Environmental Approach With Premium And Free Cards
Apart from the obvious efforts to try to keep the interface very simple with few steps and easy payment, EmotiCards are printed on FSC-certified paper. Printing itself is as far as possible done locally close to the recipients thanks to the Xerox Premier Partner Network, shrinking delivery times and the need for air mail.

To send a postcard with a premium version of EmotiCards costs two “Stamps”, approx. 1,5€. You can pay with credit card, cell phone or via Paypal. In a couple of weeks the company will be ready for worldwide delivery, at the same price, beginning printing in United States, United Kingdom, Nordics, China, Australia, Germany and France. Later this autumn it will also be possible to send postcards for free, bundled with product samples from selected companies.

According to Roman Pixell, CEO, EmotiCards will get onboard the Facebook virtual currency  coming soon, as working with a mobile integration and an iPhone app. My immediate question about Flickr integration got a positive answer. Together with Picasa, Flickr should be in place in the near future. I’m also looking forward to be able pull addresses from my address book.

Will There Be Cards Sent
I see a good opportunity in here within fashion, holiday, event and party pictures, but with already tens of services available for sending postcards, both within and outside Facebook, EmotiCards need to be doing something differently in order to gain stickiness. Even if Facebook is the largest depository for digital images, it’s also the world’s fifth largest country with lots of noise. Getting it right in there will be a huge advantage. For example Posten, the Swedish postal service offers same type of service, just a bit more expensive and with no Facebook integration.

I think EmotiCards can stand the challenge because of their
- Simplicity. I couldn’t even choose a font. Most of the times I just want to choose a picture and send it.
- Eco-friendly approach, not just regarding the paper quality, but with local printing.
- Price. Free cards bundled with sample products. Brands are in need to find new ways to advertise and interact.
 
It does look like Roman and his crew have at least done their homework before launching yet another postcard service. I’m excited about my postcard to arrive.

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Auktionsfynda is a service with a simple search and clean GUI, the main page displaying random selection of items that have 10, 30 or 60 min. left to bid. The search results include a short description of an item, time left to bid and link directly to the respective auction. No transactions, nor bidwatching is handled by the service, at least not yet. I think on demand notifications on auctions closing shortly would add value, since many of the bidwatching applications and services on the market are made service specific, especially for eBay.

The business model is no different to any other niche search engine service: Advertising and finding value added features the indexed online auction sites are willing to pay for.

Ted and Henrik demoing Auktionsfynda @ the office, i.e. a restaurant terrace

The two co-founders behind Auktionsfynda are no less than Ted Valentin and Henrik Berggren. By their side they have co-owner David Kjelkerud. Henrik and David are most known for Listentoblogs and their latest addition to online music scene, Citysounds.fm. Ted, serial entrepreneur and founder of 24 Hour Business Camp, 24HBC, has previously started a similar site, Annonskartan.se, a local add search engine. It was at the 24HBC that Ted and Henrik met and soon after decided they wanted to work together in a project. Couple of months and lunches later the idea of Auktionsfynda was born.

To add additional value to the service, Auktionsfynda is providing an expert blog on auctions. Neta, “auction veteran” and Ted’s mother, will be guiding the users with her best tips and tricks in the world of auctions, antigues being her line of expertise.

As Fred Wilson wisely points out regarding online retail, it’s when you focus on making users active first and foremost and give them a lot of things they can do on your website beside transact, you boost the sales. Keeping that in mind, at the same time as eBay, the dominating online auction business, just reported continuing declining numbers, I think services like Auktionsfynda ought to be welcomed by the market to give a hand in converting users to transactors.

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24 Hour Business Camp

After all the talk I’ve heard during the past year about innovation clusters and what not, which are without exception driven from top down by pouring money into what are effectively projects that are born dead, 24hbc was the first occasion in which I saw innovation truly actually happening. It’s all about passion and caring, and it matters. In a same way as a person can care for her startup, events and even long term projects should have the same burning desire of a single person or a group of people to create something that matters to them and to their peer group. Anything else fails before it has really started.

