Arctic Startup

The informal Finnish marketing bible, M&M reported today (article in Finnish) that Fruugo, a mysterious Finnish startup with a world class Board of Directors including Jorma Ollila (Shell, former Nokia), Risto Siilasmaa (from F-secure fame and an active Finnish Angel investor) and Marko Parkkinen (from Bob Helsinki fame), has hired three Helsinki digital agency-world big timers, namely Janne Waltonen, Sami Keinänen and Kim Stenbäck.

According to the Finnish trade register Fruugo’s line of business includes market place software development, digital market place maintenance and related activity. To shed further light into the startup, all Mr. Waltonen is ready to reveal at this point is that Fruugo is aiming at international markets right from the beginning.

More on the topic by Startupbin here and here.

Musiikki&Media organizes a free seminar with the theme “New revenue models of music” on May 16th 10.00-15.00 at Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. The seminar features opinions and insights around what seem to be the revenue models of the future and what are the changes already taken place in the music industry.

Why I’m picking it up is because the event might interest also those not directly involved in music business as Johan Vosmeijer, Managing Director of the interesting German startup SellaBand will participate. Crowd sourcing is one of themes covered in the seminar.

Free registration before May 13th is required. The enrollment and later on event details are available on the Musiikki&Media 08 web site.

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Photo by malingering.

There will be a special startup developers get together event in Helsinki on May 22. The purpose of the event is to exchange knowledge about technologies and conventions touching startup developers, and also to demonstrate students “how cool it is to run and work in a startup”.

There’s quite a good bunch of startup speakers participating, including Lare Lekman, CTO of Star Wreck Studios, Jani Luostarinen, System Administrator at Floobs, Joakim Achren, founder and CEO of Ironstar Helsinki (MoiPal service), and Taro Morimoto, CTO of Zipipop. After the afternoon event there will be an evening party as well, place to be declared later.

The event will take place on Thursday, May 22, starting at 1pm at HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Science in Helsinki. Check out the detailed agenda and enrollment on Yahoo upcoming or Facebook.

If you can’t make it, you can see the live stream from Floobs. Sponsors are also sought after, so if you’re interested, contact Kai Lemmetty @Floobs.

Technopolis and Technopolis Ventures organize a brief morning seminar on April 29th in Espoo with a theme “Virtual Communities as a Tool for New Businesses”. The free of charge event is quite short, light even, but does feature a keynote from the software business research legend David G. Messerschmitt, what might make it just worth your visit.

More information and registration (due April 24th).

Talk about clear value proposition? How about getting your own webstore opened and running within one minute? That’s how it works with MyCashflow, a recently opened service for creating your own shop on the web.

With signing up, the Middle Finland-based company instantly sets you up with search engine optimized store including most usual payment methods, inventory management, and easy admin tool. The subscription-based plans range several options from free, max 10-product store, to an unlimited premium one currently priced at EUR 249/month.

The service is currently provided only in Finnish, but listen up as the co-founder Ismo Ruotsalainen tells more about the company.

1. Could you introduce briefly what MyCashflow is all about?

MyCashflow is an elegant webstore software designed for small businesses and web designers.

2. How do you position yourself against and differentiate from the
other webstore providers?

There are lots of differences. For example, you can open your own webstore in few seconds, but I think the most important ones are the admin interface and HTML/CSS themes.

The admin interface is practical and dead simple to use. We have been working hundreds of hours to improve workflow and productivity. We’ve got tons of great feedback about our admin interface – people really like to use it.

HTML/CSS themes are something what web designers really respect. Finally they can design premium quality webshops without any programming experience. They just embed codes like {ShoppingCart} into HTML-template.

3. Can you let us know what led you to the idea for MyCashflow?

There’s nothing particular. We have worked with webshops for a long time and the idea just evolved naturally. We noticed that there is a lot of need for improvements in the e-commerce software business and thought that we have a lot to give.

4. What have been the early successes and challenges with releasing your service?

We launched 2 months ago and there are 350 shops at a moment. Also web designers have been pleased to MyCashflow. There are now more than 10 marketing agencies that use our service. Whole thing has started well but there are still lots of things to do.

5. What can we expect from MyCashflow in the future? Are you going to release international versions?

MyCashflow is designed for the global market, that’s why the English name. We started with Finnish version on purpose, because we wanted to learn how to walk before running. Finland is like a beta-test or a dress rehearsal.

Global, multilingual version is a next big step. First step of testing starts in few weeks and we launch when we are ready.

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Thanks Ismo, and good luck to MyCashflow with rolling out the service on a large scale! With all the talk regarding entrepreneurs and small businesses not utilizing web enough in their business, there should be healthy demand for a simple and fast to adapt no-nonsense solution.

There’s some good comments being thrown around as Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch interviewed the developers of Scred in Amsterdam’s NextWeb Conference. There are a lot of competitor’s names as well and it just shows what kind of competition you usually end up with once you execute.

I’d be even daring to say that the idea is nothing, execution is everything.

Something’s definitely happening in the UK and Mountain View today - according to Petteri’s Jaiku post. Petteri is the co-founder of Jaiku working in the UK, while Jyri Engestrom is working in Mountain view with his wife and son.

Yesterday we got our 20 invites and Petteri even replied to his Jaiku announcing those invites as “OK, sounds good. Expect some news shortly :)” - we’re on the lookout!

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.

I did a small e-mail interview with Helene Auramo, HSE student, MA student in TAIK and CEO of Zipipop. Zipipop was founded July 23rd 2007, but Helene and Richard von Kaufmann had started planning the company some 9 months earlier. The young company has 5 Facebook applications as their products.

Helene, you’re the CEO of Zipipop – what does Zipipop do?

We make social media applications that help make life easier, for example getting your friends together for drink. Our current focus is on Facebook, however, we are about to start developing for other social networks too. And we’re always thinking about mobile possibilities.

At the moment most of our income comes from making custom applications for various clients. However, these are mostly based on our own Zipipop platforms. One example is the Laika application “What kind of dog are you?” inside Facebook. Laika Design is a cool Finnish company that produces bags and accessories with a dog theme.

Can you tell us how you went about starting the Zipipop – did you plan to do Facebook applications from day one or was that a result of some other decision?

I have a background in Helsinki School of Economics, but also in University of Art and Design Helsinki, in media lab. I met other two Zipipop partners; Richard von Kaufmann and Tuomas Laitinen in media lab. And the idea of Zipipop came in one UIAH’s course together with Richard.

One Friday last summer we had our normal afternoon tea break, when we started to talk about Facebook and its applications. We had an idea that we should test the platform and create an application there. And one week later, we had the first version of Friends Pad online. We also thought that the Facebook platform might be suitable for spreading our other web-based software.

You started the company while studying – how well does studying and running a company mix together?

I just had one week holiday from Zipi office because I had to study. But otherwise I haven’t been that much away from the office. However, I hope to graduate on June 2008 from HSE. At the moment I’m working days and trying to study on evenings and weekends. My thesis is also related to Zipipop.

Being in school at the same time has been good in the sense that we have received a lot of help from other students and teachers. And some courses have really given me good ideas related to running a business.

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Thanks to Helene for the interview! Although there is a lot of capability to grow the business in a difficult industry, I’m glad to see people taking initiative already earlier on in their studies.

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 :)