Planeto Launches "Massively Multiplayer Online Quiz" Social Game In Open Beta
Swedish social game startup Planeto has released its new game Planeto Quiz into open beta available for all players late last week. Planeto calls the game "the world's first massively multiplayer online quiz", MMOQ. The idea of the game is to combine elements from quiz competitions and online multiplayer games, e.g. World of Warcraft, including role-playing elements like character building and player interaction - but all packaged for global mass-market audience.
Fruugo Posts Net Loss Of 11 Million Euros in 2009 - Aims For Growth
Fruugo, the much-debated ambitious Finnish e-commerce startup (see our previous coverage) that has raised tens of millions of euros of funding, filed its 2009 annual report last Friday. The report reveals the company made a loss of 11,040,071 euros (USD ~13.9M) in the financial year 2009. Despite the huge loss, the result was actually a slight improvement from 2008 when the company made a loss of 14.5 million euros. The report also tells that Fruugo produced a turnover of 8236 euros (yes, not a typo; i.e. USD ~10,350) from the sales commissions in 2009. The company launched its web storefront, available to consumers in Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands (and including merchants from also the UK), in May 2009 several months late from the planned schedule.
Calling All Nordic And Baltic Angel Investors
There's been a lot of talk lately about angel investing or the lack of thereof, and I think the time is finally ripe for it to raise its head here in the Nordics and Baltics.
I just recently talked to Petteri Koponen of Lifeline Ventures, who came back from the first SeedSummit that took place in London and was put together by the good people at Seedcamp. It's a new initiative that twice a year brings together a critical mass of Europe’s most active seed investors to try and establish a stronger, more cohesive network to support entrepreneurs across the continent.
We welcome the initiative. If its needed generally in Europe, the Nordics and Baltics are literally screaming for such an initiative.
The other angel investor coming from our neck of the woods who was present was who else than the other Jaiku co-founder, Jyri Engeström. Other angels present included Jeff Clavier, Martin Varsavsky, Brent Hoberman, Lukasz Gadowski, Stefan Glaenzer, Dave McClure, Andy Philips, William Reeve, Robin Klein and Sherry Coutu. A hefty list.
Investment: Sopima Closes A €1m Round
Every Friday we will feature an Investment and aim to break it down as closely as we can so our audience will get an idea of where the money comes from.
Sopima, a Finnish company building an online contract bank that aims to enable productivity improvements into the way organizations manage their contracts secured a €1m funding just a while ago.
Sopima is developed for all sizes of companies to keep their contracts in order, be able to manage all commitments made. As a web service Sopima enables you to do this together with your business partners, regardless where they are located. With Sopima every party has the entire contract constantly at arms length, and thus the contract becomes integral part of the daily business.
We dug a bit deeper to see where a web startup like Sopima would get its funding in Finland.
