Arctic Startup

The investment groups Ambient Sound Investments or ASI for short (from Skype fame) and Seed Fund Vera make an equity investment in Senseg, a Finnish company developing a breakthrough touch interface technology. The sum of the investment remains undisclosed.

Senseg is one of the startups whose journey to Israel to meet Israeli investors we have been following. It only makes sense that Senseg comes out with the announcement right before they pitch to the local VCs on Wednesday, May the 21th to capture the full benefit of the announcement.

Senseg has developed a new technology to produce touch-like sensations. The technology has a wide range of applications, for example generating the feeling of virtual buttons on smooth surfaces such as mobile phones and other touch screens. Iphone with a keyboard you can actually feel, anyone?

Dr. Ville Mäkinen, Senseg’s CEO, described the technology nothing short of revolutionary:

Senseg’s technology is something completely different. It is a novel communications technology based on human sensation. […] The technology has unrepresented potential. I can be licenced easily and used in hundreds of different ways and applications. Senseg’s technology can therefore initiate a significant and fundamental change in how consumer gadgets are designed and used.

According to Moaffak Ahmed, Chairman of Senseg, the technology will be available for a select group of equipment manufacturers in the second half of 2008 and be officially launched when the first products are introduced to the market, which he expects to be in 2009.

Arctic Startup will follow Sensig and other Finnish startups throughout the week and report on how they manage to attract attension from the VC scene in Israel.

Combine marketing people with a possibility to launch a product online and you get a service where you have to pay to see advertising - News to Screen. In short, News to Screen is a seperate program you have purchase for 29 euros a year to get the news you can get online for free.

In the program you have your normal news headlines, the area where you read the news and a video banner where you will be targeted with advertisements. They company has also had a very hungry start in terms of PR. During the doping scandal of the Finnish Biathlon Association, they were the only company that actually started a sponsorship deal with the skiers left in the association.

There’s enough competition out there in the market with regards to free RSS newsreaders that you really don’t need to build barriers of adoption to your product, like putting a price on it. The company has 13 employees at the moment, of whom 4 to 5 are technically oriented. I wish them all the best, but somehow I just don’t see this product taking off.

Creative agency Bolder Helsinki Oy was founded in the last week of February. The firm promises to do, uh, bolder and more creative and experimental marketing compared to more conventional and established agencies in both offline and online. Target customers are especially new firms, those planning to transfer their business to web, and firms who have undergone a generation shift and might need a strategic approach in creating or renewing their marketing as a whole. Their whole site is unfortunately only in Finnish right now, but an English version is promised to be launched before the summer.

The founder team consists of six Helsinki School of Economics students, who look forward to offer their experience of marketing in the student communities to national and international brands, which are looking to cover segments that might be difficult to reach. The founders are open about their excitement and enthusiasm to help create new success stories, and they’re looking to support entrepreneurship and encourage more Finnish students to consider it as a more tempting career option.

Competition in the media business is tough, but there’s always room for guys who believe in themselves. Best of luck to Bolder and kudos for stepping up with the challenge.

[This post is slightly late due to my winter holiday, sorry about that.]

The travel information organizer Vailoma has changed their name to TripSay. Also the website has been polished up. TripSay’s service aims to ease up the process required to plan new trips and vacations, by providing easy access to relevant and complete destination content, which is both updated by users and aggregated from around the web.

The company has also created a new embeddable application called the Destination Module, which is designed to share TripSay’s content with travel agencies and other partners enabling them to get dynamic destination content from the web and travelers onto their site without any effort. The application can be checked out on Kaleva Travel’s web site (the site’s in Finnish, but scroll down a bit and you’ll see the app), which has the first implementation of the application. TripSay has also plans to open up an API to allow tailored services, though no indication of the release schedule is given yet.

TripSay plans to monetize their service by targeted advertisements, along with commissions from bookings done via its site. Hopefully the new name is more descriptive to international users and helps to spread the word.

[via Startupbin , TripSay blog]

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.

The Institute for Innovation and Information Productivity has interviewed about 25000 people around the world on what they call innovation confidence. Finland has received 44 points of the 100 possible points, which makes it the one of the least thrilled by technology. We’re in the pack together with Slovenia, Turkey and the Netherlands.

This is very worrying, as we’ve been noted as one of the most technologically advanced countries, especially when it comes to the mobile phones and internet. Finland is usually considered in general a very early adapter of new technologies and thus it’s stressful to see this sort of attitude change.

Via New York Times and ReadWriteWeb.