Startup Jobs: Equity, Pay, Fame And Fortune
Those who say there are no interesting opportunities in the Nordics clearly don't know what they are talking about. An ideal place to start the exploration is our job board at http://www.arcticstartup.com/jobs/. This is invaluable destination for those who are not yet confortable setting up their own shop, but want to learn to the ropes with a solid team that already know what they are doing, but still want to be in the eye of the storm.
Working in a startup is ultimate experience and much more. You are running against time with too little resources, a boat load of passionate people who just absolutely love every little bit of their product, team, people and purpose. And everyday single day is different, very different. How much more fun can one have while still not breaking the law?
Get The ArcticIndex iPhone App Now!
ArcticIndex, our directory for Nordic and Baltic startups, people, startup jobs and events, just got iPhoned. ArcticIndex iPhone app is developed by Arun Prakash Rajendran, a passionate mobile entrepreneur living in Göteborg, Sweden. You can check out the App at Prakash's app gallery, or get it directly here.
I have used the app for couple of days now and love the ease I can check out the new events listings. Similarly, if you're looking for a startup to join its a whim to check out the latest jobs at ArcticIndex and see what the company is all about from the Index.
We will introduce more features for ArcticIndex soon, so make sure you have your iPhone App ready when that happens.
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.
ArcticIndex To Make The Community Tick
There are roughly 350 startups and 200 individuals already listed in ArcticIndex. This is becoming an increasingly important destination and a resource for anyone looking for information on any startup that comes from the Northern Europe.
We have heard of cases where an investors have heard about a startup and subsequently contacted them (and sometimes even invested) when they have been able to look up a name from the ArcticIndex. Same goes for the media. We break stories on many new startups that the big media then picks up and writes about. Yes, you guessed it: ArcticIndex is where they go check out the facts on those startups.
If you have a startup and have not listed yours yet, do it now. And if you have yours listed, do update your information! Why? Because this is the information that gets printed and looked at as a fact. So if you have had subsequent financing rounds, new key employees, product releases, do yourself a favor and write it in the ArcticIndex, since this is what the readers, investors and the media will judge your startup by. This is also where we pick up new startups to write about.
Get In The Know With ArcticIndex
The second half of 2009 is well under way as the late comers have finally returned from their summer holidays and the focus is once again put back into work. While the economies around the world are showing slight rebound from the nasty recession, things are still uncertain. This however doesn't seem to be the case with startups - the uncertainty has not startups all that hard, compared to the bigger giants. One proof of this is that many startups are still recruiting.
Post Your Events To ArcticIndex From Now On
I wanted to kickstart the week by giving a little heads up on our ArcticIndex and what we've been up to lately. Sometime back we added the jobs part to the website and even though it hasn't been under tremendous use - it has received a lot of attention.
Today - we're announcing an addition to the service, events. We decided to let go of our Yahoo Upcoming account and build it ourselves to ArcticIndex. Actually, the wonderful guys at Kisko Labs did it - do contact them if you're in need of development resources, they do a fantastic job. Anyways, one of the reasons was also that we really want to give all the necessary tools for the community to do this sort of activities without us being a gatekeeper in the middle.
New Job Openings
We have been slowly developing ArcticIndex with KiskoLabs to make it even more useful for the Nordic and Baltic entrepreneurship community, which seems to grow bigger and stronger by the day.
ArcticIndex is the primary information resource of Nordic and Baltic startups and the entrepreneurs behind them. It's effectively your one stop shop for getting the latest information on the companies and people region, whatever your need.
The platform has developed nicely and the latest addition to the service, a job board, is starting to get traction and we're seeing more and more activity in there.
Go and check out some very exciting opportunities that have been posted on the Job Board or post your own (here).
Amidst Downturn - Startups Are Recruiting
Last week we launched some new features to our ArcticIndex, the service you can use to find out about startups in the Nordics as well as Baltics and the people associated with these companies. On top of the shiny new design, we have launched a job board that has gotten fair share of interest already.
The job board is free for everyone to use. All you need to do is register your company to the ArcticIndex and add the position you need to get filled.
Already, five companies are looking for talent. Do apply for the positions if they are of interest and hey, if you know someone in need of a job during these times - be sure to tip them of these killer positions:
- Appear: Software Engineer With Customer Skills
- Oak Ventures Oy: Freelance Junior Consultant/Writer
- Netcycler: Senior Web Developer
- Ironstar Helsinki: Game Designer
- Kisko Labs: Programmer
ArcticIndex redesigned and launched with new features
ArcticIndex, the best resource for finding out information regarding nordic and Baltic startups, has been redesigned and launched with new features. Thanks to our great development partner, Kisko Labs who have done a magnificent job with the rapid and flexible iterative development.
ArcticIndex, for those who are not yet familiar with the service, is a one stop shop for your information needs regarding Nordic and Baltic startups. We have close to 200 companies in the service and over 100 people affiliated with startups. The service is a community effort in building a coherent and wide information resource for everyone of us in the startup community and we're growing strong!
We have now redesigned the website and made it slightly different in branding compared to ArcticStartup. There's no point in confusing people with the two websites. Furthermore, the redesign has come in handy adding some usability fixes to the service.
One of the biggest new features in the release is the addition of our free job board or a recruiting service. This is the first release and we'll be adding features to it as we go on. However, it already works fine and we'll be promoting companies looking for talent in the job board on ArcticStartup on a regular basis. Make sure you enter your recruitment needs there - we'll do some free promotion on it in the near future.
