. Caught on tape at Le Web, Spotify “Consigliere” Shakil Khan announced that they now have 7 million users in 6 countries choosing from 6.5 million tracks and listening for an average of 80-90 minutes per user. 

When asked the million billion dollar question about when the service will launch in the US, Khan reiterated the 1Q10 time frame that has been given before. Interestingly, he also said that one of the main delays has been setting up a corporate infrastructure in the US including “business licences and visas,” as well as operations and ad sales teams in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. Spotify has used this type of careful building since the beginning, and it is a credit to they way that they think about user experience, considering problems that would result from not being fully prepared as a degradation to the end service. However, with attitudes towards the non-ownership model changing rapidly, there will be an element of first-mover advantage to whomever can launch an insanely great streaming service in the US, and even more so if that first-mover happens to be called Apple. Will Spotify be dead-on-arrival in the US if Apple launches an iTunes streaming service before they’re ready? Continue reading »

Week In Review: Get To Work!

by Nick Mueller, December 4, 2009 — Leave a Comment

GetToWorkIt seems like everybody got new jobs this week. Spotify announced their new CTO, Oskar Stål, and took the fun out of guessing what their mobile strategy is (can you say, “transactional model”). Polar rose announced their new CEO, Carl Silbersky, and added fun to guessing who will be acquiring them in the next 12 months. The hotshots at Videoplaza announced they will be hiring ten (10!) new people before the end of Q1 2010.  We here at ArcticStartup are hiring too! We’re looking for a Stockholm based Co-editor, let us know if you’re interested.

Other interesting companies we met this week include Helsinki based FilmGator, a Last.fm for movies, and Tuxera, whose system interoperability software is in such a deep niche no natural light reaches them. The other hot new company of the week is Sofanatics, a Finnish social viewing service. How they will add value to watching teevee while Skype chatting with friends remains to be seen.

Of course, not everyone can be in the right place at the right time. For example Zipiko, the real-time social invitation service that was before it’s time and is now behind Plancast, Foursquare, Hot Potato and everybody else. Even the mighty Bonnier Group might be setting themselves up for a fall, with a “maybe” forthcoming e-reader. You be the judge.

Our cleantech team was all over Clean Tech Venture Day, and posted some great video interviews with Rene Savelsberg, CEO of SET Venture Partners on the topics of break through areas for 2010 and which markets to enter in cleantech.

We also introduced you to a couple of companies trying to clean the world up one boat at time. Faroe Island based GreenSteam is trying to help the maritime industry reach their goal of a 15% reduction in emissions by 2015. And Eniram, who doesn’t want to turn the marine industry backwards at all, but wants to use IT to help it save fuel and emissions.

The Mediocre Future Success of the Bonnier E-Reader

by Nick Mueller, December 3, 2009 — 5 Comments

Bonnier_WHITEE-readers and tablet MIDs are the new black. Eric Schmidt says they’ll be our new best friends by 2015, making internet consumption an orgasmic joy. But by now we all know about the strange fate that befell the Pad of Crunches. So, we’ve got 5 years to go from absurd FUBAR to utopian ecstasy and the team at bonnier_rd isn’t wasting any time. They sent their office overseer, Sara Öhrvall, to San Francisco yesterday where she will surely meet, work, and learn about lots of fancy new media things that are getting born there. She will, however, need to keep her eyes on the prize: a Bonnier Media Empire Tablet E-Reader. A media company with an “R&D” department is one of the perks of having a national media monopoly that is itself part of a regional oligopoly. But it is precisely Bonnier’s many content and distribution tentacles that make the prospect of it’s own e-reader so appealing. But as we learned this week, when you yourself know nothing about tech manufacturing, it tends to blow up in your face. Is the Bonnier Media Empire Tablet E-Reader™ a lawsuit waiting to happen? Or will it be the must have item for Swedish Christmas 2010? Continue reading »

Polar Rose Appoints New CEO, Looks To Come In From the Cold

by Nick Mueller, December 1, 2009 — Leave a Comment

polar rose logoThe Malmö, Sweden based company who’s facial recognition powered visual search technology is very well regarded, announced on their blog this afternoon that they’ve appointed Carl Silbersky as their new CEO. In a move that seems strangely similar to Spotify’s announcement earlier, the new focus will be on developing Polar Rose’s mobile service. The fact that Former CEO Nikolaj Nyholm will remain on the board of directors gives us a good clue about what this new direction really means for Polar Rose, the respected but ultimately profitless company whose A-round was way back in 2006. Continue reading »

Week In Review: Stand Out From The Crowd

by Nick Mueller, November 27, 2009 — 1 Comment

northkoreaimage1Here’s a fact: the future is in entrepreneurship. For Finnish Cleantech, the future is now.

