Arctic Startup

Another Technopolis event coming up is MoneyTalks™ Forum Special on 8th of May, claimed to be the largest investor event in Finland during the spring of 2008. The event is invitation-only and targeted to VCs, business angels and promising high-tech & innovation based start-ups seeking financing. Companies interested in pitching in the event should check for further information.

The bi-annual special event promises to feature the rising stars of the Finnish high-tech scene and prominent early stage investors from Finland and abroad. Participants should have plenty of opportunities for one-one-one meetings with investors and entrepreneurs.

Photo by cpalmieri.

TechCrunch reports more difficult times ahead for companies looking for funding in Silicon Valley. Overall, the number of M&As have gone down, as well as IPOs and the total value of disclosed M&A deals. When in US, they report on quarterly figures, we have to settle for annual figures (which are increasingly late as well) here in Finland. Then again, our market domestically is in very early stages (the average size of a venture capital investment in 2006 was a mere 680 000 euros).

While I don’t believe the effects of the downturn have hit Europe yet, I believe they are on their way. Any comments from the field would be appreciated on this topic, like always :)

Being the founder of the blog, I’m very very glad to announce that we have secured funding from two Finnish venture capitalists. The money will be used to hire a full time blogger and expand the services overseas to other Scandinavian countries. We are still in talks of publishing the two private investors in the near future.

We’re thrilled of course, needless to say. However, we won’t be selling this blog so the focus will be kept critical and analytical in the future as well. The blog was started in 2007 with a suspicion that I will have time to continue writing it. Soon it gathered momentum and I had sort of an obligation from the fans and companies to continue on the track I’ve chosen. With this funding I see that our efforts have not been in vain.

A huge thanks to all the readers and companies involved - I’m starting of the day with a bottle of champagne :)

I and Miikka had a chat yesterday with Tatu Laurila, CEO of Greater Helsinki Promotions about a venture they are organising for Finnish startups and prospects to Israel. Greater Helsinki Promotions is co-organising the event with Technopolis ventures.

Ten of the finest Finnish companies eligible for this venture will be sent to Israel to the IVA Hi-Tech Conference 2008. The event is held in Tel Aviv 19.-20.5.2008. The Israeli Venture Capital Association (IVA) has offered the Finnish organizers an opportunity to bring 5-10 promising start-ups plus an accompanying delegation to Tel Aviv for IVA’s annual conference, which attracts about 1,500 global players from the high tech industry, including VC and Corporate investors. Large number of global VC’s will attend the conference. The estimated cost for the whole program is a maximum of 5000 € at the maximum, a more exact budget will be available in the next couple weeks.

Deadline for enrollment is 2.4.2008. If you’re interested, contact Will Cardwell of Technopolis Ventures for more information on how to apply.

For those who are unaware with the startup and entrepreneurship environment in Israel, it is a lot more effective than it is in Finland. The countries themselves are similar in size and population. With a focus on entrepreneurship and a 15-year strong track record, Israel has managed to enlist over 100 companies to Nasdaq and there seems to be more in the pipeline. There’s definitely a lot there to learn. Arctic Startup will try to cover the process, preparaion up to the event and the event itself as thoroughly as possible. Stay tuned!

Eniram received a major investment from Conor Venture Partners earlier this month. The exact amount was not disclosed, but it’s believed to be around €1 million (major by Finnish standards). The purpose of the investment is to strengthen Eniram’s marketing and sales operations in order to expand globally.

Eniram was founded in 2005 as a spin-off from US-based engineering consultant Edec, which remains a partner to Eniram. Eniram focuses on the maritime industry, providing system integration solutions allowing its customers to save costs and lower emissions through lower fuel consumption. The team reportedly has a great deal of knowledge of the industry and software development. The rumor also has it that Pekka Roine from Conor joined Eniram’s board, bringing the company extensive experience of running technology and software business.

Press release.

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.

Teemu Selänne, the NHL hockey player, has cashed in on the MySQL deal, where Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL for a billion dollars.

Teemu had invested about 330 000 euros seven years ago into Holtron Capital Fund I, which is managed by Inventure Oy, according to the Finnish Venture Capital Association. The exit value for Teemu’s initial investment was worth just over 1 million euros, according to Ilta-Sanomat.

Congrats to Teemu!

Aegis Groups Isobar has acquired White Sheep from Finland. White Sheep has assets of 0.7M€. The investment amount was not disclosed.

White Sheep will be re-branded as Suddenly Helsinki, becoming part of Isobar’s Suddenly network. Suddenly has offices in Stockholm, Oslo, Gothenberg and Copenhagen.

Full press release available here.

Vailoma Oy, a company enabling community generated guides and tips for travel planning, has secured seed financing from Valve Branding Oy and Veraventure. The amount invested was not disclosed.

Vailoma offers currently over 260.000 destinations, cities, sights and so forth to help make decisions on the next travel destination. The content is gathered from all over the internet and filtered by the community. You build up a profile to enable suggestions based on what kind of holidays and travels you enjoy.

Valve Branding, which also invested in Jaiku, wants to seek new investments in the area of internet startups. “Valve sees Vailoma as an interesting opportunity to participate in the development of an interesting web service. We received some experience with Jaiku and this time we wanted to be a more active”, says Toni Laturi from Valve.

The investement is aimed towards internationalisation and the launch of the service (it is currently in private beta). Vailoma is also recruiting - web developers and GUI designers.

Update: Apparently Valve did not invest in Jaiku and therefore the information above was false.

Alarm:clock euro pointed us to Aito Technologies getting another injection of VC capital, this time from Creandum to fuel its international growth.

I’ve heard from relatively reliable sources that Aito is definitely onto something big and good here. Initial demand for the product/software they are building is incredibly good. The software as far as I’m informed, is a tool to analyse network traffic and thus serve as an indicator for operators to streamline their services. For example, as funny as it sounds - not many operators know the percentage of successfully delivered MMS messages in their networks and as far as I know, Aito’s software will help with these sort of problems.