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.
LinkedIn Co-Founder Joins Wrapp Board, Greylock Adds $5 M To Series A
Yesterday the digital gift card service, Wrapp, got another boost to their funding round and added anther big name to their board of directors. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has joined the board as Greylock Partners added $5 million to the company’s Series A funding to co-lead the round with Atomico. Wrapp received $5.5 million in November from Atomico and Creandum.
iZettle, Competitor To Square, Closes 8.2M Euro Investment
iZettle, a Sweden based company looking to crack the social payment problem, has closed an 8.2M euro investment from Index Ventures, Creandum and Charles Dunstone, CEO and Co-founder of The Carphone Warehouse. The round was lead by Index Ventures. iZettle's solution is very similar to that of the US leader's in this space, Square. They have an iOS app that users are able to download for free and then use that app, together with a small chip-card reader, to accept and pay for goods and services with your credit card.
Anil Hansjee Joins Creandum
Anil Hansjee, former head of Corporate Development at Google EMEA, joins Creandum the Sweden based Nordic VC firm as an investment advisor. Creandum also recently announced the hiring of Hjalmar Winbladh as a Venture Partner. The team continues its growth in knowledge, but also in the breadth of its networks.
“As Creandum seeks to build the leading venture firm in the Nordics, we strive to build a network of leading individuals to work with. These individuals should have superior deal flow, company building and investment experience, and international network. Anil ticks all these boxes. Needless to say we are thrilled to work with Anil to build global businesses.” says Johan Brenner, Creandum General Partner.
ArcticEvening Stockholm - 7th of September
ArcticEvening Stockholm is just around the corner! We have a very good lineup for Stockholm in order and honestly speaking, I hope we could have this panel in Tallinn and Helsinki as well.
Our theme for Stockholm will be Venture Capital and its state in the Nordics and Baltics.
Part of the questions will be provided by the moderator, but this time we'll try something new as well. Since we have the top venture capital companies of the region in our panel - we want to open up the possibility for the community to ask your questions as well. Therefore, do leave your questions in the comments of this post and we'll pick the best and most suitable ones.
Videoplaza Secures € 3.5 Million In Funding
We all know the Swedish startup Videoplaza has been on a roll lately with their ad serving technology for managing and monetising online video. Venture capitalist are not disagreeing: Today Videoplaza announced the completion of its €3.5 million (US$5 million) round of investment led by Creandum and Northzone.
Not surprisingly, the capital was raised to support a further commercial development and a roll-out across Europe. More specifically, the funding will enable Videoplaza to accelerate the deployment of its Monetizer ad server platform technology for managing, displaying and tracking advertising in and around publishers’ online video content into more European territories, including Germany, Spain and Italy.
Being A VC In The Nordics
Daniel Blomquist of Creandum, a Swedish early stage venture capital company, has posted an excellent post to their blog analysing the differences between the Nordic countries to other countries as well as analysing the differences within themselves. In essence, Daniel goes on to confirm what Will Cardwell said some time ago.
Creandum has gathered a lot of knowledge about the Nordic venture capital market over the last two years to understand the ecosystem better and thus be able to work in it better. They now share some of this knowledge with us. Their main findings from the report were:
Spotify Aims For €230 Million Valuation
We all love Spotify here at ArcticStartup and use it everyday to listen our favorite tracks. We also know that it was not cheap to begin with for the VCs to invest in Spotify even though it was (and still is) the early days, since the founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon had plenty of experience, capital of their own and know what they were doing. But if you thought it was expensive before, the Times Online reports that "Spotify is trying to drum up a valuation of close to £200m (roughly €230m) as it seeks new investment of between £20m (€23m) and £30m (€35m)."
Times Online further reports that If it Spotify achieves the valuation it aims for, the company will have almost trebled in value since it sold a £13m stake last autumn to Nordic investors Northzone Ventures and Creandum.
We are excited and for once, think the high valuation is for a very good reason. Just recently in an investor forum I heard a VC who had invested in Spotify proudly stating that Spotify is the next Skype, meaning that it will be the next big Internet service success story coming from the region. They certainly have the right direction and I don't think I have seen any company have the same potential since. Regardless of whether Spotify ever reaches a $2.6 billion exit (with current exchange rate some €1.87 billion), or exit at all for that matter, I, for one, would invest in a heart beat.
Using A Sales Process for Venture Capital
Daniel Blomquist from Creandum venture capital firm wrote lately how entrepreneurs should focus more on which VC to approach than how to approach. He argues that you can make more out of your time if you try to find out and select the most prominent VCs for your firm beforehand. As Ville Vesterinen and Daniel mention in successive post's comments, it is a sales job. But a bit of clarifying could be used to point out the similarities and try enlighten the whole process further. The fund raising process seems to be somewhat comparable to business-to-business selling process.