We'll also be adding a smaller development blog to ArcticIndex to enable dialogue with the startup community to create the kind of service the community wants. We'll let you know when the blog is live - shouldn't take too many days though.
As always, we're more than glad to hear your comments on these improvements and don't hesitate to share any ideas you might have with the service. We're developing this to make the startup community in whole function better - so you're part of the team that we want to listen to.
New Features At ArcticIndex
ArcticIndex, our database and a network of Nordic and Baltic startups, service providers and investors, has been growing steadily with new members. We have also added some new features together with Kisko Labs that have been asked for every now and then. Here's a little run down on what we've released and some plans where we intend to go with the service.
Some new additions to the service include:
- Availability to set a location for your company - this means you can choose a Nordic or a Baltic country from the drop down list to mark the home turf your company. This will come in handy in the future as we bring in more localised services to ArcticIndex.
- Possibility to filter out companies and people based on their nationality - this feature has been asked for quite a bit and we agree, it is only the beginning in adding better ways to drill down to the database with keywords of filters of your choice. However, now when you go to either the companies page or people page, you are able to filter the nationalities with the tool on the left hand side.
- Company specific URLs - this will help those smaller companies get more visibility through Google and other search engines. Unfortunately we can't write about every startup there is, but that is no barrier for good online visibility. Just enter your company name as it should be in the field provided and the service will render the company page URL so that it matches your company name. A small step towards better SEO.
- Company specific ArcticStartup blog posts - we matched the companies in the database together with the blog posts in ArcticStartup through tags. This means that, for example on Spotify's page you will now be able to see the latest ArcticStartup blog posts regarding Spotify. This will make the content more relevant for everyone and useful.
We have a roadmap of new features that are going to be implemented in the near future, but what are the things you'd like to see in the service - where would you like us to take it? We're going to be releasing embeddable boxes (like the one you see about Spotify and Kisko Labs below this post) to everyone in a bit, so other startup bloggers can also share the love. We've also been playing with the idea of bringing in tools for startups to take better control over their own page and start using it as a marketing platform, or a recruiting service. But now's your chance - give us your input, where would you like us to take the service and what are the features you'd like to see implemented?
ArcticIndex Growing Strong. Register Now!
We released ArcticIndex just two weeks ago and we have already nearly 80 registered startups and nearly 60 registered entrepreneurs in the index.
It's easy and free to register, just as it's easy and free to use the service.
We wanted to build the service because we strongly felt that the Nordic and Baltic startups deserve more visibility. I quote myself here:
We at ArcticStartup aim to encourage entrepreneurship and to help create a radically optimistic entrepreneurial culture here in the Nordics and Baltics, and thus have long wanted to bring more visibility to the market and most importantly give visibility to the many kick-ass startups we have here.Now, we’re excited to announce that we’re are one step closer to our common goal by introducing ArcticIndex. It’s an early beta and we’re are adding features and improving it as we go so please be patient. There’s a road map full of features coming, but we wanted the community to be able to use it as soon as possible.
We are happy to say that we have received nothing but support and 'thank yous' from the startups and entrepreneurs all over the arctic region. Still, we hope to build the service a far and wide to give full benefit for the startups and entrepreneurs in the region and to give a stronger standing for the whole arctic startup scene in the global arena.
If you're a startup or an entrepreneur and you're not in the ArcticIndex yet, make sure your customers, media and peers can find by registering (here!) and getting a great start to 2009. Thanks!
Image by Paul Keller (CC:)
ArcticIndex Beta Is Live! Register Your Startup Now!
We at ArcticStartup aim to encourage entrepreneurship and to help create a radically optimistic entrepreneurial culture here in the Nordics and Baltics, and thus have long wanted to bring more visibility to the market and most importantly give visibility to the many kick-ass startups we have here.
Now, we're excited to announce that we're are one step closer to our common goal by introducing ArcticIndex. It's an early beta and we're are adding features and improving it as we go so please be patient. There's a road map full of features coming, but we wanted the community to be able to use it as soon as possible.
ArcticIndex is for the Nordics and Baltics what CrunchBase is for the Silicon Valley. It will be the best venue for the Nordic and Baltic startups to gain visibility and get the attention of the press, the investors, the potential employees and basically anyone at the region. This is because the US equivalent does not help small Nordic and Baltic startups much, since there are thousands of US startrups. Most of the rock star startups like Twitter, etc. get all the attention and many other small startups will never be found from the hay stack. This is why we wanted to create our own 'CrunchBase' and you, our dear readers, decided it's called ArcticIndex.
You can register here and add your startup's information to the database as well as your founder/management team. This will ensure that we, or anyone else for that matter, will always have up-to-date information at hand when we write about your startup and make sure all the readers get to know your startup.
If your profile or your startup's profile is already in the ArcticIndex, you can edit your information if its not correct or up-to-date. Please, avoid marketing language and try to keep to the facts so we will have an objective resource that we can all use.
We will also pull out your ArcticIndex profile to the end of the blog post when we write about you on this blog. This is to ensure that by filling and keeping the information at ArcticIndex up-to-date you can make sure that all the facts in the ArcticStartup blog posts are accurate.
Also, since it's an early Beta do let us know if you have problems logging in, filling information etc. As said, this is the first version and we're improving it as we go, but we wanted to give you this right away so you can start using it as soon as possible to see what works, what you want more of and what you want less of. Thank you and make sure to sign up now!
