Nest New York To Help Finnish Startups Establish Themselves Stateside
Nest New York is a new kind of a startup accelerator (can we really call it that?) in New York that helps Finnish companies establish themselves into the US market, according to Finnish Talouselämä. The setup is a combined effort by Tekes (Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation) as well as Teknologiateollisuus (The Federation of Finnish Technology Industries).
The companies currently accepted into the accelerator are PlayMySong, Campalyst, Stream Republic, Wantlet, MobileBrainBank and Kiosked.
Valkee Study Published In Peer Reviewed Journal?
Valkee, the creator of the bright-light headset used to treat seasonal depression and mood disorders, has published the first results of its clinical and neurobiological research program. The clinical trial, published in Medical Hypothesis, studied therapeutic effects of bright light channeled into the human brain via the ear canal to test the sensitivity of the human brain to light. The trial has been conducted since 2007 and challenges the existing paradigm that light therapy is only effective when transmitted through the eyes.
People with suspicions of Valkee's claimed benefits have long been asking for some proof from a peer reviewed study that acknowledges that the medical concept is sound. Unfortunately this paper will likely do little to remove those suspicions after taking a look at the colorful history of the journal, Medical Hypothesis.
Angry Birds Leaked On Facebook - Available Now
It seems that Angry Birds is already available on Facebook. We stumbled upon the game a day early of their official release. A few weeks back Rovio announced on Facebook that they would hold the biggest Facebook event ever and invite everyone and your mom to participate. The day naturally coincides with Valentines Day - a great day to share a good game with your friends. We snatched a few screenshots from the game as we played it and they're available below.
Mobile Backstage Hits 100K Users Interacting With Artists
We've covered the rise of Helsinki-based Mobile Backstage, a service that creates and maintains smartphone apps for bands. They've seen success creating an interactive fan club service that helps develop and maintain relationships between artists and fans, where now their platform has expanded to many Finnish and UK based bands. Today Mobile Backstage tells us the service has reached 100 thousand registered users on mobile devices alone. These users have also logged 4 million interactions in 2011.
Iron Sky A Box Office Hit At Berlin Film Festival
Iron Sky has been one of the more anticipated films in the Finnish movie industry in the past years. The movie is a sequel to the Star Wreck, a fully crowdsourced movie that has become the most watched (and also downloaded) Finnish film of all time. Iron Sky is a built on the story that in 1945 Nazis flew to the moon - and now they're coming back. The movie is also a big budget film by Finnish standards. On Wreckamovie, a site where movie creators can crowdsource parts of the content from the community, the film's budget is listed at an impressive €7.5 million.
Nokia Cuts 4000 Jobs Globally
Nokia has just announced, according to Reuters that it is cutting down 4000 jobs in Finland, Hungary and Mexico as it struggles for better profitability. Finnish Helsingin Sanomat expects that the factory in Salo will see some 1000-1200 jobs cut as part of downsizing the output to match demand in Europe.
Pult, Trainingbook, Zonear Selected For Seedcamp London
Seedcamp London is kicking off this week, and with it they announced for this round they've received a record number of applications and are hosting a record number of teams. For those who aren't familiar with the program, Seedcamp is a European startup incubator that employs many of the same principles as Silicon Valley's famous Y Combinator startup incubator. Of the selected 22 companies, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia are each represented with one company who will compete to win the London event. Winners will receive a year long support with mentors, and Seedcamp will invest around €50000 for 8-10% in the winning companies.
TechDays Helsinki - Bigger Than Ever
Editorial note: This post is part of Microsoft's sponsored posts series Hear it from the startups.
Microsoft Finland is throwing its annual conference, TechDays in Helsinki in just over a month's time. The event is scheduled for two days between the 8th and 9th of March. The event has a ton of speakers covering a very impressive amount of topics. Microsoft has also confirmed for us that they will be giving a first look at the new Windows 8 operating system at the event as well. In fact, there will be one whole day's worth of content aimed at Windows 8.
Walkbase Introduces Automatic Check-in Client For Foursquare
Automatic check-in apps for Foursquare have been available for some time now, but they all suffer from two major issues; poor accuracy and high battery drainage. To address these problems, Finnish startup Walkbase has introduced Checked, the world’s first indoor positioning client for Foursquare.
Comptel Acquires Advanced Analytics Startup Xtract For EUR 3.1 Million
Finland-based analytics provider Xtract has been acquired by software company Comptel for EUR 3.1 million. Xtract was founded in 2001 and specializes in advanced customer analytics solutions for companies operating in the mobile, retail and finance sectors.
Angry Birds Coming To Facebook February 14th
Rovio has announced that Angry Birds will expand to Facebook on February 14th. They did this in a very subtle way, by inviting people to an event on Facebook itself. Angry Birds has been anticipated to arrive on Facebook since last spring. At the time of writing this there are only a little over a thousand people invited to the event, but this will surely grow as the date gets closer.