Grädde Wants To Invest In Tomorrow's Internet Stars. Are You One Of Them?
"You don't become an artist because you want to, but because you have to." 
The words are of Katja Lepola, a partner at Grädde Invest. Katja held a speach about venture capital for companies in early stages at the Geek Girl Meetup on 28th March in Stockholm, Sweden.
Her quote was strongly related to as of being an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is most likely not something one chooses to become, but something one has to do. It's very hard to be an entrepreneur, especially if one is to create a great successful company. To make it, one has to have a very strong commitment.
Katja's advice for an entrepreneur
Besides from the fact that entrepreneurship is something one has to do, Katja shared her best advice for an entrepreneur:
- Love your customer, or get customers who you can love. You'll benefit greatly if you're interested in creating value for your customer.
- Create a company you love to work for, it's going to be long hours along with ups and downs.
- Build a company that is easy to sell. Do your homework on what type of companies are most likely to be bought.
- There are no shortcuts to create value, it takes time. Be prepared on a fantastic, but a long and tuff journey.
- No skeletons in the closet. Keep your records straight like if you were to get listed at the stock exchange the next day.
Videoplaza Gaining Speed
Recently we wrote about Videoplaza signing a deal with Sweden's TV4. At that point it was not disclosed what they would deliver to TV4. Now Videoplaza has revealed that they work together with TV4 on Replay, a free ad funded catch-up service, which uses Videoplaza's ad server to serve ads. The formats the ads are served to the TV include pre- and midrolls, overlays and companion banners. Campaigns currently running include campaigns from Sweden’s largest advertiser ICA, Ford, SAS and the Red Cross. (see video below in Swedish).
This could also possibly be something that could easily take traction in other Nordic countries as they struggle find new ways to compete against new players like TVkaista (see our blog post here). Not only that, I believe UK and the whole mainland Europe is potentially fertile ground for their solution, where US might be a tougher market with Hulu and the likes.
The company also announced that it has added a new board member, Rolf Skoglund, who started Microsoft Nordics way back in 1985. At the same time Videoplaza announced two advisors: Andy Chen, VP of Digital Solutions at Viacom International / MTV Europe and Joakim Jardenberg, the CEO of Mindpark. All of Videoplaza's non-execs are also investors and stake holders in the company.
Creandum, an independent and partner owned Swedish early stage seed fund which has invested in Spotify has also invested in Videoplaza. We will see if Videoplaza will spark similar kind of wild speculation that Spotify has. Creandum's portfolio includes a number of very promising Nordic early stage companies along with Spotify, and it is likely that Videoplaza is no exception.
Aito Technologies To Work With Blyk
Blyk, the free Finnish born (but operates only in UK) mobile network for 16 to 24 year-olds funded by advertising, has signed a frame agreement with Aito Technologies, a Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution provider, for the delivery and implementation of its Business-Driven CEM software product, Aito, to UK market. This follows a successful 3-month pilot installation, which began in May.
Aito takes business intelligence from network traffic data and offers Blyk an easy-to-understand, in-depth analysis of service usage, member behavior patterns and trends.
The information that the software generates is given to key staff directly involved in business management – sales and marketing managers, member service teams, product managers – in a form which is easy to use and act on.
In essence, Aito is an easy-to-implement tool that’s a user-friendly method of making sure mobile subscribers are having a great network experience, at all times, whether making a voice call, sending a text or MMS, or, in the case of Blyk, receiving relevant mobile adverts with their services. The carrier-grade Aito will provide Blyk with a 360° view of the activities and overall experience of its entire subscriber base. .
CEO of Aito Technologies, Anssi Tauriainen, said, “Like Blyk, we know that mobile advertising is set to be one of the most important business models and revenue-generating network activities offered by operators in the future [...]"
Mobile advertising has been already coming from years and is still as annoying as ever. 
Yet, this is hardly Aito's fault and I admit not having tried Blyk services. That said, even if Blyk works like charm, I already pay fixed monthly sum for practically unlimited calls, SMS and data and can't really imagine the future any other way. For cash-strapped 16 to 24 year-olds teens who adore brands there seems to be something there though. Blyk users receive 6 sms/mms from the chosen brands per day in exchange for 217 txts and 43 minutes of voice calls each month.
For the segment the service seems to be working: Blyk has currently 200,000 member in the UK, which is the only market they are currently serving. Now Blyk is ready to slice and dice the market data into an easy-to-use format with Aito Technologies' help and are well equipped to follow their plans to go pan-European in 2009 potentially reaching 40 million young consumers.
The advertisers seems to be happy as well: Big brands like L'Oreal have seen tremendous results with average click through rates of 29% (ranges between 12 and 43%). Quite a lead from the average mobile advertising average CTR that hovers around 3-6%.