All the events I’ve been to, 24hbc was the best I’ve seen along with Reboot that takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark (Reboot beign very different type of event and a lot less productive, but the culture was the same nonetheless). It all came down to the atmosphere. People enjoying their peers company and pushing each other to excel after seeing all the effort that Ted Valentin saw to pull all of us all together. Even the corporate sponsor Bonnier R&D had the right people there who not only blended in, but made the event only better. As they wrote in the Live Blog that were set up for the participants, Beata Wickbom and us to contribute to:

“As sponsors, Bonnier R&D´s main focus was to meet all the entrepreneurs and learn as much from them as we could. Unsurprisingly, we soon realised that the temptation to build something ourselves proved to be to difficult to handle.”

They came up with an innovation that reflects the high level of services that all the participants worked on, and most even finished within a mere 24 hours. Here’s Bonnier’s two cents:

“Morris and I played with the new Mirr:or RFID-reader from Violet. It suddenly dawned on us that the new SL bus/underground-card has an RFID chip inside, and therefore most people in Stockholm will have one soon. A world of opportunities open.

With a lot of help from Herman (and Pelle), we made a small script that connected the Mirr:or to the Mobilstart API. When the chip is read, a text message is sent to a predefined phone number, notifying what time the reading occurred.

We think this could become a smart little application for families. When the kids come home they simply place their SL card over the reader, and automatically the parents get a text message saying ‘Hi! Sara came home at 14:15’. “

Bonnier was just a drop in the ocean; The young guns developed equally or more promising services, of which I will surely write about later on once they get off the ground. See all of them here and here. Powerfull stuff!

Miikka and I enjoyed our stay. Thank you Ted! Previous post on 24hbc here and here.

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The Swedish 24 Hour Business Camp (in Swedish; try Google translation and our previous post) has been kicked off in the outskirts of Stockholm today at noon. There is a buzz across the Japanese style Yasuragi Hasseludden conference center with over 50 small teams of Swedish Internet entrepreneurs and developers planning their new businesses.

The event started out yesterday evening with a boat trip to the conference center, where the participants tuned in to creative mood by relaxing and mingling over a sushi dinner in Yukata’s, and enjoying spa and the tranquility of the establishment.

Nothing great is born without pain, though (right?), and there have been some problems this time as well. As Ted Valentin, the event organizer, mentioned earlier, “All one needs is a laptop, an Internet connection and an idea.” Well, so we thought. The equation almost fell short with major wifi fail lasting from the last evening until the very kick-off of the event. Some hotshot technicians were brought in this morning, however, and got the issue fixed in time for the start, preventing the conference group switching to another location. But the network is still rather sluggish and somewhat unstable.

Nevertheless, the teams have not let connectivity issues slow them down, and are working at full speed. Our hope with Ted and the participants is that these kinds of events will radiate the excitement and entrepreneurial spirit across the whole of Nordics and Baltics.

You can find out more from the event’s live blog, and ArcticStartup will also report tomorrow with a new post. We will publish some video interviews later on as well (and of course register the newborn startups in ArcticIndex). See also the Flickr photos.

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Now Valentin is rouding up a group of the most promising Swedish Internet entrepreneurs and soon-to-be-entrepreneurs to spend two days together in Swedish arhipelago in a Japanese spa working on new business ideas in groups (52 small teams!). The concept in called 24 Hour Business Camp (24hbc), which means each team has 24 hours to work on their idea (hence the name) and when they are done, the teams present their ideas, pick up and head back to Stockholm loaded with inspiration. (Here’s more about the 24hbc concept)

ArcticStartup is there as well documenting the project from start to finish. We will not only post updates to our blog, but will be also post short video snippets in a Live Blog with Beata Wickbom . The Live Blog has been set up specificly for the 24hbc and will be in English throughout.

Why is Valentin doing this? Because just as we in ArcticStartup, he wants to push the Nordic entrepreneurial culture forward and inspire creative people around him …and it’s simply just too fun of an idea to not go through with. As Valentin puts it:

The goal of the 24 hour business camp is to have fun, meet other entrepreneurs, test our creative limits, and inspiring other people to build their own start-ups. The inspiration comes from the 24 hour dot com , a similiar but smaller event that took place in Berlin in 2004.

Valentin is also behind the annoskartan.se, which is a search engine for local classified ads (previous post here), which is only one of his many map websites he has released (See all his projects here). Others include Sushikartan.se (the sushi map), Wifikartan.se (the wifi map), Cafekartan.se (the cafe map) just to name a few. Valentin is also runs AcademicNetwork.se – Swedens largest site network for students and academics.

Photo by puyol5 (CC:BY).

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