Was Megaupload Shutdown Because Of Megabox?
Last week saw the closure of hugely popular site Megaupload.com that functioned as a file-sharing site for individuals. That was the intention, but many used it to share illegal files as well. It has been publicly stated, that due to the fact that the service held so much pirated material - the FBI and New Zealand police arrested Kim Dotcom (previously Kim Schmitz). Kim Schmitz is actually half German, half Finn which qualifies him for coverage on ArcticStartup.
Blaast Launches In Indonesia, Targets The Next Billion Users
We've received news that tomorrow Blaast is launching "the world's first cloud-based mobile platform" in Jakarta, Indonesia in cooperation with the mobile operator XL. The Helsinki-based company is throwing a press event and hackathon designed to catch the attention of the local press and the local developer community, who are encouraged to create apps for the entirely cloud-based platform. Finland's Foreign Minister, Alex Stubb, is also in Jakarta and will likely attend the launch.
Blaast has been operating in stealth mode for some time, but what's been public is that the company's cloud based platform will essentially allow 'dumber' feature phones to behave like smartphones by running the complicated background processes in the cloud. Android already incorporates some of this ideology, but Blaast has built its entire platform on this concept.
Scoopinion Looking To Capitalize On Summify Shut Down
Finnish social news aggregator Scoopinion is looking to capitalize on Twitter’s acquisition of competitor Summify. According to co-founder Johannes Koponen, Summify’s unanticipated exit and subsequent shut down has enabled Scoopinion to grow its user base significantly during the last few days.
Has Scoopinion caught a lucky break? Well, not really. It all comes down to hard work. The guys at Scoopinion were quick enough to react and engage in some aggressive marketing tactics, recommending the startup’s newsletter service as an alternative to Summify on all major news sites and blogs that covered the acquisition.
Cabforce Launches Officially At Nordic Travel Fair
Finland-based Cabforce launched officially at the Nordic Travel Fair last week. The service allows business and recreational travelers to book a taxi up to two hours in advance, and pre-pay with a credit card online. This saves the stress of being "taken for a ride" on a longer route in an unfamiliar city, and simplifies payment and language hassles with local drivers.
Microsoft Finland To Send A Team To Imagine Cup
Editorial note: This is a sponsored blog post by Microsoft as part of their series Hear it from startups.
Imagine Cup is an annual competition aimed at students worldwide, who are looking to change the world. Each year students compete against each other in many different categories for the best application. Applications are judged by their real world potential in changing the world, but also how viable they are business wise.
This year the finals will take place in Sydney, Australia and Microsoft Finland will be sending one team from Finland to the finals. The team however, has to win the semi-finals in Finland first.
Imagine Cup has multiple different categories available, but if you choose to enter the competition local semi-finals will be held for the Windows Phone Challenge as well as the Software Design categories.
PlayMySong Receives $350,000, Launches In NYC
PlayMySong has announced it has received $350,ooo (€271,000) in funding, allowing them to open an office in New York City and continue their reach in bars and venues between both coasts of the United States. In case you haven't seen our previous coverage, PlayMySong is a social jukebox mobile app that lets patrons control the background music you hear when you're out at a bar, diner, or at a similar location where the venue owner has the PlayMySong app running on iOS device connected to the sound system.
Poor Royalties: Spotify Isn't The Problem, It's Music Business Itself
Helsingin Sanomat wrote an article on A.W. Yrjänä, the head of a successful Finnish rock band CMX, and how much money they made on Spotify and through record sales. Yrjänä is a multi-talent. Not only does he write and sing the vocals for their songs, but he also writes poems and books. He shares with us that Iäti, their album that came out in September 2010, wasn't really a huge success financially even though it shot to number one on the charts.
#2 - In The Low Eight Figures
Unfair Advantage is out! Our guest this week is William Wolfram, the CEO and founder of DealDash. DealDash is a penny auction site with a lot of small innovations to improve the shopping experience. We talked to Will about pretty much everything related to DealDash; how he started it, what he did when he started the company, how they're doing financially and so forth. Listen in to hear the story of DealDash and what Will thinks of running a company that does revenue in the low eight figures annually.
Hammerkit Nails €1.25 M In Funding
Hammerkit, the Finnish cloud technology provider, today received €1.25 million investment from the North West Fund, joining Veraventure and Tekes as investors. The company produces scalable digital solutions for the global PR and marketing industry, and will use the funding to open a sales and development center in Liverpool.
Oh Private Money, Where Art Thou?
Editorial note: This is a guest post by Jaakko Salminen. More information on him towards the end of the post.