Lucky for you, starting a company is easy, er, easier than you think. If the Bloglovin’ guys could do it, anyone can. Eventually though it pays to have some managerial talent, not just good ideas. But good ideas help, and there sure are a lot of them around, like AleLion, the Swedish company that wants to put lithium iron phosphate batteries in all the world’s golf carts, or TaxiPal, the Estonian service that lets you control a fleet of Parisian taxis with just your thumbs! Don’t forget Noko Jeans, the Swedish designed, North Korean made jeans that Kim Jong-il would wear, if he, you know, wore jeans.

Once that light bulb has gone off in your head and it’s time to start working, there will be plenty of other entrepreneurs to help you out. Like the guys at TimeGT, that started their company just to help you GET THINGS DONE. And to make sure your productivity doesn’t get interrupted just as you’ve entered The Zone, Numo solutions from Norway has caller ID search, so you only have to answer when your VC calls, and your mother-in-law can go straight to voicemail.

LOL @ Spotify for Symbian being released the same week Nokia drops it from more devices.

ArcticEvening Tallinn – 3 December!

Not Tech Tuesday: Noko Jeans Is Jeans From North Korea

by Nick Mueller, November 24, 2009 — 11 Comments

nk logoStartups are startups and it takes more than consumer web companies to make the world go around.  In fact, one of the most ambitious startups in Sweden at the moment, in the hyper competitive fashion industry, is Noko Jeans. The cleverly narrated video on their website tells the story: from an idea to use Sweden’s relatively good diplomatic relations with the “hermit kingdom” to get there and make some trousers with a literally inimitable pedigree.

While jeans made in the world’s most isolated country may seem like a novelty, using the “Made In” tag as a brand feature is nothing new. ”Made In Italy” has been adding cache to consumer goods for decades. More recently, American Apparel has used their vertical integration and “Made In USA” branding to out maneuver competitors with production in more standard East Asian “tiger” countries. However, the real cheekiness of Noko Jeans comes from their flaunting of the “Made In North Korea” label which, in the consumer mind is likely to have only negative connotations. But fashion is very crowded, and even more so in the premium denim category, so does a brand with no track record, no real financial backing, and a brand association with an oppressive regime have a chance to succeed? Continue reading »

Week In Review: Money Grows On VeeCees

by Nick Mueller, November 20, 2009 — 2 Comments

money on treesIt was a rollercoaster of a week, with some companies going up, some down, and some upside-down. Take Sopima, the Finnish online contract “bank,” this week they took €1m to the actual bank. Or Voddler, the Swedish “Spotify for movies” company that got 35 million kronor from a mysterious uncle.

Not everyone did so well. Like a certain moderately well known Finnish mobile phone manufacturer, that announced Symbian will be executed in 2012.

But, don’t waste time shedding any tears for Nokia, their future will be bright. So many new tools are there to help them, like Tietoset, a SaaS where industrial buyers are better able to source from the manufacturing field. They could learn a thing or too from Eric Ries about lean startupsas well, since every big company needs some intrapreneurs.

Sometimes, a distraction like some online gaming is all it takes to get the creative juices flowing again. There are plenty around whether your tastes are more intense, like the new MMORPG Hours of War, or casual social gaming like Planteo.

Cars are so 20th century. Use Me Mover, they’re so hot right now.

Google is so 5 minutes ago. Use Azouk, they’re so hot right now.

All you need to know about MetGen and their “enzymatic technologies in industrial processes” is that it’s a $2,000,000,000 a year market. I bet you’re interested now that you’ve finished counting all those zeros.

Event Report: Arctic Evening Stockholm – What’s Your Fantasy Price?

by Nick Mueller, November 19, 2009 — 1 Comment

ae-shtml-banner23Last night a hundred of Stockholm’s brightest and best in mobile services got together to talk about future challenges, opportunities, hopes, dreams, and tearing down the old order to build it again. The event got started with a short presentation by Jaycut CEO Jonas Hombert, who just might be the nicest guy in the Swedish tech scene, which would put him high in the running for nicest worldwide. He talked about the future of the Jaycut service on mobile devices and his partnership with Intel and Moblin, classifying it as advantageous and door-opening.

Next up was the main panel, featuring no less than Rebtel founder Hjalmar Winbladh, Traveas founder Jack Melcher-Claësson, and Cloudo evangelist Viktor Björk. Hjalmar talked about Rebtel’s dual targeting strategy, focusing on immigrants and expats around the world as customers and entrenched operators around the world as enemies. He slyly added, about his enemies pricing strategy, that “50 öre for an sms is a fantasy price.” Of course facing down operators is no easy challenge, especially when companies like AT&T are constantly whispering in Apple’s ear about which applications should be approved and which should not.

Viktor, with his trademark zeal, discussed the clear mobile future of Cloudo, and made very sure not to use the term “OS,” since Cloudo is a horizontal platform, and won’t try to make you give up your gmail. Ever. He promised. Lastly, by virtue of sitting on the right of the panel, Jack illuminated the ways in which Traveas tries to make travelling print-out free, on everyone’s mobile, EVEN people without iPhones. Shocking.

Miikka then wrapped up the panel, and I passed out more drink tickets, as handshakes, back slaps, light hearted insults, and heavily considered strategies were discussed into the night.