Videoplaza Secures $12 Million Series B
Videoplaza has just come out with an announcement that they have secured a $12 million investment aimed for global expansion. The Series B funding comes from Qualcomm Ventures and Innovacom. We've written about the Sweden based company before as well, regarding their strong growth. With this investment the growth is sure to follow. The company had a great 2011 according to the press release. It served five times greater ad volume than the year before and opened up new offices in Madrid, Berlin and Singapore. It now operates in 17 different countries.
SoundCloud Reaches 10 Million Users
SoundCloud has just announced it has reached 10 million users. SoundCloud is a music startup currently in Berlin, but its roots lay in Sweden where its two co-founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss are from. We've covered the music service in the past as well a couple of times and they've definitely been one of the more interesting startups in Europe in the recent months. Just a few weeks ago the company closed a, reportedly, $50 million finance round.
SoundCloud Scores A $50 Million Round
Soundcloud, the Berlin-based startup founded by Swedes Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, has reportedly received a $50 million investment led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers including participation by GGV Capital. TechCrunch has estimated the round to be around $50 million, but Soundcloud did not confirm the round size in their press release about the investment.
Well Done Arctic Valley!
The startup ecosystem in the Arctic Valley (pardon us for our selfish term) hasn't always been a very well functioning one. Not that it is extremely functioning today, we're increasingly getting more evidence that the world is noticing your startups, your efforts and most importantly - your passion to change the world.
This week Wired UK wrote a piece on the hottest startup cities in Europe. Three of the nine startup cities in the outlined story are from the region; Tallinn, Stockholm and Helsinki.
Felix Peterson Of Amen Coming To Arctic15
We're extremely thrilled to announce that Felix Petersen is coming to Arctic15! Felix founded a successful location based startup, one of the first that got global traction in 2006 and grew it until 2008 when it got sold to Nokia. After that, he spent a few years at Nokia Nokia working at various positions until heading back into the wild to work on his next startup - Amen.
Amen is a startup in stealth mode and not a lot of it is known. However, it is reported that Ashton Kutcher together with Madonna's manager (and Index Ventures) have invested around $2 million into this Berlin based venture.
SoundCloud In LeWeb
We interviewed Eric Wahlforss in LeWeb Paris about their startup SoundCloud. It's an interesting company and not your average music startup as they build tools for artists to share that music. SoundCloud has recently moved to Berlin from Sweden and the impact of that move is also covered in the video.
Check out the Cloudplayer here and follow the company in Twitter here.