Finnish media Digitoday knows that in addition to Blyk, Aito Technologies has currently six commercial pilots running in Europe, including Finland. Digitoday also reports that Aito has around 700 potential customers, traditional and virtual mobile operators. Along with these, Aito is going after ring tone, community and added value service providers in the mobile space, which there are around 2000 to 3000.
Aito Technologies is owned by the employees as well as two reputable Nordic investement funds, Creandum and Conor. The company has currently 25 employees.
Spotify Opened For Public
Spotify, a Swedish startup offering a lightweight software application enabling on demand streaming of music, has opened up its service for public.
Earlier on we wrote about rumor that Spotify had raised €15m round from various investors. Last week I received a confirmation that Creandum and Northzone Ventures has invested undisclosed sum to the Swedish startup (more bout this here).
It's no wonder the startup is investors' latest darling as it just recently signed significant licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music Group, Merlin, The Orchard and Bonnier Amigo.
The service launched on October 7th 2008 in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Throughout the remainder of this year and into 2009 Spotify will be rolled out to further markets.
Spotify offers three different subscription models: Free, Day Pass and Premium accounts. Day pass cost you just under one pound sterling for 24 hours whereas the Premium account costs you 9.99 pound sterling a month. Free account is advertising funded, but if you have received your free account via an invitation already earlier on as I did, chances are you don't need to deal with any advertising yet. Advertisers that have signed up to be included from the launch include Ford, T-Mobile and Xbox.
Spotify – the story from Spotify on Vimeo.
In comparison, the service is better than any other music service I have seen so far. Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists. It will also recommend music you might like based on what you've listened so far. To my delight it also seems to do the recommendation very accurately to match my taste. Martin Varsavsky used a fitting analogies for the service.
[...] Spotify is like iTunes but with on-demand. It’s like Joost, but for music! It´s like Pandora without the need to vote and with your ability to listen to music anytime you want. It´s like Last FM without the community.
The only downside was that some of the current users saw many of the songs on their playlists disappear as Spotify cleaned their playlist to reflect the current copyright agreements that they have been able to push through. Regardless, I think this is a minor disappointment and the users will possible see many of the songs reappear as Spotify tries to get more record labels behind them.
You can also post and vote on your favorite playlist Digg-style at Spotylist. Spotylist also allows you to find new playlists that others have posted via simple links. I already found two good ones just from the blog comments.
The fact that another service has already build its own offering on Spotify's core product is a solid example that there is something very special about this service. Forget Last.fm, go Spotify!
Spotify rumoured to have raised €15m round
TechCrunch UK just reported (here) that Spotify, a Swedish startup offering a lightweight software application enabling on demand streaming of music, is rumoured to have raised €15m round (massive €71.6m pre-money valuation) from a Scandinavian VC fund Northzone Ventures.
As TechCrunch UK commented "Northzone themselves have declined to comment, but Creandum, another of Sweden’s top VCs, is also understood to have taken part in the funding round."
ArcticStartup met Creandum at Seedcamp in London and a partner at Creandum told us that he is very excited about Spotify when we asked what are the most interesting Swedish startups at the moment. On the face of it this would support the rumor, even though we can't confirm it either.
An Interview With Daniel Blomquist, Creandum
I did an extensive interview with Daniel Blomquist from the Venture Capital firm Creandum. Daniel is an associate at Creandum and profiles innovative companies that have the potential to become market leaders in niche markets. He shares great insight on Nordic companies and gives some first hand tips on venture financing.
Many thanks to Daniel at this moment!
What’s the big idea behind Creandum, what's the philosphy so to speak?
Creandum was founded based on two important strategic principles. Firstly, from a market perspective, we identified a market opportunity due to the lack of professional venture capital investors in Nordic early-stage technology companies. We have seen through extensive analysis of the Nordic venture capital market that significant value has been created in companies that are less than 5-6 years old, which means that one has to invest early to be part of these successes. Secondly, from a resource perspective, we noticed that in many successful US early-stage venture capital firms, the investors often had entrepreneurial and technology backgrounds. This was rarely the case in Europe or the Nordic region. That’s why everyone at Creandum has an entrepreneurial background being involved in building and growing start-ups. Some have also worked as business angels before joining Creandum.
Creandum completes Aitos's round A financing
Alarm:clock euro pointed us to Aito Technologies getting another injection of VC capital, this time from Creandum to fuel its international growth.
I've heard from relatively reliable sources that Aito is definitely onto something big and good here. Initial demand for the product/software they are building is incredibly good. The software as far as I'm informed, is a tool to analyse network traffic and thus serve as an indicator for operators to streamline their services. For example, as funny as it sounds - not many operators know the percentage of successfully delivered MMS messages in their networks and as far as I know, Aito's software will help with these sort of problems.
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