One of the generally accepted wisdoms of the Finnish startup and growth company environment is shortage of private money. Startups run to Tekes for funding supposedly due to lack of available private early investments, and growth companies get sold very early when there is no VC money available. Easily available public funding is often cited as the dragon eating away any lucrative investment opportunities, and the vicious circle is ready.
Or is private money simply being directed elsewhere? In fact some very interesting sources for additional private money could be made available, if we take a forward-looking attitude.
Would Transparency In Company Financials Increase Innovation?
A few days ago I listened to Horace Dediu's Critical Path and it got me thinking that would governments be able to increase innovation and competition through more transparency in the economy. Dediu talked about the movie business in one the more recent shows and he stated it many times that it is very hard to analyse the industry at large as they do not provide any figures on how different players are doing.
Further into the podcast, he went on to explain the findings of his study and more specifically how movies are financed as well as how the accounting works in the industry. Having listened to his findings, I completely understand why there is so little innovation and disruption taking place in the industry.
The lack of innovation was put in concrete explanation in Fred Wilson's blog post on AVC yesterday where he argues that scarcity is a bad business. He writes how he wanted to find something interesting to watch through many different legal movie services, but was unable to find anything worthwhile. In the end he had to resort to a "foreign rogue site", as he put it.
Geeks On Wheels: Microsoft Student Partners On A Roadtrip
Editorial note: This is a sponsored post by Microsoft and is part of the Hear it from startups -series.
I had a chat with Drazen Dodik, a Microsoft Student Partner, about the Geeks on Wheels tour they did with the other Microsoft Student Partners in November and December. All in all the gentlemen toured some 12 different cities and universities in Finland, talking to students about the possibilities Windows Phone offers. The tour was also an answer to the numerous requests they had received regarding Windows Phone trainings from faculties and different partners around Finland.
DealDash Recruiting Talent With Strong Growth And $1M Investment
Our January's recruiting partner is DealDash, a Helsinki, Finland based startup. They operate a "gamified" shopping site that we've been covering recently. Back in October we covered their growth in quite a bit of detail, but we're very happy to report that this growth has further continued and seems to continue into the future. To fuel this, they of course require the best of talent that is out there.
Currently DealDash is looking for front-end developers. If you've got your doubts about the financials of this particular startup, you need not worry.
WOT Reaches Another Milestone: 30 Million Downloads
Community-powered safe surfing tool WOT reached another milestone this past Monday by passing 30 million downloads. The number of downloads has effectively doubled during the past 12 months and the latest figure checks off a great year for the Finnish company - a year that also included new partnerships with social media giant Facebook and Russian email provider Mail.ru.
Why Elisa's Blockade Is Such A Big Thing
The court's order to make Elisa block access to certain websites became our most retweeted story yesterday. It received almost 1500 retweets in about 24 hours. I'm sure the plaintiff didn't anticipate the implications this will have, not only on Elisa but on a variety of other things - potentially even harming themselves. The more significant result to this is perhaps that Finland received a lot of negative publicity in the digital media space for its court's decision. In a time when countries are competing for appeal in the eye of digital media entrepreneurs, a lot of potential candidates saw Finland's position diminish. This may sound far fetched, but it really isn't. Let me explain why.
Finnish Operator Required To Block Access To ThePirateBay, Among Others
Elisa, one of the largest internet service providers in Finland, has been forced to block access to The PirateBay for its customers. Elisa issued a press release (in Finnish) on the matter moments ago. The decision was given by a local district court in Helsinki. Elisa has stated that they will seek correction to the decision in supreme court. As of today, all Elisa and Saunalahti (part of the same group) customers will be denied access to ThePirateBay on an operator level, meaning they have denied access to the servers in their name servers.
Risto Siilasmaa Set To Become Chairman Of Nokia
According to Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish), and two of their independent sources, Risto Siilasmaa will be proposed to become the next chairman of Nokia. Currently, the Chairman of the board is Jorma Ollila. Siilasmaa is the largest shareholder and also the founder of F-Secure, a computer security company.
ArcticStartup Now On Google+
Are you more active on Google+ than any other social network? Now you're able to also follow ArcticStartup on Google+ and get all our updates in a similar fashion to Twitter and Facebook. Google+ recently came out with its pages feature enabling businesses to create pages similar to those on Facebook. While we don't get a lot of traffic from Google+ currently, we do realise it's in our interest to offer alternatives to our readers in the way of distributing our news. Google+ has also been generally touted as the place where many technologically oriented people hang out.
Gecko Systems Eyes At The Russian Logistics Market And Glonass
Gecko Systems is a Finnish technology company that has taken an out-of-the box approach to location based services and markets. Instead of thinking of the obvious (which by Nordic standards usually means Western markets, USA, etc.), they have turned east towards Russia and their solutions, namely Glonass, a competitor to the GPS (Global Positioning System).
